Building the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Tech Belt

Building a tech belt: Well there is talk of Cleveland State University and Akron U. joining forces. There is a Universities collaborative tech link through the Wright Center for Sensor Systems Engineering at Cleveland State University. The WCSSE effect is of the High Tech Corridor that spreads from Cleveland, through Columbus and on to Cincinnati.

I agree collaboration is the key for Cleveland and Pittsburg. Competition is irrelevant on the local level when collaborations can bring complement and strength to competing globally. The “my back yard mentality,” only serves to cut us off from the needed growth and prosperity.

I’ll go one better. To have collaborations, a sound economy, and to be more environmentally and socially responsible we need ACCESS –to wean ourselves from some of the fuel dependency and yet get the job done while serving our masses. To do this we need to look at Europe and the TGV type of systems. These trains are moving greater populous at speeds of 200 miles per hour and can go up to approximately 300 miles per hour. Paris France charges drivers a fee and thus induces alternatives. Their transit system is quite extensive, and they have a bike rental system with drop offs with no fee paid for the short trips.

In my village of New London, Ohio we have a ZENN dealer. This is a small all eclectic vehicle that I would be happy to use for short hops to a decent mass transit. It would be my future plan to charge my electric vehicle via photovoltaic. Change can be a hard thing when people don’t see the time to transition.

A story of motivation:
A certain species of frog gets comfortable in whatever environment it is in. The frog is sitting in a pan of water at room temperature. The heat is gradually turned up. But the frog never jumps out, and it slowly boils to death. Do not let yourself get too comfortable; if there are changes in the environment, you need to react.

Access will better serve collaborations, our mobile society, the health of our economy and the environment.

To that end we ought to get moving on creating a rail corridor from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Being able to work on a train brings the cost of traveling down. And face-to-face collaboration is particularly effective.

Generally I agree with this sort of movement. Howver, first in my mind is this nagging question, "What changed?" There have always been places off shore where labor costs were less than domestic rates.

20 to 30 years or so ago something changed. It became more attractive to buy U. S. manufacturer, move the production off-shore, let the U.S. plant and facilities rust and rot, import the off-shore manufactured products and do all this at a profit! What changed to makke this happen? Was it Congressional action? Federal level Executive actions? What changed?

Before public funds are spent on more education, transportation, infrastructure and facitlities the events that permitted this exodus to off-shore production needs to be reversed. It makes no sense to spend publuc funds on technologies, product development and facitlites only nto see the fruits of these efforts be outsourced. Embracing g'globalism' is like having a pick-pocket put the grip on your house key, copy it, use the copy and the expect you to be thankful that the original was returned to you...and your empty house.

We need to support political leaders who make real changes. We need legislators at the stqte and federal level who are for Northeat Ohio first and formost. Political leaders who actually make changes. Their failure cannot be an option...nnot be ignored or forgiven.

As this is boing done we will have a more solid basis for the development that we all expect to see.