jjakucyk

Yeah, it goes (from north to south) westbound bike lane, westbound vehicle lane, eastbound vehicle lane, eastbound bike lane, permanent parking lane.

It may be hard to believe, but it's the kind of thing that requires looking at the entire system rather than just the performance of a single intersection or block, at which point the benefits are mostly nibbled away. The amount of extra multi-block circulation that vehicles are required to navigate in a one-way grid is the biggest factor. Even if intersections themselves are improved by say 50%, much of that benefit is negated when the effective traffic volume of the whole grid is increased by 20-30%. Also, the benefits of simplified signal phasing and turning movements at intersections is mostly negated by the constant presence of pedestrians. Driving straight on a two-way grid and a one-way grid are equally easy as there are no pedestrian conflicts. However on a one-way grid you're guaranteed to have more turning movements either on your arrival or departure trip, so you're getting stuck by pedestrians more often. Turns on red are mostly forbidden in downtown as well, so you don't get the benefit of making a left turn on red that you might be able to do on a one-way grid. All these things add up to negate much of the benefit. Here's a paper that describes a lot of it: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/circulars/ec019/Ec019_f2.pdf

I can't really see OTR becoming gridlocked by having two-way streets. The increase in capacity you get from one-way streets in the first place is pretty minimal, like 20% at best. It's hurt a lot by all the excess circulating that motorists have to do to get where they're going. It's also dreadfully harmful to street life, which hurts retail, especially retail that loses its visibility from vehicular traffic by being on the wrong corner. I don't really see a need for any one-way streets in OTR at all, except in some cases where the street is simply too narrow or has other geometrical and intersection issues that would be problematic. Frankly I don't think any north/south one-way streets are needed in the entire basin. Most east-west ones could be eliminated too without much difficulty, though 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th are pretty much stuck as-is due to all the highway ramps. 7th and 9th have some issues related to highway ramps too, but they're a bit more manageable.

I suspect that when the Ohio River Trail is completed east of Salem to connect with the isolated section in Anderson Twp. by Riverbend, that there will be little concern for that ramp since cyclists will most likely opt for the path in lieu of Eastern. Some will, but the ones who already ride out that way now probably won't, especially with the trail being on the wrong side of the street for going east.

Those ramps to Salem are very dangerous for cyclists who are riding through on Kellogg. It's good to see some calming and reconfiguring going on here, though it would be nice if something could be done to mitigate the danger of the eastbound ramp. I'm not really sure what could be done for that though.

Yeah, instead the banks and the government does the grafting. All we have to show for it is a crippled economy and highways to nowhere.

Just keep in mind that the building styles in OTR are already "faux" revival styles to begin with. Yes we can make them even more fake now than they were then, but it's just a matter of degree and not a completely different methodology.

That, and it's a humongous road. I really hope the give a bunch of extra sidewalk space to the north side of Reading.

The roundabout that I drew there is definitely too large a radius, which leads to higher circulating speeds that does hurt performance. However, everything Sherman said is right on. The other thing is that they actually do improve traffic flow in aggregate, because traffic flows constantly rather than being stopped and started intermittently. Once you get into multi-lane circles and traffic volumes over a certain threshold (which I do not think are present in this particular area, but I'm not sure) then yes they probably aren't the best solution. However, they are good at dealing with odd geometric problems like there are here. Besides, they're all over Europe and the UK, and in many highly urban areas, so they obviously work in such contexts.

There's some permeable concrete along 12th that looks very gray and borderline unfinished. That's probably what you're seeing along 14th too. They used it around Oakley Square in a few areas as well.

Those transformers along Race are very unfortunate. They're so close to the sidewalk it'll be next to impossible to screen them with anything. It's silly that when you go to the trouble of putting utilities underground they insist on putting boxes in the most visible places. There's a huge underground parking garage there, put them in a mechanical closet out of sight. Heaven forbid Duke might have to go into the garage to access them.

Because, as I said, the attitudes of peers are very important too. If a student wants to learn, and has parents who care, they'll still have trouble if they're bullied for being a nerd, or because their friends insist that hanging out with them or playing football is more important than studying.

Here's some photos of yesterday's Celebration of Nations Parade. It started off a bit slow, but the crowd was great and the excitement really picked up as the various nations showed off their stuff. http://www.jjakucyk.com/wcg/

For your safety in the children's play area: "All adults must be accompanied by a child"

School performance is generally not well correlated with funding. Some of the highest funded school districts (through additional subsidies from the state usually) are terribly performing inner-city districts. The biggest factors for school performance are teachers, parental involvement, and peer relationships. This is why great teachers who go to bad schools to "reach these kids" usually fail. No matter how good they are, and by extension no matter how much money gets poured into the school, it can't overcome students who aren't interested in learning. Their parents never instilled an interest in it and don't follow up with homework or teacher conferences, and peers actively discourage it through bullying or putting higher priority on other activities. Many historically good schools had a pretty quick flip from good to bad when the student body reached a tipping point of anti-learning, with little change in overall funding in that period. It's not a case where one bad apple spoils the bunch, but get enough bad apples and the whole thing goes rotten. When that tipping point gets close, that's when the parents who do care about their kids' education pull out, which accelerates the downward spiral. It's a tough situation of course. Basically the schools are bad because they're bad, not through any particular structural fault. It's not unlike celebrities who are famous for being famous.

