URBAN TURBINES - WHY NOT RIDE THE WIND NOW?

JOINT POST BY MILLER (TEXT) AND BUSTER (PHOTO) 
The photo above is a copy of a paper flyer from the RTA bus tour at August 07 Ingenuity Fest. Someone decided that photographing the new bus - which cost $860,000.00 each - in front of the Cleveland Science Center wind turbine would look dynamic. So, let's actually DO IT as Susan suggests below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I surfed over to RTA development this morning after a long hiatus. Wow! Very exciting things going on down the hill for wanna-be transit riders. Now if only I could easily get there more easily from Cleveland Heights business districts! Press for the UCI project might include a note that CityWheels cars are available at Ford and Euclid and a place for your bike, in case you prefer to lock it and leave it when you get to the rapid.

I can’t wait for these things to be done. I want to jettison my car and have CityWheels at Cedar Lee (my neighborhood) and everywhere. I am also eager to see a Cedar Corridor with a park-n-ride to make use of all of the under used retail surface parking at Cedar and Richmond .

Will the stations and trains have wifi access? Both eastside stations should be able to tap into the NS Innovation Center signal and perhaps you could run a router along the tracks to encourage business ridership. http://realneo.us/blog/jeff-buster/wireless-community-mesh-internet [1] Talk about TOD! I have always held that the in the “information age”, when one should have as much time for reading as possible, the technology should be centered around public transit first (i.e. taking the wifi enabled bus or train when not walking or biking to get from one place to another). Norm Roulet is ramping up to get neighborhood wifi into East Cleveland from Roxbury and connected along Euclid and into other neighborhood spots. Windermere station having a signal could assist with that effort. Drawing people down the hill to the north via Superior and Forest Hill to park and ride from Windermere would assist with the westbound downhill congestion on Cedar Glen in rush hour.

Now, are you ready for green technology, really sustainable mass transit? In Cleveland , set aside wind on the lake for a few years– the real innovation in NEO could/would be to Ride the Wind http://realneo.us/blog/jeff-buster/ride-the-wind [2]!

Show Clevelanders that transit is cool and not for Creeps and Weirdos http://www.boingboing.net/2003/03/25/gm-ads-smear-public-.html [3]. Let’s get working together here. Get the initiatives “linked” in more ways than one. Do we need a Valdis Krebs intervention here? Do we have one, and I just don’t know it?

You go RTA! You can lead the pack for a green city on a blue lake. In ten years, the well-to-do can be moving in from Solon so that they can be “beamed up” to the airport more easily while working on a brief on the train.  Heck in Cleveland there is plenty of space for that big backyard, and you can have it tax abated what’s more! TOD for the very rich – driven by RTA. Now that’s visionary! Park your Beamer – permanently! Put that baby in storage. Why drive when RTA is so slick? What’s cool? Renovating an old Cleveland mansion or building a new “green home” in a Cleveland neighborhood.

You think I am crazy, but these ideas might work. Why not? You guys will know. I am just a dreamer.

Susan Miller