jjakucyk

Because they think the only alternative is monolithic boxes. If the form is simple you can spend the money saved on better materials and detailing. That's a more traditional design typology. Functionally, the buildings from MikeInCanton's rendering are courtyard apartments, except the courtyard isn't for the front doors it's for the parking. They're basically this: https://goo.gl/maps/ATCNWR4PsG22 Now, the architecture isn't great, but it's all masonry and there's not too much spinning and twirling and pushing and pulling. Call it faux historical if you want, but the style it's using was already a 19th century faux reinterpretation of even older designs. The thing is that it has a connection to people here being part of the vernacular architectural language. Essentially people "get it" because it's familiar and makes some logical sense as to what it's doing (heavier masonry at the bottom where it gets more weathering, a cornice to protect the rest of the facade and punctuate the top of the building, windows sized for people to stand by and look out, doors for people to go through, vertical expression of all those because people walk by and stand in and occupy these buildings, and people are vertical [usually], base/middle/top arrangement which goes back to classical columns which themselves are expressions of human proportions). For more actual moderate sized (missing middle) buildings, which are actually old, there's plenty of examples out there that aren't monolithic slabs but aren't trying to pretend they're anything but what they are. This is what I think we should be pushing for instead. https://goo.gl/maps/tmHC57Rewz32 https://goo.gl/maps/QheWBd1pz9t https://goo.gl/maps/ktcuyE5tDN12

It's the Potemkin village. I think it's being driven more by design review boards and neighborhood councils than anything. They want to "break up the masses" and "don't make it look all like one building." In the face of excessive height/density restrictions and the demand for fee simple property ownership in such situations, you'd end up with disproportionately horizontal buildings when built out on a full block by a single developer. All the excessive articulation however makes the detailing and construction more complicated and expensive, necessitating cheaper materials to compensate. Proportionately, if each block was designed as four buildings instead of the 12 shown, then maybe they could actually do something not so chintzy and derivative.

Because the administration doesn't want to. Just like making the streetcar work. This is 100% about Cranley and his cronies. Jim Coppock from the city engineering office told me point blank that the city is under no obligation to follow the bike plan if they don't want to.

The thing about Wrigley is that there's no massive parking garage or lot spewing out tons of cars (though traffic is still bad), it's been there as long as the neighborhood has, and none of the houses around the perimeter of the ballpark are houses anymore, they've been turned into bars. The other streets were already commercial to begin with, but there is no residential directly adjacent to the park anymore. Any homes that are just one or two buildings away see no benefit (unless they like going to baseball games) but still have to deal with the noise, light, traffic, and parking.

That's how the DOT ensures the minimal amount of opposition, by eliminating as many businesses and residents that are in the way who might pose a problem, and also by increasing the amount of sunk costs in the project so they can say "we have to finish it now."

Russia has nearly twice the fatality rate as the US, but it's nowhere near as bad as much of Africa and Asia. Yes the US is terrible compared to the western world, but that map is pretty misleading otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

^ Where's the Chipelto?

That's a very interesting analysis. What I didn't really think about was how the percentage of delay decreases as you get farther away, though it does make sense logically as alternative routes become less of a "detour" and more of a "slight variation" the farther away you get. Even if you did take the same route as far as possible and had to detour at the former location of the viaduct, the longer the trip the less of an impact that detour has on the total. I do have to wonder some about the "network effect" of removing the viaduct though. Do the delay calculations account for additional congestion on the alternative routes? One of the insidious properties of road traffic is that congestion and traffic volume have a non-linear relationship. At some threshold small increases in volume begin to create massive delays, especially at choke points. Plus, what is the actual traffic count? The OKI map shows less than 34,000/day in 2009 (it was much lower in 2006). Yes those numbers are a bit old, but the highest number I've seen was 55,000. Where did 75,000 come from?

^ If it was one of the electric/diesels then that would make it easier to get it here, so you're probably right. Otherwise they'd need a flatbed, because I doubt towing one for 60 miles on I-75 is practical.

Very much so. They had that bus down here within 2 hours.

