bike756

Well, this is a rather tremendous surprise, given their earlier reaction... From the limited metadata, it looks like the 'yearly' file is about worthless (there's better free data for those things already), but the 'quarterly' might be quite good. It's still downloading for me... Jskinner: To your question about CAD files, I don't see any mentioned in the metadata. If they have any, they don't seem to be sharing them yet.

For me it's got to be Carew Tower. It's far and away the most elegant(and visible) tower in the city and clearly, right in the center of everything :-) It just IS Cincinnati. At least in my romantic, nostalgic mind. I love Deco so much...

Update: I went ahead and sent them an email and got a response shortly thereafter requesting $600.00 for the three files I requested. I responded with my understanding of the law and we'll see how things progress from here. Below is the email exchange. It reads from bottom to top:

Yep yep! I shop there all the time. Most of the people in there are poor and black; of course the veggie section is heavy on collard greens(Which I am most certainly not complaining about ;-)) and the alcohol light on premium beer. They're serving the people who actually live in OTR quite well and the newcomers aren't numerous enough yet to warrant their expensive cheeses. I'll never understand people who live in Over-the-Rhine and drive (to Kroger or anywhere else). You wonder why they aren't stocking your favourite things? It's because you aren't actually in the store! Indeed, if you have a car and are so ready to hop in it, you're barely even really living in the neighborhood. The city sure, but hardly the neighborhood. Why should Kroger consider the desires of such fickle people when there is a more captive audience?

I'd be happy to host a snapshot of everything on my own server. Downloads wouldn't be that huge since the data would be stale enough that municipalities wouldn't use it. Still, even if it was as much as a year out of date it could be enormously useful to the lay user. Gigabytes are sooo easy to move these days ;-) EDIT: As for actually getting it, their offices are a few blocks from my apt. I could walk in and just physically pick up data(which I have actually done before) with a portable drive.

I recall having just recently(within the last couple of months) seen the results of a whole DAAP architecture studio devoted to design concepts for an urban grocery in Cincinnati....not sure if that was at all related to the Kroger co-op position but it would probably have happened at around the same time. Most of the designs were pretty out-there as most architecture concepts, at least those done by students, inevitably end up being. I'll bet that some Kroger execs got a few smiles out of the student's work but that none of it was (or at least seemed to be) practical or business-minded enough to warrant serious attention.

This makes me hate ESRI even more than I already did. *sigh* Still, this should be a good sign for the CAGIS data which is mostly stored in shapefiles. That file type, while created by ESRI originally, is (I'm pretty sure) now an open standard with plenty of opensource conversion tools even if it's not.

Please do find that case if you can! I heard something vague from a friend about a recent court case and that is probably what he was talking about. RE licenses: It would seem like if the data is subject to the sunshine laws then it's in the public domain. A journalist certainly couldn't be held back by a 'license' or 'terms of use' from publishing something incriminating if it was legally obtained...I assume!

The Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System (CAGIS), for those of you who might not know, is an office jointly funded by the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County that collects and maintains a huge amount of geospatial data for use by public agencies within Hamilton County. I used to have access to their data as a planning student at DAAP(which apparently pays an annual subscription fee to CAGIS or something like that). It's generally really accurate, complete and useful data, but it's not available to the general public or at least not the general public that doesn't have a few thousand dollars to throw around each year. It's also presumably only available even then under a restrictive agreement that prevents someone who's purchased the data from sharing it or publishing derivative products. I once hosted a copy of a few of their files on my own server and was asked by the director of CAGIS to remove the files lest DAAP lose their access. I complied uneasily at the time but my unease has recently been nagging me. Is it legal for a public agency to keep it's data secret or hidden behind huge fees? This data is publicly funded and put to a clear public administrative purpose. It seems to me from my admittedly quick reading of the overview of Ohio sunshine laws on the attorney general's website: http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Legal/Sunshine-Laws ...that the data ought then, with perhaps a few small exceptions for private information, to be in the public domain or available on request for any purpose. Does anyone know a legal reason why the data shouldn't be public or at least available in full at the specific request of the public? It would not be technically or logistically difficult to share all or some of the data they collect. I'd like to make a formal request for data which I would then share publicly but I want to do my homework first so CAGIS can't give me the run-around. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Well, I don't know what to say...those are surely different urban planners from the ones I talk to regularly.

I edited my reply, actually was going to before I saw yours, to say "doesn't quite make sense". I really don't want to say it's entirely silly. But where are they? I think there are a lot of us. I think we're mostly keeping quiet for pragmatic reasons(ie, we actually like transit a lot and don't want to get down on something people are excited about for once) and because we realize it's past the point of no return politically. Also, like I said, or rather corrected later, it's not entirely silly, just substantially less than ideal, given a range of other similarly possible transit options. It's certainly not a 'bad' plan by any stretch. The consensus that I personally feel from the planners I know is, if I may summarize it so succinctly: "It's not ideal, but oh well. People are excited about it."

