cleveland pride

ZachariahDaMan, thanks for the pictures! I understand exactly what you were doing and I love it. I drive through this area for work every day, and I love it. I've always wanted to explore the observatory on Taylor that you posted. Many of us take a real interest in the side of cities which you show. Most of the photo threads focus mainly on the up and coming or well-maintained neighborhoods, but these areas exist too and they're fascinating. There's a real difference between posting pictures to say that a city is rundown and showing the urban blight which many people on this board are interested in just like you. I think it's clear which of the two you try to do. Keep up the good work!

My wife and I lost teaching jobs in Wisconsin and had to leave my nice little spot in downtown Port Washington. The only place I could find a job was in Cleveland, so I moved back to my hometown and now live in a place in Lakewood that is twice the size of my old spot for $25 a month cheaper. I also make about $5000 more a year. To be honest, I'd say the economy going in the crapper and causing me to lose my job was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Thanks, guys. KJP-I did pick one up, but I think I set it down and left it when I had lunch because I can't find it now! Is there an online version?

I posted some pictures I took today here: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,23851.0.html

I went on the subway tour with my wife and then had lunch on East 4th Street earlier today. I decided to post some of the pictures I took. Unfortunately, I have a cheap camera and know nothing about photography, so some of the pictures in the tunnel didn't turn out so well. It's not exactly a Mayday thread! :wink: Alright, enough shots in the tunnel. It's time to head across the bridge! When we finally made it Downtown we found a couple of nice views. Thanks for taking a walk with us! We had to get home, but here's one more shot from where our car was parked. Hopefully someone else with better photography skills went and took some better pictures. If not, then these should do the trick!

^I was thinking the same thing. If the new convention center isn't ready yet, then does that mean they'd have to hold it in the IX Center? If that's the case then I can't imagine Cleveland actually being chosen.

^That's true of most of the older teachers I work with. However, there is a real trend among many of the younger teachers to move back towards the city core. There are more transportation options, the commute is shorter, and I think that there is a growing sense that old stereotypes about Cleveland and its inner ring suburbs being unsafe are unfounded if you move into the right neighborhood. I'd say Cleveland Heights is a good choice because of this.

Do you live in CH? Currently, no. That is only because I have a friend that is letting me stay in a house without paying rent in another suburb. I actually am planning on moving to Cleveland and buying a house there, but that is not because I do not feel safe in Cleveland Heights. I would just rather live in Cleveland. My wife and I have talked about it a lot, and we would move to Cleveland Heights if we could not find somewhere we liked enough in Cleveland. I spend plenty of time in Cleveland Heights, and I would not call it a utopia without crime. However, I have never felt like I am in danger in the city.

Clevelandjem, I can give you a little piece of advice on the schools in the area. I am a high school teacher in Cleveland Heights. The school system isn't terrible, but it isn't the greatest. That being said, I would say from dealing with these students and their families that this has much more to do with the involvement of the parents than it does with the quality of the school system. There is only one school I would definitely say you should NOT consider if you are looking at elementary schools. Apex academy is a charter school on the east side of Cleveland that many parents in the area send their children to. I've seen many students that come out of this school and are years behind where they should be. As for safety, I have little qualms about Cleveland Heights.

That number of parking spaces is ridiculous! There are already garages near and what is the point of building on a parking lot only to replace them? The people that live there are most likely going to be walkers and shop withing a 10 block radius of their home. I am really not a big fan of parking either, but I think that in this case it can serve a purpose. FCE has complained that the city will lose parking when MMPI puts in the MM and the CC is rebuilt. While 300 parking spaces will be lost by that project, this one will create many more than that just a couple blocks away. So maybe FCE and the naysayers on the Mall site can shut their mouths about losing parking. Also, I think one of the problems with getting something going in the Warehouse District is that so many people use all of those parking lots on a daily basis. If more parking is provided in the Warehouse District by this project it may be easier to fill in that sea of parking in the future. While I don't think that 2400 parking spaces is needed with this project, it certainly does seem to shut down some of the pathetic arguments about parking problems in the Warehouse District and with the new CC.

JMasek, I appreciate your continual responses in this thread. If you look on the previous page, you will see that I have actually given the HealthLine a very positive review based on my the two rides I took during my recent trip to Cleveland. However, I am not drawing illogical conclusions. I sat on the brt and merely reported what I observed. My comment about the Cleveland police was in response to MTS' remark that implied they are the ones working to take care of this, so maybe you go back and read my review instead of focusing on that one line. From what I have seen, it seems very easy to get on and off the HealthLine without paying. That's not an illogical conclusion on a brt that is not fully functional. It is an observation that has been offered to you by someone who sat and watched more than a dozen people get on and off without paying. Overall, I believe that the system is running fairly smooth and is something to be proud of, but I do think that this is a potential problem.

Besides, if there are a large amount of people not paying, then it will take a large amount of tickets to stop this from continuing. Would RTA then have a huge force just sitting on every bus issuing tickets all day every day for as long as it takes for people to get the message? Plus, people could always claim ignorance. The ticket machines at the stations aren't working yet, and it's not like there's a huge flashing sign that says "pay here" when you get on the bus.

MTS, that helps, but it still doesn't control the situation. Police can't be on every ride. There were no police on either of my rides. I saw no one in uniform and either there was no undercover officer on board, or else he or she did not care that people weren't paying. I'd be surprised if they could spare people to sit on even half of the rides, and that's not really their responsibility. That means that the majority of the HealthLine is not moderated by the police, and I wouldn't want them to be wasting so much time checking tickets when they should be fighting crime throughout the city. So the question remains: How does RTA stop from having fourteen people not paying on every trip from Downtown to University Circle?

