jjakucyk

What I find interesting is the somewhat lopsided growth of Cincinnati to the northeast and southwest, which of course basically follows the I-71 and I-75 corridors. What puzzles me though is how little development there is in Dayton's southwest quadrant. That's not unlike the lack of development on Indianapolis' southeast and southwest sides compared to the other directions. Still, you only have to go about four miles southwest of downtown Dayton to get to corn fields, so poor highway connections don't seem like an impediment. Is it a lack of sewers or something?

Yes, and the interstates are the most expensive of those roads per mile, but at the same time those urban streets are so overbuilt that even if they're cheaper, they still represent a very large cost to society to maintain. They can't just be left out of the equation, but they're not practical to toll.

Yes but the interstates (or limited access highways in general) are a very very small part of the total road network.

I always figured a vehicle-mile tax would be pretty simple with yearly odometer readings, and as mentioned before a way to pay in installments quarterly or such. Being caught with a tampered odometer can be a very large fine, which would ensure people get a broken odometer fixed right away. What is important though is that the tax is based on vehicle weight as well, as that's the major factor in causing road wear. That said, a tax on gas still makes sense as well since it has its own externalities and such too, whether used in cars and trucks or generators, lawnmowers, or farm and construction equipment. It does also make sense to have local property and general source taxes fund some portion of the road network as well, since it is used by non-motorists such as pedestrians and cyclists, but also as public open space, a right-of-way for utilities, block parties, access for garbage collection as well as police, fire, and ambulances too. Then there's parking, which is the elephant in the room of all road pricing discussions. I guess neighborhood parking stickers or some sort of additional fee should be required for that too. All this sounds like a huge increase in various taxes and fees, but the goal of course is to more properly distribute the burden of payment onto those who are actually using the roads. As it is, say the money spent on roads now comes from about 75% local sources and 25% from the gas tax. That could be wildly off, but the local contribution is guaranteed to be much higher than 50%. Anyway, taking that existing 75/25 split, it should probably be something more like 30% from gas taxes, 20% from local sources, 30% from vehicle mile taxes, and 20% from parking fees. If you were to take out parking as being too complicated, I'd still say something like 30% should come from gas taxes, 50% from vehicle mile taxes, and 20% from local sources. It's not right that so much of the cost of roads is not born by the users. That local cost should be quite low because it doesn't require super wide pavement that's meticulously maintained, elaborate drainage systems, snow plows, traffic cops, etc., to provide most of the services required by non-motorists.

Are there any similar stats for cities not in the Pacific Northwest? Charlotte maybe?

Good point about the weight. These cars are already insanely heavy to start with. The last thing we'd need is a bunch of rolling stock that's too heavy to get to uptown once the line is extended.

I can understand wanting to go with batteries if it would save money over the installation of overhead wires, even ignoring the aesthetic concerns. Still, I'd be much more worried about the reliability issues involved, and anything that could draw criticism from the many naysayers out there. Since the shortened route is mostly flat, it might not be so bad, but even with regenerative breaking for downhills, I doubt batteries could store enough power for the climb up those same hills when the route is ultimately lengthened.

Would you drive to the ice cream store in the ice and snow at all? There's many trips that may be marginally more unpleasant in bad weather when walking or taking transit, but which are hugely burdensome if not avoided altogether when you have to drive yourself. It seems to me it'd be easier to walk the kids several blocks to a store or restaurant or whatever than to have to strap them into their car seats, drive to wherever you're going, unstrap them, then walk the remainder of the distance to whatever it is you're going to.

I made no no statements about the subjective qualities of being "better off." I said the city dweller who works in the city is "in the best position to ride out high transportation costs." Those are very different things. One thing that seems to get missed a lot in these discussions is that there are plenty of people who live or work in places they would not otherwise want to. Many of those young couples who move out to the suburbs when they have kids do so not because they don't want to live in the city anymore, but because of issues with schools or crime or affordability of housing. They simply have no other choice. If they could raise their kids in the city with equal quality schools, many more would. Some of the city dwellers who move out to the suburbs do so because the job they managed to land is in some office park outside the beltway. Commuting 20 miles each way is tough even as a reverse commute. If you've gotta have a car anyway, then trying to stay in the city makes less sense. There's all sorts of factors at play that interact with each other. Taxes and zoning are other big ones too. That growing family can't stay in the city because they can't afford a big enough apartment, condo, or house. Well the fact that they're so expensive is in no small part because building additional supply of that kind of housing is nearly always restricted by zoning laws. I could go on and on, but it's not simple enough to say that just because people have chosen to live in the suburbs it shows that's what they all prefer. Of course it's the same with inner city living as well.

