KJP

Just WVIZ. KJP

All kids do stupid stuff, no matter what era/generation/wormhole they're from. The ones that survive grow to become wise adults for their own children to ignore. KJP

I did a Google search on some Ohio passenger rail-related keywords, and found this place to be a great resource for exchanging ideas and info. Now look at what I've done to it!! KJP

I remember one year, maybe 10-15 years ago, several fisherman drove their pickup trucks out onto the Lake Erie ice to spend the weekend "out there." Problem was, the ice flow they were on started moving and broke free. Fortunately, they had a radio or cell phone and called for help. The US Coast Guard sent a helicopter and plucked them from the ice. Their pickup trucks were left behind and never found again.... I've often heard that, in really cold winters, you can walk to Canada, especially the shallower west end of the lake. If I ever did that, I'd tow an already inflated raft behind me and bring some fishing equipment just to convince the Coast Guard rescuers that I was out the there fishing. KJP

Something like that. You're thinking of the British Railbus that ran in 1985 between downtown, Euclid and Mentor. But it could be a more substantial vehicle, such as what Ottawa uses, called the O-Train -- http://www.octranspo.com/train_menue.htm Or, it could be like what is used on the River Line in New Jersey, between Trenton and Camden, that opened earlier this year (2004). http://www.njtransit.com/an_cp_project006.shtml or http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Camden-Trenton/ Both of these are diesel-powered light-rail services (dubbed "cordless light rail"). I suspect we could probably borrow one of these trains (more likely from New Jersey which has numerous train sets, whereas Ottawa only has three) for about six months to give it a test drive here. KJP

Next stop is 'transit neighborhood' Lakewood Sun Post Dec. 30, 2004 By KEN PRENDERGAST Staff Writer .........

VCR/DVR alert.... From 9-10 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 13, WVIZ TV-25 will focus its "ideas" show on the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project. Joe Calabrese is scheduled to appear live. KJP

Damn, your identi-con scares me enough as it is -- every time I read one of your posts, that scary-looking dude is banging away like he wants to lay down a beating on someone... KJP

I wrote a freelance piece about it for the Weather Channel's website in the early 1990s, and did a 20th anniversary article about it for Sun Newspapers in Cleveland. I'll see if I can find the articles and post them. I remember the storm quite clearly, even though I was only 11 years old at the time. My mother drove that morning from Highland Heights to work in Northfield as her car's gas tank ran low, and abandoned cars littered I-271, only to discover her workplace was closed and she couldn't find a gas station open on her way back. She called my father and told him the route she would take home so if she failed to arrive, he would know where to tell authorities to start looking for her. In Tiffin, my brother awoke to discover the power was out in his home and the air temperature INSIDE was 28 degrees. His one-year-old daughter's skin was blue, a sign of hypothermia. The roads were impassable, so he called a friend who had a snowmobile, wrapped his daughter in some blankets, and she was taken to the hospital on the back of the snowmobile. She survived, and has a family of her own these days. My personal recollection is not being able to see out my bedroom window because an 8-foot snowdrift blocked my view. My father took a picture of it and I have it around here somewhere. When I find it, I will post it. But, here's an article from the PD on the 25th anniversary of the storm that still has us talking..... ______________________ But it's better than 1978 25 years ago today, huge blizzard shut down the state, killed 100 Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) January 26, 2003 Author: Grant Segall; Plain Dealer Reporter Estimated printed pages: 6 Randy Ayers grabbed the judge's chair. His teammates had to sleep in jail. "We can remember some of the prisoners hollering at us, banging on the bars," the basketball star recalls 25 years later. Read More... _______________________________ the blizzard of '78 Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) January 26, 2003 Author: Plain Dealer The worst blizzard in Ohio's history struck 25 years ago today, wrapping the Midwest in white. Below are its vital statistics. All local weather readings were made at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where worse extremes may have gone unrecorded during a blackout for part of the day. Snowfall: just 7.1 inches in Cleveland, up to 31 inches elsewhere, with drifts deep enough to bury trucks. Sustained wind: 53 miles per hour here, still a local record. Read More...

