natininja

A parking garage with a Domino's Pizza.

This is one of the reasons I've been advocating using eminent domain and sending the streetcar through there. It would take at least part of the opportunity to f*** things up away from the people who are bound to do just that. This is a very important site for setting the tone for development in Uptown and the city in general, and it's in the public's interest to take some control of the site's direction.

I think the media, city council (Kevin Flynn especially, since this is his baby), and the people working on the charter update have done a horrible job with keeping the public up to date on what they're actually doing. Unless that changes soon, I would personally vote against it. Too much opportunity for sleights-of-hand.

It's going to be the SOS. But an enormous parking lot will still offer opportunities for development, and a tunnel in the vein of John Schneider's proposal could still make a transit node possible at that location. Technically, so could eminent domain, but it's doubtful if neighborhood leaders prefer the plan that was signed.

^ When I read that quote, I think it is a recognition of the recent "me too" cries from the west side. It's meant for people to imagine Winburn wants to put stuff in their neighborhood. More "Downtown/OTR vs. Neighborhoods" rhetoric, but phrased cryptically so people can interpret it as they like/hear what they want to hear.

"Effective through January 12, 2015" I was thinking, "Oh, ouch!" Then I realized that's not that long. 3 months.

Just providing a transit ROW from Vine to Short Vine makes it worthwhile. If we value connectivity, we should support this. It can also serve as a bus lane and (if it's made wide enough) a bike/ped route. We owe it to Uptown to activate Short Vine in this manner.

thebillshark, when I say 'hub-and-spoke' I am referring to a city's transit system as a whole. The hub is usually Downtown, and to get across town you have to make a transfer at the hub (e.g. many/most cross town trips in Cincinnati require a transfer at government square). Cincinnati has been drifting away from that, and your plan would further get away from that, simply by virtue of not being based at government square. So in my terminology, a hub-and-spoke system could be considered a nodal system with just one node. My contention is we should have many nodes, and I see your system adding one in addition to the existing one at Government Square. That's progress. Putting one at Xavier, where several light rail lines could branch, would also be smart. We should identify nodes around the city that can serve as major (and minor) transfer points where connections can be made easily, so we can blanket the city with fast and frequent transit with minimal transfers.

One thing I don't like about Jarrett Walker's ideas, at least what I am familiar with, is he seems to assume every city can accommodate a grid. Which is obviously not true for Cincinnati. Rather than a grid format (which is impossible), I believe Cincinnati should focus on nodal transit, stringing together NBDs. Which is one of the reasons I think having an Uptown node at University Plaza (and a high-frequency trunk from Short Vine to Downtown) is a good idea. The hub-and-spoke system is a proven bad idea, but having some strong north-south and strong east-west trunks which hit nodes where transfers between many lines are easy is a Cincy-sensitive way of implementing the benefits of the grid. I also think we should aim to keep our streetcar plans as lightrail-like as possible, and make them retrofitable to be faster, with greater capacity, and with dedicated ROW. Edit: Another thing I don't like about Jarrett Walker's ideas is that he doesn't display much understanding of the political landscape of most American cities. We wanted to pass Metro Moves, right? Which is something he probably would have approved of. But we couldn't. So we started implementing a piece of it, the streetcar, hoping it could eventually all get done. But he doesn't like that -- even though it might be the best way to get to what he does like (popular support for more frequency and coverage).

Is there a target date for completion?

^ I've heard it called the Chivas Regal Effect. Supposedly sales of Chivas Regal took off when the price was lifted to give the perception of a premium brand.

Streetcar supporters should be negotiating with swing votes on council instead of Cranley, who also behaves like a whining child. Figure out a plan that gets the support of Murray and/or Flynn. Or even Winburn.

You have a point here in the sense that some folks always seem to have that much money to drop at the bar no matter how broke they are... And that's in one night, versus once a month.

"intended to centralize government power" Anarchists...centralize government power... No. There is a HUGE difference between "Smash the state!" and "Amass government power!"

^ How is that a statement of support for the streetcar?

They probably consider themselves anarchists, which is definitely as far as you can get from fascist.

^ It sounds like the "pizza theater" is just the kitchen being open (behind glass) to people watching their pizza being made. I guess you get to see what Domino's frozen "crust" looks like before it turns into soggy cardboard.

Is that a play on a pop song?

^ Remember the streetcar goes south of Fifth Street, which almost no Metro bus routes do. Altering the bus routes to offer the same frequency and capacity to the Banks as the streetcar would surely be very expensive.

I didn't do it! (Sorry. I did do it.) Finally, the Moerlein Brewery is on Streetview.

I was pessimistic about this game before the death of Kennedy-Palmore. Now I will be surprised if the score is even close. It's a shame these teams couldn't face each other in a year when both are stronger.

Panda Bear was (is?) a member of one of the biggest acts in indie rock in the mid-aughties (i.e. when hipsterism was actually still a thing), Animal Collective.

Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest there weren't other factors contributing to slowness. But sitting in the station for an hour (for some reason I thought it was 2 hours, but you would know better) is, well, just a time vortex. I've only taken the Cardinal to the east coast. If I did it again, I'd want to splurge on a sleeper car. It's just too long. But it's infinitely better than Greyhound, which takes about the same amount of time.

That's a nice graphic, though the angle of the sun on the sign and the angle of the sun on the bus (as indicated by shadows) are inconsistent.

Just clicked around for a minute, but it looks like they covered Over-the-Rhine much better than in the past. There were a lot of streets they never hit before. Edit: Wow, Vine Street looks so different even from the last time I was there. Incredible. While the Mercer Commons buildings on Vine are kind of ugly, they look better in context than in isolation.