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That's a lot of hammering for something that, if true, should be self-evident. If existing rail service was having that much "success" one would expect this to be an easier sell. Sure, statistics can show growth, and that's good. But those speed numbers still aren't competitive with cars. If we're defining that as success, if we're promoting that as success... I think we're gonna hit a wall. And the majority of Americans (especially Ohioans) are on the other side of that wall. It's already been noted that comparing fares to the total cost of car ownership will give us unrealistically favorable ratios. All that does is make us look out of touch. Let's not miss the forest for the trees. Says who? Says them? That's not how they were treated when they wanted to pay zippo for the land. Let met get this straight... they have rights that are unquestionably binding across countless generations, but their responsibilities all terminated 150 years ago. That is some deal.

Partners is good. They have work to do and so do we. Everybody needs to get their work done. But I strongly disagree that what happened with the RR barons doesn't matter now. Without "what happened," we wouldn't now be talking about all this being private property. They built THEIR pool in OUR yard, not the other way around. If banks can collect on old debts, then so can everyone else. And I still agree with johio, the existing plan matches up with a nonexistent budget figure. Change requires change. The other problem is that opposition to the project seems to be basing its argument on lack of speed. If we open with slow service, we legitimize their contention. Even if we can't go 150+ right off the bat, it sounds like 79 may not meet sufficient acceptance to justify ANY future upgrades. I don't know if giving Dayton and Sharonville a 5-hour trip to Cleveland as soon as humanly possible is worth that risk.

Freight is always time sensitive. Our economy needs freight to arrive on time, no less so than passengers. But it's my understanding that the original acquisition of these rights of way by the railroad companies, long ago, was legally and politically ugly. Fair prices weren't always paid and there was complicity at many government levels. Some might say NS and CSX have already received a great deal of charity from the rest of us. Some might say this was the scandal of the century, 1800s edition. Actually historians do say something like that. You can actually read letters from long-ago congressmen asking rail barons for their little piece of the action. Today we still have the expression "I'm getting railroaded." Think about what that could possibly mean, in its original context. The legal burden of proof in tort cases was permanently changed from defendants to plaintiffs in order to protect RR operators. So as far as the freight RRs playing ball... they better play ball. That solves that.

Yes. We got thrown a curveball and now it's time to adjust. The first question is whether we're allowed to alter our plan in light of the reduced funding, and question 1-A is whether we've done an alternative cost study on a more serious upgrade for Cle-Cbus. You know, something that would allow for speeds we could actually sell someone. This rollout is a one shot deal in terms of PR, so why risk alienating the entire state with bad service? The northern leg would likely have higher ridership at first anyway, since people here are already comfortable with the concept. We need good numbers and good reviews, good word of mouth. We're not building an amusement park ride. If the product, at any stage, is not practical to use it won't help our cause a whole lot.

I might see the "political side" differently if there were some way to blame Cleveland for the fact that Cincinnati doesn't already have passenger rail infrastructure. Cleveland can't force Cincinnati to become some liberal pinko People's Republic that prepares itself ahead of time for a massive public works project like this. Again, the local politics of Cincinnati are NOT the fault of its UO contingent... but it's also not fair to watch Cleveland spend its own money for decades to maintain a local rail system, and then expect everything to be equal when DC finally decides it's Rail Time. It seems like this is an important discussion to be having WITHIN Hamilton County. And it seems like Cleveland might have been right about something.

I disagree pretty strongly with your overall position, as strongly as you do with mine, and I don't see any accord in our immediate future. I do agree with you that if regional government were to be run by pro-sprawl/anti-urban leadership, that it would not do much to change sprawl. That much is obvious. But I still think regional government would benefit everyone, rich and poor, by cutting regional overhead for the sake of lower taxes on business, and fewer sets of regulations for businesses to deal with. I would imagine you agree that we need to ease the burdens on business around here.

