Photos Of Other Cities

Hello. I know I have been absent from this blog. Unfortunately, I have to say, do not expect this to change any time soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos of trips to New York and Chicago.

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Grand Central Station

We were lucky enough to run right into a Free Tibet march, fake prisoners and everything.

Lunch in Bryant Park.

 

Central Park.

Looking uptown.

Looking downtown.

 

By sheer coincidence, we found ourselves in Times Square during Earth Hour, when they shut off all the big screens.

A secret burger joint!

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At night, this American Gothic couple comes to life and cleans garbage off the streets.

At the Museum of Science & Industry, in one giant room, they have a giant train set model of the entire country!

High atop the Sears Tower.

   

The Museum of Natural History is pretty freakin' cool.

 

From Navy Pier.

All Aboard

Over on Cinplify, I found a story on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about rail travel in the United States. I started quoting from the story, but I ended up copying nearly the entire thing. So just go and read it right now. It's not that long.

Okay, so here's one quote:

But as Amtrak's national ridership soars in spite of its flaws -- increasing now for the sixth year in a row, with 2 million more riders than last year -- it's time to ask: Can a better rail system fill in the gaps that airlines are leaving behind?

And I believe the answer is a firm: HELL YES.

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Airline passengers now have to pay for every piece of luggage, every drink, snack, and bathroom break (okay, maybe not that last one) taken. Customer service goes down while prices go up (I realize that fuel is costly). Less flights mean more crowds, and more stopovers. But people take it anyway.

Flying becomes more and more of a pain in the ass as time goes on. Airlines have started to capitalize on a reality that has existed for decades: air travel is the best way to travel long distances, and there is no alternative that even comes close.

But what if there was an alternative?

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We traveled to Milwaukee this past weekend for a wedding. Before the weekend, I had to figure out how to get there.

1. Plane: I honestly didn't look into the flying option. Assuredly quicker, but assuredly hundreds of dollars for a single, round-trip ticket from CVG, unless I had bought the tickets months ago.
   
2. Train: If you go to Amtrak's website now and search, you'll find that the train leaves Union Terminal at 1:10 AM, and arrives in Milwaukee some 13 hrs. later. Coming back is a bit faster at 12 hrs., as long as you don't mind arriving at 3:17 in the morning. Cost of ticket: not expensive, but not cheap, at $140 round-trip for one person.. Being able to do things on the train like sleep, etc. is nice, but those hours are just not friendly.
   
3. Automobile: Google Maps pins it at about 6.5 hrs and 380 miles driving. I can get that far in just over a tank of gas. Rounding down, that's two tanks of gas at about $90 for 1-4 people, and 13 hours of time, round-trip.

Balancing all the factors, you just can't beat driving.

Residents of the East Coast between Boston and Washington D.C. will rave about the train systems. (Just ask Joe Biden.) Then, when you get to your destination, there's often the local subway or train to get you to your final destination. But us in the Midwest apparently lose out.

Did A Whole Lot Of This This Weekend

Chi-town

Traveled to Chicago a couple weeks ago for a wedding, and had a whole day free to ourselves. Managed to get some decent pictures.

We started out the day on Belmont St. at a diner called Ann Sather's, which had a line out the door when we arrived. I must say the food was delicious and generously portioned. Every entree was gigantic, and every entree came with two gigantic sides. The neighborhood was of course very walkable, and there were a lot of scooters motoring around. Notice the elevated train in the background.

Now, I had never been to Wrigley Field, but it did not disappoint. And all we did was walk around it! All I could think of, as I saw all the homes across the street from the park with rooftop seating, the dozens of bars, and the elevated train line a block away from the park, was Broadway Commons. That's all I'll say, for fear of starting a complaint session.

We drove down to the lakeshore and rented some bikes to ride from this bike station. I don't really know how far you can ride, but we rode along the beach for at least two hours, and I didn't see the end in sight. It was a nice day and very crowded. Here's a popular portion of the beach.


After returning our bikes, we took a stroll through Millennium Park. I had been to this park a few years ago, when it still under construction. Well, it looks finished now. Below are pictures of, what I like to call, the big space bean, and a giant installation of faces that appear on a video screen and periodically spit water out at kids. The last picture of some surrounding buildings reminds me a bit of Central Park.

A Cincinnati Visitor

I randomly came across this Toronto resident's blog post about his visit to Cincinnati. There are some funny lines and some pictures of familiar places.

