jjakucyk

The City Council approved $64 million worth of its own funding. You don't consider that a strong action? Yes, I would love to see UC, Kroger, P&G, GE, or Macy's chip in, and that's something the city should be trying to get from them. However, to say that they're dragging their feet or don't really support the project is baseless. Engineering/design takes a long time. In one little garage project I worked on, it took forever to try to find where an old sewer line ran. It ended up being in a completely unexpected place, which we only found after doing some exploratory digging. Imagine the amount of utility coordination it takes to sort out a route through the oldest and most densely built part of the city. There's a huge amount of due diligence that's necessary for these things that, while in the end is mostly invisible, is still very much necessary.

I'd hope that the streetcar will help Short Vine, but I'm skeptical that it will, at least for the initial Uptown connection phase. I read through the Uptown Alignment Assessment in the TIGER II application, and all the four possible routes terminate at a University Plaza transit hub of some sort. Now, for one thing, none of the plans I've seen of University Plaza take either the streetcar or any transit hub into account, on top of not bothering to reconnect Short Vine. Second, without the streetcar penetrating up Short Vine, I doubt it will help the business district much since most foot traffic will be coming from the west rather than from the north. I highly recommend everyone read that document, since it goes through a very in-depth analysis of the possible routes. Several were dismissed from the outset due to excessive grades, such as McMicken-Ravine, Liberty-Highland, and Sycamore-Auburn. Of the routes that are left (McMicken-McMillan, Clifton-McMillan, Vine-Calhoun-Clifton Loop, and Vine Street), the two routes using Clifton Avenue are also right at the threshold of being too steep, with the maximum allowable grade of 9% and Clifton Avenue being at 8.9%. While those two Clifton Avenue routes were still examined, I suspect they're not going to make it very far considering the steepness. That basically leaves Vine and McMicken-McMillan. Of those two routes, the report much prefers the McMicken-McMillan route, though I think it's a bit unfair to Vine. The advantages of McMicken-McMillan is that it touches a lot more redevelopable area, serves the Calhoun/McMillan business district, and it's also easy to connect to the Elm-Race loop without having to backtrack. The advantage of Vine is that it's much shorter (including about 10 minutes less travel time), is the least expensive, and is the most accommodating for future expansion. As I mentioned, the report is rather harsh on Vine Street for issues that aren't particularly difficult to overcome. For one thing, they mention that Vine is too narrow to accommodate two lanes of traffic each way with the streetcar (the road is 36' wide and streetcar lanes need to be 11'). There's other options, but the road can easily be made to accommodate one wide lane each way with permanent parking on one side and even a bike climbing lane northbound. Also, despite the presence of Inwood Park, there is a lot of developable land directly along Vine and on Loth and Rice Streets. On Vine itself, there's enough room to build a lot of 4-6 story buildings, especially if the bit of park north of Hollister Street was sold off for development. Another concern is the lack of connectivity to Vine Street from Ohio Avenue and the streets in Mt. Auburn. However, they neglect the pedestrian connections through Inwood Park and via hillside stairs that still exist or could be easily built. Finally, while it's true that a Vine only route doesn't really serve Calhoun/McMillan so well, to say that it doesn't serve UC well is a bit unfair. The on-campus students live on the east and south side along Calhoun and Jefferson, so if one single point of access were to be chosen, it would be that southeast corner of campus. Yes it's not as convenient for Calhoun or Siddall residents, but it's just as good for those who live in Daniels, Turner, Schneider, Dabney, Scioto, and Morgens. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, but I do hope they further consider the impacts these routes will have on extensions to serve UC Hospital and just how this transit hub is supposed to work since Kroger doesn't seem to even have it on their radar screen.

Woo hoo, they cited my website and map on page 4 of the Uptown Alternatives Analysis. Good to see they got the graphics straightened out, though I must say I'm a little wary of how many times the streetcar changes lanes near the southern end of the route.

