jjakucyk

Is any of this "leaving cincinnati out" argument based on real facts, or is it just speculation from the funding announcement? To me, it appears to be the latter.

Can you really be sure though? I know CAGIS was mapped, but I can't find any evidence that the bridge ever existed except in CAGIS. A Google Earth aerial from 1994, which predates the CAGIS data I have, doesn't show any bridge either. Whatever the story, it's not there now, which is unfortunate.

But isn't Lunken Airport the currently planned terminus anyway? I agree it's dumb, but it's much better than Sharonville. The whole reason for choosing the east side route was to avoid the already bad rail congestion in the Mill Creek Valley. A 4th main through the valley is already being studied as a separate project, but that's years away at best. Bringing the old CH&D alignment back into service would be great, though I bet there'd be a lot of opposition to it in Northside. There's only two buildings on the old right-of-way as far as I can tell, one is the self-storage place on Vandalia Avenue, and the other is a now abandoned industrial building on Powers Street next to I-74. The highway is a bit of an issue too, as there's no underpass for the railroad. CAGIS shows one, but since that stretch of I-74 was built in 1973, I suspect the CAGIS map was drawn based on plan drawings of the highway, but the bridge was never built since the railroad was already abandoned. Anyway, I think the Lunken station is the best we can hope for right now. There's a lot of stupid NIMBY opposition to bringing the station to the Boathouse. Even if there wasn't, the cost to bring the tracks from Fairfax to the Boathouse up to even 45 mph condition is huge compared to the rest of the Oasis (former PRR Richmond Division) line.

Grr, I hate when sites use session ID's. Try this: http://maps.google.com/maps?gl=us&om=0&ie=UTF8&ll=39.182837,-84.425964&spn=0,359.980474&z=16&layer=c&cbll=39.182895,-84.425853&panoid=Xr7kR65d3Uiu6JhzVavrpQ&cbp=12,105.87,,0,0.55

To some extent yes, but we've got nothing compared to the awesome gas stations of the pre-WWII era. This one in Lebanon is an excellent example. There's still a bunch around that have been converted to other uses, like the Lewis Animal Hospital in O'Bryonville, and there's one buried inside of Courtesy Chevrolet in Oakley. Back on topic though, sort of, is this the old Kroger in Pleasant Ridge? The Auditor's site says 1940, which is more appropriate for the minimalist concrete block design. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a pre-1940 structure inside that was expanded and modernized into what we see now, but I really don't believe what we see dates from the 20s.

Well how do some of the urban stores in Chicago perform, like the Dominick's next to the Fullerton L station? That's a two story urban store with a few more floors of either apartments or office above, and a parking garage in the back. Image

Well I do have the streetcar route numbers on my map at http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/Transit1/map.html (at least the route numbers as they were in 1925). You can't always tell what the actual route is closer to downtown since many overlap, but the turn-by-turn description and names are at http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/Transit1/mapinfo.html

Of course, most bus routes today were former streetcar routes. Some even have the same route number, like 69 to Madisonville.

The University Plaza plans are just as bad. Ooo look, fancy paving! That'll make everything better! It's all such uninspired and inappropriate crap it becomes offensive when applied to an urban environment.

There, fixed that for ya. But you're right, it's an infrequent occurrence.

If you can find it, The Bicentennial Guide to Greater Cincinnati has a lot of great history of all the neighborhoods and even many of the suburbs as well. The coverage gets more and more broad the farther out you go, of course. There's great walking/driving tours and info on most of the notable buildings along the way.

Eh, not a whole lot. Fulton is where the Verdin factory is, and a few other old buildings and houses, but a lot of all the East End neighborhoods have been whittled away over time.

