jjakucyk

Certainly not original, but it's the kind of distinctive element that does have worth. OTR doesn't need to have every building completely stripped of anything that's not from the 19th century.

It's an interesting thought, but Blanchester seems to be far enough away that it's sort of isolated. At the very least, none of the streets to there are flanked by much suburban or exurban style development. Maineville on the other hand is becoming quite suburban/exurban, at least between the old town center and to the north. It makes me think of the development along Ohio Pike, also served by two interurban lines. The landscape doesn't become truly rural in character until you get past Bethel, though you can make the argument that exurban development ends around East Fork State Park. It can be kind of tough sometimes to differentiate between exurban and simply a higher level of rural development. More densely populated rural areas that have lots of small farms, many towns, and non-farming rural poor, etc., can take on a sort of pseudo-suburban feel at least along the main commercial corridor, even if they really aren't. This sort of development is quite difficult to characterize, but it's interesting to ponder.

Indeed the current economic crisis and related bankruptcy of government has brought a lot of so-called fiscal conservatives into the forefront. However, what today's crop of anti-spending politicians forget (whether intentionally or not) is that you have to spend money to make money. Cutting fat and pork is a good thing, but canceling projects that have a demonstrably positive return on investment is idiotic. All spending is not bad, and now is the time to spend that money, even if it's deficit spending, on infrastructure projects that create jobs and will benefit the public purse in the future. Construction workers need jobs, cities need investments, and the labor and material are cheap right now, as is the interest rate on borrowed money. Anyone who suggests that building the Cincinnati streetcar, or the 3-C Corridor, or the New Jersey ARC Tunnel, should be canceled or suspended is only playing political games so they can say "look I cut spending!" even though it's at the expense of the future of our country.

My thoughts exactly Living in Gin. Also, Elm Street had two-way streetcar service in the past. I'll concede that they didn't do such a good job of eliminating conflicts with underground utilities 100 years ago, but they still made it work. How could the single track route being proposed today be any worse than the double track route that is still buried under the asphalt?

That San Francisco video is nothing less than epic. Seeing all the activity of that street in motion is more inspiring than even the best restored photo at shorpy.com. It was quite thrilling to make that march towards the Ferry Terminal, and to actually arrive there and turn around to look back on where we came from. The look on the people's faces who noticed the camera was great, as was seeing all the hustle and bustle on the street while taking place at a much less frantic pace. It really emphasizes just how much safer streets can be for all modes of traffic when the speeds are below 10 mph ( San Francisco's cable cars run at 9.5 mph, Cincinnati's ran at 8 ). The one thing that freaked me out was the cyclist riding directly on top of the cable guideway. I know the tires are fairly wide, but damn!

This is an interesting point- because genuinely after reading article after article of his (and I've read them all) he comes across being heavily streetcar-weary. Perhaps some of the good stuff was left on the cutting room floor, so to say... There's also a lot of people out there who think that public transit in the USA is not worth pursuing, because somehow our culture is antithetical to it. They tend to think that transit just won't work here even though they see it working well in places like Europe or Japan. That's a classic case of the fundamental attribution error and may explain why Horstman doesn't fight the edits more, if he's even being edited down at all.

I'm assuming they just haven't aimed the lights at all yet.

Just a quick accounting note...depreciation is an accounting construct to allocate the cost of an asset (like a vehicle) over its useful life. So really, depreciation is capturing the cost of the vehicle over a fixed time period, or as a function of its use, rather than recognizing the expense upfront at acquisition. Ok, lecture over. So? The point is that when you get mileage reimbursement, part of it is to compensate you for the reduced value of your vehicle by the fact that it has more miles on the odometer. The same factor is in play when driving for your own personal reasons, the more miles you put on it the lower its resale value, regardless of how well you maintain it.