This is a big problem here in the midwest, the mindset that "if it doesn't serve me directly, then I'm not interested and may even oppose it." It's a wonder anything gets done around here.

So what? It just means they look the same at the back as they do at the front. I don't see how it's the least bit confusing to anyone for any reason. The Mt. Auburn Cable Railway did not have loops or turntables, simply reversing direction at each end of the line. Some of the short shuttle streetcar lines used double-end cars, like the Edwards Road jerky that ran between Erie and Markbreit. The later years of the Paddock Road line operated that way too, but overall it was pretty rare.

Bike paths, bike lanes, and roads with no specific bike facilities cater to different segments of the riding population. Yes there's overlap, but the most timid riders generally won't touch a bike lane. Even so, the new path is unfinished, so it basically goes from nowhere to nowhere, with no obvious start or end point either. I don't know what sort of plans they have for finishing it, but whenever it might be finished is going to be a long time out, and it won't help those who already use Spring Grove. An odd thing about it also is that there's very few curb cuts that allow you to get onto the thing. I've ridden along there a few times, and thought about trying it out, but I could never get on it because there's so few connections and a guardrail in the way. It's kind of bizarre.

Well in many transit vehicles (as opposed to more typical railroad cars that usually have moveable seat backs), half the seats face one way, and half face the other, though there may be a bunch that face inwards too. Yes the actual side of the car may change, but who'd ride to the end of the line and stay on the car to come back? In most cases you get kicked out or re-ticketed or something at that point anyway. The issue with something like a bike section would be more that in one direction it would be at the front, while going the other direction it would be at the back, but only half the time, since there's no turnaround downtown.

As cool as I think it would be to reuse the old Vine-Erkenbrecher loop that was built in 1930, I thought the plan was to use double-ended cars so that a loop wouldn't be necessary, just a crossover switch.

Actually I think the patronage of the Clifton Kroger (especially after it's rebuilt) could be very significant since OTR's Kroger sucks. Also, the main point is serving UC and the hospitals. There's a lot of students who live on campus, most of which are along the Jefferson Avenue side. Those are the most captive transit riders there are, since they're much less likely to have access to a car than the ones living off campus. Also as I've said before, a route that's nowhere near east campus means much less reverse commuting of lower-income workers to that area, though there may still be some to west campus. I don't see how a Clifton route would be any closer to Urban Outfitters or even Uptown Commons (though it's such a long parcel of land it could be close to both). Also don't confuse the history, Vine was developed around cable cars and streetcars before Clifton was. Another thing is that while the CUF neighborhood does have a lot of people, there's not a whole lot of potential for new development there. It's already fully built-out for the most part, and arguably is even somewhat overcrowded since most of the houses are divided into apartments. The emptiness along Vine, and the area around Uptown Commons is a place that needs more help, and the streetcar can do that.

Word is that the proposed change to Madison Road between Torrence/Grandin and Dana has received very positive community support, so the the changes to add bike lanes there are almost certain to be implemented. The city just this week started working on replacing the curbs, so repaving shouldn't be too far off (finally!).

So is it just me or are the graphics on most of those PDF's corrupted? I can't get some of the documents to open at all.

That's a very good point REK. While there wasn't any zoning or design standards written into law 100 years ago, there was a much greater understanding of the principles of good design, urban form, etc. among the builders and architects of the time. That knowledge took centuries to develop, and it was all chucked in the garbage come the 1950s. We're only just now starting to dig it all back up after realizing how important they are, and how completely ill-equipped we are without them.

