jjakucyk

You're still just projecting your own biases, trying to justify a position that only you seem to think is the "real truth" but without any real evidence to back it up. Even if it were true that more accidents happen bike-on-bike or bike-self, you have provided nothing to suggest that those are any more serious than bike-car crashes, which are usually reported, especially fatalities. The very few fatalities that involve a cyclist and a pedestrian or another cyclist get blown way out of proportion in the news because it's such a rare occurrence. In the same vein, the most car crashes happen in parking lots, but they're never fatal, so are they really that dangerous?

Why do you keep insisting on a point that's not supported by facts? Just because you can find examples of cyclists self-injuring it still doesn't mean it's more dangerous, as you seem to believe. Anecdote does not equal data.

And yet how many cyclists are killed or seriously injured by other cyclists compared to those killed and injured by motorists?

They did make it an auxiliary lane from I-74 EB/Central Parkway to Mitchell Avenue, so the lane is only striped off over the bridge. I guess it's all wasted southbound though? I assume they'll do another auxiliary lane from Mitchell to the Norwood Lateral after they get the railroad bridge rebuilt.

What else would you do with it in the meantime though?

Something that never seems to get mentioned, and which I think is a worthwhile idea relating to this topic is that there is a limit to just how much any one person can drive, and just how much any particular city can sprawl. Nobody can drive 24/7, and in fact the average commute time to work throughout modern history has always been about 30 minutes, regardless of mode or distance. Also, at some point cities just can't sprawl anymore because the fringes just get too far away from anything else. Yes at a certain level sprawl becomes somewhat self-sustaining, but not to the extent that it does when connected to a major city. I think we might be starting to approach some of those limits now.

^ Agreed, OTR has a handful of quite large buildings already that fit just fine (Emory Theater, Hamilton County Job & Family Services, old Woodward High School, the new SCPA [kind of], YMCA, Hudepohl, and of course Music Hall). These new buildings that try to look like a bunch of row houses not only don't convince, but they've been done so many times it's a cliché all its own. I'd still prefer to see more granular development on a small scale, but today's reality isn't very conducive to that. I applaud the city for relaxing parking minimums and embracing mixed-use zoning, but there's still quite onerous building codes, energy efficiency standards, fire protection regulations, and even the historic district reviews which are all important, but they do disadvantage the smaller developers. The financing/lending world also hasn't caught up with the times either, and they want comps within a block, parking parking and more parking, and no risk whatsoever. Again, that disadvantages the small players. So the choice does somewhat boil down to either big developments or nothing. I know it's not that simple, and there are some small players out there doing good work, but there's not enough to satisfy demand really. So what would really help is to have these architects and developers build something that just is what it is, rather than pretending to be something else. That doesn't mean it's anti-urban or out of character; how it meets the ground and sidewalk and the materials and fenestration are all still very important. Not only are there plenty of examples of buildings that work in OTR that I mentioned before, but also several blocks south into downtown. That's where the inspiration should be coming from for these larger projects, because that's how neighborhoods like this evolved in the first place. Remember that downtown of the latter half of the 19th century had buildings much like OTR does today, but it kept growing. The one fly in the ointment here is how to handle the existing buildings without turning them into cartoons or shadows of their former selves. That's not an easy proposition, and it's one the preservation community has yet to find a really good solution for.

Seems like a good place for those round concrete planters. Even if they can't support much of a shade tree, a small evergreen and some annuals would do a lot to help buffer the sidewalk from the highway...I mean 2nd Street.

I get the sentiment, but I think Mercy Health's move to Bond Hill will be good for the overall health of the community. For starters, it's going to bring 1000+ employees to the neighborhood every day. This should create the need for some spin off businesses, and maybe stimulate the housing market in the area if people decide they want to live close to work. However the real benefit, in my opinion, is the symbolic victory for a part of the city that could sorely use one. Once this facility opens, people in Bond Hill won't be able to say that the city has done nothing for their neighborhood. Remember the downtown vs neighborhood narrative that Cranley used to get elected? That has to be addressed, and I think this project does a good job at that. Also, having a 1000+ employment center will make the area look a lot more desirable for potential retailers and developers at the Swifton Commons site just a mile or so up Reading. I don't think this project will singularly transform Bond Hill, but I think it's a step in the right direction. Is it any different from Medpace in Madisonville? It's walled off from the neighborhood too, and all there really is to show for it is more traffic congestion. There doesn't seem to be much spinoff development happening because of it.

So, since about 1920?

^ It's in the "parcpoly" layer from the quarterly data. That also has land use, but you need to classify it by "exlucode" (existing land use code) to see the different colors. For some reason none of the data sets seem to have the "condo" layer so those show up as blank/white.

QGIS is a great program, and it keeps getting more capable at every release. The DXF export is relatively new I believe, and it's all free. I downloaded the quarterly update and there's a lot in it. All the road centerlines, curb lines, sidewalks, parking lots, railroads, buildings, parcels/land use, municipal borders, and zoning. I'm downloading the yearly data set to get the rivers, lakes, and ponds, as well as the contours (that's by far the largest layer). Good stuff, it's been ages since I've been able to update the Hamilton County map on my website.

