Equillibrius

I know this answer is probably somewhere in this thread (search engine didn't give any results and I don't want to look through 137 pages :)) but I'm curious as to how much it costs a year to maintain Interstate 71 from the interchange with I-90 in Cleveland to the Cincinnati-Kentucky border. I'm willing to bet that it would still be less than the 3-C. Sadly, I don't think even that's going to convince the naysayers. Even if the train's building and operating costs will be literally hundreds of times less than ODOT's yearly budget, they'd rather continue spending money on highways because "they work" (or at least that's what they want themselves to believe). The state's entire budget could go toward the freeways, and it won't matter to them. But god forbid you try spending even a fraction of it on something new. The "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" line of thinking is what the 3-C is up against.

Great pics. I always love shots of the new-and-improved Terminal Tower. I got to wonder how a tree managed to propagate way up there. Although a tree growing without any soil isn't uncommon. Or maybe the tower just has a rooftop arboretum/garden that nobody knows about. :laugh:

I remember seeing "Adopt a Spot" signs in the old planters and garden spaces, and they were very well maintained. Maybe the new ones will be taken care of by the same or a similar program?

Not sure when the photo was taken. It must have been within the past year or so. I got it from the Kamms website. Anyway, it's mostly masonry work that been done so far. New sidewalks, crosswalk ramps, foundations (or whatever they're called) for the new street lights and traffic/walk signals, as well as landscape plots along the north side of Lorain.

Nothing has been mentioned of this here, as far as I know, so I figure I'll post something. The stretch of Lorain Avenue from West 165th to Fairview Hospital is undergoing a bit of an overhaul right now, with several projects from burying the utility lines, to renovating surrounding buildings, to improving the pedestrian element. It would be interesting to see how it turns out. Hopefully it would lead to spinoff development, particularly the removal of the gas station on the northwest side of the Lorain/Rocky River Drive intersection. Also maybe get rid of the Kamm's Plaza stripmall, but unfortunately that's too much of a financial draw for the area.

That's actually what warning sirens are meant for; a signal to tell people outdoors to go inside and tune into their television or radio for information. A siren isn't really supposed to be taken as a "Panic now! The world is ending!" message.

Now there's a memory-jarring. I vaguely remember that building from my childhood (my dad had been working in the factory at the time). What a beautiful building it was, though. It looks like it could have belonged to a college campus rather than an industrial site. I especially like the last photo. Talk about a waste.

It's almost as if public transit might actually be used as an alternative to private transit or something. :roll:

I think it's because it's easier for some people to blame the more visible local government and agencies than it is to blame the bigger picture. There are people I've gotten into passioned arguements about RTA, how I remind them that transit agencies all over the country are facing the exact same trouble that RTA is and having to go through similar service cuts and rising fares, but it just keeps coming back to RTA and our local government being inept and irresponsible.

Pretty cool. I like that Lorain is keeping the old signals as opposed to replacing them with standard ones like so many other cities are currently doing. I'm a bit of a traffic light geek myself, which is ironic considering that I'm not a big fan of the car culture. My cousin outdid me in that geekiness, though. He bought and restored a Crouse-Hinds 4-way traffic light (like the ones in Lorain) a few years back. It's hanging in his study now, and he even wired an electronic sequencer to it so the lights do the green-yellow-red cycle for each direction, just like a real signal. :) I love the craftsmanship that went into these old things, too. Very Art Deco-ish.

^ I don't work with RTA, but the Puritas station is definately going to be rebuilt soon: http://www.gcrta.org/majorprojects/puritas.asp

I had some relatives living in Lorain when I was younger, so there's definately an air of familiarity here. My favorite part of the city is the Charles Berry Bridge near downtown, which is apparently one of the longest bascule bridges in the world. Seeing the street in front of you being upturned to let a huge ore freighter pass is quite a sight when you're about eight years old.

Back in early 2005 when the original site plans were first published in local papers, I remember thinking how bad the design looked, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt, that it might have just been an early draft. Then construction began and, lo and behold, the place was being built just as it appeared in the newspapers. As for the flow of the place, it's bad enough trying to navigate the parking lots on your feet, but driving through it is just as mind-bendingly frustrating. I've been hearing that Westgate is having a hard time attracting tenants. The pullout of Max's really makes the situation all the more obvious. Personally, I think a place like Max's belongs in an on-the-street retail space in an urban-suburban area. Leave the stripmalls for the chain stores/restaurants.

How ironic. It's not so much "I don't like sprawl" as it is "I don't like having other buildings within shouting distance of my own home", which is sprawl in its worst form.

The Kamm's Corner area is kind of a mix of streetcar-suburban and 1950's suburbia, because most of its development happened during those two time periods (the streetcars were torn out right around the time the neighborhood was in its infant stages). Hence the mix of old-style colonials and new-style bungalows. The neighborhood gets more older and denser as you travel north toward Lakewood.

Oy. It's no surprise that local developers and civic leaders don't have much interest in making areas actually walkable and/or transit-oriented. But Lakewood, one of the most populous and densest cities in all of Ohio, continues to allow the sort of developments that are characteristic of the exurbs. Literally on the border with Cleveland, no less. There's something wrong with that picture. At least the Buntz-Detroit project sounds promising.

Great pics! They're one hell of a memory-jarring, too. There are certain ones that make me think, "Hey, I remember that!" It's mind-boggling to think what Euclid Avenue looked like less than a decade ago, and how much has changed since then (and how much is still changing).

I'm surprised that Lakewood doesn't have some kind of law or regulation that forbids new developments from being set back from the street. Yeah, it's up to the developer how a building should be placed, but Lakewood isn't exactly Brunswick.

No, they're demon horns!

Three-car LRT trains? How would that work? Even though Blue/Green line trains are double-ended, the individual cars themselves are single-ended with an open space at the back (unlike individual Red Line cars with a cab at each end). If they did run three-car trains on the Blue/Green, wouldn't there need to be some kind of a "middle" car between the two cab cars?

Nice. From the "roll by" shots in the videos, it sounds pretty quiet, too. That ought to put a lid on the NIMBYs who complain about possible noise issues.

This evening, I went to Wendy Park for the first time. I was pleasantly suprised at how well they cleaned up the area around the Coast Guard station. I knew that the pier was repaired, but I was still expecting something along the lines of the picture MayDay posted earlier in this thread, with lots of brush surrounding the building. The next thing, of course, is the redevelopment of the station building itself, but it's a good thing that it's at least semi-accessible (in that you can walk up to it) and not fenced off at a distance. Another thing that surprised me was that there were quite a few people in the park, even in the evening in the middle of September. Imagine how busy the place will be when a more direct access route from Downtown/the Flats gets built. :-D

Well, Long Island does have a population of 7,500,000. I'm sure there are quite few Ikea shoppers among them. :) Anyway, a Trader Joe's in SYC would be good for the area, what with its close proximity to Tremont, although you'd obviously need to hop in a car to get there.

Awesome pics, MayDay. Florida Guy is right-- Cleveland is great on Labor Day Weekend (not that it isn't any other time :-D). The weather today was perfect to boot. I too was down in the area for the Bridge subway tour, then went to Tower City for a bite to eat, and wandered my way to the Voinovich Park area to watch the air show. Until today, I haven't been to Voinovich Park after they'd moved the William G. Mather, and I'm not sure how other people take to the idea of it being moved, but I like it. It really opens up that side of the harbor to visitors. Though I completely forgot the Rotunda was open. :(

Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but I found this rather depressing photo on Flickr... http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=558563682&size=l It's the land that would eventually become The Promenade, and Crocker Park later on. The photo was taken in 1988, according to the person who posted it.