It would be nice though to come up with a different city than Portland to compare to. Yes I know it's a similar size, has some of the same geography issues, blah blah blah, but it's too often the go-to city. Proponents are constantly talking about Portland, and even the naysayers are tired of hearing about it. Part of the problem is that it's viewed as a left coast hippie city that Cincinnati certainly is not, so even if the physical similarities are striking, many people will write it off because of the political views of the entire Pacific northwest.

The trouble is that there's a lot of jobs in the suburbs and edge cities too. You're pretty much at the whim of whatever job you're lucky enough to have or find. The city dweller who finds a job in the suburbs is almost as screwed as the suburbanite who works downtown. While the suburbanite might be lucky enough to have a rush hour bus route to get to work or commuter rail in a larger city, and maybe park-and-ride options, they're still having to drive around a lot more for their other non-work daily needs. The city dweller may be able to get to the store or nearby restaurants easily, but reverse commuting is next to impossible without a car in most cities. Both situations are difficult in the face of rising energy prices, because the tradeoffs are pretty big and unable to be mitigated much. Of course the city dweller who works in the city is in the best position to ride out high transportation costs, but the suburbanite who lives in the same or a nearby suburb is probably better off than even the city dweller who must reverse commute out to the suburbs.

So what delays are there to the other casinos, if any? Is this disproportionately affecting the Cincinnati one?

That's correct. The turreted building was used as the station at some point, but it wasn't built for it. I want to say the actual station burned down at some point and then they just leased space in that building, but I don't recall exactly.

^ I developed that plan for an architecture/urban design studio. It's more of a light rail concept, and the circles are the stops. The blue Ludlow/MLK/Madison line is very simple and makes a nice crosstown route. I was never happy with the red north-south route though, both the routing up the hill and the zig-zagging to serve the zoo and Xavier. Still, it's an interesting concept. I do still believe Vine should be made two-way all the way to the suspension bridge. http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/portfolio/cats.html The more important part of that project was the access to the CAGIS data that let me make that map, and ultimately to document the original streetcar system and later the interurbans and railroads. The Tiger II uptown connector study even referenced it when analyzing the possible routes up the hill. Full size can be found at: http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/Transit1/map.html

While the architectural quality of the new construction leaves much to be desired, this is still an example of urban densification. That's generally a good thing. Increasing density with high quality buildings and retaining the best historic properties is of course the best situation, but those goals are rarely in alignment with one another.

The point is that transit riders are more readers. You can't sell ad space if there's nobody reading the paper. I doubt the streetcar would see a whole lot of people taking much time to get comfy and read the paper, but longer distance light rail, commuter rail, intercity rail, etc., are natural markets for newspapers.

The attitude that "this site is so bad that we don't need to do anything worthwhile here" is a notion that needs to die. If anything, the difficult sites are the ones that require the most careful design and consideration in order to mitigate the impact of those external forces. The road, highway, and railroad boundaries present opportunities to better integrate the site with the surrounding neighborhood. Bridging the railroad tracks to better connect the heart of Oakley to the site, and also bridging I-71 to connect with the gorgeous but now defunct US Playing Card factory and the rest of Norwood would be hugely beneficial. To concede to typical suburban crap development just because "the site is too difficult" not only misses an opportunity, but it hurts the city and the surrounding communities by creating one more throwaway place that generates traffic and isn't worth caring about. I can guarantee more people care about those factory buildings than the stuff they're proposing to replace them with. This simply isn't good enough.

