jjakucyk

It's too bad that the de facto standard here in Cincinnati is a cobra head on a wood utility pole. I'm constantly flabbergasted when streetscaping projects install all this great new pavement and planters and new post lights, but they leave the utility lines AND the cobra heads too. Is it really necessary to have twice as many lights? Why are we paying for this? That makes me wonder if there's going to be any effort to clean things up a bit along the streetcar route. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but there's going to be all sorts of new trolley poles put up along the way, and they should double as street lights too.

Townships are a problem in some sense, especially the highly developed suburban townships that really should just incorporate. On the other hand, while there certainly is waste and redundancy in having township and county governance overlapping, in much the same way we see with metropolitan fragmentation (many small incorporated municipalities), that's not always necessarily a bad thing. To consolidate multiple municipalities like Indianapolis' Unigov, or to dismantle townships in favor of county governance can certainly reduce or eliminate redundancy to save costs, but redundancy is also resiliency. Smaller units of government, even if not the most efficient in aggregate, are more able to respond to their own needs in a timely and more situation-appropriate manner. Those extra fire trucks may seem like a waste until that fertilizer plant explodes, and many smaller school districts might not be able to provide all the whiz-bang sports and special classes, but they also don't have to bus kids 30 miles to school every day either. It also makes those smaller government units more responsible for being self-sufficient. The example given of one township awash in money while the one next door is bankrupt is a perfect example. The poor township obviously has some issues they need to overcome, but if they were all consolidated then a bunch of wealth transferring happens that averages everything out to just blah. The successes and failures are both buried in the bureaucracy, so problem areas become harder to identify and solutions remain elusive when they're all melted together in the same pot. The size difference between township and counties may not be enough to rationalize keeping them separate, especially since our counties here in Ohio, as in Indiana, are pretty small. It's important to consider though, and the problems I outlined are present in nearly every scale of government.

Maybe so, but my point is that those who would oppose the project only seem to care about speed. 327 is right that speed is an important factor, but while it may not be a priority to current and potential riders, it is the primary talking point, argument against, critical flaw, or what have you, for the opponents. Those are the people that need to be won over somehow.

But as we've seen, all anyone seems to look at or care about is speed. I and most of us here understand the other benefits, but the vast majority of people out there don't, and they simply don't care about those other benefits. The ones who are going to oppose rail are not the people who are too poor to own a car, or are too old or otherwise unable to drive, both of which are nowhere near a majority of the population. They simply don't care about them, nor do they care about livability or revitalizing city centers. That's what makes it such a challenge.

You're absolutely right, but therein lies the problem. We can't afford high speed rail right now, nor is it even really that useful without an underlying network of "regular" speed rail. To propose high speed rail where no rail exists at all is a very tough sell due to the costs. On the other hand, the naysayers and mouth breathing troglodytes in government and the general populace don't see the point of a regular speed network either, as we've very clearly seen. All they see is "slower than driving the interstate" (even if in reality it isn't) and then completely discount it.

I'd say part of the problem with the retail vacancy is the fact that each iteration of the west end has been less dense than the last. The 1930s and 40s low-rise public housing was a lot less dense than the original row house neighborhoods, and the current rather suburban townhouses are even less dense than those. Despite being new and of a better overall form than the previous typology, the lack of density is a big problem for supporting much retail.

Driverless cars may be able to work in some areas, like on limited access highways, but it's a stretch to think they'll be able to accommodate every driving scenario we have today. The issue with boomers (among others) in the suburbs is that as people get older they are less and less able to drive. Whether it's a lack of money to support cars, diminished reflexes, night vision, or just eyesight in general, people lose the ability to safely and legally "operate heavy machinery" well before they die. The only real choices are to move to an expensive retirement community, or move somewhere that they can walk to their daily needs. So far some retirees have convinced their kids to move nearby so they can take care of them, or to move in with their kids, but I don't see many of the boomers' kids being willing or even able to do that.

It's an interesting concept, but daylighting creeks in urban areas can backfire because it's a much more suburban typology. It's a difficult situation though in South Fairmount because so much of the neighborhood has been decimated by road projects in the first place.

Let's hope so. Of course, if they do proceed with another ballot initiative, it could be just as poorly worded and easy to pick apart as Issue 9 was.