I don't remember the "grousing/rant" about East Broad Street. Probably just as well. I count publicly owned airports as a subsidy because, when they were begun, railroads maintained their own stations, were wholly responsible for their depreciation, maintenance and property taxes. Lots of property taxes. Consider this sidebar from the April 1959 issue of Trains Magazine article "Who Shot The Passenger Train?".... CASE IN POINT Rail vs. Air in Toledo A favorite pastime in Toledo, O., (population 330,000) use to be criticizing its ancient Union Station. Built in 1886, the passenger facility was owned by New York Central but also used by B&O, C&O and Wabash. Civic wrath reached such a pitch that a local businessman erected a billboard which read DON'T JUDGE TOLEDO BY ITS UNION STATION. [New York] Central finally capitulated after the war despite the fact that it was piling up bigger and bigger passenger deficits. The [rail]road spent 5 million dollars of its own money to erect a brand-new Central Union Terminal in 1950. Today the structure represents an investment of $4,856,745 and in the year 1956 land and property taxes totaling $42,745 were paid on it. Fourteen miles from downtown is the Toledo Express Airport, served by Capital, Delta and United. Convairs, DC-6B's and Viscounts serve the facility; nonstop flights to both New York and Chicago are available. The airport, built entirely with city funds, was completed in 1955. In 1957 its financial statement looked like this: Gross operating revenues: $192,660 Gross operating expenses: $209,026 Operating deficit............. $ 16,366 Toledo Express Airport maintains depreciation records though such a charge is not included in operating expense. The annual depreciation charge on such items as hangars, runways and fencing is $86,851 which, if added to the deficit, brings the figure to $103,217. Moreover, there is the matter of debt service. The airport, valued at $3,865,228, was financed out of city funds as well as a municipal improvement fund and a bond issue. No interest on the amount borrowed is included in the airport statement, but at the 2 1/2 percent rate applicable, the amount is $96,631 -- which boost the deficit to $199,848. No taxes are levied upon the publicly owned airport, of course, but if it were a private concern taxed at current rates the bill would be $45,005. This brings the 1957 deficit to $244,853. _______________________ This was before the start of the federal air traffic control system in the 1960s, or the start of the Airport & Airways Trust Fund in 1970. The moral of that story is the airlines' fares out of Toledo would have been higher had they owned and operated their own airport as a fixed cost, rather than use a public facility as a variable cost. Worse, if you ran a railroad and your stations (as a for-profit facility) had to compete against airports (a nonprofit facility), you'd get out of that competition in a big hurry. That's just what the railroads did. KJP

I have followed this thing closely for Sun Newspapers, since before NS and CSX proposed acquiring Conrail and NS wanted to triple the freight train traffic through Lakewood (traffic at the time was 13-16 trains a day). The communities from Cleveland west through Lakewood and into Lorain County got an agreement from NS that capped the number of trains at 16 per day. NS spent more than $30 million to detour trains through Berea and Linndale. As recently as two years ago, NS reduced the traffic through Lakewood to a daily average of 1.2 trains per day. Some argued that this was an opportunity to run commuter trains through Lakewood, as even a half-dozen commuter trains in each direction wouldn't increase the daily total above the cap contained in the agreement. Kucinich would have none of it, fearing that the agreement would be compromised. I think something else was at work, as I've been covering the "Kucinich beat" for Sun since 2001. Kucinich "made his bones" on fighting to keep the freight trains out of the West Shore communities. If he sought commuter trains, he might be viewed as going back on his word (even though a commuter train is shorter, quieter and would serve the West Shore, unlike freight trains, which just roar through). There was a lot of emotion expressed by residents and local officials when NS proposed tripling the freight train traffic, and Kucinich remembers that. Kucinich is a strong supporter of commuter rail, "except on that line" through Lakewood, he has told me several times. In the last couple of years, as rail freight traffic has risen dramatically nationwide, freight traffic through Lakewood has since increased to about 8-10 trains per day day. I live 10 houses from the tracks, and I count them, when I notice them. Does that mean that if you add a half-dozen commuter trains in each direction per day, will that compromise the agreement with NS on capping the trains? Not according to an attorney working with Lorain County interests, who want to see commuter rail on that line. He believes the deal with NS is exclusive of commuter rail. It may also be a moot point. I seem to recall that the agreement with NS expired five years after the June 1, 1999 NS/CSX acquisition of Conrail assets. In other words, the agreement expired six months ago -- maybe. I'd like to verify that, but keep forgetting to check it out. I think the solution to all this is to run a six-month commuter rail demo service, with a couple of trains a day, just to see what people think about it. If people living near the tracks don't like the extra couple of trains, or not enough people ride it, or it doesn't mix well with NS trains, then it was worth a shot. But I think the opposite will happen. Kucinich can save face if enough people get in his and tell him to try the demo service to see how things go. Those who will benefit from this service are Kucinich's core constituency -- people who need access to suburban jobs but can't afford cars, the environmental community, the urban-progressive community, etc etc. But they haven't pressured him, so he has no reason to budge. So that's where things stand now. KJP

