KJP

Air traffic control at Newark Airport briefly lost communication with aircraft, kicking off travel chaosAfter the incident last week, the controllers from the Philadelphia TRACON took leave under the Federal Employees Compensation Act. NBC NewsAir traffic control at Newark Airport briefly lost commun...After the incident last week, the controllers from the Philadelphia TRACON took leave under the Federal Employees Compensation Act.

Ohio City’s north end of W. 25th to get refreshBy Ken Prendergast / May 5, 2025 Out goes the Hulett Hotel proposal. In comes a couple of redevelopment projects intended to reinvigorate the north end of West 25th Street in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, dubbed Hingetown. It is one of the last sections of West 25th in Ohio City whose historic buildings have yet to be renovated and redeveloped. All it took was a $110 million hillside-public park project across the street to help seal the deal. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2025/05/05/ohio-citys-north-end-of-w-25th-to-get-refresh/

Goodbye Leaning Laundromat of Little Italy. 😭

@Mov2Ohio Someone out there does. The comment about a different contractor overseeing a different part of the project is damage control.

The developer claims that Turner had completed its portion of the project and Independence is now taking over for its. Can someone help me verify/refute this?

Cool vid, bro https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16GMiU5VnX/

Not all public schools do, either. Legally, somehow Lakewood gets out of it. And Cleveland school kids take RTA, walk, bike or get rides to school. I realize they do have some school buses, but very few considering the size of the enrollment.

Let's keep this focused on US business/economy trends.

@marty15 Thanks for the reminder.... Walz Library-Karam Senior Living gets city OKBy Ken Prendergast / May 2, 2025 It’s a $34 million project nearly six years in the making. But after a pandemic, a sharp increase in construction costs, pursuits of additional financing and working out a complicated development partnership to build essentially two buildings in one, construction is finally in sight for the new Walz Branch Library topped by Karam Senior Living apartments. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2025/05/02/walz-library-karam-senior-living-gets-city-ok/

AI is already running amok, against their master's wishes. Thank goodness!

I would think so. But what Ronayne is saying is that it cannot be considered now as long as there is an active RFP process. If he lays out the scenario @WhatUp suggested, he will be accused and the county sued for not conducting a RFP process according to the law.

One recommendation that came out of GCRTA's SW Corridor Alternatives Analysis was a follow-on study that proposed taking the Red Line out of the airport tunnel and putting it on an elevated alignment on the north side of the current parking garage where a large retail-hotel-rail station complex would be built. For some reason, I recall this new structure was to be nine stories tall and built so the Red Line could be more easily extended to the south someday. But wait, there’s more! The airport rail tunnel wouldn't be abandoned. Instead, it would be used by a new rail shuttle linking the airport to the car rental facility to rid the airport roadways of all the shuttle buses. The rail shuttle would share the Brookpark Rapid station with the Red Line and, after it went under I-480, it would make a sharp turn to the west, go over I-71 and head into the car rental facility that was built with a grassy strip for the rail shuttle route.

This is the best-run company on earth. It has a custom-made exemption for its product category from the tariffs. It already has full alternative supply chains up and running in India and Vietnam. It has months of inventory ready to go. And it'sstill going to lose $1 billion per quarter because of these tariffs. Small companies don't stand a chance. But we need to make our new Robber Barons overlords happy. They are the geniuses with the god-given right to rule over us. They will guide us midwits to a new future full of robots and crypto! These Übermenschen will save us. But first, they need tariff revenue for their tax cuts... Apple has managed tariffs so far, but Cook lacks long-term answers CNBCApple has managed tariffs so far, but Cook lacks long-ter...The vast majority of Apple's products are "currently not subject" to Trump's tariffs, CEO Tim Cook said. But beyond June, he didn't say much.

Start of an interesting thread...

Note the added info from Chris Ronayne.

GSA confirms Celebrezze Federal Building to be soldBy Ken Prendergast / May 1, 2025 The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced it will initiate a public sale of the 32-story Anthony J. Celebrezze (AJC) Federal Building, 1240 E 9th St, in Downtown Cleveland that it claims could potentially save more than $430 million in total annual operating costs. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2025/05/01/gsa-confirms-celebrezze-federal-building-to-be-sold/

Office leasing cools in first quarter of 2025By Ken Prendergast / May 1, 2025 Greater Cleveland's office market in the first quarter of this year saw its second-lowest amount of leasing activity, as measured in square feet, in the last 16 years since the Great Recession. Only the fourth quarter of 2021, following the pandemic and the rise of remote working, saw less leasing activity locally since 2009. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2025/05/01/office-leasing-cools-in-first-quarter-of-2025/

Virginia and North Carolina have purchased portions of a ripped-up former freight rail line, known as the S-Line, with the goal of upgrading it to 110 mph, dedicated for passenger rail service between Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA. This follows the aforementioned CSX ROW acquisition between Richmond and Washington (only a portion of which is used for commuter rail). And it follows the state of NC's longtime ownership of the ROW between Charlotte, Raleigh and on to Morehead City. Thus it will soon be possible to ride a passenger train from Charlotte to Boston without riding on a piece of track owned by a freight railroad company.

They're just a little delayed. 😉 Thanks for reminding me to check on this.

Amtrak does have eminent domain power to acquire rights of way. It actually condemned a freight railroad right of way in Vermont once to get action on the freight company's poor track maintenance. It took a long time but the state of Vermont, Amtrak, Central of Vermont RR, and the FRA partnered on rebuilding the tracks north of Springfield, MA up to Burlington, VT, providing a smooth, much faster route for Amtrak's Vermonter service. The tracks are now owned by a Genesee & Wyoming subsidiary. Some background for those interested: https://www.justice.gov/osg/media/231961/dl?inline https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/503/407/case.pdf

It was just a very broad brush of an idea by someone with zero power or influence. I would guess that, in the unlikely event the idea goes anywhere, it would be like most other publicly held transportation trust funds -- a pot of money from which improvements by eligible applicants could competitively apply to achieve private AND public benefit goals.

They grabbed that graphic from my article two days ago which addressed this.

Web site has gone live for the Lincoln Heights Apartments, officially called The Park... https://www.theparkcle.com/ Prices are a shade over $2 per square foot and show an availability starting July 1.

Remember the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 which gave Amtrak $2.3 billion as a refund of wartime taxes that rail passengers paid from 1942 to 1962 -- continuing 17 years after WWII ended? Amtrak used that refund to buy the Acela Express trains that travel the Northeast Corridor. For the rest of the nation, Amtrak bought boxcars for mail and express shipments that didn't last beyond 2005. But they got most of it right, even though it benefitted only a small geographic part of the nation. Why not a similar relief act for railroads nationwide that continued to pay the federal shipping discount long after the land grants were repaid to jump start a capital improvement trust fund for railroads? While $773 million may not sound like a lot of money in the grand scheme, what if it was inflation adjusted? According to the BLS inflation calculator, today that $773 million would be equal to $13,887,900,000. By the time a bill would be passed, additional inflation would be added. So let's call it a $14 billion refund owed to America's railroads.