I have seen some huge backups I-71 south from Red Bank to through downtown the past 2 Fridays. Why is there no aux lane northbound from Cross county to Pfeiffer? But at what time joetraveler? I used to be in the clear if I left work by 4:30, and even after 5:00 I-71 southbound was always wide open south of Reagan. Now I've been stuck in stop and go traffic going southbound at 4:00, and even today it was a complete parking lot from Pfeiffer all the way to Red Bank at 5:45. The last few times I went all the way down Kenwood to hook up on Reagan to I-71 I was shocked to find I-71 a slow mess. That's never been the case before. Pfeiffer itself is generally quite a bit less backed up now sure, but so what? As for why there's no auxiliary lane northbound from Reagan, my guess is that it wouldn't really help much. I think that Reagan to I-71 northbound traffic in the evening rush is getting caught up in the already existing jams, and it doesn't seem to back up much in the morning anyway, at least not because of Reagan. The Pfeiffer ramp itself could use some more stack space, but another factor is that there's a lot more sound wall right up against the shoulder that would need to be moved, and there could be side-to-side clearance issues at the Cooper Avenue overpass as well. For the new Pfeiffer auxiliary lane they had to tear out a bunch of the median jersey barrier under Zig Zag Road so they could shift the lanes east a bit and get about 3 or 4 feet of "shoulder" on each side, a total kludge but a cost saving measure. It looks like the piers in the middle at Cooper are actually closer to the northbound lanes so it might just be too tight a squeeze.

Not exactly related to the MLK interchange, but the recently finished auxiliary lane on southbound I-71 from Pfeiffer to Ronald Reagan has significantly changed traffic flow. Pfeiffer always caused big backups in all directions because of the number of people who work in Blue Ash. Previously, in the evening rush I-71 would be a parking lot from Pfeiffer north to I-275 or Fields-Ertel, and Pfeiffer itself would back up to Kenwood, but once you got past the merging traffic it would be smooth sailing from Reagan south to about Taft. Now with the new lane, so many cars can flood onto I-71 south in the evening that the whole highway jams up from Reagan down to Red Bank or the Norwood Lateral. If something as innocuous as an auxiliary lane can change things so much, it makes me wonder just how much the new MLK interchange will also affect I-71's dynamics. The congested access roads seem to act as a relief valve, keeping the highway from becoming too clogged, sort of like self-imposed ramp metering. It also shows how "eliminating bottlenecks" can really backfire.

Sweet zombie jesus that's something straight out of 1976.

There's nothing wrong with stepping back and taking a reasoned look at the broader picture. Just look what happened to Chicago. They were all ra-ra on the Loop and north side neighborhoods but still ended up losing population in the last census. How many cities posted increasing population after the massive depopulation of the late 20th century only to drop again? The reason that happened is because while the Loop and north side are certainly very important for the city, they still could not overcome the catastrophic decline of the west and south sides of the city, which make up some 80% of the land area within the city limits. Rampant NIMBY-ism in those wealthy north side neighborhoods have actually caused their populations to decline too as new construction is fought and occupancies decrease as housing units move more and more upmarket. New York and San Francisco have similar problems. The desirable neighborhoods can't densify to satisfy demand, and nobody wants to live in the undesirable neighborhoods. The same thing could happen in Cincinnati. Mt. Adams, Hyde Park, and Mt. Lookout are already pretty much frozen in amber, and OTR could very well end up being completely fixed up without significantly changing its total population. Many of the outer neighborhoods (not to mention several inner neighborhoods) are already pretty sketchy and not particularly desirable from a redevelopment standpoint. If they begin to go down the toilet then no matter how nice downtown, OTR, Walnut Hills, and the rest of Uptown might get, it won't be enough to overcome that. Now I'll be the first to say that having a smaller denser strong core is more important than having strong low-density outer neighborhoods, because the core supports the outer neighborhoods financially, not vice versa. The political manipulation that pits the neighborhoods against the core are disgusting, but it works because the population of those neighborhoods is much larger than the core of the city, in the same way that the population of the suburbs is much larger than the city itself. So the problems in Westwood, Bond Hill, Kennedy Heights, and Madisonville can't simply be ignored or else they will come back to bite the city later on.

What's interesting about the Kenosha system (ok system is being generous, it's just a small loop) is how simple and inexpensive it was built. There's not much street running (though a lot of street crossings), so much of the track is in grass. There's stops at just about every block, but they're just concrete sidewalks (no level boarding) so it's easy to build and convenient. There's no complicated catenary, just simple trolley wire with single poles and mast arms. It's very much like streetcars used to be built, and I think there's certainly value in the lessons we can learn from that. Definitely more "bang for the buck" here. Of course a critical thing is that it's a link from a new housing development to the existing Metra commuter rail station. Transit begets transit, and it connects fairly high density housing through the business district. Win win win. One of their cars is even painted up in the Cincinnati Street Railway livery from the PCC days!

