KJP

Oops! I lived in Tabor Ridge apartments -- Emerson and Rocky River Drive, from September of 1993 to November of 1996. After I moved out of there to Lakewood, I haven't moved since....

I hope some of you youngins realize how far our cities have come with examples from New York's East village and Detroit shown below.

The guy who founded Donte's restaurant in Berea was a retired New York Central operator at Linndale Tower. I met him not long after I moved in '93 to live a block away from this restaurant. Spent a lot of time here in the mid-90s.

It's the third-tallest building downtown and the chances of another building of similar height (or of any height) getting built on this spot anytime soon are not good.

One of the buildings mentioned in this article, the Westinghouse-TAPCO plant caught fire early Monday morning. I don't know how much damage was done. This guy shared pictures of the site on Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/share/p/gbkBLV4h51qzQKsn/?mibextid=oFDknk

So sad.

Amtrak can't wait for the Great Lakes Stations program to be funded to address this station. The ADA access is a legal obligation for the rail company. The station will be of a standardized design. The station in Alliance is a comp for what Amtrak has in mind here... Amtrak improving Bryan train station The improvements include updating the facilities to be ADA-compliant as the industry continues to make a push to encourage traveling by train. https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/bryan-ohio-amtrak-station-improvements/512-f228116c-af57-4121-a65b-cfef95636e7b Amtrak standardized station in Alliance opened in 2011 (Great American Stations Foundation)...

I used to call it the "bib run-off"

My family and I spent the weekend down in Hocking Hills three summers ago. It was uncomfortably quiet for me. Except for the trails to the rock formations and cliffs, there were few people. We left after dinner at about 8 pm, after trying hard to find anyplace open for dinner, passed through a couple of dead small towns on the way to I-77 and got back to Cleveland just after 10 pm. The amount of people out and about, businesses open, activity, etc. was a stunning change of pace. It was totally invigorating. Now I realize I'm a city guy, but if people are the lifeblood of a region, I'd say Appalachia is in need of a transfusion. But are there any donors??

Tampa transportation leaders vote on resolution supporting railway expansion https://baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2024/06/14/resolution-passed--supports-amtrak-expansion-and-brightline-arrival-in-tampa

CPD and the courts need to crack down on this without mercy Another Cleveland weekend filled with blocked-off roads due to unruly crowds, daredevil driving https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/another-cleveland-weekend-filled-with-blocked-off-roads-due-to-unruly-crowds-daredevil-driving

10 years...assuming everything goes right. Daaaamn I'll be pushing 70 by the time this thing is done.

Slower and less frequent today. And Cleveland had 500,000 more people back then, before they all fled to the suburbs with their shopping and jobs.

That's the Great Lakes Brewing Co. property. Plans from 2021.... https://neo-trans.blog/2021/12/18/great-lakes-brewing-co-to-start-scranton-peninsula-work/

Mine's working.

I don't think anything going on here is sabotage. But I have seen it happen before with passenger rail improvement efforts and it will happen again -- e.g.: Ohio rail advocates were pitted against one another in 1989, a decade after Columbus and Dayton lost Amtrak service. Ohio also narrowly lost out on getting 3C Corridor service in the mid-1980s. I was targeted by downstate folks in 1989 for advocating for Cleveland-Pittsburgh service because it wasn't 3C Corridor. It was considered a distraction. And they thought I was taking trains farther away from them when Amtrak announced it was forced by Conrail to relocate passenger rail from a route through Canton, Crestline and Lima. It moved those trains to routes farther north through Youngstown, Akron, Fostoria, Cleveland, Elyria, Sandusky and Toledo, leaving a bigger void in the central part of the state. The Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers (AAO predecessor) President Tom Pulsifer, a friend of mine, had resigned. He lived in Xenia and he was tired of losing rail battles. He didn't want to get into another no-win situation. It took 10-15 years to overcome the internal fight and distrust between Central Ohio and Northern Ohio rail advocates, and our statewide advocacy efforts suffered because of it. While there may not have been an intent to sabotage, it was sabotage just the same. And based on the Congressionals' letter yesterday that "Failing to provide such infrastructure would undoubtedly result in adverse consequences for the economic development of the region” suggests they are concerned about being left behind if other metro areas get passenger rail and they don't. I hope it doesn't turn into an us vs them fight because nobody wins them.

They are.

Updated the article with building square footage maximums allowable under the zoning code.

Treo is right next to the same tracks. I got a tour of the building when a freight train went by. I could barely hear It. And there are no road crossings nearby, so no train horns.

Let's keep things in perspective here. Given Ohio's situation of the past 50-plus years, we'll be lucky to get any new passenger rail service in Ohio. A comprehensive rail system is even farther beyond hope. If we do get an expansion of rail service here, its probably not going to be Amtrak. The only model that has shown the ability to achieve development in a state like Ohio is Brightline. Brightline doesn't build comprehensive rail systems. It builds a line. Whatever route Brightline picks in the next year or two (hopefully it will involve Ohio), it's going to pick one line or perhaps one with a branches to two major cities. An example is Chicago to Toledo with branches to Detroit and Cleveland that can act like three routes in one. The point is that the first line (whether it's in Ohio or not) is going to leave a lot of places out of it. I only hope that this makes the initial left-behinds want to work harder to expand rail service rather than get mad and try and sabotage those that are on track to get it first.

The Capitol (and future trains like an extended Pennsylvanian) could serve Youngstown's southern suburbs with a stop at Columbiana/SR11, Canton-area with its existing station at Alliance, and serve Akron's northern suburbs with a stop at Hudson.

Not necessarily. It travels our portion of this route in the middle of the night so its ability to attract ridership is very small here. And how would it be rerouted? If it served and ran between Akron and Youngstown, it would have to miss Cleveland and probably Toledo. Note the Ohio rail maps above -- especially the ones showing the quality and capacity for high levels of service.

It's hard to serve Akron and Canton. You've got 2 million population metros at the corners of a triangle -- Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Columbus. Cleveland is at the top of the triangle. Pittsburgh to the right. Columbus to the left. Akron (600,000 metro population) and Canton (400,000 metro pop) are south of it. How do you serve it with the lines of the triangle? You can't, especially when neither Akron or Canton are on the main rail lines linking the points on the triangle. Here's where the current rail lines are: Then consider the quality of the rail lines. The lines with more tracks and more trains on them are more capable of handling passenger trains without a complete rebuilding....

I would love to see buildings like that constructed throughout Cleveland. Every Rapid station should have at least three of them!