jjakucyk

Sounds like they typical ploy to bankrupt government services so they can be cheaply sold off to cronies in the name of privatization. It's just another form of corporate welfare.

Is the river flooding over the old Mehring Way there?

Cities routinely don't get back all the taxes they pay out. The cities subsidize the rural areas of their states, and the urban states subsidize the rural ones. This data is a little old, but in 2004 for example, the worst "offender" in federal tax income vs. spending was New Mexico, which got twice as much federal spending versus the taxes they paid in. Other mostly rural states like Alaska, Montana, the Dakotas, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Virginia, and Hawaii all had ratios higher than 1.5. The states that were the biggest losers, contributing the most taxes while getting the least spending, were California, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. I think that Nevada is an anomaly because they get so much taxes from Las Vegas while the feds have very little stuff to spend on in that state. http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf I can't find the city data, but I'm pretty sure Aaron at http://www.urbanophile.com/ posted statistics showing that the urbanized counties of Indiana paid more to the state than they got back in spending compared to rural counties. It could've been another site, but it's out there somewhere.

The real trick is setting a proper fine for not having a valid ticket. It has to be large enough to be a deterrent and also to recoup the estimated cost of people who aren't caught. It also can't be so large that it ruins someone or is excessively unfair to those who make a mistake with their ticket or is caught 5 minutes after their ticket expired. If I recall, the fine in many European cities is something around $60-100, at least it was about 10 years ago.

It's pretty sad. My parents live about an hour south of Raleigh. The country is pretty, but Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Fayetteville are all pretty horrid places. They've got their own bad aspects, like Winston-Salem is very rust-beltish, while Greensboro is totally new south highway maniac, as is Raleigh-Durham. Fayetteville is very poor suburban military ugly. None of these cities have done anything with their growth to make them the least bit hospitable. I haven't been to Charlotte, but they at least seem to be trying some more sensible urban things, but like most places it's just a drop in the bucket.

+1 bonus for using the word "tawdry." :laugh:

What is your definition of administration? Principals and vice-principals are fine. In high schools you usually need a dean of students and a few other people. That's all good. It's the superintendents and staff workers at the district office that are the problem. These are the people who aren't even in a school building, that never interact with students. Of course, another big issue is busing. That's incredibly expensive. Maybe we could pay teachers better and have more amenable working conditions if we didn't have to spend so much money busing kids around for hours every day.

This is a key point. There is tremendous opportunity for cross-selling between parking meters and the streetcar. I can imagine a whole lot of people may want to park cheaply in OTR and take the streetcar to the CBD for the last mile. Would be great for OTR businesses to have all that traffic. With electronic meter stations, the city could have sales to promote the streetcar at slow times. That is, park in OTR, get a free streetcar ticket. The possibiliites are endess here. Totally agree here. Integrating parking payment with streetcar payment opens lots of doors to increase the positive economic and behavioral impacts of the streetcar. Parking in certain lots (like ones on the periphery of downtown, or at the top of Vine) should include free or discounted streetcar tickets. That could take things in a bad direction though. If more remote parking lots become more usable to downtown workers because of discounts or free streetcar passes, then it could encourage those areas to remain as parking lots or even expand. That's not something we want to have happen. If such a system were to be implemented, it might make sense for it not to give free rides during the morning rush. That would allow people doing daily errands or visits to institutions to get a free pass, but not office workers who are just going to clog up those remote parking lots all day long. Whatever the ultimate situation, it will need to be carefully implemented to avoid adverse consequences.

Understaffed administration? If anything, there's WAY too much administration overhead in schools.

A proper discussion will require some numbers for the cost of collecting fares. Ticket kiosks, timestamping machines, and employees to maintain and empty change from such machines cost money, as does the accounting. Still, compared to the cost of a driver's salary, electricity, maintenance and such, I can't imagine it's THAT high. Rapid transit systems probably have more opportunity to save since they have to maintain all of the aforementioned equipment on top of turnstiles, gates, and fences. Are there any studies out there that quantify these costs on a per-passenger basis? Of course it must also be examined compared to the amount of subsidy as well. While having no fare might still cost more than charging for a fare, it may be a paltry difference compared to the total subsidized cost of operation. For instance, say it costs $5 million to operate, while collecting $1.5 million in fares (30% farebox recovery, thus $3.5 million in subsidy). With no fares it may only cost $4.5 million to operate at 100% subsidy.