What's funny is that Cleveland also distrusts the statehouse. Mirror image. There's a general sense that the assembly serves primarily rural and southern interests, and that the Hamilton County GOP essentially dictates state budget and policy. I don't think that's true, but neither is the idea that Cleveland is big-timing anyone on this project. If favoring NEO was that much of a concern, the route would include Akron. That's never even been suggested. The route as planned hits 3 cities in the southern half of the state... one in the north. The idea that "3C" doesn't touch Cincinnati proper is indeed goofy, but recall that until November 2009 the future of ANY PASSENGER RAIL in Cincinnati proper was questionable. Obviously that's not the fault of anyone here. But it is reality. If I were the one making contingency plans for the possiblity of 3C only getting partial federal funding, I'm probably hesitant about making a commitment to Cincinnati under those conditions... especially if the infrastructure costs are disproportionate.

Because the rationale for sprawl is to separate one's own "community" from the problems that plague its urban neighbors. Thus Solon and Geauga County have more police than they know what to do with, while Cleveland can't protect major tourist areas. The current system, with tiny municipalities and townships claiming absolute sovereignty from each other, cannot address these discrepancies. A regional government could. If you can't take the wealth and services with you when you flee the city, there's a lot less incentive for doing so.

Rando you're making several good points. In Cleveland's defense I would note that it's right between NYC and Chicago, a busier corridor than any which passes through Cincinnati. I must agree with you about Dayton. If we're having such difficulty paying for the 3C aspect and the high speed aspect... why are we so intent on keeping the Dayton aspect, which has nothing to do with the actual purpose of the project?

Help me because I want to understand... if you took the train to Cleveland from elsewhere in the state, why would your destination be Cleveland's airport? Didn't you just get here? And Puritas/W150th is a suburban lite-industrial area. It really doesn't have "destination" qualities, nor does anything nearby. Also, serving that area =/= serving the airport. And if someone is originating their trip from that area, it's hardly a stretch to ask them to go downtown to catch 3C, since there's already a direct rail link that's very fast. No congestion involved. If this is to be "high speed" by any stretch of the imagination, why would we want to be measuring our station intervals in city blocks? And I still don't get why it would ever make stops in exurbs or isolated farm towns. If the goal is speed between the 3Cs, let's keep our eye on the ball and put every effort toward achieving speed between the 3Cs. Cut out the fat. I don't expect that we could save enough money that way to pay for extending it into downtown Cincy, but I do expect that we could cut some time off our ETAs to Sharonville.

My point is that if it wasn't a chicken & egg thing before, it still isn't. We've already got the Oriented Development, but we can't expect it to start filling back in without the pre-existence of the same type of Transit that spurred its creation in the first place. We can't expect it to happen in reverse, with the population coming first and then waiting patiently for transit... there's no precedent for that, in fact the precedent is the exact opposite of that. I'm talking streetcars on the main commercial corridors. Just. Like. Before. Until we have a plan to begin re-installing the streetcars, we really don't have a plan to bring population back to an inner city that was specifically designed to have them. We can't reinvent this wheel without bulldozing the entire city and starting over. The Rapids we currently have are a separate issue, because they serve a different purpose. Also because, for the most part, they do not already have associated TOD. But in general, we have miles and miles of existing TOD just waiting to blow up in a gas explosion, because it's not commercially viable in the absense of robust mass transit. I submit to you that we're being asked to view the entire issue backwards. Maybe I'm wrong. But look at this place, look at the devastation. What if I'm not wrong?

Chicken and egg? No. The trolley lines were ripped out at the beginning of our mass exodus, not the end of it. This may not prove causation... but it tends to disprove causation on the other end. That is, it eliminates the idea that our former transit system was simply responding to demographic shifts when it vanished. As soon as the transit was removed, the city's layout became dysfunctional. That layout will remain dysfunctional for as long as its rail system remains absent. The rail system was never a luxury and it never will be... it was and is a vital component without which we're screwed.

^ That's a really good idea.

I too am a Sharon Reed admirer. I can't hardly stand to watch their broadcast, because it sounds like they're promoting a monster truck show, but I do think 19's on-air talent is the best we have here.