I agree that too much emphasis is put on keeping streetcars from impacting automobile traffic, which leads to the streetcar project being compromised. My opinion is that everything should be done to give streetcars priority over all other traffic, with no exceptions, even if this means blocking the lane from use by cars, or at least making it less than pleasant by using rough paving. If streetcars cause traffic backups behind them when they're stopped at stations, then so be it, you should be riding the streetcar instead. However, to put the streetcar in a situation where it gets stuck in traffic jams that are already present is also a bad thing. OTR has the advantage that there's a lot of through streets, and there's not really any stop and go traffic, just lots of lights to navigate, which are relatively easy to get around. Calhoun and McMillan however get jammed up all on their own, as do the intersections at all four corners of UC's main campus. This is much more difficult to deal with. With just one stop, I could see a Clifton-Calhoun-W. Clifton-McMillan loop taking nearly 5-8 minutes to navigate in heavy traffic, even though it's just one block around. Vine/McMillan would be tough because of the high volume of east-west and turning traffic onto eastbound McMillan, on top of the steep grade there. Vine/Jefferson/MLK is a complete mess, and it would be difficult to navigate the geometry even without the high volume there. All these make signal preemption more difficult, and would likely lead to the streetcar waiting around unnecessarily. That's the real concern more so than creating a traffic backup behind it.

What I like about a Vine routing is the ability to serve Short Vine and eventually Ludlow via the aforementioned Nixon/Jefferson routing. That's still close enough to the zoo, but the real key is that it's close to East Campus and University Hospital. Any routing via Clifton that doesn't take a huge detour back to vine upon reaching McMillan fails to serve that East Campus area, which is arguably just as important as serving West Campus. It's not just about getting students and teachers to downtown and back, but also getting workers from OTR up to UC and the hospitals. To leave the hospitals out of the equation by locating the route too far to the west would be a big missed opportunity in that respect.

Also, form-based codes are not intended to be used on top of already convoluted existing zoning regulations, they're a replacement. Form-based codes focus on the overall unity of the neighborhood, because mixed uses, even vastly different ones, are very compatible as long as they are all of a similar scale. A full scale hospital is not compatible with single-family residential or even a dense row house type neighborhood, but a small doctor's office, veterinarian, accountant's office, or funeral home is. The point of form-based codes isn't to say that those uses are specifically allowed or disallowed, but that any of those (or other) uses are ok if they fit within the same size buildings as everything else. Traditional zoning is about micromanaging things like floor area ratios, parking spaces per unit, dwelling units per acre, and specific occupancy uses. It's about restriction, preventing certain types of uses and levels of occupancy. Form-based codes turn the situation around and make it about the actual, well, form of the building. It's about saying the building shall front on the sidewalks, shall be between these heights, and must be so open to the street frontage, etc. Whatever happens inside is much more flexible however, without all the strict land use and other occupancy guidelines. You can of course still do less than what the zoning allows, but using the example of a bank branch for instance, instead of getting a small building surrounded by a parking lot, you get a small building pushed up to the sidewalk, maybe with some apartments above it and space in back to expand or to put some of that parking. It's much more conducive to development, since once the basic principles are met you're much more free to develop the programming to meet whatever the needs of the owner are. In essence, it prescribes the initial framework for the design of the building based on context and (again) form, rather than abstract dictates like the required number of parking spaces or rigorous minimum setbacks. All that said, like traditional zoning, form-based zoning can also be a tool to prevent growth and development if not implemented properly. By restricting the occupancy levels or the "form" of a neighborhood to what's already there, you severely limit the ability for the city to grow, and also for property owners to maximize its potential. Even as this discussion was starting, the city was down-zoning parts of Hyde Park and Mt. Lookout to prevent subdividing of lots. This is where property owners can be rather stupid, in that they think they're protecting "neighborhood character" (which is usually fancy talk for protecting property values). However, in such hot areas, these property owners are suppressing the value of their land significantly, and causing sprawl by artificially limiting its development potential through zoning. Form-based codes would still do this if they treat the status quo as the ideal form. However, it wouldn't prevent houses from being divided into apartments, renting out the basement or garage apartments, or being replaced with smaller multi-unit buildings that still have the appearance of single family houses, for example, so it's still an improvement.

That's an awful lot of turns, more of which this project definitely does NOT need. Also, while a one-way loop at the end of the line can work, it precludes any further extension beyond that point.

Shoot, just getting daily Cardinal service in the first place would be a big step in the right direction.