While I am reluctant to support the teachers union, or other unions in general, there is at least one thing they do that's very valuable to the profession. They protect teachers from out-of-control parents who want that teacher fired for doing their job. The teacher who gives their kid a low grade for bad performance, or sends them to detention for misbehaving. Heaven forbid! Discipline and grade inflation are huge problems because teachers fear that any one parent could sweep in and destroy their career because THEIR child is the smartest and most well-behaved little snowflake in the school. This is exactly the kind of thing unions are there for, and you could argue that they're not effective enough in this case because it's still a very big problem. Nevertheless, this is also something the general population wants eliminated, because they're the ones who want to get said teachers fired in the first place.

When done properly, ticket checkers come out in force with at least three or four people. On subways they get on at one stop and sweep a particular car, getting off at the next stop or switching to another car. On buses and streetcars, they move in at a particular stop, place one person at each door to check people getting off, while another one or two people sweep through the inside for those who are staying on. The vehicle doesn't leave until they've checked everyone. This isn't doable at peak times, but with a large enough crew they can do it pretty quickly. Anyone found inside who's in violation is dragged off to the sidewalk to get their citation and pay their fine so everyone else can keep going. There's usually a police officer at hand to prevent people from running. For a system as small as Cincinnati's streetcar, these couldn't be dedicated people. They'd most likely be drivers finishing or starting their shift, ticket kiosk maintenance folk, or other staff people who are normally doing other things but are required to do fare checking say two times a day. Subway and train inspectors are usually plain-clothed with wallet-type ID that they pull out once the doors are closed. People who check buses and streetcars and hold the vehicle at a stop, or do a combination of inspecting those who disembark before getting on to check everyone else as the vehicle proceeds, can be in uniform.

Could it be that those other states (like in the sunbelt) that offer more "incentives, rebates, lower taxes, etc." are actually farther behind the game? It's like they're not as deep into the hole of the growth ponzi scheme that has characterized our economy for the past 60 years or so. When all is said and done, which I admit could still be decades away, they'll be facing the same problems that states like Ohio are dealing with now. Those incentives have to be paid for somehow, and it'll come back to bite them in the ass. The difference is that while we'll hopefully have figured out a solution by then, they'll be in denial that there's a problem and will try to keep the good times rolling. At the same time, I doubt they'll have built up the assets that earlier developed northern states did with the riches they had. Think about Cincinnati for instance. It's rare enough for a city this small to have so many great assets like fantastic museums, symphonies, Fortune 500 companies, parks, etc., yet even huge sunbelt cities can't compare. They're putting all their riches into highway interchanges and further sprawl. In a way, this parallels the city/suburb divide. Growth in the sunbelt is akin to growth in the suburbs. While they both offer lower taxes, newer infrastructure, less red tape, and an "everybody else is doing it" sort of cachet, it's a temporary and unsustainable pattern. Once the infrastructure ages and the place is no longer hip, once the real costs of that growth come to the surface, the newness and low taxes that drew people there evaporate. This is true for inner ring suburbs as well, and as we're seeing, they're becoming some of the hardest hit areas. The ones that do survive are the ones that offer assets beyond newness and low taxes. Older cities can't ride the wave of newness, and they're not being subsidized anymore, so the costs of living and doing business there are less distorted. They also have a much more resilient development pattern that's going to make them a bigger asset as resource scarcity becomes more acute. The flight to the suburbs, to the south, or to third world countries is a race to the bottom, where price is the only consideration. Unfortunately, that's a race that nobody wins in the long run, and it leaves a huge amount of losers in its wake. Forces beyond our control are starting to dictate which places have a future and which ones don't. Ohio is certainly hurting, but it's positioned well as far as resources and location. Those other states that are kicking Ohio's butt are doing so by leveraging themselves in such a risky manner that if they fail they just might envy the rust belt.

