JoeSchmo

You are very right and I corrected.

Oh man, better knock on wood.

It was Pine Academy. I think it at one point was used an alternative school and originally it was Grand Rapids Christian High School West Side Christian. Yesterday you could see into the gym from the outside and see the basketball hoops.

The bridge closure will easily double WB 96 traffic at a minimum. And it will spill highway traffic downtown. Traffic downtown near Michigan/Bridge/Leonard )will come to a halt through rush hour (if you thought it was slow already). Who knows what this will do to 131 traffic... 131 has limited space for more traffic as is. Also more traffic will spill downtown at other spots because NB131 to WB196 and SB131 to EB196 will be closed. The thing with closing a bridge is that there are limited options for detours. There are only 8 local bridges to cross the Grand River from Wealthy to N Park. If you are not taking 96 over the river, you are going to take one of these. This isn't just about suburbanites. But anybody who needs to get from the east side of Grand Rapids to the west side of Grand Rapids.

Some demolition on Pine.

I was 'almost' as excited when I heard they were going to replace that gas station as the Bridge St Meijer itself. That gas station was one of those that made you feel like you needed a shower if you had to go in. On another note, the Pine School on Leonard (and Pine) is fenced in and getting ready to be bulldozed very shortly.

They only remodeled the outside before. Now they are expanding into the space next door as well, but it does seem that they had to replace parts of what they remodeled on the outside.

I agree that should be fixed as well. I believe the proposed gas tax increase, they are removing general fund money to fund roads and would be replaced with this gas tax. But I am not sure about the other way around. Gas tax money certainly shouldn't be used to fund the state general fund.

The tax has to come from somewhere. I think the roads should be fully funded by users. That means gas tax, registration etc. You drive - you pay. You dont want to pay the tax..drive less...live closer to your work, etc. I would not dismiss adding an EV fee of some sort in the future. Though for other political reasons, I don't believe switching to EV's at a faster rate would be a bad thing (pollution, dependence on oil). This could be the highest gas tax, but we also have some of the worst roads in the entire country. 2 cents

Whats wrong with that The complex across the street is 9-10 stories. Just sayin...

Match this with the idea of Bridge St going to a curbless "shared" street .

So correct me if I am wrong, the Land Bank was created for the excessive number of foreclosures during the last housing recession. Was the initial intent for the Land Bank to be permanent? I know the Land Bank did have a number of "enemies" such as the RPOA.

Walker has a 1% income tax and they have Meijer and Bissell, among others. That has not stopped them. (Side Note) Personally, I am going to say the city income tax is more annoying than anything else. I've worked in Walker, lived in Grand Rapids, while my wife worked in Ionia (which also has a city income tax). Thats 3 additional required tax returns.. thats simply just annoying.

So the 131 exit doesnt start until after the Lane Ave on ramp. I think this is the reasoning for the location of the start of the 131 off ramp.

Wow, that looks worse and cheesier than I was expecting (and I had low expectations).

You start widening highways and you often just shift the traffic problem to other locations 'downstream'. ...i.e. exits and secondary roads. Also you just encourage more suburban sprawl until you have the same traffic issues again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand Not saying there aren't actual issues though.

I thought I-196 traffic was bad when they closed 96 this year. 1 lane WB seems multitudes worse. It seems like this could close a lot of the downtown exits temporarily too.

Lets not forget that used to be a Cina Mini. https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9851619,-85.6866549,3a,75y,1.72h,87.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdmufBZVY078rAHPOfDQp1w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Since the beginning of the year I happened to notice theres about 10+ Rapid buses sitting in the back of the Grand Rapids Auto Auction lot in Hudsonville (visible from Chicago Dr). I believe they were all the hybrid buses. Were the hybrid buses a fail?

If looking for the 2 farthest stops on the schedule where the routes overlap is cherry picking. Then yes I cherry picked - trying to objectively look at the speed performance of the Silverline. The distance between these 2 stops takes up just over 40% of each route (14min of the 33min route) and covers 4.5 miles of Division. I would say that is pretty significant. The #1's 54th St Meijer stop is on Clyde Park and is 1 mile away from the Silverline's 54th and Division stop. With that, of course the #1 is going to take longer. So that comment doesnt seem to really align. On that point though, the SIlverline only takes 4 minutes to get to 44th from 60th - while the #1 takes 1 minute longer to cover a shorter distance 54th (and Division) to 44th St. So an improvement for the Silverline. The Silverline does appear to travel 20% faster per mile in the downtown area north of Franklin. But from the evidence it appears it did not make up much speed along the majority of Division.

This will put way more pressure on the other parking lot across from Plaza Towers. Am I getting greedy?

I had a look at the new Silverline schedule. According to the schedule it shows no improvements in the speed of the route compared to the #1 route. They both take exactly 14 minutes to get from 44th st and Division to Franklin and Division. https://www.ridetherapid.org/ride/routes/1 https://www.ridetherapid.org/ride/routes/sl Is this correct?

Plaza Towers, the apartments take floors 8 thru 14 - so 7 floors. So Irony would be correct. Portions of floors 1 and 2 are some common areas for the apartments as well though and additional parking not included in the footprint. (Floors 15 thru 32 are condos in PT.) It does seem like it could result in some significant build-up. Doesn't $5 million seem low for a project like this?

Im having difficulty seeing what they would be doing here. Is this essentially a public bus 50 route with added stops or would they not expand the number of stops? Also, would they actually consider removing a lane on M-45? Obviously this is still in the study phase, so I might just be asking these questions to the wind. This doesn't actually seem like it would benefit GVSU very much, since the bus is already very efficient - but it could benefit the public.

They do get LEED points for reusing material. See link pg 39. http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEEDdocs/LEED_RS_v2-1.pdf