Akron is a smart city. I just want to get that out of the way.
I was just browsing Green City Blue Lake Today and I stumbled across this: Akron Maps Out Sustainable Land Use and Transportation. Writes GCBL’s Mark Lefkowitz:
Connecting Communities: A Guide to Integrating Land Use and Transportation is a good read on the Akron/Summit region’s development patterns with an eye toward “increasing transportation choices, improving connectivity and reducing environmental impact.”
Wowza.
The article continues that Akron will be inventorying parking, sidewalks, transit stops, bikeways and landuse to explore …

It is an oft-lamented fact, both locally and nationally, that the city of Cleveland hasn’t taken full advantage of its position on the shore of Lake Erie. The national media, in its seemingly boundless enthusiasm for stories about the declining fortunes of the city where I live, is quick to point out that we haven’t taken advantage of what may be our best asset.

Whether the publication is Forbes (Most Miserable City, Sixth Fastest Dying City) or Portfolio Magazine (Third Most Stressed City), the attention can start to feel like a cheap shot. Inevitably, they turn the blame for the city’s problems onto itself with observations like this one: Why hasn’t Cleveland developed its lakefront into an asset like the city of Baltimore or San Francisco?

Now NPR has run a story on the “teardown” of the West Shoreway freeway, highlighting plans to turn it into a tree-lined boulevard and break down a major barrier to the lake.

The Scene: A maze of decaying streets intermingled with dirt-tinged smokestacks and neglected church steeples.

The Action: A small knot of cyclists set off en masse from a Carnegie-built library in a formerly robust steel town.

Background: Cycling is still a fringe activity in this Rust Belt metropolis, wedged as it is between the trendier East and West coasts. But a small yet committed group of riders shrug off the incredulous stares. Some even commute to work, though few of their employers provide showers and lockers, much less secure bike parking. At least the local transit authority finally has installed bike racks.

Welcome to Pittsburgh circa 2003, when the Post-Gazette published the story “Can Pittsburgh Learn to Love Bikes?”

Andrew Basile, writer of the infamous Detroit sprawl letter, shared this video he has been working on with us. It outlines how car culture destroyed Detroit and how the Woodward Corridor presents an opportunity for revitalization.

What an inspiring guy. Kudos to Mr. Basile for fighting the good fight and not “silently surrendering,” like so many other businesses.
Detroit’s Woodward Avenue:
Before:                                                                                    After:

-AS
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Ha. Nuff said.
Joel Batterman of Transport Michigan, maker of this video, is one of the smartest and most creative voices in the region, in my opinion.

-A.S.
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Ohio Governor John Kasich is back to his backwards-looking, anti-rail ways, and this time his target is the Cincinnati streetcar.
The Republican governor is trying to get his hands on $52 million allocated to the green transportation project that is expected to yield $1.5 billion in new investment in inner-city Cincinnati. Problem is, the money comes from federal grant reserved for transportation projects and can’t be used to plug the state’s $8 billion deficit. Moreover, Ohio’s Transportation Review Advisory Council — which was developed to …

Today I posed a seemingly obvious question to myself: Why do we care about saving the cities we live in?

Some of us care about carbon emissions, but people were concerned about cities before we knew about climate change. I like living in the city because I would rather spend an hour reading my Kindle on a bus than sit twenty minutes in stop-and-go traffic, but that doesn’t explain why I want other people to live in Pittsburgh with me. In fact, the more people, the more traffic.

One obvious answer is that cities are full of people, and people care about people. But the death of a city often means people simply moving to other cities. Why do I care about tipping people’s decisions towards living in Pittsburgh, where I happen to want to live? (The exception is when a city dies because Godzilla attacks it.)

Take a look at these two quirky videos about congestion pricing by Lewis Lehe

Leadership in the city of Cincinnati has been campaigning to develop a streetcar line, for quite some time, and it has been a controversial issue.
Here is the mayor and city manager promoting the initiative. During the last week, the city assembled $86 million for a rail and streetcar line that will connect the University of Cincinnati to downtown. Yesterday, city officials approved $64 million in bonds to support the project, according to The TransportPolitic.
City voters endorsed the measure this fall, despite an effort to block the initiative.
It is hoped that …

Spend a few minutes looking at this report from The Center for Public Integrity.
The study details how unfocused policy can lead to lots of goodies for special interest groups, especially developers.
From the report: “Virtually all players agree there is no coordinated vision in setting priorities for federal transportation projects. That vacuum has led to a tidal wave of earmarks by Congress. Quite naturally real estate developers and other interests make great efforts to influence which projects get funded. As a group, more than 100 real estate development interests – including …