Yeah seriously, I know this is getting a bit off-topic, but teaching is not just an 8-5 job (and no, teachers don't go home at 3:00). They also have the additional work of grading papers and preparing lessons during the evenings and weekends. That summer break is filled with seminars, school board meetings, curriculum development, continuing education, maintaining accreditation, and a whole host of random stuff. Summer may not be full-time, but it's no cake walk. Considering how much "homework" teachers are required to do during the school year (not all tests can be multiple-choice, and there's homework, papers, reports, labs, etc. to grade too), having a few months to recharge is hardly a perk, it's needed to maintain sanity. It's not unlike people complaining about all those lazy construction workers. They're just standing around, why aren't they working? Never mind that they might need to wait for something to get fixed before they can proceed, or that the concrete truck might be late, or they need the piping to be finished before they can backfill, etc. It's simply hard work too. You try being on your feet all day in the hot sun or cold winds. That alone is difficult enough, just standing around, let alone actually carrying things, digging, or operating equipment. We're very quick to point out how difficult our own job is and to admonish others for being lazy. Nevertheless, they'd look at us and think the exact same thing.

It depends on a lot of other factors too. It's much easier to teach already smart and well-behaved kids who come from a family environment that puts a high value on education, such as in a parochial private school. It's another thing altogether in an impoverished inner-city or rural public school where the kids don't give a rat's ass about learning OR behaving in the first place. My mom taught science for years at a private Jewish middle school in Northbrook, Illinois. It was a lot of work, and there was a lot of stress from all the school politics involved, but she liked her students and they liked her, and it all worked out well. After moving to the sticks in North Carolina (ultimately to retire), she got a job as a science teacher at one of the local public middle schools. She had to spend so much time trying to get kids to behave and actually do their work, which always came back as crap anyway, that she had to quit half way through the school year. I was visiting for a few weeks once and I remember her coming home so frazzled and disheveled every day that I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. It's the same situation with bright young enthusiastic teachers who go to a school in the projects to try to make a difference. Most of them leave after realizing they can't do anything, especially in the higher grades, and they become so disillusioned that it might just as well be burnout. It's a very thankless job for the most part, being a teacher. They're constantly being evaluated on metrics that are irrelevant to actually teaching, that discount their own creativity and drive, that try to commoditize them. On top of that, they're further and further hobbled by the threat of litigation over trying to maintain order in their classroom. Many can't even give proper grades anymore due to pressure from parents. Little Snowflake says he's not misbehaving in class, and he deserves an A, how DARE you suggest otherwise? Frankly I'm surprised there isn't more teacher burnout, or even rampaging psychotic killing sprees.

The way proof-of-payment works in places like Denmark and Germany is that you first buy a "blank" ticket either at the station or a store. You then insert it in a machine inside the vehicle that stamps the ticket with the time and date. I can't remember if it stamps the current time or the time it expires, but either way it tells you how long it's valid for. In Copenhagen, which uses a zone-based fare system (at least for the trains), they have 10-ride cards with little tabs that are bitten off as well as timestamped. If you have a 10-ride card that's good for two zone travel, but you need to go four zones, then you just punch your ticket twice. It's a bit complicated, but very versatile. This has one advantage over prepaid cards like they use in Chicago. Those are great in that they are universal across both the L and CTA buses, so they automatically deduct the proper reduced fare for the first transfer and free second transfer, but there's nothing to indicate when your two hour window is up. You have to note the time when you first swipe your card and hope the clocks are all in sync if you're pushing to get your reduced or free transfer within that two hour period. With a timestamped paper ticket, you always know for sure. While I doubt there would be a whole lot of need for streetcar/bus transfers, having at least a one hour window where you can get back on with the same ticket would be a good policy to encourage more use for quick errands.

