How Cars Divide America

Car dependence not only reduces our quality of life, it’s a crucial factor in America’s economic and political divisions.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/07/how-cars-divide-america/565148/

 

Also from the article, though:

 

Transportation to the eastern job centers, just like to Max Hayes, can involve multiple bus connections that take too long to have much appeal.

 

Getting a dense transit network out to Solon is simply spatially challenging regardless of funding, and of course you'll dampen enthusiasm for transit funding generally if you insist on an entire bus route just for a tiny handful of people's daily commute.  As for exclusionary zoning, I presume the 3D-chess move there is the implication that workers could move into those neighborhoods to be closer to the jobs there.  But even transportation within Solon is car-dependent.  And there are other barriers than zoning and its attendant artificial unaffordability that keep many longtime residents of Cleveland from simply pulling up stakes.

 

You might as well also have said the article should call out employers for locating in the southeastern sprawlburbs at all rather than in neighborhoods that are already denser and easier to serve with transit options.

 

Bad for the environment, awful for our health and terrible for public space – this is the case for banning cars

Quote

"We need to think of private cars like the 21st century equivalent of Victorian buckets of waste; people will keep emptying them in the street until the city provides a better alternative" -- Leo Murray

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cars-climate-change-environment-air-pollution-congestion-health-a9034841.html

No mention of electric cars in that article.  But also, it's completely London-centric.  Even in other cities in England's fairly populous southeast, the density isn't there to make what he's proposing feasible.

9 hours ago, Gramarye said:

Also from the article, though:

 

Transportation to the eastern job centers, just like to Max Hayes, can involve multiple bus connections that take too long to have much appeal.

 

Getting a dense transit network out to Solon is simply spatially challenging regardless of funding, and of course you'll dampen enthusiasm for transit funding generally if you insist on an entire bus route just for a tiny handful of people's daily commute.  As for exclusionary zoning, I presume the 3D-chess move there is the implication that workers could move into those neighborhoods to be closer to the jobs there.  But even transportation within Solon is car-dependent.  And there are other barriers than zoning and its attendant artificial unaffordability that keep many longtime residents of Cleveland from simply pulling up stakes.

 

You might as well also have said the article should call out employers for locating in the southeastern sprawlburbs at all rather than in neighborhoods that are already denser and easier to serve with transit options.

 

All very true. A fairly frequent commuter rail service from Lorain to downtown to Aurora combined with van pools and circulator bus routes would reduce trip times to suburban manufacturing/warehousing jobs, thus making it easier to fill the thousands of unfilled jobs in those areas. And it would raise the prominence of downtown as an employment center, creating more skilled and non-skilled jobs there too which are accessible to everyone. BTW, one 250-passenger commuter train eliminates the need for 2.5 acres of downtown parking (also reducing the value of that land as a parking lot and thus making vertical development more cost-effective).  EDIT -- FYI, these maps are more than decade old, so the "active development plans" represent projects that may or may not still be pending.

Edited August 5, 20195 yr by KJP

It would be a cool thought experiment if we could get a somewhat isolated city of over 50,000 to ban cars for non-commercial reasons for a year - like the greater Scranton area or even Youngstown

 

For instance, I wonder if WalMart would even be viable anymore if people had to walk, bike, etc to get groceries. 

I think an experiment like that would require a longer duration because so much of our economy is structurally dependent on cars. I would think a community that's already walkable, like Holland, MI or Newport, RI would be a good place to try an experiment like that.

Agreed on regional rail when you make the focus on downtown.  

 

But Solon by itself is 21 square miles.  By comparison: Akron is 62.  Cleveland is 82.  Much larger cities in population but not that much larger in land area.  Solon will never be the focus of a regional rail system and quite honestly might not even get a single stop (I'm not sure you'd have a decent place to put it with a serviceable population nearby, and I really don't think people are that scared of downtown Cleveland traffic that they would use a park-and-ride system to avoid it).

Solon could never be the focus of a rail system. No one would ever seriously suggest it.

Sleasman's take on the article seemed to be implying the need (or at least that it would be a good thing) for making the employers in Solon and other sprawling eastern suburbs transit-accessible.  Of course, he didn't specifically mention rail; that came from you.  But even a bus transit system would have enormous difficulty getting good coverage and route times throughout Solon (let alone Orange or some of the even less dense places in that part of Cuyahoga County).

Here's my ideal transit system:

 

- A light rail system that connects Ohio City, D-S, Tremont, University Circle, Old Brooklyn, and another East side neighborhood to Downtown. 

 

- A "rapid transit" system that would keep intact the lines that run to Shaker and the airport. But extend one westward through: Lakewood, River, and dead end it in Westlake. Maybe 5-8 stops? One extending Eastward to Euclid. One extending Southwest hitting some major pop. centers, i.e. Parma, Parma Heights, to Strongsville. 

 

I believe trains to the suburbs would be enormously popular, so long as people trust their efficiency. My wife and I dread moving from Ohio City at some point, because we despise 10+ minute commutes. 

Edited August 5, 20195 yr by YABO713

One easy, short-term fix for "increasing the number of jobs accessible in 90 minutes or less" issue is to allow passengers to ride the reverse rush-hour trips to the suburban park-n-rides. There, a transit agency could partner with companies or groups of companies to fund van pools or circulators to distribute workers to the number of plants and warehouses.

 

EDIT: RTA and Laketran have allowed some trips to do that but not all. Even some non-park-n-ride buses could carry passengers on dead-head trips. For example, when some rush-hour #55 Clifton buses get downtown to STJ Center, not all reverse back down the Shoreway and Clifton as revenue trips to the suburbs to start their next CBD-bound rush-hour trip. Instead, at least half dead-head on I-90 out to Westlake or Bay Village to start their next run. Why not allow fare-paying passengers to get on STJ and ride out to suburban jobs?

Edited August 5, 20195 yr by KJP

I think that first route is an obvious one.

 

I actually think an interesting thought exercise is this: How effective, efficient, and well-utilized of a rail transit system could you build in Cleveland without leaving the city at all, forgetting even Shaker and Lakewood and other "obvious" inner-ring suburbs for such a system?

 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

Agreed on regional rail when you make the focus on downtown.  

 

But Solon by itself is 21 square miles.  By comparison: Akron is 62.  Cleveland is 82.  Much larger cities in population but not that much larger in land area.  Solon will never be the focus of a regional rail system and quite honestly might not even get a single stop (I'm not sure you'd have a decent place to put it with a serviceable population nearby, and I really don't think people are that scared of downtown Cleveland traffic that they would use a park-and-ride system to avoid it).

 

Virtually all of Solon’s jobs are in the industrial zone south of 422 on both sides of Harper / Cochran (which are the same north/south road). It is perhaps 1/5 of Solon’s land area - and the commercial area of Glenwillow is immediately adjacent. On the attached map image I circled in blue where basically ALL of the relevant jobs are. A commuter rail station by the Nestle plant on Harper just south of 422 (red X on map) plus a circulator bus (that already exists) would serve those primarily manufacturing and also headquarters jobs extremely well. And considering that this would be the secondary function of the commuter rail line (the primary being to get people to downtown jobs) it’s actually set up much better for this than one might expect in suburban America. 

 

Going east past Harper would get more difficult since the tracks are not active and have been abandoned. But west of there is still active track for freight rail.