It helps that some neighborhoods try to maintain their identity and even those of the sub-neighborhoods. While the boundaries between neighborhoods seem to flow a lot, especially outside the city limits, I don't see that happen quite as much within Cincinnati, because the boundaries have always been very well established. First off, they usually coincided with annexation boundaries, and since then they've been marked with signs and such. However, this tends to happen in the better neighborhoods more than the downtrodden ones, as would be expected. Of course there certainly are neighborhoods that have fluctuated, like Queensgate (which I believe used to all be part of the west end, and got its name from the actual urban "renewal" plan). CUF is a mess, since Fairview and Clifton Heights get lumped into it, but CUF is sometimes unto itself as well. Mohawk/Brighton seemed to mostly be sub-neighorhoods of the West End and OTR, though there actually used to be a Brighton train station over in what's now South Fairmount. The Brighton Bank seems like just about the only thing that actually keeps the neighborhood name alive. What's generally called Sayler Park is actually made up of Delhi, Sayler Park, and Fernbank. O'Bryonville technically is all part of Evanston, though it abuts both East Walnut Hills and Hyde Park. Still, I think the East End has managed to maintain some identity, at least with some of the signs along Columbia Parkway (though they should be on Eastern Avenu...excuse me Riverside Drive as well). There's Fulton, which stretched from Bains Street to St. Andrews, the old riverboat manufacturing neighborhood. Pendleton was from St. Andrews to Delta, home to the Little Miami Railroad's original terminal and yards. Columbia ran from Delta to about the old LeBlond plant, while the "Mt. Tusculum" subdivision, which was also within Columbia, was on the hill where Alms Park is. The area around Lunken Airport and the Beechmont Levee was Turkey Bottoms. Linwood, originally a railroad suburb, has been mostly obliterated unfortunately. It started out like Columbia, with denser development on the flat river floodplain and bigger more spread out houses on the hillsides. However, the expanding Undercliff railroad yard, construction and reconstruction and reconstruction again of the Columbia Parkway/Linwood/Beechmont/Wooster interchange in the 1930s, 50s, and 60s destroyed much of the lower part of the neighborhood. The rest, such as Archer, Heekin, Russell, and Shattuc Avenues are generally considered part of Mt. Lookout, even though they technically aren't.

Issue 9 failed with 56% no 44% yes, but Metro Moves failed with 68% no and only 32% yes. That's a much bigger spread. Though the fact that Metro Moves was countywide does explain why it had a tougher time passing.

Sounds like a good reason to hold off on approving it to me.

There's a lot of concern that this ordinance for $3.5 million doesn't actually specify what that money is to be spent for. The argument is that it's to continue the environmental impact and utilities studies that would allow Cincinnati to keep its lead over other projects to receive federal and state grants. There's also the question of what happens to this money if the required funding is not awarded and the project dies. So those who are opposed to this ordinance are only really wary of it because of those contingencies, not because of any fundamental opposition to the project.

Hmm, this casino location kinda makes the idea of a new and relocated Mt. Adams incline seem not so implausible after all. Bigger images can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/portfolio/otr.html

That's still a pretty lame excuse though. Are we really so inept that a simple hill is going to stand in the way? Maybe we'll just have to build a modern cable car instead, and that'll shut up the power line whiners too.

Bravo John, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks there's too much unnecessary zig zagging. I don't agree though that a tunnel or Gilbert Avenue alignment are necessary. If streetcars from 100 years ago could climb Vine and Clifton without issue, then there's no reason we can't do it today. That said, the simplest and straightest route is by far the most convenient and cost effective, and should really be given more consideration than it's currently getting. There's been way too much focus on it as merely a redevelopment tool, while ignoring its transportation functions, which in the end will only hurt both aspects of it.

But the more you widen the distance between the tracks, the more inconvenient it gets to actually use the thing. It's already confusing enough if where you get on is a block away from where you got off, but if it's three blocks then it actually becomes a real impediment. Imagine you go to Findlay market from somewhere in Uptown, and you think "oh perfect, I'll get dropped off right at the market's doorstep." You do your shopping, come out with several bags of produce, then realize "oh crap, now I have to walk 2-3 blocks away to catch a northbound car." It's the same thing with the weird split route up in Corryville that doesn't have one-way streets to really warrant such a thing.

Pffft, what fun is that?

I still stand behind my feeling that these split routes are a bad idea, but I do like the straight alignment regardless. As far as the zoo turnaround, there's an old loop still in place from 1930 about 200 feet west of the zoo entrance. It was built to replace a big circular loop right in the middle of the Vine/Erkenbrecher intersection. It would be really cool if they could use that again. http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/Transit1/loops/large-4.html

True, but part of the idea is also to connect with the hospitals and their jobs, at least ultimately. A "western alignment" wouldn't work for that. Though I think what we're seeing is a development pattern that really requires two lines. A Vine-Clifton-Ludlow route to serve CUF, the west campus and the Ludlow/Clifton business district, and a Vine-Zoo line to serve Short Vine/Corryville, the hospitals, and the zoo. It just doesn't seem possible to serve both properly with a single line zig-zagging all over the place. Granted, the Vine Street Cable Railway did run a Vine-Jefferson-Ludlow route (see it at http://homepage.mac.com/jjakucyk/Transit1/map70.jpeg), but that still probably required a horsecar connection to get to west campus, what little of it there was at the time anyway.

That would really only work if it loops around McMillan or Calhoun. It makes it difficult to extend in the future except as a separate route. A one-way loop that spreads out so far only works at the end of the line where someone can ride all the way around it to get where they're going.

Gotta climb the hill eventually though, and the choices are really only Vine and Clifton, both of which are about the same width. Vine seems to have more redevelopment potential, and there's many options for where to go once it gets to the top. Clifton is limited because it hits UC at the top and has to navigate an already highly congested area.