LincolnKennedy

And that beat was funky.

Constant fare inspections seem extremely expensive.

I find it hard to believe that ones employees will never forgive a pay decrease if you tell them it's to keep everyone employed. This guy sounds a real jackass. I wonder if his advice to businesses includes a freeze on hiring consultants like himself. I'm equally curious whether the rather pompously named Institute of Trend Research called the current financial crisis. Since I don't hear "Beaulieu" mentioned in the same breath as "Roubini" or "Taleb", I seriously doubt it.

Having lived on Court Street from June 2001-June 2002, and Walnut between 12th and CP from June 2002-June 2003, I have to say that the Main Street bar district didn't seem to die because of the riots. It was still going strong for two years afterward (I had to listen to the crap that played at Alchemize every night it was open). I think that after some of those meat market chains like Bar Cincinnati and Have a Nice Day closed down, the Main Street "scene" shifted elsewhere, and the supporting bars like Japp's etc. started losing the secondary traffic from those places, and therefore they became less profitable.

I suppose I could have made myself clearer and say that I-75 feels like a free asset. Clearly it isn't free, and clearly the way it seems to be a cheaper investment than public transit is that the cost of the transit vehicles are off the books of the agency that runs the road. But as we both know, these are still costs. I'm saying that because we want people to ride the streetcar, we should make barriers to riding it as few as possible. Also there is opportunity cost in not charging fares- you don't have to charge for fare equipment, people to collect the money and process it, etc. In my opinion, the thing should be funded in a way that promotes its use- that's what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty sure the actual theater was on the site of the parking lot behind the Second Empire building that now houses Venice on Vine. This building was the lobby of the theater.

I don't really get your point. I-75 is essentially a free asset, which I am proposing that the streetcar be marketed that way as well. Nearly everything that 75 passes by through the City is conducive to its use as a major freight and passenger thoroughfare, because geographically the Mill Creek Valley has always been the most convenient route for that sort of thing. So the incentives to focus that area for freight and manufacturing already exist as legacy infrastructure, large land parcels and great highway access. If an infrastructure asset gets built in your neighborhood, and the value of your land increases therefrom, why shouldn't one have to pay in to the community's coffers for that? Farms, homes and businesses get priced out of neighborhoods all the time.

I don't think that's a very good analogy. Everyone pays full price for using the libraries, all the time. Taxes pay for the libraries, and when the library system needs to cut service, they typically try to close the branches that are used the least. Site based pricing makes sense around transit routes.

I think Vine Street makes the most sense, though I am leaning more and more toward fareless transit. A real effort needs to be made to get a change in state law to allow for site based taxation for property along transit routes.

I've been thinking about that and about gentrification, and I think that the key is to make a real concerted effort to get the folks who want to live an urban lifestyle to move to these neighborhoods while the state makes a real effort to keep a certain amount of folks living there in the neighborhood. Break up concentrated poverty by bringing the wealthier in seems like the only way it will be feasible, rather than trying to disperse the poor out.

^This looks like more of the same sort of suburban support development.

^This strikes me as bad news, since I imagine $20 million can only be used for road expansion.

What's the deal with the parking garages? Are they going to be owned by the County (or City) in perpetuity, or is the parking going to be split up between the various buildings? Also, how much behind the-buildings parking is going to be created here? I suspect its going to be more than I hope, which is zero. If we are serious about the Streetcar, we need to make sure parking for apartments in streetcar zones is being eliminated, otherwise we are not simply undercutting the potential power of the Streetcar but we are also insuring that only rich people will be able to afford to live in these areas and we won't really be creating a market that exists nowhere else in the Midwest outside of Chicago (and really a market that exists nowhere else in the country's interior).

Why can't they just move the proposed facility slightly east, to the eastern side of the Mill Creek, instead of immediately south of Lower Price Hill?

^It's also about the only place in DC that hasn't been gentrified (and I don't typically use that term, but it is appropriate for the District). I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the calculation as well.

Homer: Wait, Lisa. You're saying your not going to eat any meat? What about bacon? Lisa: No. Homer: Ham? Lisa: No. Homer: Pork chops? Lisa: Dad, they all come from the same animal! Homer: (chuckling) Yeah, right Lisa. Some wonderful, magical animal.

I don't disagree. It's not ideal procedure. Nevertheless, the anti-pork complaint is typically one that argues that this money is simply a waste. A lot of these things strike me as having real value, and I'm less concerned about spending by the lender of last resort during a major economic downturn, even over 140K for the Jewish Archives, particularly when we are bailing out insurance companies who insured loans at billions upon billions. I haven't heard many people, journalists or congressmen, complaining about the power of various committee chairs. It's typically this conceit that "all government spending is inherently wasteful" simply because it is being done by the government. It's a pretty silly critique that one can't really refute, because those who hold it simply reject any consideration that the premise is absurd. My purchases, and the value of them, didn't change when I ceased being a government employee seven months ago. However my income did, because far two many private investors spent too much money on a particular industry, and then took loans out on their investments in that industry. Pigs might be fat but at least they are intelligent. So give me pork spending over Wall Street's mahi-mahi spending (dumbest fish I can think of) that causes widespread economic downturn.

Jake (or anyone who knows), is the grade up Warsaw Avenue via the Waldvogel Viaduct comparable to Gilbert? It seems so, but I don't know exactly how to check

All those projects seem worthwhile to me, and a lot of them seem completely within the purview of the federal government. I find the money paid out to each Alaskan resident (a state that pays fewer federal taxes than it receives in federal money) which the oil companies there get to deduct from their federal tax liability (further screwing the rest of us) to me much more in the spirit of pork, if not the letter.

Despite what Don Draper says about the power of nostalgia, this thing needs to be presented as progress and improvement, not a trip down memory lane or something we moved down from the zoo. Any insider have any idea where this thing is at?

^I think we are in the midst of a real shift in the economy, where we are going to see more production in the U.S. for the U.S. market than we've seen in the past. Of course, since it will have to be high quality/high cost goods, it will only happen if either 1) U.S. workers start to get paid more; 2) the U.S. government becomes a larger and stable purchaser of capital goods; 3) a combination of both. But Ohio may be poised for a comback. We need to leverage our political relevance.

Funding buses?

Didn't you see the pictures? They're right there^.

Downtown.

These things are fine, but whoever is mobilizing these events should really be planning to go after people who aren't already coming downtown and into Over-the-Rhine for these types of events. Door to door canvassing has the highest rate (about 1 persuasion for every 14 doors knocked) for persuasive voter interaction of any single means of voter contact. What the ballot issue does is change the dynamic- previously, the only people who really needed to be persuaded of the efficacy of the streetcar were a majority of members of Cincinnati City Council. Therefore the streetcar wasn't sold on a grand scale- most people who vote in City elections don't understand the issue, and while they are inclined to go along with their elected representatives, most probably would vote against it if they were in the voting booth. If the charter amendment gets on the ballot, then it must be presented as something the average voter would want. So proponents need to go out and talk to the average voter where they are.