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That's exactly the response the Cranley administration wants.

It's interesting how our topography has worsened this. These narrow cross valleys had the easier grades up to the hilltops, making them natural transportation corridors, but there's not a lot of room to build in the valley bottoms themselves. The steeper hills on the west side and the funneling of traffic across the Mill Creek Valley's rail yards concentrates traffic into fewer corridors than you see on the east side. Still, it might be worth comparing some other neighborhoods in a similar predicament. Sedamsville is probably the most directly comparable, though at a much smaller scale. Northside is big enough and has enough flat land to not be totally decimated by I-74, Colerain, or Hamilton Avenues. Columbia-Tusculum is in a similar predicament, though the major transportation corridor is running parallel to the river via Columbia Parkway and Eastern/Riverside/Kellogg Avenues, while Delta Avenue is a relatively constrained surface street by comparison. West Pike Street, Montague, and Amsterdam in Covington are similar on the west side of Covington, spared somewhat by I-75 providing an alternative route to Dixie Highway. I would say that the most Fairmount-like neighborhood that was completely obliterated was the Deer Creek Valley between Eden Park and Mt. Auburn. A rough and tumble industrial neighborhood for most of its life, it was cleared out between Reading Road and Glibert Avenue in the 1920s or so in a manner similar to what they're doing to South Fairmount today. The old factories and railroad trestles and steeply cut hillsides were smoothed out for ballfields and parkland. That and the relatively easy grade up the hills made it a prime target for I-71 to come later, so now it's nothing but roads and highways.

The neighborhood center at Madison and Whetsel could really shine if they just built up the three empty corners (the strip mall really needs to go or be redeveloped in some way) to address the street). The trajectory does seem to be going in the right direction, but I fear that all this new automobile-centric stuff going on along Red Bank will just cause more of a flood of cars down Madison and choke off the good that's been done so far in bringing that corridor back. It's an odd 50'-wide roadway with some confusing lane changes that could be nicely traffic calmed, but I bet the pressure will be in the opposite direction.

Is it a conspiracy when they're so open about their efforts at sabotage? It's just like Cranley's declaration that no bike lanes will be maintained. It's not widely known, but it's not a secret either.

With design, railroad negotiation, land acquisition, utility and rail track relocation, staging, temporary route construction, and full funding, is it likely the viaduct would be built any sooner than that either?

The thing about GPS accuracy downtown is that it should never be off by THAT much. A few hundred feet at most I would think. That shouldn't have any bearing on arrival times. Look at this Strava map of downtown: https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15.95/-84.51321/39.10132/bluered/ride These tracks are mostly from Garmin bike computers and smartphone GPS apps, not dedicated GPS receivers, and they still do a pretty good job staying on the streets. Walkers and runners are more all over the place, but they can also GO more places, like sidewalks, Fountain Square, inside buildings, plazas, etc. Downtown Chicago's GPS map is much fuzzier, but it's still not that bad.

Just got word that Earl Clark, Jr. who rode the last streetcar on April 29, 1951 and the first new streetcar on September 9, 2016 passed away this morning at the age of 94.

Whenever I went there I was disappointed in the selection compared to Kenwood. So it seems they treated it like less than just another store, at least in the men's clothing department anyway.

I'm talking about the original Citirama/Longworth Square developments from the mid-late 1990s along West Court Street. The two blocks bounded by Central, Court, Mound, and Elizabeth is Longworth Square. That's a lame suburban garden townhouse typology of clusters of four townhouses. I don't know if that was the Citirama development or the stuff on Weninger Circle and Mound south of Court. That is better deployed on the ground with a consistent street wall and true alleys, though they area all detached single-family homes, and the construction quality and detailing is sorely lacking. A big problem with a lot of these developments, partly inspired by trying to shoehorn in well-meaning new urbanist principles into zoning categories that don't really fit, is the over-accommodation of automobiles. When the fire department gets involved and says the alley has to be 30 feet wide and the garages then need another 5-10 foot setback from said alley, along with the desire (by banks and real estate agents) for an attached garage, you end up with no back yard and a huge sea of pavement in the rear. I'll credit the Mound/Weininger development for having detached garages right up to the alley, but with the front yard setback and rather wide alley pavement there's not much room left for a back yard, and most have turned it into a deck. More typically you see what you get at Longworth Square or the bulk of City West, with equally sized front and back streets and large parking pads. Yes City West doesn't have garages for the most part, but there's no back yard and tons of parking and wide streets. This development in Bond Hill is the worst misapplication of alleys that https://goo.gl/maps/8jNU13NJQ4k It's basically snout houses along an automobile-dominated "rear" lane but with the front facing an equally automobile-dominated street. That's what this new development looks like to me.

My point was that the last Citirama was considered successful, and all we got was more crap out of it. I don't see how this one is any different. It's like "oh all those other magic bullets didn't work, but THIS ONE will, it's totally different I promise."

If the previous iterations didn't do that, then why would this one?

https://itineranturbanist.wordpress.com/2017/12/18/what-we-know-about-amtrak-501/

Yeah it was abandoned around 1970 when they consolidated all the rail traffic to the south side of Mill Creek. Aside from the Gantry the only other buildings on the right-of-way are cheap industrial additions/loading docks on Powers and Dreman, and self-storage on Vandalia. The big missing piece is an underpass at I-74, which may never have been built in the first place considering the timing. There's also a ton of street crossings, 10 total between I-74 and Spring Grove Cemetery, which is just about a mile. Three of those crossings also cut right through intersections, particularly Hamilton and Blue Rock. That's one of the main reasons the railroad was looking to eliminate that trackage in the first place.

