dogsandcats

In Chicago. CTA does a Holiday Train each year that runs as part of regular El service in November and December. The entire train is decorated and also has a sleigh with Santa on a flatcar. Something like this would be a great way to introduce new riders to RTA. Even if it was just done one day, maybe in conjunction with the holiday decorations on Public Square. What would it take to make this happen here next year? http://www.transitchicago.com/travel_information/holidaytrain.aspx

Maybe joining this effort could help RTA correct its confusing fare system Smart travel card to ease global travel Travellers will be able to ride the London Underground, the Paris Metro and New York's subway without ever having to stop and buy a ticket using new technology that could be ready within two years. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/8046477/Smart-travel-card-to-ease-global-travel.html

The Washinton Post ran a nice piece on Ohio City and the West Side Market on Friday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092404092.html Their experience with RTA, while fairly typical, was not what you would want running in a national newspaper. In the morning, we took the Red Line of the light-rail system, the Rapid, to the main Tower City station downtown. After a frustrating wait there, we determined that the Waterfront line, which runs near the Rock Hall, no longer operates on weekdays even though it's on all the system's maps. Nobody had bothered to put up a sign on the platform, and transit employees were dismissive. It turns out that most service on the line, always underused, was discontinued this year for budget reasons.

Can someone give a few examples of other cities that use honor-based fare collection?

Who is doing this presentation? When is it?

ColDayMan--perhaps you could explain your definition of "Highrise district"?

"To be fair to Cleveland, most large cities did not build residential highrises circa-1920's/30's away from downtown. Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston, San Diego, Washington DC, Columbus, Albany, Richmond, Cleveland, Los Angeles, etc all lack significant "older" highrise districts outside of their downtown. It was more a Midwestern influence with the grand scale ala Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Tulsa, (+ Dallas, Denver) and the other outliners include New York and San Francisco for obvious constraint reasons." DC does have a pretty significant number of older highrise buildings--just go up Wisconsin or Connecticut Avenue. There are also several cities other than NYC where co-ops are part of the real estate mix. Both DC and Chicago have quite a few. In DC especially, the tenant right of first refusal laws have been an important force in the development of co-ops.

We tried Roseangel last night. The space is beautiful and the service was very good. I think the prices are very reasonable. But the food overall was just OK. The homemade corn tortillas are fabulous and almost reason enough to go back. Even though I asked that my order be "kicked up a bit" after reading the comments that the food was bland, it still came out bland. The thing that makes Mexican food so good is the complexity of the flavors. Roseangel totally misses the boat on that. Several of the tacos we tried not only didn't have any heat, they didn't have any flavor. I think the near west side can support two modern Mexican restaurants but Momocho has set a pretty good standard. Roseangle really needs to put some serious work into getting close to being competitive. Hopefully this message gets to the chef.

Its a city, not a RTA, trash can. The number for the Director's office at Cleveland Dept of Public Service's Division of Wast Collection is 216-662-2231.

I've found the city really responsive to requests to empty overflowing trash cans at bus stops. Because this seems to be a frequent problem at the stop I usually use, I made stickers with the number to call and ask for trash pickup and put them on the cans by the bus stop. It seems to be working, the city apparently increased the frequency of pickups and the trash can rarely is overflowing.

Actually, the best first step to improving the bus stops would be to clean up the areas around them. The stops along Lorain Avenue in Ohio City are usually surrounded by trash. Part of the problem is that the City doesn't empty their own trash cans often enough. Calls to the Mayor's Office have been effective in getting someone out to empty the cans but those calls need to happen every few days. There doesn't seem to be any coordinated strategy for clearing snow from the bus stops either.

Also, there is no eating, drinking or smoking allowed in or around any Metro station or on any bus in DC. Its amazing how that cuts down on the trash. Both Metro staff and passengers are very quick to enforce this rule. There was a big uproar several years ago because a high school student was arrested for having a candy bar in a Metro station.

There are a few properties on Lorain just west of the West Side Market that might work. Ohio City Near West Development Corp (the neighborhood CDC) would probably have info on these and other properties. Lots of great places near by for lunch or a drink after work!

Maybe a student from CIA could do a series of T-shirt designs promoting RTA.