With increases in demand, the expected (and most often preferable) solution is to increase supply to meet that demand. In 99% of the country zoning laws prevent those increases in supply, thus prices go up and new development is pushed outwards as sprawl. It's one reason prices are so inflated in Hyde Park, Mt. Adams, and in an increasing amount in OTR. More people what to live there than there are units available, so they bid up the prices, whether for houses, condos, or apartments. The historic districts, which definitely serves an important purpose, are still another limiting factor on increasing density. What we see going on in Corryville and Clifton Heights is exactly what should be happening. Yes the quality of the architecture and urbanism is a problem, as are the large parking facilities, but the important thing is that more units are being added to the housing pool. Are they more expensive than what's there currently? Of course, but new construction is always more expensive. The problem is when everything is old, especially from the same time period, because it all goes down the toilet at the same time. Having a variety of housing types and building ages is the most flexible and resilient over time. While I agree that the availability of more units has put a lid on rent increases (a good and expected thing) I do not agree that it has led to the decline of preexisting units. Had no new apartments been built, then housing supply would be even more constrained so there'd be more pressure to further subdivide existing houses into crappy apartments, landlords would have even LESS incentive to keep them up because the students would rent them anyway due to a lack of choice, and those students would be paying out the nose for a cramped run-down apartment with four roommates. With more competition in the marketplace, maybe some of those houses/apartments will be renovated because that's the only way they'll be able to differentiate themselves. Maybe others can revert back to single-family, or owner-occupied. Not that it's necessarily a good thing, but I know some people think it is. Yes these are more ifs/maybes, but I didn't see landlords renovating their apartments when they were in higher demand, because they could rent them anyway. What they couldn't do, however, which you do see in even more desirable areas like the aforementioned Hyde Park, Mt. Adams, and OTR, is go super high-end. Take a 4-unit building and make it a single super-condo that fetches way more than the apartment ever did. That however leads to further decreasing density and can spiral out of control as the neighborhood moves more and more upmarket leading to fewer and fewer units at even higher prices. Such a situation is the conclusion (though sadly common enough that it's not the absurd conclusion) of hyper-constrained supply even for wealthy people. In a more modest neighborhood like around UC that's not particularly desirable to more upmarket buyers or renters, with a captive and walking-oriented clientele, the market response to a non-market-based constraint on supply is to milk the available units for all they're worth. High prices and low quality, gouging, monopoly practices. Without the supply constraints, there's actual competition in the marketplace. Lower prices and better quality ultimately. We're maybe somewhere in between at the moment, with stable prices and mediocre quality. But regardless of what you think of the architecture and urbanism of the new complexes, the units themselves are definitely a step up from what you'll get out of a 100 year old converted house.

I drove through there Wednesday morning, there's quite a dip. Still, glad to see they're building the turnouts for phase two.

I always kind of liked Schulhoff even though it's a completely inappropriate use for a site on a prime street and its wild west boomtown aesthetic is equally absurd. Nevertheless, that kitschy quality about it, and the fact that there's walls with murals and not chain link fences with razor wire make me at least respect their attempt to be a good neighbor. Ultimately a better location for them would probably be somewhere closer to Gilbert and MLK, or the already industrial side streets near I-71, but as it stands it's not bad.

If so that's actually a very clever way to approach it. Mandating low-income units in new (or significantly renovated) construction leads to higher rents for the remaining market-rate units, which can price out more middle-income renters or buyers. It also means smaller projects in general are disadvantaged compared to larger ones because economies of scale are more important for amortizing the construction costs of those low-income units compared to more expensive ones. Taking an existing building that's still mostly sound and bringing it into the fold, so to speak, is a good way to provide for lower income residents without causing displacement or other problems.

I'd add that many of the major and steep streets got significant full-depth construction/reconstruction done in the past. Streets with important streetcar routes got huge concrete slabs and full track rehab done in the 1920s (like Erie, Delta, much of Madison and McMillan, Harrison, and others). They're still completely solid bases for today's streets, under just one or two thin lifts of asphalt. Many older streets like Gilbert, Delta, Harrison, Hamilton, Reading, etc. went through 2 or 3 phases in life, starting as dirt and mud, then getting a major regrading and basing in the 1870s-1890s, then a significant concrete rebuilding in the 1920s-1940s. Many residential streets were upgraded straight from mud to concrete in that 1920s-1940s period. Maybe Woolper never got that concrete rebuild, or it was an earlier one that finally deteriorated. What I find interesting when looking through the street rehab photos from the 1920s-1940s is that virtually none of the streets are in downtown, OTR, or the West End. Part of that may be the anti-urban biases of the time, where the focus was being put on building up outer areas for people to decant to, but at the same time the streets in the basin were already pretty heavily built anyway.

If that's Elm then maybe they wanted to remove what was left of the old tracks. Seems like too crisp of a trench otherwise.

At least it's not Comic Sans.