That $0.45 per mile does not include the cost of the car though. It covers gas, routine maintenance (tires, oil changes, fluids, general wear and tear), and depreciation of the vehicle. I don't think insurance costs are factored in, which tend to be a bit more inelastic. So while I agree that many people don't really believe the $0.45 figure, it's only because they don't understand it. Comparing trips should also be done on a door-to-door basis as well. Since a train trip is generally geared towards taking people to/from downtown areas, getting to/from those stations to the final destination does also need to be considered. Parking prices need to be in the equation when talking about a car trip, which is almost always forgotten. Cab or bus fares need to be factored into the train trip too. Keep in mind however, that with trains being a downtown-focused mode, it's less likely that someone might need to take a cab or a train or a rental car, and even if they do the costs would be fairly small due to the shorter distances.

I doubt that's going to happen, and do we know if they're even water-cooled units at all? They could just be regular fan coils which don't emit any water vapor at all. If they did that might actually be kind of neat looking, especially on cold still days. That does raise an issue of condensation and moisture in general though. Cincinnati seems to have a lot of particulate pollution, whether artificial or natural. Anyone who parks their car outside overnight knows this. When this dust collects on the tubular sections of the crown and then gets washed down by morning dew or light rains it creates unsightly streaks of dirt on the underside. The white color of the crown greatly exacerbates this problem, and that also contributes to its invisibility in our usually hazy skies. The simplest solution would be to paint it a different color, but the question is what would that be? Blues and grays that match the rest of the building could be even worse at blending with the sky, and red or black don't seem appropriate either. Maybe a highly reflective silver? I don't really know.

It's Issue 9 all over again.

Well so far yes, but there's still the chance of motorists raising a ruckus before the final paving and line painting is done, which could be a month away still. People need to ride AND drive the road in the meantime, then write the city to say how much better it is for both. That should help balance out messages from those who are no doubt going to complain just because they don't like change.

Here's a photo of Madison Road with the reconfigured lanes. This is just the first of two layers of asphalt, but they have to adjust all the manhole covers and drains and such before they do that final layer.

Cars were sexy because they were an escape. Now we waste so much time in our cars that young people see them as something to escape from. And you can't post Twitter updates, tag photos on Facebook, or watch YouTube videos while driving. The many gadgets and social media outlets that have become so commonplace in the last few years require time and attention that is incompatible with driving. The money to pay for those gadgets also competes with the ever increasing amount of money required to buy, insure, and fuel cars. So while there's still a big desire for mobility among teenagers and young people in general, it's becoming much more of a double-edged sword than it used to be. Time and money are two things which we have less of to throw around nowadays than we did just a few years ago, and spending those on owning and driving a car is being viewed more and more as a waste of both.

All the entry-level jobs in the world won't do any good if there's no opportunity for advancement. No matter how deep the roots they put down might be, if they get to 30 years old and can't get a better job, or get laid off, then they'll have no choice but to go elsewhere. Roots don't matter if you don't have the rain and the fertilizer to nourish them. In fact, that's actually a pretty good analogy. No matter how much fertilizer you have (cultural institutions, vibrant neighborhoods, a high quality of life in general) it can't make up for a lack of water (jobs).

Not the "view from the highway" bit again. There's only a view from the trench if you're a passenger looking up through the sunroof. Otherwise, all you see are the walls (which are very nice walls for a highway I'll admit) and the road in front. Take in the view from the Covington cut in the hill then be done with it. As if the highways haven't done enough to destroy downtown, the last thing we need is to try to preserve some view for them. The caps are an example of air rights construction. Something that's very important in expensive downtown locations. Cincinnati may not be to that point yet, but with the streetcar running through that area it might just make it that much more lucrative.

If I recall correctly they could built a 4 or maybe 5 story building on them. Formal flower/sculpture gardens would be fine by me because while there is a lot of park land nearby, that would be directly accessible by the lunch crowd working in the high rises on 3rd and 4th streets. Buildings would be good too of course, and the presence of the streetcar through that area might warrant that more than anything, but either would be preferable to just leaving it open.

