cookies

Well I think it gives a polished look, but it's not truly necessary.

I never thought of making a bus map... well, because, buses in SimCity 4 always go wherever a certain Sim has the whim to go. :/ I like the style of your maps, but if it were me, I'd anti-alias the lines....

Perhaps I should stop saying up so late to make these? Nah. Anyway, Gentium's tram system has expanded, and so here's the update map with major geological features added. (Yes I know two stations on the Purple Line have no names. I forgot what I called those two originally and have to go back and check.) (EDIT: 8/23/11 so the link actually takes you to the larger image)

I don't post as often as I should.... Hi, I'm a lurker! Anyway, I wanted to learn Inkscape and make a map, and this is what happened: It's for my fictional city Gentium. It's the streetcar system. (Despite the disclaimer the actual system actually looks a lot like this, it's just that the distances have been shortened.)

Oh goodness I had to post! Cleveland: Fallen Beauty What a glamorous girl she once was. Knew all the best shops, all the best clubs. The snazziest jazz joints and the most elegant clothes. Took the streetcar home to an elegant flat. Almost European. Then she hit a midlife crises and lost half her weight to anorexia. She stills thinks she's fat, though, and keeps losing weight. Everyone tries to help, but no one really knows how. She doesn't listen. She binds up every wound of hers from the long, heavy skirts all around. A patchwork; there are some bright spots. There are corrupt influences on her, but she can usually ignore these, or people find out and stop it. Faced with reforming herself, it's now or never for her; hope exists. EDIT PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.photogmarc.com/id25.html

ThThat Either foot the bill to do it right, or don't do it. I will never under any circumstance advocate doing something cheap and half-assed because that's all we have the money for. The course of action in that case is to wait until enough money is available to do the job properly.quote> In many cases, it's either that, or no form of mass transit at all. I'd rather have mass transit than not. When you're talking about a street several lanes wide, turning one into a bus lane isn't a bad thing. If that restriction can be properly enforced, it is a good thing. Then the lane will be put to good use. What is bad is removing the lane and replacing it with something unrelated to moving traffic - like a median with trees.quote> Well, it's a rather long story for such dynamic street. It's wide, and originally streetcars ran down the middle, but they were removed in 1952. Then Plans were floated for a subway, which was deemed to expensive. After more review, a lightrail line was proposed to follow the route of the streetcar, but it too was deemed too expensive. Bus rapid transit was thus proposed, and follows roughly the same route as the streetcars did. Its basically putting back capacity that was removed. And yes, certain parts have a tree-lined median. (But those parts were widened to accommodate it). People usually do follow the restrictions. (Buses arrive every 5 minutes, so it's hard to stay in the bus lanes.) Um... somehow I don't see that highway as preventing too much development. Burke Airport, the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, Great Lakes Science Center, and Browns Stadium are kind of in the way anyway. And doesn't the light rail already go along the waterfront? It's going to be a shame to see that highway go...quote> Not quite, as BKL is rather necessary as a reliever to Hopkins International. (I'd still like to see it moved) The Science Center and Stadium can be considered first phases of tying the city to the lakefront. They will and are used as tourist attractions, and will thus put people on proposed developments. Additional housing is planned to go along with all of it. The one thing really in the way, according to developers, is no one wants to live near a highway and there are few areas for pedestrians to cross said highway. Also, Deadman's Curve is on this substandard bit of 1959 Highway. EDIT: Also, the port is in the way. It's moving, too. Sticking various forms of transportation together would seem to make sense. But then again, it's not without its downsides. For instance, look at this. Accessing the South End of Stamford requires passing across North State Street, under I-95, across South State Street, and under the train tracks.... all with no bit of development whatsoever in between. The neighboorhood is thus effectively walled off enough to keep the Huns out. Had I-95 been built around the north side of downtown, that wouldn't be such an issue. ...although, all things considered, having one thick wall is better than having two thinner ones. In fact, the state quite intentionally ran I-95 parallel to the train tracks in several of places so as to minimize its neighborhood severance. quote> That's quite a combo! As you said, there is no development between the transit types, but it is only one cut, not many, and I hope it supports development around it. (Also, I loathe pedestrian underpasses. I'd much rather cross OVER.) EDIT: Removed a CJK space that registered as a question mark. I dunno how that got there.