Cincinnati Photo Diary.

Driven To The Brink

Via CityKin, comes a link to "How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs," a paper about - well, the title says it all.

Here is a short video (3:44) explaining the concepts. While it focuses mainly on the Chicago area, the paper studies several other metro regions.



The paper looks at the issues from many angles, but the angle I found most interesting was the simple number of vehicle miles traveled per person:

But in the past three years, vehicle travel per capita in the United States has begun to decline. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, total vehicle miles traveled per person per day reached a peak of 27.6 in 2005 and declined to 27.2 in 2007. This represents a substantial departure from the trend established between 1990 and 2003. Vehicle travel is now about 1.5 miles per person, per day, below the 13-year trend. Despite an increasing population, the decline in driving per person has had the effect of reducing gas sales, which in early 2008 were down 1.1 percent from a year earlier (Campoy 2008).

Economists who have studied travel behavior and energy consumption agree that consumer responses to gas price changes are greater in the long run than in the short run. There are very few things, other than combining trips or forsaking travel, that consumers and workers can do in the short run to reduce their travel. But over a longer period of time, consumers can do much to lower their travel and gas consumption. Decisions about where to live or work, which neighborhood to move to and which job to take all profoundly influence travel behavior in the long run.

What might be the policy implications of all this?

• Government can help families save money by making it easy and convenient to live in mixed-use, close-in neighborhoods served by transit.
• Reducing vehicle miles traveled not only saves families money, households that drive less have more to spend on other things, stimulating the local economy. Additionally, reducing oil consumption not only cuts greenhouse gas emissions but lowers the trade deficit.

And what about long-distance traveling? Returning from vacation last week, my total elapsed travel time, including getting to the airport early, sitting at the gate, sitting on the runway, and the layover, was about 7 hours. I wonder if high-speed rail could've gotten me there in about the same amount of time? Even if it were a little longer, on the train, it must be cheaper, there must be more space, and it might be easier to work, read, etc. But that's a different story altogether.

I'd Be Lying If I Said I Missed It

Been on the beach for the past five days, completely offline. Just starting to get caught up. I missed a couple interesting news items in that short time, so expect some possible posts on the CCV-CityBeat circus, the demise of Western Bowl, and Griffey's 600th.

AK-rowdy

Sarah and I made a trip up to Akron, OH, where her sister was graduating from law school. Akron seems like a nice little town, past its prime as the home of Goodyear and Quaker, like many other Ohio cities. It has a lot of populated surrounding areas that blend in with Cleveland suburbs, but downtown itself is pretty small and not very trafficked. Fortunately, it borders the U. of Akron campus so as a whole there are a lot of things to see and do.

Here are a couple non-graduation photos. The first is from the west edge of campus - the edge that borders downtown - looking east. The big glass building is the Goodyear Polymer Research building. The second is simply 180 degrees the other direction, looking west, of St. Bernard Catholic church. It was gorgeous weather for a graduation!

Indianapolis

Traveled to Indianapolis last weekend to visit Jin. We went to the Children's Museum on Saturday, and then walked around downtown a lot on Sunday. Of course, I could not have left my camera on the kitchen counter at home any more than I did, so, no pictures.

The one thing I have to say about Indianapolis, and downtown in particular, is how well-planned it is. The metro government oversees the entire county which is the city itself. The war memorial in the city center sits exactly in the middle between the east and west borders of the city, and sits exactly in the middle of the north and south borders.

We walked along the canal, a completely fabricated waterway that curves around from the northern edge of downtown to the southern edge. If you follow it, it will take you past a central museum district, past the state capitol, and end up close to the Artsgarden, an glass-enclosed greenspace sitting above an intersection. The Artsgarden is part of a skywalk system that allows you to walk from any number of hotels to shopping, the convention center, and the RCA dome all without feet hitting the pavement. Personally, I don't believe skywalks are a good idea, but it seems to work there.

Everything in the center of the downtown, and less so the further away from it, seems like it was deliberately built to get you to stay put.

Now, Indianapolis will not deny the fact that it was planned from day one. Which makes comparing it to Cincinnati a bit unfair. Cincinnati, like other east coast cities, are older, and developed more organically. Plus, Indianapolis is very flat. So Cincinnati development has faced some historical and geographical constraints that Indy has not.

Still, one gets the sense that in Indy, the metro government Gets Things Done. In Cincinnati, the city, county, port authority, quasi-private entities, and businesses just get in each other's ways.