At least American Can is near the rest of Northside, even if its connection could be a bit better. The same goes for Spring Grove north of the Western Hills Viaduct. There may not be a whole lot there now, but Colerain Avenue, where it reappears north of Alfred and Straight Streets, was historically the commercial corridor of the neighborhood while Spring Grove was the industrial corridor. They're only a block or two apart, with a good mix of residential, commercial, and industrial uses all within close proximity. So there you could at least get more of a neighborhood/community.

They look very bare-bones, but I guess that's it takes if you're renting for for half the typical rate per square foot around here, and of course the location. I agree that sound transmission can be a real problem with those exposed wood floors. I can't really imagine living in that area myself. You're right next to the Western Hills Viaduct, I-75, and the rail yards, so air pollution and noise is going to be awful. No way you're going to want to open any windows on nice days. It's also right next to a large electrical substation. There's nowhere to walk to either. If I was going for an industrial setting I'd go north on Spring Grove a bit where there's some actual neighborhood. This particular location is right at the north edge of the Queensgate redevelopment, so it's all low-density suburban industrial park to the south. Bleh! I'll say this though. If they can rent all these places out and make it work, then it'll show that you can redevelop pretty much anything in Cincinnati.

Keep in mind that airplanes are just as much, if not more, a product of cheap oil as automobiles. You can't fly a commercial airliner on electricity. Bio-fuels maybe, but it will be extraordinarily expensive when the time comes. I wouldn't be surprised if the large airports become white elephants, with the air traffic that survives being easily handled at facilities like Lunken. So I tend to think that airport discussions are rather moot. Had CVG been built in Butler or Warren counties it probably would've been a good thing, but that ship has sailed. A much more worthwhile public investment at this point would be better rail connections between Cincinnati and Dayton, for both freight and passengers.

As with most decent sized cities, impressive population growth in the inner core neighborhoods doesn't help much when middle and outer neighborhoods (which make up the vast majority of the population) continue to hemorrhage people. Chicago is the perfect example, where impressive gentrification of the north side and near-loop neighborhoods is wiped away by the continuing depopulation of nearly the entire west and south sides of the city. Cincinnati doesn't have such large swaths of nearly empty neighborhoods like Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis do, but it's been hit hard by the gradual eroding away of housing stock and population in nearly every neighborhood. There's thousands of missing buildings all over, especially in neighborhoods like Walnut Hills, North and South Fairmount, Price Hill, Avondale, the East End, and especially along many of the hidden hillside streets and forgotten pocket neighborhoods. Cincinnati was historically so dense, especially closer to downtown and up the hillsides around there, that even with the removal of half or even two thirds of the buildings, there's still a lot left that looks pretty dense.

I wonder if there's been any studies on the total impacts of such 3-legged pedestrian crossings. Yes they may benefit that turning traffic, but could it be that they adversely impact the rest of the intersection not only for pedestrians but by motorists too? I can see that being the case at intersections where the pedestrian signals need to be manually actuated, in which case that pedestrian who has to cross the intersection three times is further delaying every other direction of traffic. It's a situation where saving 10 seconds for 20 cars making one particular movement causes an additional 10 second delay for 10 cars at each of the other three legs of the intersection, making the total problem worse. How this works with the non-actuated signals downtown and with heavy pedestrian flows I'm not sure. Of course this gets extremely complicated when you have left and right turn signals, no turn on red, one-way versus two-way traffic, manual versus automatic pedestrian signals, double turn lanes, etc. Still, I wonder if it might be similar to the situation with one-way street grids, which provide only a very minimal improvement in traffic throughput (something like 10-20%) over a two-way grid. Performance isn't better than that because it necessitates a lot more multi-block long circulation and backtracking for motorists to get where they want to go. This crosswalk situation may cause a similar kind of feedback loop.

Don't forget the Eastern Corridor, the West MLK widening, and of course the widening of I-75 through Hamilton County separate from the Brent Spence Bridge.

wait, what? im sorry im not familiar but this sounds stupid. what is the reason you can't cross both ways? He doesn't mean you can't walk both ways, but there's no crosswalk on the east side of Walnut at 2nd in preference to turning traffic. http://goo.gl/maps/Juzq So if you were walking south along the east side of Walnut towards The Banks and wanted to cross 2nd and stay on the same side of the street, you'd need to navigate the intersection through three signal phases (go west, then south, then east) to get where you want to go.

Ok, but even before the black starts chipping it'll get dirty and streaky from dust and rain, which shows up way more on glossy black than on matte tan or gray or some other more boring color.

I saw one guy with a van painting one of them on 5th Street near P&G. I was a little disappointed that he didn't repaint the already black backplates behind the traffic signals, which in their somewhat faded state stand out as unfinished. I think the black is a bit stark to be perfectly honest. The beige just blends in with the background and doesn't clutter up the streetscape, but now they really stand out. Do you really want traffic signals and overhead lights to stand out? I guess I'm just wary that the glossy black won't age well. Maybe if it was a matte black it would be better, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I assume Cincinnati's would be OKI.