Oh please John, the money spent on the foundations is a brilliant example of thinking ahead. Imagine how much more expensive it would be to try to cap the highway now if they weren't in place. $10 million is a pittance. It's no more of a boondoggle than the Riverfront Transit Center. It may be underutilized now, but it's there for future use and it was much MUCH cheaper to do it as part of the bigger FWW project than it would be to do later. Also, just because you don't feel inhibited by something doesn't mean it's not a problem. It takes very little break in the built environment to put up a virtual wall to pedestrian traffic. Even a less-than-ideally articulated building frontage on a sidewalk can make people turn back. That happens markedly to 5th Street east of Sycamore. The road gets a bit wider, and the emptiness of P&G's park/plaza totally kills the pedestrian environment, and that's still HUGELY better than a noisy highway in a trench. Sure the streetcar will help connect downtown with the rest of the riverfront development, but not taking advantage of the opportunity to cover up some of that chasm would be a mistake to say the least.

I think it's more along the lines that they DON'T want the answers, because it would show their opposition of the project is flawed. If they stop the answers from coming, they can continue to "claim" that they want answers, but in reality they're just posturing.

The view of Cincinnati can be quite confusing if you don't know what's going on. Terrain is obviously a big factor. The river valleys and floodplains, industrial corridors, and unbuildable hillsides all cause abrupt changes in density and racial makeup. It's encouraging to see that the city/suburb divide isn't also a big racial divide too. The map of Detroit is frightening in that respect. It also shows that while there are many predominantly white and predominantly black neighborhoods, they're all scattered around without any real pattern. I'd say in the absence of true integration that's better than nothing. Aside from the variations in density from the aforementioned physical constraints, some other interesting patterns do show up, which you can sort of see in some aerial photographs too. One thing that jumps out on the map, which is also very evident in aerials, is the very low density of the Grandin Road corridor in Hyde Park. Amberly Village and Indian Hill are also noticeably less dense than surrounding suburbs. It's also interesting to see how some of the densest suburban development moves due north from downtown rather than following the easterly bend of I-75 and I-71. Part of that is due to a big hole in density caused by the huge industrial park between Fairfield and West Chester, but it's still intriguing to see how built-up Fairfield and Forest Park are. It is also interesting how you do get a very different feeling traveling along the river valleys. As mentioned already, River Rd. to the west or Columbia Parkway/Riverside Drive/Kellogg Avenue to the east present a very rural feel. Route 8 in Kentucky is even more like that. Go west of Bromley and it's countryside, same with going east of Dayton. You only notice something isn't right when you look across the river. Of course, going up the hill in any of those locations takes you to much more sprawling locales. The place I find it the most interesting (and abrupt) is how completely the city ends at Camargo Road in Madisonville. As soon as you take that left off of Madison onto Camargo the city just vanishes. Of course the sprawl of Madeira and Indian Hill is up at the top now, but it's rare to find such a well-defined boundary to the city like that anymore. It used to be much more common.

While it doesn't address all concerns of course, I like to point out to those who think passenger rail is unrealistic because of a lack of local transit options that very few airports are served by transit. Taxis and rental cars tend to be the norm for getting from the airport to wherever you're going, which is usually downtown anyway. With a train station already in or near downtown, the worst case scenario is a short taxi ride to your final destination, and that's still way better than the situation with flying.

Those geothermal wells aren't 300 feet straight down are they? I'm under the impression that its just 300 feet wrapped around under the ground. They can be either. 150' and 300' are the two main standards around here. If you make the wells twice as deep you only need half as many. That's a concern if you have limited space, since wells need to be at least 15 feet apart. However, it costs more to drill deeper wells, so it's a trade off. Interesting. Hopefully, they'll update streetview sometime soon. That seems to be done much more piecemeal. Their newer street view images are much higher resolution though, and many streets around here were shot more recently than their initial pass a number of years ago.

Google just updated their aerial photographs, and they're very recent, like within the last month or so. It shows the repaved Spring Grove Avenue near the cemetery, and also it shows the construction of the relocated Mehring Way along the riverfront. http://maps.google.com/maps?t=k&gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=39.095363,-84.510773&spn=0.006103,0.009763&z=17

Kasich wants to use the money for roads and bridges, which he can't. I think he really would rather just give the money back to the Feds to use in another state. It's just that idiotic.

The corner of Madison and Woodburn is at 808 feet above sea level, so that would put the top of the tower at 1,038 feet. 5th and Vine is at 550 feet, and with Carew Tower being 574 feet tall, that puts it at 1,124 feet. http://cagisonline.hamilton-co.org/CagisOnline/index.html