The main streets in Lakewood (and Cleveland) were specifically designed to have rail service along them. Not necessarily rapid service, but c'mon, this entire place is already set up for TOD. We just need to bring back the "T" element, which is currently lacking. And R&R's story is really quite common. You need to plan for unreasonable travel times on short trips, especially if you're going north-south of if you're crossing the river. Trip-planning algorithms are typically too simple and too optimistic. They expect the schedules to be more or less accurate, which is physically impossible. The more stops on a route, the more lights on that street, the higher the variation in trip times and arrivals. Decreased route frequency heightens the potential damage. If the first leg of your journey hits one light too many, you might have just lost an hour. This is why adding transfers to the mix makes trip planning a bit of a lost cause, which in turn is why cross-town routes are so important to people.

Rando, what I meant is that Cincy could already have local rail by now, if there hadn't been sufficient political oppostion to prevent it. When I visit friends there, we usually avoid discussion of politics or rail because we're simply too far apart on those issues. By way of analogy, if 3C ended at West 150th in Cleveland, we'd be OK because that would still be a direct link to existing local rail, connecting you with downtown and the east side. For Cincinnati, 3C itself has to go downtown or you're not getting downtown. As others have suggested, this issue may light a fire to get local rail built there. And no... other than the head of our local transit agency, there are no anti-rail activists of note in Cleveland. Sure there are individuals here with that mindset, and they may occasionally block specific rail expansions on a NIMBY theory, but there is no organized opposition to the base concept of building local rail. I still agree with your main points, that Cincinnati shouldn't be screwed like this, and that there seem to be several extraneous service points in the current plan (including the west side of Cleveland).

RTA has a bus that actually goes down Madison, but the trip planner says take the Detroit bus and walk. Spendid. I lived in Lakewood for years, and no you cannot do a lunch hour round trip via bus. You would need a rapid for that sort of thing.

I fully agree that ending the line in Sharonville would be stupid. And I also agree that the service currently proposed will be marginally competitive at best. But you can't blame Cleveland for Cincinnati having all those groups who actively oppose rail. Hopefully this project is a turning point in that battle. And I had thought that Cleveland was also getting lame-ass depots. We just had a design competition for a new station downtown, but I thought that was... hypothetical.

I like the site selection. There haven't been a lot of answers for this neighborhood, and here we have a nice one.

2010: The Year We Make... Barns

It takes a whole lotta new business to replace lost revenue from tax cuts. There's basically no way the revenue would be regained for several years. You really need to have a comprehensive plan for getting these businesses up and running and paying taxes right away, or you could have an absolute crash in basic services... including services needed by businesses. And dropping taxes on businesses (which Ohio already did on a massive scale) is not a very direct lever on per capita income. Many high-tax states are very attractive for business, and many low-tax states aren't. I thought Taft's tax cuts were a good idea, all things considered, but let's keep in mind that taxes nationwide have dropped dramatically in the past 30 years, and so has the nationwide economy. Maybe there's not as much correlation as is suggested.

I've lost hours upon hours of my life in this way. It would be nice to know, for example, that a certian route that's typically hourly takes a 3-hour break at midday. Or that the bus you're waiting for-- on Saturday-- will not arrive till Monday morning. Leadership at RTA simply must change. That could mean different people doing the leading, or it could mean a change in the way the current leadership views its responsibilities... both the nuts & bolts aspect and the visionary aspect. There needs to be a clean break from the way things have progressed over the last decade. This community cannot accept any more substandard offerings, embarassing blunders, or missed opportunities. There is no excuse for refusing to ACCEPT THE EXISTENCE of clear national standards, when our system falls so ridiculously short of them. Shameful.

Thank you Dan, hope you're doing well. This is a limited engagement... exam prep has temporarily cost me my social life and my civic activities. I'll be out there raising hell again before you know it! In a good way...

Strongly recommend Zen Cafe, the new Chinese place in the Old Arcade food court. I have never before said "wow" to food court food. But wow. Not at all fancy, just markedly better than any other Chinese fast food you can get.

At least they're not quitting their jobs to go on Fox.