It shouldn't be necessary to have to beat them again, but I suspect it would be even more difficult this time if it comes to it. The strength of the No on 9 campaign was that Issue 9 was so broadly written as to have many unintended consequences. It wasn't an anti-streetcar issue, it was an anti-rail-of-any-kind issue that would even affect planning processes. There's a lot of people who don't support the streetcar OR 3-C passenger rail, but they understood just how bad of an amendment Issue 9 was. Even so, it wasn't beaten by much, 56% no, 44% yes. Many of those yes votes came from the west side too, which is even more likely to come out against the streetcar in another round. Without the "terribly written, unforeseen consequences, broad amendment" argument, the streetcar itself is going to have a much more difficult time standing on its own merits.

Look at the comments here by garyg to see what I'm talking about: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don’t-pay-for-themselves/

But that just reinforces the argument. The person would say "why should the car driver have to pay for their car, while the transit rider's train is subsidized?" I'm not saying it's isn't inefficient that people have to buy cars to use the roads, but the argument is that transit has to be subsidized more than cars precisely because car owners have to buy their own vehicle.

Here's a point that's come up in some of these arguments that I'd like to get some opinions on. Namely that most of the cost of driving is born by the driver, through the purchase and operation of their own vehicle, and that road subsidies (even the cost of roads as a whole) is a very small part of the total cost of driving. Transit by comparison is subsidized a lot more because the fares and government subsidies also have to pay for the driver's salary and the rolling stock. The point of the argument is that we harp on highway subsidies, but if the gas tax (or whatever) was raised to pay for all the road maintenance and construction without any subsidies from general funds, it wouldn't make an appreciable dent in the overall cost of driving. It might cost another $1-2 per gallon for gas, which is just a few cents per mile. On the other hand, removing all transit subsidies would triple or quadruple the fares. Of course the TOTAL amount we spend on roads and highways is an enormous sum, and it dwarfs what we spend for transit. Still, when you divide it out you do see that a much higher proportion of government money is spent per person/trip/mile/whatever for transit than for driving. So what are some of the counterarguments to this? Of course road spending isn't the only subsidy to driving, there's also military protection of oil tanker ships and "stabilizing" of oil-rich regions, which may be the largest subsidy of all. There's also parking subsidies, both on-street and through zoning on private property. Then there's the externalities of air/water/noise pollution, water runoff and sewage treatment, cost of accidents, wasted time in traffic, etc. as well. However these things are much harder to quantify. Are there some other points I'm missing? I'll admit I'm having a tough time countering the argument myself with anything but subjective claims about the externalities or issues of livability, etc.

I keep hearing all this talk about converting Red Bank into some sort of limited-access expressway, but I just don't see how that's even remotely possible, especially considering how so much of it has already been rebuilt/widened in the last few years. It's not like it's some remote suburban road, it's got development all around it, and without a bypass of sorts, there's simply not enough room to turn it into a fully grade-separated freeway with interchanges without creating huge access problems for all the abutting businesses. I've driven on it a lot and while some intersections can get kind of congested (Madison Road and Erie/Brotherton for example), it's not really all that busy.

Maybe in the immediate short term, but it's a perfect example of densification. More downtown office space now means the rest will become cheaper and and thus more accessible to other businesses. Supply and demand.

^ That looks like a scheme to replace Ft. Washington Way with a canal. A pretty idiotic idea considering how close that is to the Ohio River. Why create "competition" for the river just two blocks away? The whole canal idea at Central Parkway is pretty silly considering the subway tunnels underneath and the amount of work it would require for little benefit. However, replacing the boring grassy medians with shallow pools and fountains would be a nice gesture to the road's history that right now is completely ignored. That would also be much easier to implement and maintain, and it's far enough from the Ohio River that it's a nice bookend to the north side of downtown.

While the Millworks proposal had the character of a semi-mixed-use "lifestyle center" it at least attempted to create somewhat of a street grid with some decent public space. Now it appears to be devolving into typical suburban "pod" development with large swaths of parking and retail outlot parcels. A movie theater might be a nice thing to have, but how much more retail do we really need? In the past 10 years we've had about 12% growth in retail sales while the amount of retail space has doubled. Now a lot of it is vacant, for obvious reasons. They can put a ton of good residential development back there, and fairly easily connect it to the Madison/Brotherton business area of Oakley.

Yeah I saw it the other day, but I need to go by at night. I wish they would've washed down the brickwork a bit, but still, it's nice to see everything all lit up and no more trees growing out of the top of the tower. I really hope they bring in some decent sized trees to replant in the esplanade though, it's rather stark right now.

