gobyrail

If the Cincinnati Streetcar had a "freezone", what would you suggest the limits be to maximize a balance of ridership and revenue generation?

For the Streetcar, City Council has only approved $800,000 to study the Uptown area, and given the City Manager permission to look for private funding commitments. Until the city selects a design/build/operate/finance firm, finalizes a financing plan, gets funding approval from council, contracts with the DB firm, begins preliminary engineering, and jumps through any environmental strings that are probably tied to the federal money...no shovels are going in the ground.

After reading all of the outlandish claims about rubber tired trolleys being the answer, I figured I had to join the fray. As Winburn asserted, Cleveland has had success with their "trolley" on the Euclid Ave. Corridor, but the project required construction of exclusive bus lanes (not possible in urban Cincinnati), modern stations to permit level floor boarding, and custom vehicles. The total price for the 6+ mile route was $200 million! Here is an article about the opening of the system. http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2008/11/_cleveland_a_city_fighting.html