The new Dayton trolleybuses are electric/battery vehicles. They can apparently run for 15 miles off batteries at 50mph with a full load of passengers. That's pretty impressive, and it's how they were able to run here without a second overhead wire. Anyway, trolleybus poles are heavy and rigid enough to support what's called a sleet scraper or sleet cutter shoe. Lightweight pantographs can't handle the additional longitudinal (?) force. Either it would damage the pantograph or it wouldn't have enough force against the wire to cut into the ice. That said, Dayton has a bunch of extra trolley poles from their old buses, and a suggestion was made to fit one of those with a sleet scraper and mount it (properly insulated of course) to a work truck. One could theoretically be mounted to a streetcar if there's room with all the a/c condenser fans and other stuff on the roof.

That's not really true, they've taken title and everything, they just haven't released the final payment.

Not more than usual for a streetcar, but more than usual for what you would expect from a compressor of that design/size/specification.

Ok here's the explanation I got. There's both a design issue and a duty cycle issue. Because of some oddities in the design specifications, CAF used a different air compressor than they normally would. This is a pretty small unit, similar to the ones used to start electric locomotives which would be run off batteries to create just enough air pressure to raise the pneumatic pantograph to the overhead wire. A compressor like that would be generally used for a couple minutes a month, whereas ours are being used 18 hours a day for maybe 50% of the time. That's much longer than such a small unit is intended. Also, one compressor serves an entire car, powering the sanding system which is used for braking in slippery conditions. Without the sanders it's not safe to run the cars. The air system also runs the track oilers. The other issue is that moisture is condensing in the compressor itself (not the air reservoir) overnight in the cold. Since liquid doesn't compress, when the compressor piston hits water it basically blows apart the mechanism. They have a large stock of spare parts to fix the broken compressors, but of course it takes time to do it and the car is out of service for that time. Why exactly this is happening in the first place isn't really known, but it's on CAF to fix, which will likely require replacing them completely. Kansas City can get around this problem in part because their carbarn is large enough to hold all their cars. If they stay warm then the moisture doesn't condense in the first place. They are also better able to mitigate an out of service car because their route is isn't a continuous loop, there's a small loop at the north end and a stub-end terminal at the south at Union Station. Normally they do a layover at Union Station but if a car is out of service they can skip it in order to maintain the same headways.

I don't buy the notion that GABP and PBS are the drivers of The Banks, especially not PBS. The Banks is, IMO, its own independent thing that could be much better in fact without the stadiums, allowing the neighborhood to be many many blocks larger and thus more self-sustaining. Even so, it seems to be something of a smokescreen to help disguise just how bad a deal these projects are. For reference, the city and county spent $1.3 billion on The Banks just up to 2004 (on the stadiums, Ft. Washington Way, the Freedom Center, and the Reds Hall of Fame). Additional expenses on Smale Park, the street grid, and the parking garages are supposedly around $400 million, for an estimated total of $1.7 billion in city/county funding. The total value of the entire project, including private development, is expected to be $2.5 billion. So we spend $1.7 billion to get $800 million in private development. Hmm, that sounds a bit fishy. But wait, they project $275 million in additional economic activity to be generated per year, above and beyond the one-time $600 million in economic activity precipitated by the construction. Let's be super generous and assume all the garages, road infrastructure, stadiums, and everything will last for 50 years with little to no maintenance or operational expenses. So ($275 million x 50 years) + $600 million = $14.35 billion. Subtract out the $1.7 billion in public outlay and wow what a big win! Except wait, how much of that $14.35 billion in economic activity over the next 50 years will the city and county recoup through taxes? You know, to actually pay back the construction? Assuming the city and county can get 10% of the economic activity via municipal income, property, sales, and other taxes, that means only $1.4 billion will be earned back to pay for its construction, and that's assuming 100% of the taxes go to paying it back, instead of schools, police/fire protection, libraries, and all manner of other things. Then there's all the tax breaks given to companies to encourage them to build there in the first place. I bet the local recovery rate is below 5% too. I say all that just to illustrate why the whole "if you build it they will come" or "we just need to prime the pump" mentality is so fraudulent. If the FC stadium was going to be 100% privately funded and they weren't asking for any public accommodation, then it would be something of a different story. Nevertheless, I agree with those who say there's no inherent benefit (quite the opposite) to living next to a stadium like this. The mixed-use component of the stadium is perhaps an attempt to mitigate the vacuum that is the stadium itself. The thing is, it's likely not to be big enough to really counteract that or to help provide the critical mass the neighborhood needs for those neighborhood-serving businesses to open either. And with public assistance, it's looking like yet another example of private profit public debt.

