Ram23

I'm opposed to moving any games off campus, and so are a lot of people. It hurts the student turnout and loses a bit of the home field advantage.

Biggest win in awhile. Feels good!

I'm always in Catskller before the games, playing darts for awhile. They have an amazing micro/craft and imported beer selection, with something different always on tap. Plus the prices are cheaper for an imported Belgian pint than for a pint of Miller Lite in the stadium! During halftime the place is packed. If it rains or gets cold its also packed. Get there early and grab a dart board, couch, or bar stool.

As of right now the plan calls for a combined interchange. There would be a two lane collector on either side of 71 from just south of McMillan through MLK, with exits to McMillan, Taft, and MLK coming off of that. I'll see if I can get the plan I saw and post it here. This is needed badly, though. Right now all of uptown is a mess at rush hour; there are 60,000 workers in uptown, and 15,000 commuting students, with most using the poorly designed interchanges at Hopple and Mcmillan/Taft. Hopple is also getting a massive redesign along with the 75 redevelopments coming soon.

Looks like it may storm for the game.. I'll be watching in Catskeller.. the bar in TUC right next to the stadium if anyone seeks some shelter. The place gets packed though..

It's not that absurd, it's the basic concept behind boycotts. It's why Gaddafi couldn't find a place to stay in New York this week after visiting the UN... hotels wouldn't do business with him because of his political opinions. There are "political opinions" and then there's killing hundreds if not thousands of innocent people. One of these things is okay to boycott over, the other does nothing but enforce partisan agenda and essentially hurt the city in the long run.

Not doing business with someone because their political opinions differ from yours is absurd. Also, misleading and stupid campaign signs are nothing new.

^ There are more lights on behind the older curtain wall, whereas it's relatively dark behind the new curtain wall.

^I was watching the 10 O'clock news on Fox 19 and heard the $128 million figure.. when were you watching? I second that the poll question was worded horribly.. hell I would have said no. Downtown will be successful with or without the streetcar, the streetcar will help spread amplify and spread that success. And on a side note, 19 or 5 are the only news broadcasts I'll watch. I can't stand 12.. 9 is alright.

This is a common problem in the peak oil discussion. Those who have few, if any, facts to back up their statements resort to saying things like peak oil "scare tactics", "fear mongering", etc. I'm not using scare tactics. I'm interested in factual data. I've done extensive reading on the subject of peak oil for at least 5 years now, and I pay attention to what those on both the sides of the discussion say. The crowd of so called experts out there who are on the side of "oil abundance" is very small and they do nothing more than keep repeating the same small handful of arguments without providing any hard data to back them up. The congestion problem that still exists in many areas of the country has nothing to do with "scare tactics" and everything to do with economics. There is hard data on this as to how much congestion costs our economy every year. I don't recall the exact figure, but it's not small. Recently, it was reported that Switzerland is the most competitive economy in the world. One of the reasons sited was the quality of their infrastructure-- a category where the US is behind even some developing nations, and falling farther. Ram23 You're assuming that we can simply switch from oil to alternative fuel(s) like unplugging an old appliance and plugging in a new one. I would strongly suggest you do some research on the energy returned on energy invested of alternative fuels and what it takes to actually produce them. No one can hang their hat on a simple belief. And, statistics showing that the number of cars on the road has been going up thus far is not enough to predict the future 50 years hence. What I've seen over the past several years is: On one side of the argument are a lot of qualified people presenting hard data on everything from the state of oil fields around the globe, to the energy returned on energy invested for everything from unconventional oil to alternative fuels, to analyses of coal fields (how much is being produced, what remains, the BTU value (energy content) of what's been produced over time frames), the food vs. fuel puzzle. On the other side I see people relying too much on beliefs and assumptions but little, if any, hard data. I never said a switch would be simple, just that it would be easier and more efficient than relocating the hundreds of millions of people that live in a place that requires a vehicle to live a standard life. You're completely ignoring the amount of embodied energy invested in our infrastructure in your assumptions. The hard data is every suburb and small town in America. Tackling the food vs fuel debate, maximizing efficiency, and solving problems with the development of renewables are all much easier than moving a majority of the population into new locations that can utilize mass transit.