Many people in the world think American football players look ridiculous too, but they are what they are for a reason. Get over it. The level of petty and immature thinking here just astounds me. Jake, I applaud you for having an ass that can take a good pounding (hehe), but not wearing a helmet because you think it's too "euro" or because the kids in a town WHERE YOU DON'T LIVE ANYMORE would have IN THE PAST beaten you up for it is just reckless and stupid.

To complain about cyclists who don't obey the law is also a slippery slope. Having drivers licenses certainly doesn't prevent car drivers from breaking the law either. When someone in a car blows through a red light they're an asshole, but when someone on a bike does it they're an asshole cyclist. All cyclists get singled out and accosted for the misdeeds of other cyclists, while motorists do not. The main reason licensing and registration for vehicles was implemented was because cars and trucks were the first vehicles on the roads that were truly dangerous to people and property. Comparatively speaking, cyclists don't pose much of a danger to anyone or anything else, while cars and trucks do. The laws are written such that with equal rights (to use the roads) comes equal responsibility (to obey all the same laws). However, the laws can, should, and in many cases are being adjusted to compensate for the disparity in speeds and abilities of vehicles to operate on the roads. Laws that require a certain clearance while passing shouldn't be necessary if people in cars would pass safely to begin with. Someone disobeying that law should be ticketed, and a cyclist should be ticketed for running a red light just like anyone else. However, having a license isn't necessary in order to give someone a ticket. What needs to be addressed is why some cyclists break the law, and is it really something worth fighting about? You tend to see more cyclists rolling through stop signs or even stop lights, which is less common for motor vehicles. On the other hand, cyclists rarely exceed the speed limit or tailgate. There's also plenty of things cyclist do that annoy other drivers, sometimes for no good reason, but mainly to protect themselves. Riding in the middle of the lane is one very common example. Being close to the curb may be dangerous due to debris, or there might be a blind curve or other issue that means it would not be safe for a car to pass, so the cyclist won't let them. Also, to be perfectly honest, cycling can be really hard. Stopping and starting at lights or stop signs requires a lot of effort compared to slowing down and rolling through. That doesn't make it right, but it's understandable, also because cyclists have much better viewing angles than people in vehicles, since they're a bit higher up and don't have six feet of hood in front of them that keeps them from seeing around corners easily. I also want to speak to the whole "Lance wannabes" thing. First, what of all the Dale Earnhardt wannabes in their cars? It's the same problem I mentioned before, where cyclists are generalized and motorists are given a free pass. Second, any serious rider who's going at any appreciable speed is on the road. If they have to ride on the sidewalk, there's a problem with the road that needs to be addressed. Since they're on the road, how are they dangerous to anyone else? The only way to get "mowed down" by a cyclist who's "whizzing around at high speeds" is if you're standing in the the road not paying attention. Just because you can't hear an engine doesn't mean you shouldn't look both ways before crossing the street. Finally, calling someone a Lance wannabe just because they're wearing lycra shorts or are on a local racing team shows a very disturbing prejudice. Cycling clothes all serve specific functions, and to ridicule someone for that is very ignorant. Also, because cycling can be such a difficult sport (especially in hilly areas like Cincinnati), you see a lot of people who do it for both fitness and for getting around. Heaven forbid someone wouldn't want to drive to the health club just to run on a treadmill for an hour.

Those taxes and fees mostly go to the Feds or the State, to pay for Interstate Highways which bicycles can't use. The vast majority of regular roads are NOT funded by gas taxes and fees, but by property and state income taxes, so cyclists are already paying for them anyway. Besides, there really aren't that many cyclists who don't own a car too, and saying they shouldn't get a free pass is like saying pedestrians shouldn't get a free pass to use sidewalks.

Even with a fast growing economy they'd still be against it because they want to handle ALL the growth, not leave some of it for competitors to tackle.

Yeah great, just what the building needs, more bling.

