natininja

Wikipedia holds the knowledge you seek.

Yes, and many of them are a one-seat bus ride from regional job centers.

At least this indicates the writer knows something about anything, which is more than I can say about nearly all the other antistreetcar letters printed.

That is the site of a fellow forumer, jjakucyk.

Sometimes when I can't find an article I find it in the NKY section. Try adding NKY to the URL.

Looks like toothless BS to me. "Improvement to the design and presentation of local streets, making Reading Road into a larger boulevard and creating a regional gateway at the intersection of Liberty and Reading and a neighborhood gateway at the intersection of Pendleton and Reading." And that sounds like suburbanization of the area. What a joke.

I don't remember super well, but I think the delay to NYC was roughly 2 hours. The delay to Cincy was maybe half an hour more because we hit a car that slid on ice into an on-grade crossing near Charleston. (No one was hurt but it took seemingly forever.) KJP is right about the view being awesome. I went in the winter so the daylight hours were short. Summer would be much better. For as long as there was daylight, the time flew. Once it got dark, I just wanted to GET THERE! (I'm not good at sleeping in odd places.) The legroom is nice, and you can get up and walk around, go to the dining car, etc., so it's way more comfortable than a plane or bus. That being said, traveling for such a long time is draining. If you do decide on a long trip, I really really encourage you to get a sleeper car if you can afford it. That would make the trip totally painless. Though they are pricey! If you could travel with someone and split the cost, that might make it more affordable. I am glad I had the experience, though I would not really look forward to doing it again without a sleeper. Oh, and since it's such a long trip, I'd suggest making it a week trip if you go to DC or NYC. Otherwise you will be completely trained out, and feel like all you did the whole weekend was sit on a damn train.

What's most egregious is defining Casey as "streetcar supporter" in the title. Not an attorney, not a city resident, not a local journalist, but "streetcar supporter". Frankly, I expect better from the Courier. I am disappointed. I was actually considering getting a subscription with them using the Urban Cincy discount, but this type of trash is exactly what made me give up on the Enquirer.

Springfield should have been the capital! It's not too late!

^ Was one of them you? :wink2:

I took the Cardinal to NYC last year. Kind of a rough trip, due to length and delay. Only go to DC if you plan to get a sleeper car. I took my folding bike, in a bag I put in the carry-on rack above my seat. You cannot bring a full size bike on the cardinal, unless maybe if you box it. Then probably only if you're traveling to a station which has baggage service -- check the website for bike and luggage rules. There is no time to get off the train at stops, except Indy, where the train stops on the way to Chicago for a couple hours in order to make the train times more reasonable for riders originating in Indy. This is why it takes so long to go to Chicago. (The train in the other direction may be faster, if it doesn't have the layover.) Consider traveling in segments and stopping in a couple different places ultimately staying a few days in DC, NYC, or Chicago. Then splurge on a sleeper for the long ride home.

One of the very best things about recent development downtown is the embracement of underground parking. Unfortunately, it doesn't come cheap! But it does pave the way for creating a downtown where all off-street parking is underground, which would be amazing! Get those cars out of sight, out of mind, and out of the way. I don't know of any other similarly sized American city which is embracing this solution to such a large degree, though that doesn't mean there aren't any. I guess Portland might be but I'm not familiar enough to know. Maybe they're mostly abandoning downtown parking lots and structures all together, which would be even better, but obviously isn't feasible here and now.

That's why we should be converting some of the vacant office space into apartments and condos. Especially some of the older, more unique buildings, like the old Enquirer building. And I'd much rather see 4-story infill on all of the downtown parking lots than one giant 25-story apartment/condo tower. Good points. I know I just posted about building a residential tower in the Banks thread, and as Atlas said, there's something to be said about the appeal of new construction. But there is quite a bit of vacant office space which is ripe for conversion. And as you point out, it would be much faster to get rid of all those pesky surface lots with lower buildings, which can also appeal to those who prefer new construction.

Could this be the plan with the porno x-rays and junk-grabbing techniques? Readying the job to be "reasonably pleasant" for 18 & 19 year olds with raging hormones?

^^ From the article: "On Wednesday, The Banks’ first 300 apartments, known as Current at The Banks, reached 100 percent occupancy." :clap: :clap: :clap: Someone needs to build a huge f@$king residential tower downtown to soak up all this excess demand. The Banks and OTR renovations aren't cutting it.

LOL!

Not sure why they talk about Cincinnati (10), Buffalo (7), and Austin (9) at the start of the article...they're not even in the "top 5 unhappiest". (Dayton is #2.) I guess because they are more recognizable cities? Milwaukee is #3, so maybe it's a compliment they think Cincy is more important to mention? I thought everything was supposed to be peachy in Austin. Cleveland is 22, Springfield is 20. Columbus (32) and Akron (46) make the happiest list. http://www.careerbliss.com/happiest-and-unhappiest-cities-16/

Do you know if putting a rack for, say, 10 bikes on the sidewalk in front of a store would subtract 5 car spaces under the proposed zoning amendment? Assuming it's kosher to put the rack there. (Which maybe is never the case? Except I know there are some, e.g. in front of the coffee shop on Central Pkwy.) Also, why the special stipulation for Downtown Development districts? Because of a perceived lack of (car) parking? If developers are smart, they will see this as a great loophole in parking requirements. It's pretty easy and cheap to squeak in a few bike parking spots, while it's expensive and often difficult to fit in car spaces (plus the required driveway space to access them, etc.). This is a very good thing! Parking requirements are silly -- businesses, developers and landlords can build the number of spaces they foresee a need for, motivated by the desire for customers/buyers/renters. While I'd like to see the parking requirements abolished outright, this amendment both makes the space requirement situation better and supports the bike-friendliness of the city. (With no cost to the city! Win!)