Yeah, allowed. Not caused. Obviously there must have been some reason why those business would want to move out of downtown. Maybe we should figure out what that is and think about addressing it, hm?quote> As After the people migrated to suburbs allowed by highways, companies wanted to follow. With cheap land to build office parks, suburbs could attract them. As such, a perception of crime developed, and there were no funds from taxes to keep maintaining the city, and the companies started to flee, as the people had fled. (Not all doom and gloom though, a new bus rapid transit line was installed on Euclid Avenue, and businesses find the improved streetscape and transit line very inviting, and are setting up shop, though slowly due to the economy. Note, they removed a lane of traffic [GASP!] to implement bus lanes/wider side walks. Ridership is up sharply.) So, revive the city at the expense of killing the suburbs. Sounds like just moving the problem, not fixing it. [/q Not necessarily, as suburbs are often far more well off, and removing an urban highway in the city that doesn't reach a suburb would have little affect on them. Although, removing all highway connections, which I don't advise, would be negative to both city and suburb. This is true, and allowing those rail lines to be removed was a mistake. Let's not repeat that mistake now by allowing highways to be removed.quote> This assumes that highways are necessary/beneficial, which they may not always be. Um, quite a few of the rail lines around here are four tracks....quote> Mm, true, but I was making an example. True enough. Railways were the original enablers of sprawl. They came first, and were built mostly through empty land that later developed around them. Highways came much later, and were in many more cases cut through already developed areas... areas whose development the railways had enabled over the previous 100+ years. I suppose in this way rail to highway isn't a fair compariosn because the rail lines are all much older.... so, give it time. See what the parts of cities around highways look like a century from now. Somehow I bet they'll have adapted to the highways presence more and feel a lot less cut up. Just gotta give them the chance.quote> A city tied to its highways may very well look like Dallas or Los Angeles. Though, that's my opinion. It's true cities weren't built for cars until recently. I don't know about suburbs being "leech-like"... I suppose that depends on who's going where. There are an awful lot of "satellite cities" around New York (I live in one of them), which are small cities in their own right, but nevertheless revolve around Manhattan - and they would not be what they are without it. Places like Newark, White Plains, Stamford... actually exhibit somehwat the "leech-like" tendency that you describe, in that many of the jobs there are jobs which moved out of Manhattan. But here, it's very different because the reason they left Manhattan is that Manhattan is highly in demand and thus expensive. New York thrives in spite of their departure. In fact, New York thriving is what keeps them out. Although, granted, these suburbs first sprung into "satellte cities" during the 70's, when companies were leaving Manhattan not to escape high rents and property taxes but rather to escape crime and filth. They did leech, but now it's hard to look at them that way.quote> That's somewhat analogous to what happened in Cleveland, as companies wanted to escape crime. (Technically, the perception of crime, as crimes in Downtown are few, and usually limited to petty theft. White collar crime runs high, though. <_&lt However, suburbs around here do not realize they would cease to exist without Cleveland, and as such continually leach development funds, people, and businesses from the core city, all the while speeding toward their own doom. Anyways, let's expand upon my previous comment about creating, not destroying. Highways tear neighborhoods apart. Fine, I get that. I'm not advocating ripping cities apart further by building more of them (unless it's on an exitsing ROW, then you're not being destructive, so go nuts). But I will stand adamant against removal of the ones that have already been built unless they are to be replaced with something equal or greater. You want to narrow an eight lane highway to six and create a couple of train tracks out of the spare lanes? Okay, we'll talk (although, buulding the rail line without removing lanes from the highway is better). You want to outright rip a highway down and replace it with just a surface boulevard that has intersections and fewer total lanes? Forget it, that's a capacity decrease. Hence, bad idea. Though, on that matter... the problem is that construction of new capacity need not accompany removal of old capacity. Why rip up two lanes of highway for a pair of train tracks if you've got room for them in the median or to the sides? Even if you don't, how about tunneling them under the highway or elevating them over it? (see: AirTrain JFK). And yes, there may be a streetcar now where the Embarcadero Freeway used to be... but could the streetcar and the highway not have coexisted? Would that not have been even better than the current setup? quote> As said, building a subway costs a significant amount more. A cost/benefit analysis usually shows that replacing 2 lanes with a railway is often far better. Also, a capacity decrease is not always a horrible thing. Ohio Route 2 separates Cleveland from its lakefront and prevents any development. It's only connected to I-90 and is vastly underused and overbuilt. It's being turned into a surface street starting 2013. (Technically, it will be an expressway under Ohio terms, as 50% of its intersecting streets will be interchanges. To go along with this, an extension of the light rail system is planned.) ROW often do cut through developed areas, although I agree if you have a transit ROW uses it. Though, for more than just a highway. Preferably for a rail/highway/pedestrian combo. EDIT: Goodness! I don't understand the quoting system on this site at all! Never seen anything quite like it.

