Hotel Bruce

Welcome to the Bruce blog – a weekly update on news, events and issues affecting life in Cleveland. Reporting as it happens on transit, development, planning, environment and arts & culture.

Basically, we write about creative ideas forming, talk to the people who have an inside track on the issues, and sometimes offer a commentary of our own. (For disclosure purposes, the Bruce blog should mention it works part-time with nonprofit organization EcoCity Cleveland).

Rumors are circulating from within Norfolk-Southern that the freight rail carrier is planning on abandoning the right-of-way from downtown Cleveland west through Lakewood (the track that runs parallel between Clifton Road and Detroit Avenue) all the way to Bay Village. A while ago, the company scaled back its operation on this part of the line to a single track and now runs maybe five trains on it a day.

Fueling the rumor mill is Norfolk-Southern’s investment of $1 million on new tracks for the old Nickel Plate rail line at the Rockport Yard area near Berea. Is Northfolk-Southern preparing to bypass the lakefront all together? Berea residents won’t like it, but if the lakefront line is abandoned, the city of Cleveland could make a play for the right-of-way, which is prime lakefront real estate. Advocates for using the line for a new commuter train to link the western suburbs (and all of their high-density residential and commercial areas) and downtown Cleveland are keenly interested. With RTA proposing a downtown trolley running somewhere in the vicinity of the lakefront and E. 17th Street, and with the city still considering a commuter train on the lakeshore east of downtown as part of the Innerbelt project, rail dreams have never been so tantalizing.

A real fight is brewing over the Ohio EPA’s pending decision whether to allow or deny the request of ACER Environmental, Inc. to expand its landfill operation at Bradley Road. The dump has a beautiful view of the lower Cuyahoga River valley.

Environmental advocate and director of the Ohio Greenways project Elaine Marsh has fired the first shot, charging that ACER "has no permit to operate this site as a CD & D landfill and that, in fact, its permit to operate the existing landfill…has been revoked (by the city) for slope and erosion violations." ACER contends that the dump overlooks some streams that are actually drainage ditches for the region’s combined sewer overflows and that converting the streams is required by administrative order of the City of Cleveland. While the public comment period to the OEPA has ended, the fight has just begun.

Bruce blog is happy to see the Free Times resurrected. And, we’re not shilling for no one. But here’s a bit of good news for a change about Councilman Matt Zone—ya’ know, the guy who FT keeps giving ‘the finger’ to for his proposed smoking ban? Zone is committing $800,000 of his Community Development Block Grants (the millions of dollars each councilperson receives from the feds every year for community development) to redesign the wide-open fields around the Michael J. Zone Rec Center. And Bruce blog thinks it’s for more reasons than having his father’s name on the building (which sits on the corner of W. 65th and Lorain Ave.). Zone, his family, and about 50 residents attended a public meeting last week to share ideas for putting the 25-acre parcel (the biggest public green space on the West side of Cleveland—it was slated to be a highway interchange) to some better uses.

Some ideas making the wish list include converting the drainage ditch into a stream connected to a wetland and a nature center, flower/herb/interpretive gardens, bike and walking paths, an outdoor swimming pool, gathering spots for seniors, more water fountains and so forth. Bruce blog hopes this is one public meeting where the input is put to use.

Can you imagine the audacity? A group of Spandex-clad no-goodniks get together on the last Friday afternoon of May in Downtown Cleveland and expect to ride their bikes, unfettered, on the street? They call it Critical Mass, a celebration of the right to ride on the road, just as other groups have been doing for years in Seattle, Chicago and more progressive cities.

En-mass they cruise down Euclid Avenue. Picture kids cheering and even grumpy businessmen smiling and waving as they pass. The situation turns sticky, though, because Ohio law states that you must ride as reasonably close as you can to the curb and that bicyclists may not ride on the street more that two abreast. And so the Cleveland cops show up and start handing out tickets like its candy, even for those scofflaws who thumb their nose at gasp! the reflector law. In the aftermath that ensues, Cleveland must decide if it has the stomach to press charges against the 15 or so ‘criminals’ who got written up? Or maybe the city lightens up and charges some real lawbreakers?

Bruce blog’s (Bb) personal goal is to be carbon neutral just like those regular Joes from Coldplay and the cast of "Lord of the Rings." Bb usually rides the RTA 3 out of 5 work days a week. Even though it might take up to 45 minutes to commute, hey, it beats waiting in Tribe traffic. We could find a hundred ways to Tuesday to criticize RTA, but the biggest problem is there just aren’t enough people willing to ride the damn train or bus. RTA’s job is to give them fewer excuses.

So, can someone explain why RTA refused to link up its just unveiled Heights Circulator bus with Cedar-Lee and the high-density residential neighborhoods along Lee Road? Even if rider fees don’t make up the cost of running more buses there, it just seems like a missed opportunity (Btw, Bb lives in the loop that will be served by the circulator).