A thought popped into my mind last night that I think makes the situation a lot more clear. Think about an old poorly insulated house. It works fine, it's relatively comfortable most of the time, but it's expensive to heat and cool, and it can get drafty in the winter and kind of hot in some rooms in the summer sun. The furnace is getting old and starting to rust out, so it needs to be replaced soon lest we end up with carbon monoxide problems. We can replace it with a new high-efficiency furnace and cut the bills a little, but it's still an old house with poor thermal characteristics, so it'll always be expensive to keep it comfortable. Instead, we could add more insulation in the attic, install storm windows, seal drafty floors, and blow new insulation into the walls. This will of course cost money, but we can then get a smaller high-efficiency furnace, and with the added insulation we'll be saving money year over year and be more comfortable as well. The current mindset for our transportation infrastructure is akin to just replacing that furnace without treating the problems of the building envelope too. We keep expanding roads and incurring the high costs of that, rather than looking for more economical long-term solutions. By investing in alternative transportation, like better insulation, we could ultimately reduce the scope of our road system. While some urban freeways have been removed completely, like the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, I could see lane reductions happening in some corridors too. We're already seeing road diets being implemented in many places, and projects like 3-C can allow more of that to happen. Also, it's a bit of a misnomer that we can't afford to maintain the infrastructure we have. We certainly CAN afford it, we just don't WANT to. Look how much people bitch and moan about raising the gas tax by $0.10, which is nothing compared to regular swings in price, and since it's not indexed to inflation its effectively lower now than it has been in decades. The amount of money spent on the bank bailouts was more than we spent on building the Interstate Highway system in the first place (adjusting for inflation of course). Imagine if we'd spent that money, about $14 billion per state, on bringing our rail system into the 21st century. Maintaining stuff that exists doesn't make for good news stories, there's no ribbon cuttings, so politicians can't take credit since it's not a new project. This is actually a place where 3-C has an advantage, since there's lots of ribbon cutting opportunities, and any improvements later on will result in reduced travel times, and will at least garner SOME attention.

Yeah, I was in agreement up until that last sentence too. Our country is still growing, so we can stop nearly all new road building, because we have enough to support today's driving habits. We can accommodate growth with other modes, rather than constantly expanding the already out of control highway system.

That's my first thought too, but I'm guessing that the hyper-specialization we see in many fields today means it's probably not so simple. Take the home building industry for example, something I'm pretty familiar with. There's a lot more subcontractors than you may think. For instance, there's the excavators, the foundation subs, the rough carpenters, the masons, the roofers, the insulators, the electricians, the plumbers, the HVAC subs, the the drywall hangers, the drywall finishers, the finish carpenters, the painters, the floor finishers, the carpet installers, the driveway pavers, and the landscapers. That's a very simple take on it too. Yes, the plumbing and HVAC might be the same company, and sometimes the framers might be from the same company as the finish carpenters, but you could also get into audio/visual subs, lightning protection, home automation, security, special HVAC like geothermal that requires separate drilling subcontractors, etc., etc., etc. As for the road building types, I fear we'd see the same sort of thing. I'm not familiar with the exact breakdown, but I imagine you'd have one crew that does nothing but scrape up the old pavement, one for heavy earth moving, one that does base preparation, one for drainage, one that does paving (and the asphalt people are different from the concrete people), one for jersey barriers (again, the metal versus concrete crews might be different), separate bridge crews for the piers and the steel, separate line painters, electricians, sign and gantry installers, and who knows what else. They could all be part of just two or three companies, but they'd still likely be separate crews with vastly different knowledge bases. So while on the surface it may not seem all that much different than building a railroad line, only a few of those crews are really transferable. Even then, because of different loading standards, allowable grades, standards of fit and finish, etc., those crews would still need a lot of retraining. Of course the road builders would just assume build more roads than try to retool their operations. The same goes for trying to repurpose automobile factories to train building. They're both heavy machinery, assembly line type operations, but the scale and logistics end up making the change rather more difficult to swallow.