jjakucyk

I just hope Young and Flynn are right that the Feds will allow a few days at least to sort things out, and that the "substantial progress" being mandated is only reported on a quarterly basis. At least then it won't mean a pause of any length leads to revocation of the federal funds, but of course I have no faith that the Cranleycronies won't try to cook the numbers any way they can. That Flynn actually thinks it's reasonable to assume operating costs could balloon to $28 million per year based on what Metro fares were 30 years ago (never mind things like inflation) shows that he's totally off his rocker.

I didn't notice if this was posted here before, but there's a "line the line" rally today at noon at Washington Park. http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=f66a03e23b959fc88788cfd3c&id=3aa18f0d73

It's a battle of perception, trying to shake off the shackles of Cincinnati's history. If the streetcar is canceled then Cincinnati will be "that idiotic city that pisses away money and gets nothing for it" for at least another generation. The subway is only just starting to fade from the minds of people who know history, but Cincinnati is still a piddly midwestern flyover city to most people. If the streetcar continues then it multiplies all the other good things happening in the city, if not, then that's all anyone will know about, deflating all the progress the city's made.

Nice straw man.

This StrongTowns article describes exactly why strengthening the core is so important to a city and region. In a nutshell, properties in the core are an order of magnitude more valuable than the sprawling neighborhoods. You can pour incredible amounts of investment into these outer neighborhoods, and even a doubling or tripling of values (and thus taxes), which is highly unlikely, pales in comparison to even a small improvement in value in the downtown. 2x $300,000 is peanuts compared to 1.2x $10,000,000. Original caption from the article: "You'll never guess where the traditional downtown is at. (Hint: the purple in the middle.)"

I just sent off a bunch of letters, and that was the gist of my point to them. Basically, I can point to projects like The Banks, Washington Park, Fountain Square, all the construction around UC, new bike lanes and bikeways, and even Metro Plus, and those get people excited. At the very least, it makes them think that things are finally moving forward. None of that will matter, NONE of it, if Cincinnati becomes “that dumb city that canceled their streetcar project mid-construction.” This city has had enough trouble shaking off the stigma of subway debacle, and it is still perceived by many to be backwards and slow moving. The momentum has definitely been building, in many cases in anticipation of the streetcar itself, but it can, and dare I say will be halted if Cincinnati defaults on this project. It doesn’t matter what else is done in the city, because all that anyone will know about and remember is that once again Cincinnati failed.

It's not just the subway and (hopefully not) the streetcar, but Cincinnati has plenty of other unfinished infrastructure projects, whether good or bad. There's the Cincinnati & Dayton Short Line Railroad and their massive tunnel under Walnut Hills that was only partially completed. There's also the abortive Cincinnati Western Railroad with yet another partially completed tunnel under Fay Apartments and random grading throughout Mt. Airy and Colerain Township. Then of course there's the Colerain Expressway which despite being something of a zombie project seems to have finally died for good. Thankfully the Taft and Queen City Expressways never got beyond the drawing stage. There's also the never-used streetcar ramps into Union Terminal. So much vision, so little follow-through. Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Is there anyone who can engage Messer and Prus, etc., to draw them out on this? After all, they need to make it known beforehand what the repercussions are going to be since they hold many of the cards. To just sit by silently while Cranley is "believing" things about them and then rain down a shitstorm when he does pull the plug doesn't really do anybody any good. Maybe they don't know for sure as they're having their attorneys, project managers, and accountants take a look at it, but they need to speak up.

You can argue that we need to shake things up to try to shed ourselves of so much of the cruft that's built up in our transportation system. Bridges to nowhere, bypasses of bypasses of bypasses, all the suburban development that doesn't pay itself back in the long-term. Say what you will about the state of the US economy in the mid-1800s, at that time we were poor, but very smart. We made only the most critical investments in infrastructure possible, and sought ways to maximize the return on those investments. Now (or at least in the recent past) we've been able to be incredibly stupid because we were a rich society. Spend $10 million to save 30 seconds of travel time? SURE! Rebuild this highway for $500 million so it "meets the standards" even though it's no less safe than ones that do meet the standard? NO PROBLEM! I won't pretend that the tea party types are actually looking at it from such a rational point-of-view, but that's at least the seed of the discontent with the current system.

