Crushing Disappointment! (Or, Moving On to Plan B....)

Below is a letter I sent to Frank Jackson's office this afternoon, after listening to his recent Sound of Ideas interview:

(Pay attention to the part I've highlighted, and you'll understand what this post's title is all about.)

Dear Mayor Jackson,

I have a comment regarding the question you were asked on The Sound of Ideas about connecting low-income Cleveland residents (who don't have cars) with jobs in the suburbs.

I am a Cleveland native living in New York City. I want to return to Cleveland, but I'm facing a similar problem: because of my commitment to using public transportation, I'm limited to looking for jobs downtown. Which is fine, but there aren't that many jobs downtown: over the past year, I've seen plenty of interesting job postings, but they were all located in RTA-unfriendly places like Parma or Solon.

In fact, this happened to me just this morning - I was on the phone scheduling a job interview with a company I believed to be located in downtown Cleveland, only to find out that they had relocated to Independence.

As I'm sure you know, current development patterns make inter-suburb public transit routes inefficient and impractical. On the other hand, the existing wheel-and-spoke system in Cleveland is quite good - it's pretty convenient to get from the suburbs to downtown.

So, please consider providing incentives for businesses to move - and stay - downtown.

It's clear to me that you care very much about the city of Cleveland. So do I. Thank you for your time.

Moving on....