I-71 is a known nightmare during heavy travel periods. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, big Ohio State football games, etc. overwhelm the highway. Does that happen often? Not necessarily, but the interstate is in a fairly precarious condition, and traffic easily gets monstrous with just the slightest problem, especially snow. It could be fixed temporarily by further widening of the highway, but that's only going to induce more traffic and it doesn't solve the weather problems. Hence the need for 3-C which is much less expensive than widening the highway.

Freight rail is a strange anomaly in our country's transportation hierarchy in that it's the only one that's mostly privately owned and is not subsidized much. So while many countries in the world laugh at our terrible passenger rail system, they also envy the freight system. In much of Europe for example, while passenger rail services are mostly profitable, though in many cases government owned, freight rail in those countries is highly subsidized, just the opposite of here. Why is that? I'm not exactly sure, but I think part of it is that freight trains need to be shorter and faster in order to not interfere with the passenger trains. This means somewhat higher energy/fuel costs from the faster operation, but also higher personnel costs due to the short length and thus the lower freight per employee ratio. I also doubt European railroads had the same sort of deregulation that was necessary to get Conrail and other US systems out of the toilet, which they continue to benefit from. It's probably also related to needing more separate tracks and sidings as well to keep out of the way of passenger trains. I would add that Europe may in fact be more reliant on truck freight than we think. They don't use as many of the enormous tractor trailers we do, but while international borders are essentially invisible nowadays, the countries are still more independent than our states, so they have shorter supply lines that are easier to serve with trucks. Also, those international borders aren't so invisible for freight trains as they are for passenger trains, cars, and trucks. The various national railroad companies in Europe are still national companies, not international companies. So there's rolling stock and signaling and personnel and control issues that occur when a train crosses into another country. While these aren't insurmountable barriers, as they've been pretty well sorted out for passenger trains, the priority of a foreign freight train is at the bottom of the list. They can be left for DAYS on a siding waiting for an opening in the schedule, at the convenience of the local operator. So while water IS a big part of the picture in Europe, something like 40-50% of freight moves by water I think, their rail system is the exact opposite of ours. Passenger trains are given top priority with frequent and fast schedules. That makes the freight trains slow and unreliable, and in many cases not worth the trouble. That's exactly what happens with our Amtrak trains, and it's really quite a fascinating comparison. There has to be a good middle ground. I think the advantage we have is all of the underutilized rail corridors I mentioned before that can be easily expanded without requiring expensive new alignments created from scratch. I think it's also necessary on both sides of the pond to take a more comprehensive approach to the scheduling situation. The railroads of old managed mixed traffic by having schedules for both passenger AND freight trains, which were of course completely interdependent. This seems to be anathema to current freight rail companies, but I think that's probably what's going to have to happen to manage everything properly.

On this point, you may have a point. Some others have noted that freight trains travel at different speeds and that synchronizing the schedules could be problematic at times. That said, it's very likely a solvable problem. Notwithstanding the growth in freight rail over the past few years, Ohio's railways aren't that crowded. Also, many of the rail corridors we have now are single-track that used to be double-track. It is immensely easier to restore that second track than it is to create a completely new corridor. I've expressed the same thought myself; I'd rather see last-mile transportation put in place first, while reserving some space for later intercity transit hubs. Trying to rely on buses and cabs when you get to your destination can be confusing if you're in an unfamiliar city, and my experience with city buses has been heavily negative. It is a concern yes, but those who fly have managed to get to their airport and to get around their destination cities just fine. A downtown train station, even in the absence of any meaningful transit, is still likely to be a much shorter cab ride to your destination than the airport outside the beltway.

Because apparently gingko is an accepted variation in the spelling, much like buses and busses. Okay, my bad...I can't help but think it's become an acceptable variation due to people's inability to spell the original, though! :) That wouldn't surprise me.

Because apparently gingko is an accepted variation in the spelling, much like buses and busses.

Apparently the ginkgo trees in Oakley Square were all males to begin with too. It seems that they can turn female if there's no other girl trees around, especially if the nursery wasn't too diligent in selecting their grafting stock. Supposedly newer varieties don't have this tendency, but I guess we'll have to wait another 60 years or so to find out for sure.

So office parks with big box retail is considered mixed use? Brilliant. :roll: