jjakucyk

This is exactly why we need to at least start exploring the idea of more of a land-based property taxing scheme, so that property owners can't benefit from demolishing buildings in favor of surface parking. As it is, even derelict buildings are more valuable than vacant land or parking lots, so the tax burden is reduced if they're demolished. It's a perverse situation, one the city should be doing everything it can to reverse since it reduces the tax base, but sadly it's not on hardly anyone's radar. I certainly have little confidence that the current administration would be open to any sort of reform along these lines. Heck, I'm surprised they haven't tried to roll back the progress that's already been made on form based codes, let alone historic preservation. If Freestore wanted to demolish the buildings in order to build something new, then we can have a constructive conversation about it, but for surface parking in the middle of OTR? That shouldn't even be up for consideration.

Red is electric, orange is telecom, yellow is gas, green is sewer, and blue is water. They may or may not be doing work on something under the tracks. When the locating service comes out they're given an area to mark everything, though where actual work will be done is usually quite a bit smaller. We'll just have to wait and see.

The bridge rating system refers to structural soundness (or deficiency). You can have a bridge with a structural score of 100 still be functionally obsolete because the lanes are too narrow, there's insufficient guard rails, height clearance issues, or whatever. Basically all functionally obsolete means is that it doesn't meet current design standards for roadway geometry or capacity. It's important to make the distinction between functionally obsolete and structurally deficient, and the media definitely does not do that, but that doesn't mean there's no reason to use the terms.

^ Because filling the space with dirt as was originally planned would've cost nearly as much as building the transit center. Yet now we have something that can be used in the future for transit purposes, while in the meantime is at least somewhat useful for tour buses and other ancillary uses. It's not really good for the streetcar because it would require significant detours east and west to get to the entrances, and it also puts it out of sight out of mind. It's really more useful for light rail or commuter rail that's already heading in an east-west direction as opposed to the streetcar's north-south, and which have longer trains and fewer stops.

^ Ah touche, good call.

^ Blowing a horn will be an issue by Friendship Park and the houses/condos near there and the Boathouse, not to mention Sawyer Point, but fortunately for the East End there's no other grade crossings until you get nearly to Lunken Airport (Tennyson Street) and none in Linwood.

I saw some DMUs in Denmark 10 years ago (they use them for regional trains that go beyond Copenhagen's electrified rail service area) and they weren't any louder than a cruising semi tractor trailer. In fact I'd say they had a more muffled and lower pitch sound, and this was when running pretty fast. I suspect today they're even quieter.

The I-35W bridge was a particular type of highly efficient but also non-redundant structure that's susceptible to failure when particular pieces fail (fracture critical). Some of the specific fracture critical gusset plates that were used to bolt together different beams and girders were determined to be significantly undersized for the design load, and the actual loading of the bridge has increased over time beyond the original design specifications. There were known problems with the I-35W bridge such as stress cracks and significant corrosion on structural members. The bridge had a structural rating of 50/100 well before the collapse, one of the worst in the state. An aggressive de-icing system used to prevent black ice is also suspected as accelerating corrosion of structural steel. The bridge was loaded with nearly 300 tons of construction supplies and equipment for deck resurfacing, and an additional two inches of concrete had been added to the deck, increasing the dead load by 20%. The I-71 Jeremiah Morrow Bridge over the Little Miami River is the same kind of fracture critical under truss design, and it's being replaced as we speak. Other bridges have had new gusset plates installed, and they are being more frequently inspected. Other than increased load, I do not believe any of these conditions apply to the Brent Spence Bridge.

I think the point is that any sort of diesel equipment would not be viable on a Wasson alignment because the CL&N right-of-way between Xavier and downtown is unusable. The simplest and likely highest ridership route to downtown would be to use the existing rail bed along Wasson through Ault Park, Hyde Park, and Norwood to Xavier, then go to street running at Montgomery or preferably Woodburn, follow Woodburn to Taft/McMillan, then take Gilbert downtown, or maybe Gilbert/Elsinore/Reading. Because of street running it wouldn't be feasible to use diesel equipment. Plus, whether on Gilbert Avenue or the CL&N right-of-way, there's grades approaching 3.5%. Can diesel equipment safely handle anything like that? The CL&N routinely needed pusher locomotives to get trains up the hill, and runaways were a problem too.

I have to echo Jake's earlier point that maybe, just maybe, the project is simply too big. If something is too big and expensive, then you look for ways to scale it back. This all-or-nothing mentality, or the idea that "we have to start building SOMETHING now now now," smells like a handout to highway building contractors. It's a desperate attempt to keep the sprawl machine chugging along by any means necessary, even if it bankrupts us.