There's other things going on in the Chicago map too. Aside from what looks like one tract in Evanston and what I assume is Ft. Sheridan, nearly the entire North Shore posted losses as well, some of them significant. Nobody's trying to move out of Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest, or Lake Bluff though. Nevertheless, they don't look good on the map, nor do other affluent suburbs like Northbrook or Deerfield, which also show up as red on the map. It's probably more of a demographic shift, with a higher proportion of childless couples, single-person households, etc.

No kidding! Give us all that money and we could do a super 3-C and get the Cardinal really fixed up right. *sigh*

I don't find it that puzzling. Many people assume that the more greenery and "open space" in the suburbs makes them more environmentally friendly than "teh OMG concrete everywhere in the big city!" Just because it's green and a few creeks and woods are preserved that makes them seem better. Unfortunately, few understand the reality of energy usage, excessive driving, and inefficient land use that comes with suburban development. That said, the suburbs are the best place to implement green technologies such as composting, solar energy, gray water, rain water capture, electric cars, etc., because of the space available to accommodate those things at each dwelling. You can't do much composting or solar energy capture in a high-rise apartment block, after all. Andres Duany has said that we shouldn't "punish" city dwellers with excessive regulation (say for even better building performance, alternative energy, recycling, etc.) because they're already doing their part by living compactly, walking, and taking transit. Don't punish the farmers or rural dwellers either because they can't afford it and there's not enough of them to make much difference. The focus should be on improving the performance of suburban areas because they are the worst performers when you consider both ecological destruction (best=wilderness, worst=city centers) AND social well-being (best=city centers, worst=wilderness). The suburbs are at the slump in the middle, not the best at anything, and only marginally good at either one, so they need the most help, so to speak.

Parking is another huge factor. Some estimate that parking subsidies are larger than all other subsides for driving combined. Free street parking is a big component of that. You don't see neighborhood parking passes here in Cincinnati (maybe Mt. Adams?), but there isn't even a city vehicle sticker. That really surprised me when I moved here.

This is a perfect example of the tension between supporting urbanism and preservation. Allowing higher densities in already developed urban neighborhoods is generally a good thing (when done in reasonable increments), but when it threatens historic properties it can become a problem. It was never an issue until about the last 50 years though. As a society, we tore down lots of fantastic buildings of the Victorian era in the 1920s and 30s, and in many other periods in the past as well. This was all ok because the replacement building was almost universally better than the old one. This is not the case anymore. Preservation and NIMBYism are fights against developments that are usually worse than the old buildings or even the empty corn field that they replace. So what we need for a situation like the one in Corryville is something of a two-tier approach. If they want to upzone the area and demolish those nice existing houses, then the new development had better be so awesome that nobody could possibly object to it. That CAN be done, but I won't pretend that it's easy. If they can't deliver a good design, then no upzoning, and they'll have to make do with infill and preservation of the best properties.

It's an even bigger issue than just that. To expect Kasich to fix things in 4 years is just as bad as blaming Strickland for losing however many jobs the Kasich campaign touted. Ohio isn't a vacuum, the broader problem of the whole country's economy caused those jobs to disappear in every single state, and any recovery or financial fix is unlikely to happen in Ohio or any other individual state if the nation as a whole isn't on the upswing.

Greenwashing is the name of the game here. Of course, the green party should take a harder look at some of the libertarian arguments too. The site Market Urbanism is a good example. For instance, rather than adding tax credits for solar panels, etc., to try to rebalance an already distorted market, remove the original distortions (i.e. tax breaks for the established polluting oil and electric companies). This doesn't apply to all situations, but it's a sensible "treat the disease rather than just the symptoms" mentality that can build good bi-partisan or even multi-partisan support.

I'd much rather see this money going to help the neighborhood business districts than to try to redevelop a suburban shopping center that's failed multiple times and is in a very pedestrian-unfriendly location to begin with.

And Avondale and Bond Hill don't really have business districts like those other neighborhoods, they're more like disjointed strips that are much more car-oriented. Westwood's is somewhere in between, but do they or Avondale or Bond Hill even have any streetscaping plans to begin with? The city isn't going to fund something that's not even on the radar screen.