jjakucyk

^ Such as?

Vine is the only surface option available because it's the shallowest and most direct. It has a "ruling grade" of 7% which an average closer to 6.5%. Clifton goes over 8% for much of its bottom third or quarter, which is already at or over the limit for our cars. Liberty Hill is 9%, and Sycamore is greater than 12% for most of its length so only cable cars ever operated on it. Even McMillan pushes over 8% near the top of the hill. The steepest Gilbert gets is 5.5%, but that's getting pretty far out of the way. Reading seems to stay under 5% as far as I can tell, but eew.

Anecdote ≠ Data Just because something is observed, even well documented or supposedly repeatable, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a representation of the norm. Whether that's cops shooting people or cyclists falling by themselves or plane or train crashes, we notice and remember and focus on these things precisely because they're *UN*usual. Because of that they get a disproportionate amount of coverage and seem like they're much more pervasive than they are. That doesn't mean they aren't necessarily problems, especially when the result is someone losing their life, but these are not typical situations.

Mohawk Place, with the exception of the Jackson Brewery/Metal Blast building, is not part of the OTR historic district. See the first page of the PDF I linked above.

Non-contributing buildings are listed in the district guidelines http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/historic-conservation/local-conservation-guidelines/over-the-rhine-historic-district/ Generally you have more flexibility to tear those down, but if you do major remodelings you have to adhere to the overall district guidelines for new construction, so you can't make a low horizontal building even more low and horizontal, etc.

But how often are all those stops used? Yes it's annoying when people are lazy and pull the chain for the very next stop, but in reality many of them are still skipped. When a route becomes heavily used enough for it to become a problem, then it's time to reevaluate the stop spacing, but otherwise it's one concession to convenience for an otherwise infrequent service. I think the lingering to stay on schedule thing is less a function of the efficiency of the route and more the likelihood that there could be delays from traffic. A route that is more subject to traffic delays, detours, school boardings, etc., will need more padding built into its schedule and could then end up with more dwell time on free-flowing days. The trouble comes when trying to maintain consistent headways even though the schedule needs less padding at certain times of the day compared to others. If you tailor each run to the conditions however, you're faced with the possibility of frequently readjusting the schedule or having buses be late, and the time between buses becomes seemingly random and difficult to remember. Of course this is only a problem when buses are run so infrequently that you need a schedule in the first place.

If you really want to discombobulate someone...

Don't forget trolleybuses.

The exterior walls are flat framed (2x4 studs turned on their side) but they're not tight to the brick. There's a full 2x4 top and bottom plate, so we get 3 1/2" to 4" of insulation. By turning the studs sideways the insulation can fill the space behind them, limiting thermal bridging. The blown-in cellulose isn't quite as good as foam for sealing out drafts, but it's significantly better than fiberglass. So even though we're basically just meeting code on the wall insulation where strict R-value is concerned, with the additional performance the foam and cellulose provide for air leakage, plus the extra R-value we're getting in the roof with the flash and batt system (2 1/2" of foam at R-18 plus R-30 fiberglass batts for a total of R-48) we more than exceed even the recently revised energy performance criteria for LEED. Exposed bricks can be a big problem. Our LEED consultant specifically mentioned the issues they've run into with exposed brick in OTR. Even where two buildings are side-by-side, like we have here, the joint between the two walls is enough to allow a lot of air leakage. It can cause the building to fail a blower door test, simply from the brick being so soft and porous, plus more than a century of cracking and loose mortar. Painting one or both sides of the wall is the only real option short of enclosing it, and even that can be difficult to make work without a lot of caulking and multiple coats of paint. There's some clear sealers too, which can help, but they won't work as well as paint and they darken the brick and can make it shinier too. None of this changes the R-value either, which for an 8" brick wall is only about R-2, roughly equivalent to a standard commercial glass curtain wall.

The rear deck is being framed, the cornice is ready for trim, and insulation is going in. The walls are blown-in cellulose, the roof deck is 2 1/2" of closed-cell foam plus fiberglass, and all the rim joists are foamed as well.

The main span of the bridge (at the highest point) narrows by a foot or a little less on each side compared to the rest, which is already quite narrow. Maybe the trusses are a little thicker there. Yeah the purple jumpsuits that people had to wear on the climb just made it that much less appealing.