^ That sounds perfectly reasonable. It's not even that high a cost per square foot. I lived for 6 months in an apartment in Chicago in Lincoln Park that was 500 square feet, and the rent was about $1,100.

Maybe service is so bad because ridership is very poor? I know there's a chicken and egg problem, but being the most affluent parts of the city (excepting Madisonville), there seems to be an even bigger aversion to bus riding than usual. The retarded route numbering (11 Erie-Hyde Park vs. 11 Madison Road-Oakley) doesn't help either.

There's several highways that were planned but never built, even here in Cincinnati (Queen City Expressway, Taft Expressway, Colerain Expressway). Nevertheless, whether part of I-74 or not, ODOT seems hellbent on building a highway to connect Red Bank with Eastgate. Whatever the form it takes, whether a 4-lane divided highway like US-52 along the Ohio River, a full blown interstate-standard highway like a lot of US-35, or nasty street/road hybrid (a stroad) ala Montgomery Road through Landen (which is what they want to turn the existing part of Red Bank Road into), there's no way the results will be good. Mariemont is definitely fighting it, but Newtown is the place that will be hardest hit, as well as Madisonville which is also pretty organized in opposition.

To be more clear, gas taxes pay for only about half of highway expenditures. Gas tax revenues go to very few local roads and streets (it varies by state). If I recall, I think the maximum amount of total gas tax revenue (state and federal) that goes to any part of the local street network is something like 20%, and those are usually only special one-time grants, or for US and state highways inside municipalities in states that have state-aid programs (of which Ohio is not one). So not only are highways (interstates, and US and state routes in unincorporated areas) subsidized by all taxpayers, they're also subsidized by drivers who do most of their driving on local streets, which happens to be a higher proportion of city dwellers.

^ And rural Ohio would be the economic powerhouse of the Midwest.

I'd sure like to know how they can claim with a straight face that a new highway interchange in an already built-up area can "create between 5,900 and 7,300 permanent jobs."

Concrete can be poured at quite cold temperatures as long as it's covered since the hydration process generates some heat. Still, it'd probably be tough to keep properly covered in weather like this. I figure they probably don't have to pour concrete to keep things moving, they can just move on with trenching, laying track, welding rebar, etc.

The man is an absolute menace. I gotta wonder what's going on in that lizard brain of his.

I just saw a graph of accident rate the other day, maybe in the book Suburban Nation? Basically it starts way up in the stratosphere, drops like a stone at around 25 years, then bottoms out at 35 stays there until 65 and begins going up fairly significantly from there. I guess it's basically a bathtub curve. There's also a Subaru commercial on right now where a mom pretty much verbatim says, "my daughter was raised in this car." Is that supposed to be a GOOD thing? I mean, that sounds just awful. Putting a kid in a car is the single most dangerous thing you can do to them for one thing. Aside from that, if your whole life is just being driven around to places, that's sad beyond belief. I bet that's the kind of kid who will eschew driving as much as possible.

^ You say "choosing" as if most people HAVE a choice. You realize how big of a problem that is? Also why do you keep insisting that factual trends, and statements by the people who are part of those trends, must somehow be wrong or temporary? Why are you the authority? Things like transit strikes and natural disasters do not cause people to abandon transit. In fact those natural disasters cripple the road network just as badly, and even if not the lack of transit causes traffic and parking issues to cripple the city anyway. People like you said that the tech bubble bursting, 9/11, the financial meltdown, and Sandy would be the end of New York, when nothing of the sort happened, and arguably the city actually grew stronger. Do you realize how obtuse you're being?

^ The main issue I can think of with POP systems is that they require a lot more fare processing equipment. There needs to be a ticket machine at every stop which could be exposed to the weather and requires someone to travel around to maintain and refill them with paper and money and such. There's still the timestamping machine on the vehicles too, which are pretty simple in comparison to fareboxes, but they still need ink and could have issues with jamming or time synchronization, etc. All that said, the benefits of fast boarding are enormous. In a more robust transit environment, say if the whole bus system also used POP, or anywhere that has good density, then ticket machines won't be necessary at every stop and passengers can be directed to an adjacent convenience store or more central kiosks to buy tickets.

^ I'm pretty sure I've seen one step beyond the "conceptual engineering" drawings in that study, and I believe they got rid of the weaving across Main Street from the Banks for one thing.

Are final engineering drawings available anywhere? I'm curious if they plan to run the track along the curb on Race Street next to Washington Park, since that was made no-parking anyway (which is a whole other conversation by itself).

Or think about it this way, if waiting for a stop light or other traffic to clear out, would it not be more frustrating to want to get on or off but not be allowed to?

It's danger to OTHER PEOPLE that's the issue E Rocc. Again, you're bring up a single anecdote to try to support further marginalizing a whole group of people who are already hugely discriminated against in our transportation system.