I believe that depending on who you ask, the "Brent Spence Bridge Project" can include the entire I-75 corridor from the Western Hills Viaduct all the way to Kyles Lane. That being the most heavily built-up area along the highway, it is a very expensive stretch to add that extra lane to.

Following is an e-mail I sent to Chuck Mahron at Strong Towns relating to this exact issue (specifically how to deal with excessively wide roads). It's a puzzling question because anything beyond simply letting the streets go unmaintained still costs money. ... Hi Chuck, I want to start off by saying how much I've enjoyed listening to the Strong Towns podcast and reading and commenting on all the blog posts. After commenting on The Public Safety Industrial Complex and listening to your most recent podcast on firefighting, I think a valuable topic to tackle at some point would be strategies for implementing road narrowing. It's one thing to change codes to allow narrower roads to be built, but with growth already in the toilet and the (hopeful) prospect of people moving back into town and city centers, the challenge is how to deal with the existing roads that are already too wide. As you stated in the last podcast, a lack of funds are going to force the issue of cutbacks in fire protection no matter what the fire chief's objections may be. The same is true for road maintenance. No matter how wide or narrow we may want roads to be, the funds to maintain them are dwindling, but so are the funds available to change them as well. This is really the crux of what I'm interested in, and could make for a good blog post. How do you reduce the maintenance burden of a wide street, or narrow it to improve neighborhood life without requiring a huge capital outlay to change its geometry? As an engineer I suspect you could answer this better than I can, but the biggest cost in building or maintaining a street is in the base prep, constructing the curb and gutter, dealing with storm drains and manhole covers, and pouring new sidewalks and driveway aprons. Basically, the money goes mostly into the concrete and utility work, while the asphalt is a small portion of the overall expense. All that work on curbs and storm drains and such is relatively independent of the width of the road too. Do you know, for example, how much a 40' wide street with mountable curbs and no sidewalks costs in comparison to say a 27' street with 6" curb and gutter and full sidewalks? I wouldn't be surprised if the 27' street was still more expensive to build due to the extra concrete for the sidewalk alone. Of course, once it's built, I certainly understand that the maintenance of the narrower road is less because the curb/gutter and driveway aprons, drains, etc. can remain untouched through several asphalt resurfacings. Still, that brings back the question of how to deal with existing streets that are already too wide. If there's not enough money to maintain them as it is, then where's the money going to come from to relocate storm drains and to pour new curbs and sidewalks? I have a few ideas that don't require full reconstruction, but I'm sure there's other strategies to consider. I tried to include some examples where possible. 1. Do nothing If a neighborhood street is too wide and expensive to maintain, then just let it be. As it deteriorates, it naturally creates a traffic calming effect. This isn't a particularly palatable option because of how bad it makes the neighborhood look, but it also requires no implementation. http://maps.google.com/maps?gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=39.136002,-84.437538&spn=0.006017,0.009763&z=17&layer=c&cbll=39.136096,-84.437524&panoid=JAkpJfyCI_K22_uLO6L3rA&cbp=12,358.6,,0,15.38 Leaving exposed brick or granite block streets should be a no-brainer, but there's so few of those left I don't know that it's worth bringing up. 2. Maintain only the travel lanes Where there's a lot of on-street parking, only the travel lanes need to be maintained to a higher standard. The same goes for center turn lanes where they're not needed. I'm surprised we don't see more of this, but like doing nothing, it doesn't look good and can cause drainage issues. http://maps.google.com/maps?gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=39.156845,-84.387494&spn=0.003007,0.004882&z=18&layer=c&cbll=39.156815,-84.387417&panoid=lg9mtl7sUg30euqRYUUg3A&cbp=12,188.71,,0,12.71 3. Replace parking lane paving with something more permeable and requiring less maintenance This is getting into a more expensive upfront cost, but it may not be as bad as reconstructing a whole new set of curbs and such. The driving lanes of the following example road were very recently repaved, but with almost no manhole covers and no curbs or anything else to fix, it was certainly a very inexpensive rehab project. I don't know when the pavers were installed, but they seem to be holding up ok. There's aesthetic issues to be sure, but it's not as bad as crumbling asphalt. http://maps.google.com/maps?gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=39.157858,-84.386845&spn=0.003007,0.004882&z=18&layer=c&cbll=39.157858,-84.386845&panoid=OSNOv-NS0ihe5ArjntAIxw&cbp=12,9.46,,0,15.48 4. Gravel streets 100 years ago when many city and town streets were just dirt, they still maintained a level of finish and sophistication through frequent cleaning, raking, rolling, and sprinkling. Could some residential streets be realistically converted to gravel/macadam surfaces? Maybe just the parking lanes if they exist? This is not workable on any street with an appreciable slope, and there are concerns about weeds, scouring, clogged drains, etc., but it has been done. This and #3 do have benefits for reducing storm water runoff, but I don't know if that's something worth getting into at this point. http://maps.google.com/maps?gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=30.320257,-86.139218&spn=0.006696,0.009763&z=17&layer=c&cbll=30.320425,-86.139761&panoid=UoQrMCDFXc1HADLvUs43Lg&cbp=12,295.36,,0,26.07 What else is there really? Things like curb bump-outs and pedestrian islands are very good things to be sure, but they don't reduce the cost of the road by much, if at all. Road diets too, which Cincinnati has been doing to implement bike lanes, also don't reduce the amount of pavement, but they do better reallocate road space. Of course there's full reconstruction to a narrower cross-section as I've mentioned, but is that realistic to pursue in a more austere financial situation? I realize this has gotten fairly long, and I'll leave it here, but I do think it would be worthwhile to address this topic. Some of the above situations, by somewhat blending the zone between the pedestrian and motor-vehicle realms can also address some of the problems of fire trucks. That transitional area that can be taken up by parked cars, kids playing, or whatever, helps to pedestrianize the street, making it feel narrower, but also allows more room for maneuverability of emergency vehicles. In fact, many wide pedestrian-only paths through universities are usable as fire lanes even though they're usually closed off to all traffic. So even if the street itself might not be adequate to appease the fire chief, there might be other ways to accommodate them, with or without smaller vehicles. ...