You're assuming that people in Greater Cleveland, and especially in Lakewood, want more rail service in their communities. Maybe so, maybe not. But too many of our "leaders" don't believe this is the case. Regardless, as long as the neighborhoods along most existing rail lines look like Mogadishu and are about as safe, it will be a tough sell to bring rail farther out into the quiet, bucolic suburbs where isolation from the "Big Bad City" is desired. Best to pursue a TOD strategy first along existing rail lines, to show to communities that don't yet have rail that they're actually missing something. KJP

Government subsidies to commercial aviation consist mostly of infrastructure maintenance, improvement and expansion in which the federal government's Airport & Airways Trust Fund serves as the industry's banker when it comes to physical plant (airports, air traffic control facilities, etc.). This constitutes a subsidy, even though it is paid for by user fees (ticket taxes, etc), as the trust fund is not subject to the whims of the marketplace, holds no profit margin (as a private lender would), does not require collateral (though it does require a local/private share of the total cost) and airlines typically pay no property taxes on facilities financed by the multi-billion-dollar trust fund. Another large government subsidy is the more than $2 billion a year for salaries and other operating expenses to run the nation's air traffic control system. These are not funded by user fees and come out of the federal general revenue taxes you and I pay each April 15. If these were instead paid for by airline ticket taxes, landing rights fees, etc. the cost added to your airline ticket would go up by an average of just $3 (accounting for general aviation having to also pay a portion of the total). Other subsidies include Essential Air Service subsidies which total hundreds of millions of dollars per year, plus NASA and Defense Department contracts to aerospace manufacturers which result in substantial technology transfer benefits to their commercial aircraft products, and local subsidies including property tax exemptions for airport facilities, tax-exempt construction bonds and public ownership of airport facilities which do not close or get scaled back when the economy slows. All comparable expenses are paid for by shippers and users of the railroad system, which is privately owned, operated, maintained, financed and heavily taxed. Amtrak, a semi-governmental company, uses the private railroad system and receives an annual federal subsidy of $1.2 billion (in recent years) to use the rail system, run its own stations, traffic control systems and make capital improvements to its physical plant. It's the exact reverse of how the federal government funds the highway and aviation systems which have private users on governmental owned, operated and financed infrastructure. Until this inequity is rectified, we will not have a high-quality rail passenger system in this country. Sorry for another long-winded message! KJP

Probably, if COTA decides to proceed with it and voters OK it. ODOT has put money into the preliminary engineering, so logic would suggest ODOT will kick in for its construction. But why do we have to keep going to the voters to get these things built when such isn't the case with highways??? Failure of public policy, that's why. KJP

That's true. Costs for starting commuter rail on that route would be less, but offer less frequent service and fewer stations. I suspect that if a rail service is started in that corridor, it would probably begin as a "demonstration" service between Cleveland (perhaps terminating at the West Boulevard station) and Lorain, with several trains each weekday and, at most, a half dozen stations. If the demonstration succeeds, then permanent service might ensue. KJP

The problem is, every time a light rail is proposed to be built, it requires a vote of the people, as no statewide capital program exists for light rail. Not so with new highways. ODOT has failed to call for a permanent source of funding for transit and rail capital improvements. Access Ohio would have been the perfect opportunity. If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to read ODOT's Access Ohio long-range plan, which has a chapter on transit and another on rail. As a whole, the plan continues to promote a highway-dominated transportation system for Ohio (especially after the General Assembly slashed transit funding by more than 40 percent in the last couple of years, while increasing gas taxes for more highways without a vote of the people -- both at ODOT's recommendation). Anyway, here's the link to Access Ohio.... http://www.dot.state.oh.us/planning/File%20Directory/AccessOhio.htm KJP

Veddy nice KJP

In a moment of sheer boredom, I decided to sit down and figure out how much the first phase of a West Shore LRT could cost, if it were built as an 11-mile branch off the Red Line at the West Boulevard Rapid station, west to Crocker Road in Westlake. I would use the existing tracks of the NS mainline as much as possible. The second phase would route the LRT down the Shoreway Boulevard, then under the Veteran Memorial Bridge, and through downtown on Rockwell. Here is what I found out for the first phase.... Acquire 11 miles of N/S mainline ..................... $15 million Build 3rd main freight bypass via Elyria/Berea ... $50 million Build overhead catenaries-wires ...................... $30 million Add Quiet Zone crossing protection .................. $15 million Extend 2nd track to Crocker Road .................... $ 4 million Constuct up to 16 stations ............................... $17 million Retrofit W65th & W25th stations for LRT .......... $ 2 million Build WSLRT-Red Line junction at W.90th ......... $ 5 million Install LRT cab signals on 15 miles of track ....... $ 8 million Add 30% contingency ..................................... $44 million TOTAL ESTIMATED COST .............................. $190 million That may sound like a lot of money, and perhaps it is to some, but consider that the two-mile Waterfront Line cost $70 million. Just thought you might find this of interest. KJP