Well it wouldn't be "just" a concrete bridge anyway, it would be reinforced concrete which has a lot of rebar in it to rust. I assume part of the problem is that this is a ballasted deck structure which has problems with water pooling and resulting corrosion. They're quieter than open decks which could be a factor in why it was built that way, but the benefits of smoother/faster running wouldn't have been much of a concern as this wasn't a major passenger carrying route. I would hope they can reuse the abutments, but even those aren't really a standard configuration. The main span bears on the arched columns at the curb with a concrete span over the sidewalks. https://goo.gl/maps/ru92UxGdXNF2 That shortens the main span, but it means even the abutments are in this odd configuration that may not be conducive to reuse. It is almost 90 years old (built in 1929) too. It's a little like the overpasses at Highland and Lester which were built at around the same time https://goo.gl/maps/Ke6LopG7ap52 There's some similarities to the bridges over Reading and Paddock by the Norwood Lateral too. I've never gotten a good answer as to why Grovedale is such a massive bridge though. It's already wide enough for two tracks, with abutments wide enough to add a third. By the 1920s truck competition was eating into rail freight, so I can't imagine N&W was expecting some huge increase in traffic or extra sidings into HP Lumber or LeBlond, which had already been there for a while at that point.

Even without the cap standard property taxes still discourage development and encourage abandonment and demolition. This is because the land value is relatively low and is assessed at an equal rate to the improved value. So no buildings=low value=low taxes. Once you start building or renovating or improving anything the assessment increases and so do the taxes. The land value is also divorced from the amount of infrastructure that's in place to support it, and thus the cost to the city to service that land. That's what makes downtown surface parking lots so bad. Not only is it the opportunity cost of not having a sizable building there, but there's streets and sidewalks and pipes and conduits and police/fire service, etc. that's sized for a large building and is going to waste.

There's like three nice houses in Woodlawn, the rest are rather small mid-century ranches. On a slightly different note, is there any Jewish community left in Avondale? I would imagine not, since most synagogues there were converted to Christian churches, a rather unusual situation. They've kind of been following Reading and Gilbert northeast out of town for the last century, starting with downtown, then moving to Avondale and to a lesser extent Walnut Hills, then Roselawn, Amberley, and out through Montgomery and Sycamore Township.

Bond Hill and Roselawn is where I would perceive that to be. Elizabeth Place and Oberlin Boulevard in Bond Hill have some nice larger houses. Same for Roselawn west of Reading and South of Section. Most of the rest of the houses are not huge, but they're cute and well-kept. These were the earliest pre-built subdivisions from the 1920s through 1940s. Hyde Park is two or three decades older for the most part and is a bit more varied.

It's a one-bedroom on a busy street in a bad neighborhood with no off-street parking and virtually no amenities within walking distance other than cheap cell phone stores. The kitchen looks pretty rough, and the bathroom isn't much better. For a condo you really need a better kitchen than what flies for an apartment. It looks like it was probably turned into condos in the 1980s, so I bet the finishes and everything don't look very good close up. All that said it's a charming unit with some cool quirks, like the sunroom and built-ins. Usually high HOA fees in old buildings can be explained by them covering the building's heating, but that's not the case here, which is definitely an odd one. Water (even including hot water), landscaping, and snow removal certainly doesn't cost nearly $400/month.

Just because it's been left to rot doesn't mean it wasn't/isn't a grand building. Maybe not the cream of the cream, but Reading Road in Avondale has so many beautiful apartments that were built for the well-to-do, and as long as they're kept up they're just as magnificent as they were when they were new. It's like saying the Dennison Hotel was ugly and not worth caring about, just because they put some glass block windows in it at some point. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1383157,-84.4953931,3a,25.9y,73.73h,93.49t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9DlMCc1U6Q-hHkM9qkpNmg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

It's also important to remember that if your primary goal is as a development driver, that takes time, so you're not going to see big numbers right at the start. Could Cincinnati's streetcar be more of a slow burn that ends up surpassing some of these other systems in the long term? The question then becomes why do some other systems have higher ridership out of the gate? Is it because of a lack of other viable transportation options that their systems also solved? Is it SO novel that people take it just because they can even if they don't have to? Of course no fares is a big one too. Specifics of the route, schedule, and reliability are certainly factors, which are also multiplied by the fare situation. How about resistance versus support for larger scale or higher density infill construction? Strength or weakness of the existing transit system, and the amount of parking, along with the culture that surrounds the availability and use of those transportation resources?

Trash only, no garbage?

Pretty sure I mentioned this before but I'm bummed they're not saving the old telephone exchange building on the corner of Taft and Woodburn. Yes it doesn't have a great setback, and few even notice that it's there because of the trees, but it's a very handsome building.

I talked with a contractor who walked through recently, and the real problem with the 8' ceilings is that's only available where there's no utilities, basically concrete to concrete. Over the room entrances, bathrooms, and hallways where you have pipes and ductwork (more of which will be required for all new mechanicals, since what's there is shot) that means you're pushing down to the 7' level which starts to get quite oppressive.

This is getting out there a little ways, but does anyone know anything about the old office campus in South Lebanon on Mason Morrow Millgrove Road? You can see the office tower from the Little Miami Trail and some of the surrounding roads, but it's actually a huge complex, and I guess it's abandoned and being redeveloped. I can't find any information about what it used to be or what's going on with it.

Can you truly call something "unabashedly modern" that's inspired by a 50 year old design aesthetic?