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Apr
17
Mayor Thomas Brick wants to create an ad hoc committee to support hiking and biking paths in the village.
The paths could include access to South Russell, Muggleton Park, Frohring Meadows, the Cleveland Metroparks and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
He said a few local groups concerned with walking and biking — including the Safe Routes to School program and the South Russell Multi-Purpose Trail Foundation — made him realize that many residents are interested in these issues.
“I thought this would be a long-range issue,” he said at Monday’s Village Council meeting, where he announced his intention to create the committee.
My first memory of interfacing with the city of Pepper Pike’s government goes back to 2000, about a year after I moved to Pepper Pike. I was invited to join a citizen’s committee dedicated to researching and developing a recreation path plan for the city. It was a superb introduction to how passions can play out in a small city. Ultimately, the effort did not result in the approval of any plan for paths.
Since then, Beachwood has constructed paths and Pepper Pike put down asphalt paths around the Brainard Circle and down Shaker Boulevard to connect to Beachwood’s path. Bainbridge and Solon have also looked at the issue of recreational paths, though I’ve not researched the current status of those efforts.
Just this week, a long-time Pepper Pike resident and parent of two elementary school-aged children, who is also a runner, expressed to me a great desire f0r rec paths (trust me, based on my experience in 2000 and 2001, I did not bring up the topic – it just came up in conversation about the city) and was sorry that the initiative did not go anywhere eight years ago. This resident refuses to run outside in the city and feels that his/her children’s lack of knowing how to ride a bike is in part due to the fact that we have no sidewalks or rec paths, even knowing that any of us can, of course, drive somewhere to accomplish these things.
Having been up close and personal with the passions aroused by the topic of recreation paths in the city of Pepper Pike, my sense is that the 2010 census might give us useful information about the city’s demographics that could, in turn, help us evaluate the pursuit (or decision not to pursue) recreation paths sometime after 2010. Also, watching and observing how the communities around us manage and resolve inquiries and investigation into the viability of recreation paths will be instructive.
I wish Chagrin Falls good luck. What do you think?
FYI: If you want to learn more about Census 2010, start here.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:59 am April 17th, 2009 in Cleveland+, Debates, Environment, Government, leadership, Ohio, Parenting, Pepper Pike, Politics, Youth
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4 Responses to “Chagrin Falls starts inquiry into creating recreation paths”
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I was actually thinking about recreation paths last night when reading about the high speed rail networks being discussed. I think it’s a tremendous idea especially when you think about how many other communities already offer them. The ease of linking these trails/paths together, then through the Metropoarks, down through the Towpath Trail, etc makes the entire region more attractive and provides a safe, relatively inexpensive recreation/transportation opportunity. Some people might use a Pepper Pike trail to run a few miles, while others might use it to link in with Beachwood, Cleveland Hts, down MLK and along the Shoreway bike path to transport to work.
I think that Beachwood laid that path as to have an obstacle for any future thoughts about extending the rail through the city. It came to be the park and path right after RTA proposed connecting Chagrin Highlands to the rail line.
We need regional planning, I was researching Indianapolis method of regionalizing and they used the historical township to create districts. We have horrible land use, building and abandoning. Look at South Gate USA and even worse Randal Park Mall.
The rail issue is more about all the commercial lines and how they are private and often redundant and even underutilized. How that works with municipalities and property taxes. Then you have the tractor trailers literally tearing up the highways, and the DOT’s cycling excise taxes to good old boy contractors.
How the airports and air traffic works needs to be applied to rail, a public grid with licensing fees for use not property taxes. Terminals and transfers, big truck to little trucks and roads that could be restricted down to light weights. You could have walking communities with garages and train stations. Store cars long term short term even have rental services for cars and small trucks.
Hello there is available money as in stimulus funds, high speed rail is best if it connect to a local urban rail. The problems is that people think of rail as for the poor, it actually should be thought of as affordable alternatives and also economic catalysts.
The European and others get that, we do not. We are all about the car and the home in suburbia. Which is fine but what about alternatives and to link them to land redevelopment and also simultaneously to government regionalism. But that just isn’t how we like to roll is it? I do not have time to figure out how it does not all work already. I can’t help but only see it in an ideal alternative.
If you take the principals of highest and best use of land, then apply functions to each parcel and then optimization models. You could look at space differently, basically my point is we are criss-crossed with rails lines that could in fact be leveraged into corridors some combined for commercial rail and other converted to commuter and the rest trails.
We have actual obscure dead zones, we have obsolescent land all over. The vacancy rates of all defined spaces that being residential, commercial and industrial is staggering.
It has to do with ignoring the functions and the interrelationships, the financial crisis is a result of that. that’s actually calculus, like the income to dept and related cost of living functions. Then you have major manufacturing like GM attempting to leverage away the debt. Inflate prices and leverage away the losses.
The world will not stop spinning but we are looking at increased poverty and more debt. The problems will purist the current approach is correct but not comprehensive enough. It has to go from perusing profit to efficiency and meeting demand in propensity. It can be done creatively and produce real visual results.
But it will not, we will have a worse version of what we had. Particularly in North Eastern Ohio.
Washington knows it, they just can’t sell it they could get kicked out for attempting to, you have to get control of it and with less costs in the end. A big build up has to result in a more efficient result.
Its about defining a cost of living function and all the components, need based, not want based. If that function is globally competitive in that an industry can meet it and produce profit or even breakeven within that limit (calculus gain) then you rule. You define the lowest ranks and insure that it meets demand in propensity. In what is defined as needs, the basics. Not all people need to go to college, not all people want or need to keep moving ahead or having more and more.
Price is not reflective of costs, you would be astounded how cheap things could be if we stopped with all the round about. That’s all about the expression it keep me employed. Its why we have built in obsolescence or engineered obsolesces, a push system.
Its about a living wage, its about defined pay grades and job codes, its about finding the natural aptitudes. Its about getting all the cost right in front of us so we can see them, people can get rich or have more if they really have something special or are really experts at something that others can’t even understand or have any interest in.
We need huge math programs that run on real-time data, they lie to us and make us pay for a census…why? Its contrived industry. I do not want everyone to know everything about me….why? If we new everything then eventually we would be what…more knowledgeable? We fight to keep our seats, stab each other in the backs, why not just be more rotational if you rise good for you if you fall then will just make sure you won’t fall to hard or far.
Most people deserve what they have, but what about those that can’t possibly make it work? They are trapped and we trapped them, we actually disenfranchise and isolate systemically.