That's actually a really good point about the timeline developers will need to justify a project. I really hadn't thought of that before. Though I will point out that while the rails might not be likely to go anywhere in the next 30 years, it not unlikely that service could be cut to unreasonably low frequencies or short operating hours due to low ridership, political unpopularity, or "tight budgets". But then perhaps the perception of proximity would still be enough to attract tenants. If we accept that argument though, what does it say about our ambitions for the neighborhood in 30+ years? Are we hoping for (relatively)disposable development?I guess in my best case scenario, by then the increased density of the Downtown area(helped in part by the streetcar) could justify a more meaningful transit project with a different alignment, maybe even a subway! I could definitely see this making more sense if something like that were part of a longer game plan. Regarding the bikeability: Except that it's tracks will be a danger to cyclists, particularly when wet. Perhaps danger is a strong word, but steel tracks are a lot harder to maneuver around than...well not steel tracks. It's hard enough crossing freight tracks at a 45 degree angle that I don't even want to think about changing lanes across parallel tracks at 20mph on main st. But yeah, the lack of need for racks will be an improvement for those going up Vine.

Hey Nate, it's AJ! Welcome to UrbanOhio! I'm glad you brought this debate here because there are plenty of people who are quite knowledgeable and love to debate the project. I love you analysis of the project, but while I agree that Vine Street would've been a better option it's simply too late to change that. And while it's true that buses and streetcar are essentially the same conveyance of tansportation, the general public still makes that distinction HUGE. Call it naive or inexplicable, but it's been proven time and again. We're just capitalizing on that demand. Howdy AJ. Thanks! :-) Is that ethical though? I mean, I'll be the last to call myself a pragmatist(and I've literally been exploring idealist philosophy lately), but can we morally bank on a scheme that doesn't make as much sense as some other alternative just because it's popular? I say "we" here as in the polis, it's government and us, it's attentive citizens. Streetcars are more popular there's no doubt, but to me that doesn't make logical sense, only emotional sense. But then maybe I only mean "we" as in us urban planners(which narrows the group quite a bit!). Maybe I'm feeling a bit like this thing has gone off the tracks because the planners, or perhaps merely the politicians sometimes wrapped in the garments of planning, have been advancing pragmatic arguments alone, when I feel like that's a job mainly for populists and politicians. It's the job of planners to say that a streetcar doesn't (edit: That was a bit strong: quite, "doesn't quite make" )make logical sense here, and for politicians if they feel it necessary to over-rule them. I think I might be feeling angsty because I think everyone's given in to the pragmatic argument to the extent that few other developed arguments are heard(except silly or self-interested ones that come from the suburbs). I totally hear you, but I'm cringing a bit over the lack of more diverse debate. It just feels somehow...too shallow a base for what could be such an important project. -Nate

It's my position that the Cincinnati Streetcar is more of a Symbol than a transportation improvement. I actually spent two solid days writing the post at the link below. Do please read it before responding since my position is a lot more complex than the slightly intriguing statement that is this thread's title. http://cincymap.org/blog/the-streetcar-4-symbolic-transit/ I'd love to start a good discussion here. I'm dying to be proven wrong! Or at least to come to a new understanding of how this project won't put Cincinnati's transit in a slightly pathetic light for the next couple of decades. Best, Nate P.S. Mods, I put this here rather than in the streetcar thread because it's not news. I think it's time we did some serious re-analysis of the project, and not the kind that's fueled by the basic, low-level argument that the two ballot initiatives instigated. Edit: Or merely dabbling in the details of implementation.

Update! So far I have raised $2,280 for printing costs from 118 individual donors! This is enough for over 30,000 maps. They will be 11"x8.5" and I haven't quite figured out the folding yet. I'm excited to say that this project is moving forward in a big way! The map has developed quite a lot since my last post here. Please take a look at the links below and let me know where I have gone awry :) Link to the front side: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cincinnati_Bus_Diagram_2011.png Link to the back side: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cincinnati_Bus_Diagram_2011_Back.png Please not that the map is not accurate as of this posting, but reflects service changes to SORTA's system.

Agreed. I hate the term "mass transit". Possible better alternatives: Public transit Public transportation Shared-vehicle transportation Fixed-route transportation ALL transportation (including cars) in the US is publicly funded. Let's stop acting like only buses and trains get/need subsidies! Alternate less car-friendly wording for roads/cars: Car-only public roads mass transportation-it certainly is right now more than buses congestion crap the government makes us pay for.

Good suggestions! I haven't touched the map in a week or so-I've been too busy getting the fundraising together, but I'm looking forward to making some changes. First to be added: A zone line. I started to talk about different fares on the back, but I don't think that quite cuts it. Major lines through Downtown/OTR, perhaps with stops of other lines where they coincide. I'm still totally undecided on icons both on the front and back. I'm no graphic designer, but I know consistency is important, which probably means I need to design them all myself-or find someone who is good at this. Need to keep working on this part. Keep the suggestions coming! And please consider donating to the printing costs and forwarding the link below to friends! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1057319855/a-frequent-transit-guide-for-cincinnati

Hi everybody, I'm looking for some advice on a diagram I'm making of Cincinnati's frequent transit lines. This is to be a printed map that will fold up to about 3.5" x 3.5". I plan on printing a lot of these when it's ready and distributing them around the city, so it's important that the map isn't misleading. Link to the front side: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cincinnati_Bus_Diagram_2011.png The front is pretty well developed now, but I know I don't know the area as well as some, so neighbourhoods may be missing or misshaped. Link to the back side: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cincinnati_Bus_Diagram_2011_Back.png This side is really still be developed from the ground up. What needs to be included back here? Is this a good start? Your help is appreciated!! Best, Nate