Not to mention the roughly 1/4 of it that was demolished for the current bridge.

There's a bunch of land next to the river near the Waldvogel Viaduct for the transloading facility that was NIMBY'd out of existence. I don't know if a concrete (and asphalt) plant is more or less objectionable, but it's smaller and could be kept more towards Mill Creek. Cincy Bulk Terminals, which takes up most if not all of the riverbank between Duke's Mehring Way substation and Mill Creek, seems to have a fair bit of underutilized land near the Southern railroad bridge too.

Don't be so obtuse, you know exactly what's going on.

It always bothered me that they started but never finished painting the building. Plus the massive conduits for the new electric service. Seems like someone started doing a bunch of upgrades then totally fell apart. https://goo.gl/maps/AEcoZ7z49fy

http://www.shorpy.com/node/15620

Such as by allowing a vehicle to block the tracks for 45 minutes.

I doubt this one is deliberate malice. There's three deicing techniques generally used: salt, calcium chloride, and beet juice. Salt is the easiest to spread, but it needs to be crushed into place to work well and becomes a lot less effective in temperatures below 20. It also is the most corrosive. Calcium chloride is less corrosive, and works better at lower temperatures, but it tends to form stripes and may not work well for tracks, plus it washes off pretty fast. Beet juice is not corrosive (at all?) and also works at very low temperatures, plus it seems to spread better, or at least it's cheap enough that they can lay more down to get good coverage so it doesn't wash away so fast. I think calcium chloride and beet juice can be less expensive than salt, especially if salt is in short supply, but they require more expensive and dedicated tank/spreader trucks. Sometimes beet juice is mixed with salt too (the beet juice helps improve salt's effectiveness and stickiness). So my guess is that beet juice is used because it won't corrode the rails, switches, or the rubber gaskets under the rails. It *IS* a liquid that sticks to the tracks, but sticky substances can be slippery as well under the right circumstances. Salt probably does nothing since it won't stick to the top of the rails, while being the most corrosive where it sits next to the rails. Calcium chloride is probably not very effective either since it seems to wash off quickly and is still corrosive. Either way, the streetcars have sand applicators for just this reason. Back in the day they just used sand and sweeper cars, but no deicing. Also, the stuff was put down for the expected snow and dropping temperatures yesterday afternoon and into the evening which ended up being just some light snow showers and flurries.

My senior architecture thesis site was the northwest corner of Garfield and Race, including the little building at 807/809 Race. It was an attempt to incorporate that smaller building into something larger, while also maintaining the alley (bridging across it). It's an ok plot of land, and I was even able to squeeze in underground parking, but only just. The design itself ended up being an aesthetic disaster, due in no small part to constantly butting heads with my professor, but the functional and urbanistic aspects of it were sound at the very least. It also ended up being 7 stories, which is not a bad ratio for such a site. Either way, it's such a nice street that having any surface parking is criminal, so it's great to hear something is finally happening.

The trouble is the signal prioritization though. It usually has to wait for the lane crossover on Walnut between 5th and 4th, and it hits every...single...stoplight until it's back to 4th Street at least. Those special phases at 2nd/Walnut and 2nd/Main mean it's sitting there waiting for the signal to turn for a long time even though it has its own lane. Then there's the other crossover between 5th and 6th on Main. Those should never require waiting, and if I recall they already have preemption/priority systems installed (as well as at Central Parkway and Liberty too if I recall) but the city won't let them enable those.

Just what are the issues the cars are having?