It's hard to see, but in this photo from the late 70s or early 80s the weight limit looks to be 30 tons. So a 10x drop in weight limit over 20 years. http://www.cincyrails.com/CSXvintage/DPO-PC-2350-01.jpg

The load of streetcars is nothing compared to a loaded freight train. It was built to carry not only a railroad track but streetcars as well. It handled pretty much all Newport, Bellevue, Dayton, and Ft. Thomas streetcars until the Central Bridge was built. The configuration was odd though. The unused railroad section was as-is today, the middle walkway was for northbound streetcars, the roadway was for pedestrians, wagons, horses, etc., and southbound streetcars were cantilevered off the west side of the bridge (the beams are gone, but you can still see the approach on the Ohio side). That said, it functions like three separate bridges all jammed up next to each other, so the capacity of the rail side isn't necessarily the same as the sidewalk or the roadway side. In the bridge's waning years, the roadway had a weight limit of just 3 tons (!). That could be due to the awful state of disrepair it was allowed to fall into, but ouch, I never would have guessed it was that low.

It also avoids the mess of the Vine/McMicken/Findlay intersection completely, and most of the electric conduit and other utilities under Vine Street. Plus concerns have been raised that Vine is only 36' curb-to-curb rather than the more typical 40', making it quite a squeeze especially at curves and for any two-way transit in general. None of these things are insurmountable, they just make it harder and more expensive to deal with.

And how is this any different than other streets with curb parking and rush hour restrictions? Aside from that, any traffic counts are bunk because of the Hopple Street interchange construction. I've avoided Central Parkway because of that alone, and the bail-out point is Marshall Avenue, which has just as much construction going on so it's equally bad to bike on.

^ Why? It doesn't really change anything.

^ But even in municipalities like Blue Ash, Indian Hill (excuse me, The Village of Indian Hill), Mariemont, etc. when you enter an address online and have it confirm the proper address it usually switches to Cincinnati.

A little late to this discussion, but Section 8 isn't a cause it's a symptom, if you want to look at it as a problem in the first place. Good neighborhoods don't go bad because Section 8 residents come, the Section 8 residents come because the neighborhood has already gone downhill such that landlords can't get enough market renters.

Also don't forget that you're trading some visual pollution for very real air and noise pollution that you'd get from running standard buses or fake "tacky trolleys." Don't get me wrong, removing all other overhead utilities and doing a span-wire setup rather than the bracket arms would be less visually distracting, and with OCS poles on both sides of the streets then you can use them all for mounting street lights. That of course does require twice as many poles and footings, while also limiting the height clearance of the whole street rather than just one lane. I do wish the bracket arms were painted black like the poles, but as others have mentioned once they weather a bit they'll just be gray rather than shiny chrome. Still, the bracket arms seem needlessly complex, more like what you'd see on some European high speed rail line than an urban streetcar.

Indeed. The idea that the suburbs are bastions of freedom from government interference (how about rural-utopian planning?) is farcical to a level that would be funny if it wasn't so depressing. The amount of central planning (whether Federal, state, county, municipal, or even private) involved in creating the suburbs puts anything that happened in cities to shame.

They're all different sizes, and some of the largest ones had to be Pella "Architect" series due to the height, while most are "Proline" which cost less. Both lines have the same type of SDLs (simulated divided lites...permanently adhered grilles on the inside and outside, plus a spacer between the glass) and brick mould, so you can't really tell the difference. These are all aluminum-clad wood windows, custom sized to fit the existing openings. The ones on the front which all have SDLs are $600-700. The other windows on the side and rear which don't have grilles at all are generally $300-500. For quality windows like Marvin, Kolbe, and Pella the price difference for custom sizes is almost negligible for rectangular windows. It's the oversized, non-rectangular, and especially arch-top clad windows with SDLs that get crazy expensive. French doors too, those are around $2,400 in this case. These are all just unit costs, not including installation, delivery, tax, etc.

It's going to be an aluminum storefront type window with a spiral stair from the 2nd floor to the attic behind it.

Windows!

I don't think there's anything wrong with those industrial uses staying, other than their blocking any ped/bike access over I-71 to Norwood. The old Playing Card factory might as well be in Indiana for how cut off it is from that part of Oakley. Either way, the Cast-Fab building is just too cool to lose. It has a Weimar Republic/Bauhaus industrial aesthetic somewhat reminiscent of the Fagus Shoe Vactory or AEG Turbine Hall, though a bit simpler and more obviously mid-century. I would hope that if they ever leave then that building could be repurposed somehow.

If acceptance of the building is based on "it's low and small and set back and hidden by trees and you won't see it much" then you're doing it wrong. The same goes for mirrored glass buildings that "reflect the surrounding architecture." This isn't a garden pavilion because it's not in a garden, it's an empty lot between two row houses. If you want to do your objet d'art in a park, then it needs to be set alone in wide open spaces, not crammed into a small urban parcel. If this were in a block-wide park across the street from these houses, then ok I guess, but this is making all the wrong gestures in the wrong place.