Why is the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) considering service cuts and a fare hike as Northeast Ohio faces the perfect storm of high gas prices and a renewed interest in transit?

A new study that looks at each state’s vulnerability to oil prices and what they’re doing about it sheds light on Ohio, and with it, transit agencies like RTA’s plight.

While the National Resources Defense Council "Ranking States' Oil Vulnerability and Solutions for Change" study released today ranks Ohioans right in the middle on oil vulnerability (its 26th spot is based on percentage of income spent on gas), only ten states were slower to respond to that vulnerability with investments in transit.

Ohioans spend 5.4% of their income ($1,886 per driver annually) on gas, but the state ranked 40th in transit spending (.77% spent on transit compared to highway spending in 2006). The picture is bleaker when considering Ohio far exceeds the bottom twelve states in population.

Ohio has treated transit like an afterthought for more than a decade. The NRDC findings confirm a 2006 report from the Transportation Research Board, which tallied Ohio’s transit investment second to last among states—it ‘spent’ -8% on transit from 1995 to 2004 (based on compound annual growth rates). The national average was 3.9% during that time. While Ohio was reducing its funding for public transit, other states increased financial support for transit by approximately 130%.

Outmigration to suburbs and counties beyond Cuyahoga has left the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, one of the area’s largest land holders, faced with once-proud congregations who struggle with aging infrastructure and stagnant, often declining, financial support. Many, including parishioners from Saint Ann and Saint Louis of Cleveland Heights and Christ the King and Saint Philomena of East Cleveland are exploring mergers in order to remain open.

How should the church best honor the memory but respond to realities of shifting demographics and a massive real estate portfolio? Read more.

When the nation’s leading green building organization announced in September 2007 that Cleveland will be home to three pilot LEED for Neighborhood Development projects, sustainability advocates rejoiced. Since then, the city and private developers, including the Wolstein Group for the Flats East Bank, have met to discuss the details and to figure out, ‘how do we create a green neighborhood?’

One issue that the city and developers are grappling with is the intersection of what the new LEED-ND program requires for certification and what city codes and ordinances currently allow. Beyond the prestige bestowed upon Cleveland, some at the city see it as an opportunity to permanently remove obstacles to greening the public realm of a large development, solidify those changes and create a legacy for future development.

Andrew Watterson, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability, Lillian Kuri of the Cleveland Foundation (who’s managing two of the local LEED-ND projects) and Justin Glanville, director of Building Cleveland by Design (which manages the Flats LEED-ND process) proposed the city create a “green team” within city government and jettison its bureaucratic approach to development. The green team will identify what LEED-ND wants to do and how that bumps up against the city’s codes and alleviate any potential hurdles. The larger goal, however, is to move some of these green design elements from pilot to policy.

"We’ve learned from other cities, including Chicago, that completing pilot projects can help address entrenched skepticism about green design, showing people (in this case City employees) that green design can work in Cleveland, it doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive, and it can be beautiful," Glanville says.

Location(s)

Informal gathering of local planners and other placemakers organized by staff of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission.

This page will be a home for innovative ideas about urban safety — strategies for making safe streets in city neighborhoods.

Buildings make up a signifant contribution to our region's carbon footprint - both through initial construction and ongoing maintenance, and direct energy consumption required to heat, cool and light the building.

According to Architecture 2030, by "the year 2038, three-quarters of the built environment in the U.S. will be either new or renovated."  This represents a significant opportunity to impact our built environment and reduce our carbon emissions.

During Fall 2008, we will hold a series of work group meetings with building professionals in Northeast Ohio to better understand how we can make changes today and over the coming decades to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our buildings.

 Background Information

"The 2030 Blueprint: Solving Climate Change Saves Billions, Good for the Economy, Jobs," Architecture 2030, April 7, 2008.  Link.

"Meeting the 2030 Challenge Through Building Codes," Architecture 2030, June 20, 2008.  Link.

Brown, Marilyn, Frank Southworth, Therese K. Stovall, "Towards a Climate Friendly Built Environment,"  Pew Center on Global Climate Change, June 2005.  Link.

Reid Ewing and Fang Rong, "The Impact of Urban Form on US Residential Energy Use."  Link.

These days, cities are acting faster than any other level of government to reduce our carbon footprint. Some have departments on the environment (Chicago, Seattle), others sustainability program managers (Cleveland), and still others have nonprofit groups leading the way. Akron falls into the last category with Keep Akron Beautiful, a nonprofit with a $200,000 budget paid through private donations and from a city street assessment.

When Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, like Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, signed the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement last year, they joined more than 500 mayors who are committed to reducing global warming. The agreement calls for a reduction of emissions in their cities to seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012. 

Signing the agreement, however, is part one of the mayor’s compact. Part two is coming up with a comprehensive plan to follow through on the commitments. Last week, Akron announced that its Keep Akron Beautiful group will lead a community-wide effort to put a plan on paper.

"The new urgency in our formulating a community-wide plan stems in part from action in congress that would allow us to fund new environmental projects in a significant way," said Plusquellic.

Cleveland Engineering Society Fall Engineering Extravaganza on the theme, "Engineering a Sustainable Future."

Speakers include Holly Harlan, founder and president of Entrepreneurs for Sustainability; Chris Korleski, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, and David Beach of GreenCityBlueLake. Sessions on reducing your environmental footprint at home, aternative energy resources, the economics of sustainability, manufacturing, and innovative technologies for sustainability.

Registration information.

Here's a sign of progress on Euclid Avenue, demonstrating that cyclists and motorists can work together to create options for individuals and communities. The street sign photograph is a clear signal that motorists need to be prepared for cyclists and share the road. Interestingly, the signs that cyclists and buses share the road confirms the informal policy, that cyclists can share the otherwise exclusive bus lanes, for instance those on Superior Avenue.  This policy was also expressed by RTA officials, in a presentation to "Meet the Bloggers" at a midtown Cleveland event, hosted by Webtego.  To hear RTA officers commenting on bikes in bus lanes, or the Euclid Corridor project, go here.

 
Share the Road, It's the Law!  
For information on cycling in Northeast Ohio, visit ClevelandBikes

Key Bank’s Technology and Operations campus in Brooklyn, Ohio participated in the LEED for Existing Buildings pilot program and was certified as a LEED-EB facility in April of 2005. (LEED-EB provides a recognized, performance-based benchmark for building owners and operators to measure the sustainability of their operations, improvements and maintenance on a consistent scale.) Originally constructed between 1994 and 1996, the 750,000 square foot campus includes two buildings and a parking garage, and accommodates 2,000 employees. Sustainable features of this LEED-EB pilot project include: reuse of a Brownfield site; alternative transportation with a bus stop on the campus and RTA lines nearby; energy efficient mechanical and lighting systems; a comprehensive recycling program; and green housekeeping.

more information.