I don't like when the games are at PBS (Oklahoma next year is at PBS). Even with a larger crowd it doesn't seem to get as loud as Nippert. Nippert can be a tough place to play.

The cost of developing more efficient/alternative fuel vehicles is way, way less than the cost of relocating most of the US's population and redesigning our entire infrastructure. We'll find a way. It's my belief that in 50 years we'll have a lot more cars on the road, all driving fewer miles on average than today. Eigth and State's post above already shows a decrease in miles, and I could only find stats up to 2003 that show a steady increase in the number of cars.

Yeah ^ Truth PAC found a bunch of job listings in Atlantic City for jobs at the new Ohio casinos. They way I see it, the only people who are going to relocate would be management and other higher positions who actually have experience running casinos. Of course there are going to be positions that require experience, and there probably aren't many Ohio residents who have experience running casinos.

I have to ask: based on what evidence? I'd like to believe this, but the more I read about alternative fuels, the energy returned on energy invested of alternative fuels, their dependency upon oil-based infrastructure extract the necessary resources, manufacture, and deploy them, and outlook for global oil production over the next 5 years (e.g.: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50175), etc, etc the more I'm not convinced. Almost 40% of the population lives in a home with an attached garage. The amount of energy we've already placed into designing around the car is too much to simply retire it. I'm all for mass transit, more park-and-ride availability, etc. That would decrease our dependency on cars, but not erase it. The huge amount of waste that would be a result of not using cars anymore is unimaginable.

^Having lived in the suburbs my whole childhood and Clifton now, I can say that around 90% of Cincinnatians will be shocked if you tell them you live in OTR, or even want to go to OTR for a bar, restaurant, event, etc. Downtown has a better perception if you're going for a visit, but if you lived there people would be surprised - not because of a perception of crime or anything, but they'd wonder why you wanted to live there when you could have a house and a yard in Hyde Park instead. As for perception vs. reality, whenever I have anyone visiting downtown, either from out of town or the suburbs, I sneak them over into the Gateway Quarter for awhile before I break the news that we're actually in OTR, or as most of them know it "The country's most dangerous neighborhood." They're always surprised. But in my experience, there are only certain neighborhoods within Cincinnati limits that measure up to the standards of the suburbs when it comes to overall perception by the region. Hyde Park, Mt. Adams, Oakley, Mt. Washington, and Mt. Lookout are the first ones that come to mind. Most everywhere else would merit a surprised response from most Cincinnatians.

Off topic, but scholarships pay for almost all my education, and a loan pays for the remainder. My parents don't have anywhere near enough to pay for my education, and I don't want to incur to much debt to start out.. which is the reason I had to turn down grad school at Columbia and go to UC for 1/10th the price. Either way, expertise, experience, and education aren't prerequisites to have an opinion - common sense is. Anyways, as to the private vs public issue and the comparison to cars.. I've always felt mass transit relies to heavily on general tax dollars, while roads essentially tax the users only via the tax on gas, auto registration and titles, and tax when you purchase a vehicle that will be used on the roads. Meanwhile transit caters to its users by charging them less than the actual cost, and charging people who don't use it more of the cost. I think that's where the animosity a lot of people have against transit begins, and I'm sympathetic to that to a degree.

Off topic a bit, but where have you heard about events going to the Riverfront, and which ones? As nice as the new Riverfront/Banks area is going to be.. there's so much nostalgia with Oktoberfest, Taste, etc. being centered on Fountain Square.. I'd hate to see them go! New events at the Riverfront would be nice though....