So my question is this: How will they actually track who has paid? Once the ticket machines are activated, it will be easier for people to pay before they get on the bus, but it won't solve the problem. As long as it is assumed that people who don't pay already have active passes, then paying will always be optional. Many people won't pay for the trip if simply getting in line is considered proof that you have a pass.

^Thanks for explaining it to me. I was just really bothered by the thought of so many people going through without paying.

I'm in town this weekend to visit some family, so I got to take my first ride on the HealthLine yesterday so that I could check out the Art Museum. Ride #1: Public Square to Adelbert -Had to wait only two minutes for a bus. -Most lights changed for us as we approached. Those that didn't only kept us waiting for a couple of seconds. -Despite everything I've heard about problems with East 6th, we did not even get stopped there. -Total trip time: 18 minutes. Ride #2: Stokes to East 2nd -The wind made it pretty uncomfortable. It actually felt better outside the shelter than it did inside. -Had to wait six minutes for a bus (not bad). -The bus did not quite pull up to the station. It fell short by about five feet and was pretty far from the curve. This wasn't really a nuisance for me, but it would've been a problem for a handicapped person. -This time East 6th was a problem. It changed and signaled for our bus to stop as we approached, and then made us wait for almost two minutes. Many people on the bus were visibly agitated by the delay. They were mostly headed to East 2nd, and I think that they realized it would have been faster to get out and walk. -Total trip time: 21 minutes. Overall, I was very impressed with the ride and how smoothly it worked (except for a few hiccups mentioned above). Nice job, RTA! There is one thing that really bothered me. I noticed more than a dozen people who did not pay at all. Most people got on the bus and immediately showed a pass or paid for their ride, but I counted 14 people who got on near the back of the bus and did not pay. Is there any way to stop this?

I'm not sure that those are very recent. I know I remember seeing the second one last fall on a different website. I specifically remember it because I was thinking of how similar it is to a condo building north of Chicago off of 94.

The PD did have some classic lines in there apart from its usually "struggling city" lines. This one was my favorite: It plans to leave its dark high-rise on Superior Avenue. Translation for the average cleveland.commer: Eaton leaves the high-rise of darkness in the scary, evil and struggling Downtown Cleveland on the destitute Superior Avenue for the green paradise and safety of the suburbs. :roll: I know they're leaving a black buiding, but the tone of that sentence just seems to give it a dual meaning. And coming from the PD, I somehow don't think that was an accident.

I always do stop at traffic signals, and I've never had a problem with someone making a right turn into me. Every problem I've ever had with this has been with cars making a left turn into me when I have the right of way.

No, I'm a temporarily displaced Clevelander. I do my best to minimize any danger to myself and obey all the rules. When possible, I try to ride far enough over to the right for cars to pass me without having to go very far into the next lane. The problem here is that drivers are completely ignorant of the fact that bikers have any rights. People frequently turn into me and then yell at me out their car windows to get off the road. The funning thing is that this usually happens when I'm going through an area where there aren't any sidewalks at all. Where do they think I'm going to go?

I made the unfortunate choice of attending Concordia University in Mequon. I'm going to graduate in May and then I'm hoping to move back to Cleveland. I actually live in Port Washington, so thanks for the compliment. I've always thought we're the smartest people in Ozaukee :-D. Mequon's actually not the worst to drive through. It's the Grafton drivers that will kill you...literally. All three fatalities were in Grafton.

Try riding in the northern suburbs and your opinion might change. Here there are still bike lanes, but they end at random points with no warning and seem to only be on roads where it makes no sense for them to be. I've also almost been hit twice and was driven off the road once in the past two weeks. Drivers definitely don't know what to do when there are bikers on the road. There have also been three bikers that were killed by motorists who weren't paying attention in Ozaukee county in the last month. I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it to get rid of my car if it means risking my life every day.

Grant, I'll say again what I said in my earlier post: You don't have to accept everyone, but try to respect them.

I have never been one to take anything at face value, so I didn't inherit my beliefs from anyone. My parents are extremely Republican, but it always puzzled me why someone would always agree with one particular party regardless of what they said. As such, I became an Independent as I grew up. There is pretty much nobody that I agree with entirely, so I just take the person that I disagree with the least. Lately I've been leaning more Democratic, but if I start to see Republicans making more sense to me, then I'll end up swinging the opposite way in the future. The thing that most influences my political decisions is my faith. I went from being agnostic to being a Christian in my late teens and I have tried to be moderate with my voting and conservative with my beliefs (from a biblical perspective). Now conservative does not mean stupid. Just because I disagree with a person's lifestyle does not mean that I think it is a good idea to insult and oppress them. For example, I disagree with gay marriage, but that does not mean that I want laws to be passed against it or hate people who engage in it. What good would that do? It is possible to respect someone else's views without accepting those views as being correct. Two things that really bother me are immigration and abortion. I don't understand why some Republicans are so hard up on the Bible but hate immigrants (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). That's pretty much a complete contradiction in beliefs. I'm also bothered by the way that Democrats talk about abortion. They make it sound like you are an ignorant, oppressive fool if you are not for abortion. I'm all about rights, but I put human rights (the right to live) before women's rights because so many women I know just use abortion as a method of birth control. I know that's a touchy subject, but I think people frequently get so caught up in the idea that we should protect the rights of women that they forget there is a child here who cannot speak up for his or her own rights. Nobody told me to believe this way. I just use logic and test it with the most important aspect of my live, my faith.

^Sounds good to me. I just saw this here and thought I'd add my own experience.