If you don't have money in your budget, how do you advertise/market? It's one of the first things cut. At a state run agency where you budget must be balanced, how would you affectively market? How would you formulate a plan? It's easy to sit back and critize but it's really hard to put a extensive omni media plan together with only X dollars and not a cent more. It's happening everywhere, not just at RTA. As a transit authority in a state with insanely low levels of state funding for public transit, increasing ridership/fare collections is a critical revenue stream. It doesn't take a marketing or management genius to know that. If RTA thinks that cutting or eliminating marketing costs is a smart or effective way to control expenses, they have bigger problems than they probably have the capacity to solve. And all marketing doesn't have to cost alot of money. American Airlines and Amtrak both have Facebook pages with 1000s of fans. My bet is its a pretty low cost but very effective way of attracting and retaining customers. A RTA Facebook page with just a few hundred fans would probably more than pay for itself.

Even though Huntington is fairly dense and very walkable, it is not a hotbed of walking. Marshall students often drive from campus to Pullman Square--6 blocks away. I know many people who work 1/2 mile to 1 mile from where they live who would never consider walking to work---and one person who lives 3 blocks from her office and drives there every day!

There aren't many coal miners or industrial laborers in Huntington WV. The largest employers are Marshall University and the hospitals. Thanks to mountaintop removal and striip mining, most of the mining jobs in WV are automated, and even the small percentage of miners (some of whom I'm related to) actually doing deep mining aren't doing the hard, physical labor that the job used to require--again due to improved technology.

The Greater Greater Washington blog had a post today about the resignation of Metro head John Catoe. One interesting point, which should be of interest to Cleveland, was about the marketing efforts of the Los Angeles Metro (which Catoe used to head). "In a city obsessed with image, the LA Metro aggressively brands itself. Billboards across the city show "sexy" Metro Rapid buses and boast of the faster service. Coffeehouse baristas in uber-hip Silver Lake wear Metro T-shirts. And the county's 191 bus routes are broken down into three color-coordinated services. Metro Local buses are painted orange and stop every few blocks. Metro Rapid buses are painted red and have stops about a mile apart. And Metro Express buses, painted blue, run on freeways and make few stops at all. As a result, 1.2 million people ride the bus each day, or more than the subway and bus in D.C. combined. The agency claims that ridership on the 26 Metro Rapid routes has increased 40%, travel times have dropped by 29%, and one-third of the system's new riders are people who've never used transit before." Think what RTA might accomplish if it made a tenth the effort. Here's the link http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=4638

The Methodist church on Lee Road is Church of the Savior. Here is their website: www.chsaviour.org They have several services each week and also have sermons (and maybe podcasts) posted on the website.

I don't think the "broken windows theory" is the cure all that some believe it to be but I do think it has some validity. If trash is cleaned up on a regular basis, hen you're going to be a little less likely to toss your potato chip bag on the floor--especially if RTA personnel were making reminders about not littering. The DC Metro system doesn't allow eating, drinking or smoking in the stations or on the trains and it goes a long way toward keeping them clean. If Metro staff don't stop riders from littering, fellow passengers often will. Maybe RTA should consider adopting a similar rule and attitude. Also, as a citizen and taxpayer, I find it a little offensive that a RTA employee--and especially the Public Relations Manager--would refer to people his agency serves as pigs. It may be true but I don't think its an appropriate comment for a public forum. Hopefully, this is just a personal opinion and not the view of RTA.

Look at University Circle's website www.universitycircle.org Also, contact Genna Petrolla, Greater Circle Living Manager, at [email protected] or 216-707-4642.

I'm not comparing Millennium Park to Public Square. I'm trying to show an example of what can happen when people take ownership of their own public spaces. How big the space is is a bit irrelevant. Did you watch the video? Is there a reason something like that couldn't happen in Public Square?

A bunch of the stuff that happens around the Bean in Millennium Park is not programming that is put on by the City of Chicago but things that individuals just organize and do. Here is a good example: There's no reason the same thing couldn't be happening here in Cleveland, with Public Square exactly as it is today. The more it gets used, the more comfortable everyone is with it.

I think that rather than looking to much larger cities like New York and Chicago for examples of great public spaces, it would be much more useful to look at cities with similar downtown (both residential and workforce) population densities to Cleveland. Kansas City has beautiful parks/public spaces and there is some interesting stuff in St. Louis.

I'm not trying to be mean, did you bother to read what Jerry wrote? :wtf: Jerry has posted here and in the ECP thread. There are also two other RTA employees that post here and are very help. They've take our questions here and sent them to the appropriate people inside RTA and gotten back to us with official answers. I did read Jerry's post. He identified himself as "Media Relations Manager and Publications Manager, RTA". It was not clear to me that that meant he was UO's RTA rep or who the others might be. I'm just trying to have clear and complete information so that I can respond accordingly. Please try to have a little patience with a newbie who may have a few questions.