That sentiment may be an article of faith among the libertarian fringe, but it's patently untrue for those of us in the reality-based world. But I love how wingnuts think that if they keep repeating it, it somehow becomes true. If a private business model is so superior, then why haven't a group of investors stepped in to buy the Washington Metro and run it? I'm sure those investors would be happy to make a profit by running subways and buses, and Washington-area taxpayers would be happy to relieve themselves of that tax burden. Why do private traction companies like the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation or the Chicago's Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad no longer exist if they were so superior? What happened to all those private fire companies who would get into street brawls over who gets to put out a fire and bill the property owner for services rendered? If private enterprise is so good, then why do health insurance companies spend 30 cents of every premium dollar for profit and overhead, while Medicare delivers superior coverage while only spending 3 cents for administrative overhead? And everybody knows that private mercenary firms like Blackwater are far superior at fighting wars than our own military. :roll: It must be nice to still live in Ayn Rand's fantasy world, young man... I remember sitting in my mom's basement reading The Fountainhead, too, and thinking about how wonderful it all sounded. Enjoy it now, before you've spent too much time out in the real world and grow out of it. Maybe. Private transit no longer exists because they were all consolidated by local governments, or put out of business by the automobile business that used to be far more efficient than mass transit.. but has sense ceased to be. Now that we're seeing a shift back towards mass transit, I would love to see experiments with private run operations again. The reason we haven't seen anyone try to purchase a metro system is because the current operations are far too gone to be successful privately. They've relied on taxpayer dollars and no incentive to deliver the service for too long. It'd be difficult to reverse that trend, from an investor standpoint. The basic idea is that there are very few services that are better provided outside the realm of a free market. Police protection, fire, military, etc. Mass transit may not be one of these things, and I'd be interested to see private agencies in today's world. You're last paragraph is out of line. I've got a college degree, have worked in the "real world" for two years, and am currently working on a masters and nearing my NCAARB accreditation. Your experience has been within part of the inefficiency and is clearly clouding your judgment. I've never read the Fountainhead, either.

^ Your rant was completely off topic, and insulting at that. I don't need a lesson in what facts and opinions are. As for protesting, I think you're again missing the point. Just take a glance at the report I linked to and you'll see that in most cases there are plenty of facts to back up the claim that transit is inefficient because it is government funded, and that privately run business models almost always deliver a better product/service for cheaper. It's the common opinion of many right wingers that transit in this country sucks because it relies so heavily upon public funding and has no need to survive economically.

You're arguing with yourself. My point was made that the protesters have a legitimate leg to protest against metro because of wasteful spending; I'm not protesting with them but I'll take their side because you're too closed minded to accept their opinion as legitimate. I agree with KJP that overcrowding doesn't always equate to inefficiency. The issue of inefficiency is an overarching problem of most government agencies (You made want to read this as a backup for that argument http://www.heritage.org/research/budget/bg1831.cfm), and that's what is being pretested against. One could say that every transit agency in the US is inefficient to varying degrees, and back it up with facts supporting the opinion that all government spending is inefficient, and have a valid argument. I don't know why you dismiss them and call them names so often. Exactly.

Something you state isn't any more of a fact that something anyone else states. Try and be a bit more open minded and understanding of opposing viewpoints or debates like these won't get anywhere.

Trains being overcrowded is a result of poor planning on the part of a transit authority. That's poor use of funds. If there's a massive event planned and ridership is expected to increase they should run more trains.. the MTA in New York during a Mets game is one example, SORTA in Cincinnati during events is (at least, was) another example. And yes, there are people who can turn a blind eye to wasteful spending so long as it helps accomplish a certain agenda. Bush and Obama have both been guilty of this. By the way, 5 minutes on Google and I could make a similar photo of nutjobs on the left. You can't pick a few stupid signs being held and characterize an entire group of people by it.

The main message of these protests isn't "we don't want to pay taxes" it's more along the lines of being against wasteful spending. A poorly run transit system is wasteful spending. One that is run well is a good example of public spending. That is the opinion of many conservatives (me, for example). I am in full support of mass transit, but I don't have a problem with pointing out wasteful spending within it.

Cars aren't going anywhere, and their number isn't going to decrease. Our entire country is designed around the automobile, and our entire trade system is designed around trucking. Overcoming the drawbacks with alternative fuels is going to be simpler than redesigning our entire infrastructure. Proportionally I think we'll see more people using mass transit as individual transit becomes more expensive, but as population and cities continue to grow there are still going to be a higher total number of cars on the road.

This should be temporary.. move it permanently to Riverfront Park or somewhere more people will get to see it. No one goes to the freedom center (in comparison to every other museum in the metro area, including the creation museum) and this isn't going to attract many more. Most Cincinnatians will probably never even know it's in there.