Weren't most canals state-sponsored endeavors?

Good grief Jake, shrink that picture down.

We used to care in this country. There's lots of very nice telephone exchange buildings around Cincinnati and many other cities, though I'll admit the false façade thing is pretty rare. Did you know this little gem on McMillan Street was once an electrical substation? http://goo.gl/maps/E9Ivq Those funky dormers on top are the giveaway. Now it's a regular everyday building (great adaptive reuse!). So where did the substation move to? http://goo.gl/maps/oUi6d A few blocks north, it's not as nice, but still a pretty dignified building. There is some outdoor crap behind the fence and gate on the left, but it's not too bad. Most of that stuff has gone away in recent years, as even this substation has been mostly deprecated. Here's the current one a few blocks farther north. http://goo.gl/maps/XsQM5 It's a pretty big fuck-you to the neighborhood. A 100% residential street with a cemetery behind it, and this big honking substation with the high-tension transmission lines galloping all over the street. They can't plant enough trees to hide that thing. How's that for progress?

Being in a hole next to I-71, I don't see that panning out. Office/retail sure, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to live there.

Did you know they had plumbing back in the time of the ancient Romans?!?! Seriously, all these water lines and sewers are such boondoggles.

^ You might be right Jake. Madeira residents threw a fit when an apartment complex was being planned for the Paxton Lumber site.

Got any pictures from back in the day?

^ There's a whole bunch of apartments along Murray Avenue and the "Old Towne" section along Oak, Beech, Chestnut, and Maple. Same with Center Street and Wooster Pike west of the square. I'd imagine some of those have been turned into condos but certainly not all of them. All the deep red in this map (which is admittedly a bit out of date at this point) is multi-family. Condo is purple striped and there's very little of it. It's certainly an odd and rather coarse transect, but at the very least there's a lot of multi-unit buildings which are pretty old and haven't been substantially renovated.

^ I wonder what Kenwood's numbers would be if you took the Apple Store out of the equation. They can easily pull in 10x the sales per square foot seen in the rest of the mall. Overall it's not surprising to see the highest end stuff concentrating in Kenwood as other malls decant. No other nearby center could hope to get the critical mass of upscale/luxury stores, so the gravitate to one place near most of their clientele. It's not unlike how the Hyde Park Kroger sucks a lot of the life out of other nearby stores, especially in some of the more questionable neighborhoods.

^ Yeah but how?

^ Tearing up rails in concrete is a bitch. That's why most streetcar rails from the 1920s and later are still in place under a layer or two of asphalt. So yeah, unless of course Cranley wants to throw even more money down a hole by having them jackhammered and plasma torched out (which I wouldn't put past him), they're not going anywhere.

It's like some unimaginable nightmare. The guy isn't even sworn in yet and he's already managed to turn the clock back 30 years and make Cincinnati once again a laughing stock to the rest of the country.

Messer and CAF, etc. need to issue statements/ultimatums about how much they're going to demand/sue the city for to close out their contracts so it can be out in the open before any actual decisions are made.

^ I wouldn't be so sure. At the very least, the previous elections showed that nearly all the non-core neighborhoods voted anti-streetcar.

It may not be difficult to find people to go get the signatures, but the problem is getting the signatures. Even then, a petition to do what? To just shove it in Cranley's face sure, but to petition for referendum on the streetcar, which this time would be exactly that, a vote on continuing the streetcar project only and nothing else, is just as likely to fail as to pass. The previous referendums were in the streetcar's favor, but not by a lot, and I suspect they passed only because people didn't like the overly-broad reach and questionable wording. Plus, any special vote is going to bring out the naysayers and busybodies, but not the ambivalent voters. Is another referendum really what we want? What other options are there?

I guess you'd need to make the map show population by extruding the counties in proper proportion. There's a couple 3D examples from the 2004 presidential election here: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/ So while the rural areas of Mississippi, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky are certainly red, they'd be very low on the scale due to being mostly rural. On the other hand, Wayne County (Detroit) would be a very tall spike of medium-bad unemployment, showing up much more than it does now. At the moment much of the midwest looks pretty good, but going in a bit closer you can see that the central counties of the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland metro areas are a level worse than their surrounding counties, while also having the highest populations.