Nah, ODOT will tell you they only need to add more lanes. A cement-head named Wendell Cox and his followers (Cox Suckers?), who believe that anything not paved or sprawling is bad transportation/land use, actually advocated that Atlanta deal with their traffic crisis by double-decking all of their interstates. Cox and his suckers also helped to defeat the Cincy light-rail ballot initiative a couple of years ago, then two Cox Suckers were named to the Metro transit agency board. If Cincinnati double-decked their interstates, motorists could at least stay out of the snow half the time! Cox should have been on the lower deck of Interstate 880 during the Loma-Prieta Earthquake of 1989. It would have been a fitting end to him and his madness. KJP

According to the Lakewood report in our office, the city of Lakewood is considering it. RTA has talked about a BRT down Clifton but that's all it has been -- talk. My map showed the light rail line as replacing the Norfolk Southern (ex-Nickel Plate route) track, but I proposed that when freight train traffic had diminished to less than 2 trains a day. Freight traffic has gone back up since the recession, to perhaps 8-12 per day. Still, it's possible to do, if RTA built for NS some additional capacity to detour the freight traffic or if the freight train traffic were limited to the middle of the night when there would be no light-rail service. Such is the case on a portion of a light-rail north of Baltimore, and on a new diesel light-rail corridor between Trenton and Cambden N.J. If CEI could be persuaded, they already have a power transmission line along the NS rail line west of Cleveland, through Lakewood and beyond. If that power line were rebuilt by CEI as part of installing electric catenary wires over a light-rail transit line (to which CEI would provide the power and possibly recoup its investment), RTA might be able to use the existing track and leave enough space for passing tracks and a bike path. Still, it wouldn't be cheap. Building enough capacity for NS to detour its trains to another route could cost tens of millions of dollars. But RTA buying the NS right of way for perhaps $10 million to $20 million could be used to leverage a Federal Transit Administration grant for the project. The first phase could branch off from the existing Red Line at the West Boulevard station to Westlake Park and Ride, with the second phase linking the West Boulevard station to downtown via Edgewater Park and the Shoreway boulevard. It's fun to dream. KJP

Green Line is a westward extension of one of the existing Shaker Heights rapid lines west to the Airport. It assumes RTA re-equipping their rail fleet with a standardized rail car that can operate on any line. The Orange Line is a totally new line, from Euclid or Collinwood to Westlake via downtown. Maybe someday.... Take credit for it. You came up with an original idea, too. What prompted you to come up with the idea and post it? KJP

Actually, I proposed that (the West Shore Trolley II)....I guess I just blew my cover! :wave: Since I sent that to EcoCity, I revised my idea (dream?) for downtown rail transit routes....

Yes, you are. Thanks! KJP

My initials. Sorry, no imagination here! KJP

I have a book about Youngstown called "A Heritage to Share" by Howard C. Aley, dated from 1975. It's hardcover, and almost as thick as the Cleveland-area phone book. It's a chronology and, although it doesn't document the rapid decline of the city that was less than 10 years away, the warning signs are in the book. One of the most interesting parts of the book is a citing of a report on the future of the city, by James M. Trutko, coordinator of the Northern Ohio Urban System. The report is optimistic but cautionary about the city's future, predicting that metro population will continue to increase to at least year 2000, to 622,327 at the low end, to 850,097 at the high end. Here's a couple of excerpts.... "The NOUS Report cites the presence of a labor force skilled in steelmaking, frabricating and other industrial occupations, as one of Youngstown's greatest assets." "The Report holds that what is done within the next 5-10 years to revitalize and renovate Youngstown's steel industry, which in 1969 directly or indirectly employed nearly 37,000 of the manufacturing labor force of 81,000 workers in the Mahoning-Trumbull County division ... will largely determine the city's future. At the same, it contends, 'The revitalization of the steel industry alone will insure Youngstown's survival as an urban center, but further action is needed to spur additional growth'." "The NOUS Report cites the fundamental changes that have occurred over the past 15 years in the basic steel industry which have challenged the role of local production facilities which since 1880 had gained the area world-wide recognition for steel and steel products manufacture. These changes, many of them basically technological ... have required agonizing corporate decisions as reevaluations of the steel market, supply sources, and transportation facilities had by the late sixties combined to 'paint a bleak picture for Youngstown'. ...Essentially, the concern as set forth in the report is not for the short-term, because Youngstown's position competitively is at present supported by the reasonably strong demand and shortage of capacity characteristic of the industry. It is in the years ahead that the test will come and must be, the Report points out, reminding that the next decade will be critical." It sure was. KJP