I support it having its own thread. It's on topic, but it's repetitive and detracts from the flow of conversation in here. Just my 2c.

Doesn't the turnpike extend beyond NEO?

The retail space is almost full...with no retail!

Here's the info straight from ODOT. I assume this is public info, so I'll post in its entirety. ODOT Outlines Looming Financial Crisis COLUMBUS (Tuesday, January 17, 2012) – After a year of discussing the looming transportation financial crisis facing Ohio, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) today released funding projections that could result in pushing back by decades some of the state’s largest construction projects. ODOT staff made the recommendations during a presentation to the Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC), a bi-partisan group responsible for approving funding for the State’s largest transportation projects. “Unfortunately, this is Ohio’s new reality. For far too long, previous administrations have added more and more to the list of TRAC projects knowing that there were more projects than funds available,” said ODOT Director and TRAC Chairman Jerry Wray. “Their poor planning has put us in the position of making the tough decisions and delivering the bad news to many communities throughout the state that there simply is not enough money to fund their projects.” The TRAC is wrapping up a year-long process of receiving and reviewing applications for transportation funding projects throughout the state. The TRAC received 72 applications in 2011 for new transportation projects totaling nearly $10 billion. Planning, design and construction of various phases of additional projects totaling $2 billion is already underway. However, ODOT only has roughly $100 million per year to spend on new construction. ODOT is funded completely with state and federal motor fuel tax and has seen that revenue shrink over the past several years. As vehicles become more fuel efficient and fuel consumption decreases, so does the amount of revenue generated to pay for Ohio’s infrastructure and create jobs. “We know transportation is the lifeblood of Ohio’s economy and we cannot sit back and do nothing about this dire situation,” said Wray. “We are going to be looking at new and innovative ways to reduce costs and generate additional transportation funding.” The TRAC now faces the daunting task of rejecting a portion of the applications for new funding, while ODOT must consider innovative or alternative funding sources to pay for the state’s growing infrastructure. The nine-member Transportation Review Advisory Council was established by the Ohio Revised Code in 1997 and provides guidance for developing a project selection process for ODOT’s largest investments of more than $12 million. For the full list please visit: http://www.dot.state.oh.us/trac/TRAC%20List/Recommended-DRAFT-TRAC-List-1-17-11.pdf ### For more information, contact: Steve Faulkner, ODOT Press Secretary, at 614-644-7101, ​ [END] My italics. A day of reckoning of sorts, but notice the state's need for "growing infrastructure" is assumed tautological. Meanwhile, the state's population and economy are growing at a sluggish pace. Until we take a critical view of the need for new projects, based primarily on ROI and secondarily on livability/sustainability metrics, this problem won't be fixed. Hopefully whatever solutions they come up with will bake assessments of these metrics into future policy. Using tolls and a VMT tax, for example, to solve the identified revenue problem, would push users to make decisions which will reflect the economic usefulness of their trips (number and length) and the particular roads they use for them.

I would agree except in the case where the two people are denied the possibility of entering a "legal agreement" due to (e.g.) their genders. Then you run into the problem where it's impossible to say whether the people would enter a legal contract were that option available, so you have to decide whether it's more fair to a) deny benefits to some who are deserving, or b) give benefits to some who are not deserving. Then, absent data regarding the proportion of people who will take unfair advantage of the system, there's little more to go on than your moral-emotional reaction to the discriminatory nature of the status quo. How much do you care that some people may be facing financial-medical-health emergencies simply because their life partner who works for the city is the same gender as they are rather than the opposite gender? If you don't really care about that, then there's no reason to run the risk of cheaters milking the system, regardless of frequency or rarity. If you do see an inherent injustice, then righting that wrong is probably less important than a few people pretending to be in a more serious relationship than they're really in. UC has a similar rule for faculty & staff, and I know an unmarried (straight) couple who are registered as domestic partners. I doubt it is a huge problem, but clearly there are some people taking advantage. The easiest way to make everything kosher would be to legalize same-sex marriage in Ohio. Voila -- no one's deprived of their benefits, no one's cheating to obtain them.

^ Building passenger railroads used to be profitable, so companies would bankroll them. Nowadays they have to compete with roads and airlines which are afforded many more subsidies than rail. If airlines and roads were funded by user fees, passenger rail would be more competitive and you would likely see private companies building lines. Another issue is that the government has the power of eminent domain (hence how new highways get built). Were a private entity to want to build a railroad, they'd have to acquire all necessary land without the advantage of being able to take it by force.

^ Broken link. Edit: Huh, now it worked. :? Good news! This could allow a drastic reduction in space dedicated to parking. Especially if spaces on the sidewalk can count.