Originally posted by: Duke87 Re I think you're pointing fingers into totally the wrong place by blaming freeways for the decline of those cities. The fact of the matter is that you're dealing with cities that formerly were very industry-based cities. Then the factories started leaving America for greener pastures overseas. A lot of places ended up mere shadows of their former selves after all those factories and all those jobs left. The building of freeways was thus largely irrelevant. Those cities would have declined anyway. And removing them, while it may make a few places look a little prettier, would do nothing to solve the problem that those places simply haven't been able to adapt to a post-industrial economy. Note that New York also went downhill a lot in the 70's and 80's from the same problem.... but it recovered. Number of highways in New York that were removed? Only one, and it was nowhere near the worst neighborhoods in the city. No highways were removed in the outer boroughs, and they recovered anyway. What made the citiy recover was changes in public policy. ....besides, a lot of what motivates a desire to remove highways, ultimately, is a "cars bad, mass transit good" ideology. Rail lines rip neighborhoods apart too. Nobody ever proposes removing any of those on such grounds. quote> I do understand that such cities haven't taken to a primarily service sector economy, but highways further killed such cities by tearing up neighborhoods and causing mass emigration to suburbs. A city could very well have much of its industry debased, and thus must adapt, but highways make it all the more harder to keep people in a city, and stop the flow of people out, while further causing neighborhood decline. Sprawl caused by highways causes further decline to already ailing cities. For example, the number of jobs in Cleveland's downtown was approximately 111,000, in 2000 but highways allowed office parks to remove these jobs to suburbs, and as such, jobs decline to around 90,000. Not many of these jobs were in manufacturing. Removing a highway thus allows cities to increase the quality of life, and hopefully attract residents. It also makes suburbs less attractive to both people and companies. Also, many railway lines were removed after the Intersates came along in the US, but this was due to low ridership/freight traffic caused by subsidized highways, while railway companies had no subsidies, and had to maintain trackage themselves. Also, as Loney sates, a 2 track railway takes far less space, and has far less impact. Also, railways often sprouted up along with cities, particularly relatively newer cities in the Midwest. Not that they don't allow people to move far away, but they still tie streetcar suburbs to cities. Take, for example, Shaker Heights. It's an affluent, centrally planned suburb largely dependent on Cleveland, as its two streetcar lines allow it to be. It contributes to Cleveland, and Cleveland contributes to Shaker Heights, a different idea then running a highway through a city and out into far flung corners of the county to allow independent, leach-like suburbs to emerge.

If you don't like it, then leave.quote> I don't post here often, but this got my attention. Duke87, I'll say this for sure, countless millions of residents left America's cities. They didn't like it, and they left. Now look at the state of cities like Detroit, Cleveland, or Buffalo. Magnificent cities destroyed because people didn't like the highway, and the very same highway they abhorred allowed them to move to glittering, white picket fence, ethnically drab Suburbia. Then the same highway allowed them to drive back to a 9 to 5 office job in the very same cities they abandoned, drive through the very same neighborhoods they once called home, and all the while complaining at how abandoned and crime ridden it is because they left, and using this as reason to never further venture to the cities they destroyed. Then, these cities have to start from square 0. Their economic base destroyed, their former residents holed up in McMansions and shopping malls, cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo must claw their way through these barriers called highways. So yes, removing every single highway is bad, but removing a few is a great relief to struggling cities. Where can you convince people to live? Noisy, stinky, loud highway? Or, clean, tree-lined boulevards with street level retail and smoothly sailing streetcars? I'd certainly take the latter. That, Duke87, is the consequence of a highway, and what removing it can do.

Originally posted by: sakarr actually, there were almost 10k residents in downtown back in 2000 and due to all the new developement there the last 10 years, id expect the number of people it quite a bit higher now =] its quite nice down there now days *Snippity snip*quote> Really? I thought their 2010 goal was 10,000! Well, I love Cleveland all the much more now. Wonder how much it is now. Guess my statistics are old. Still, our population has dipped to 433,000! Eek. Back to the CJ, I believe there's a BAT of the Rock Hall around here on the STEX. (How would you make Voinivich park, though?)

Well, it's the first one I actually like. It works, too.

Looking good! Actually, there are quite a bit (for Cleveland standards) of R$$ and R$$$ residents Downtown. I think the number is around 9,500. That's up from a low of around 6,000. (And close to a goal of 10,000 by 2010!) Then again, I live 45 minutes away.