Places like Fresh Market or Findlay Market, Whole Foods, etc., are nice and all, but is there anywhere in downtown or OTR other than the pathetic Kroger on Vine to get "regular" products? Things like a box of Rice Krispies, Tombstone frozen pizzas, name-brand but not upmarket laundry detergents, household cleaning supplies, toilet paper etc. I honestly am not that familiar with the shopping options downtown, but I suspect it's like choosing toilet paper that's either 80 grit sandpaper or hand-woven by Hopi Indians. Are there decent options between the gas station convenience store and the high-end boutique grocery? I think that's the issue more than the particular format of the store.

Cities spend tens of millions of dollars each per year maintaining their roads. As a country, we spend almost $200 billion per year just on highways, which doesn't even include the bulk of the road network. You think that's somehow insignificant?

Easy. They don't salt or plow anything but the main arteries. You'd be amazed how much street damage is caused by plow trucks. By the way, this is a really stupid thread. Detroit is broke for a hundred reasons & none of them is because they are maintaining wide unused streets. Um, no, it's most definitely one of the reasons. It may not be THE reason, but it is one. In fact, this is a big factor in why our whole country is in such straights at the moment. This stuff is NOT cheap, and so much of it has reached its end of life and we can neither afford nor justify the expense of repairing it.

Some of the best comments I've ever seen at cincinnati.com

Resurfacing is still expensive. It's not usually as simple as just scraping off the pavement and laying down new. There's always utility covers that need to be jackhammered out and reset, drains that need fixing, curbs that need repair, etc. Even if you can avoid those things, the most basic grinding and resurfacing with asphalt costs about $200,000 per lane per mile. With major city streets being 4-6 lanes, and some of those in Detroit 7-8 lanes, that's easily $1-1.5 million per mile.

There's also a lot of transplants from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc. in North Carolina who, even if relatively conservative, are likely to have some experience with the benefits of transit. That probably reflects itself in some of the elected officials, appointees, and business leaders. Plus there's the advantage that "new south" states have an attitude of "we want it all, we want to be the best." Compare that to much of the midwest where the prevailing attitude is "we're not good enough."