cincybearcat

I believe US and Delta are doing a slot swap at LGA & DCA. Delta is taking over LGA from US and vice versa. Hence, I believe Delta will reduce service from CVG-DCA and possibly increase CVG-LGA.

I believe the plan is still have the northern OTR loop go on Henry St., not McMicken which all other maps show. Read my posts from last summer on reasons for that change. I believe Elder and Green are the streets that will be used to tie into the Uptown Spur. There is a good collection of engineers/project managers that have been working on this since Spring '09. Most of the work I was apart of will start this fall with utility relocations. Michael Moore, City Engineering, would be a good person to contact or Fred Craig at Parsons Brinckerhoff.

"21. New-ish streetscaping along Central Parkway that should have taken out an additional lane of traffic to make the median green space even larger." Interesting you mentioned this, as I believe it is currently being looked into by the City transportation department. Came up during streetcar meetings and their plan to relocate the water main located under Central Parkway (in the subway) to streets to the south. I believe they are looking at taking Central Parkway down to 2-lanes each direction.

Thus, killing any competition? CVG will be fine, I believe new carriers will be welcomed once the economy has recovered.

6.5 Hrs between Cincinnati and Cleveland! Wow, I support this project, but holy cow, this will not be a good alternative to driving. This needs move looking into, see if they can cut down on the travel time. Why would they not use the Transit Center for this? Plenty of parking would be available, streetcar above, right in downtown, and they would only have to put down a little track from the park along Pete Rose to the Transit Center. Seems like a station down at Montgomery Inn would be too far from everything. Plus all the issues with parking and it is doubtful the park system would give up land to a station, further reducing parking.

The Lockland and Arlington Heights projects are stimulus money projects for the most part. I believe the bridge is that wide in order to maintain 3 (skinny) lanes of traffic with no shoulders. So 2 sets of 3 lanes = 4 travel lanes with 2 shoulders. No doubt this will play into the future widening of 75.

In addition to traffic concerns on Findlay, there is a large 138kV buried transmission cable that runs from Charles sub. to Rochelle Sub along Findlay. This also may play a part in the future route up to UC. Luckily the line is under the side walk along Findlay and Vine. Again, the maintenance facility could play in nicely with the Henry St. route. Alot of work to do yet, lots of issues with Freedom Way, Walnut and Main bridges, grade from 3rd to 4th along Walnut and Main, car and track selection, utility relocations. But work is proceeding at a nice pace, regardless of the ballot issue.

All: Look for a potential change in the streetcar route. Looks like the northern loop will use Henry St. instead of McMicken because: 1) Turn from Elm to McMicken is too sharp, would have to take the building on the corner down. The city is trying to avoid any right of way purchases. 2) Maintenance building locations better around Henry. Nothing is set in stone, however, I am very close with the design of the project presently because of employment. I will let you know as it progresses.

Isn't the Amtrak report due out this month?

^Not sure that makes any sense? Hardly the contractors fault that this happened. Also, I heard some rumors from Sycamore Twp. that there are a couple options under cosideration, one includes tearing down the office portion and capping the project, the other is stop where it is at and just create a shell. Not sure what this would look like.

More deconstruction will happen on Jefferson as the Rochelle Substation will be expanded. Rochelle St. is approved for vacation west of the power plant. I think around 4 buildings will be taken down.

Does anyone find it odd that the first Keystone building has that green lighting on the HVAC enclosure on the roof? I know its a "Green" (puke) LEED certified building, but come on, it looks tacky.

Well no answer in that response and $2.1m seems a bit high for new sidewalks to me. Am I missing something?

I got to ride one of the new buses on Monday night, I believe it was route 18. "Very Nice!" The bus actually smelled awesome, can't say that often! Seats had more space between them and the back door is now automatic, so it was a little testy for those used to slamming against the old ones.

The article above makes me laugh. All the government/environmental action toward larger, emission controlled power plants and people are installing coal furnaces in their homes. Ha ha, good luck capturing the particulates from those. We're going backward here because the environmentalist argument is backward. In the last 20 years, a minimal amount of coal, baseload plants were built. In fact, none have been built in Ohio, Kentucky or Indiana. Now, gas turbine plants were built in large number because gas was available and due the emerging markets for electricity, they made much more sense economically. Simply fire up a turbine with electricity was needed and then turn it off. So my question is, what is more logical, better control and acceptance of larger coal plants or uncontrolled small "stoves/cars" piping out pollution?

Is anyone else a little disappointed in the streetscape project? Or was all that work just for new sidewalks?

I would suggest to the guys, check out the Club Room brand of Macy's. No, its not top end, but for college/young professionals, I find their clothing to be great. I am not a big shopper, but I find myself going to Macy's more than Dillard's vs. a couple of years ago. The Dillard's at Tri-County is probably the best one around, but why not support the mothership based in our own city? Also, Sears is carrying Land's End, which has excellent quality at a good price.

The first picture is of Miami Fort, a Duke Energy plant. It is included in the article posted above. It has the most recent emissions technologies installed. 3 units, 6,7, and 8 are operational. 7 and 8 are the two big horses with SCR and FGD. The plant has one large and several banks of cooling towers to lower the temperature of the water before putting it back in the Ohio. Usually this is not needed, but Tanners Creek(the next plant) is just down the river, so its inlet water temperature was too high after additions to Miami Fort. So, when looking at a power plant, the more "white"/cloud looking exhaust the better. This is either evaporating water from the cooling towers or from the FGD process. FGD uses lime/limestone and water to create a slurry to remove sulfur. Its the plants without large "clouds" of water vapor you should worry about. This picture must be a little old because it is showing the new stacks, but they are not functional. 7 and 8 fired back up last summer. The second picture is Tanners Creek, an AEP plant. This is a much smaller plant. I am not sure of the emission controls, but in 2003, a new natural gas plant opened in front of Tanners, which has seen plenty of use through MISO. Natural gas is very clean and has a larger part in overall generation around Cincinnati.

I just listened to the podcast of the debate and really enjoyed listening to both sides of the issue. Thank you Explore Cincinnati for the audio. As far as the debate went, both speakers did a good job, each could have listened to the questions a bit more closely and expanded on their answers. Jason seemed to get a bit fired up and repetitive, John could have done a better job disputing some of the "facts" given in Jason's argument. I see both sides of the argument, however, on the issue of environmental impact, a rail-based, electric streetcar wins over a biodiesel trolley simply because of economies of scale. Duke Energy/Cinergy has recently spent several hundred million dollars to add SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) and FGD (Flue Gas Desulfurization) to local/regional coal power plants. http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/air-quality/duke-energy-actions.asp This type of control can never be achieved with millions of diesel fueled vehicles, you can only change the fuel. The technologies of carbon capture as also following the route of economies of scale because there is a much larger "bang for the buck" (to quote Jason) to capture emissions from power plants than individual automobiles. That being said, most of Jason's debate focused on the environmental impact of coal, which is huge, but vital to providing affordable and reliant electricity to Cincinnati. Unlike California, Ohio and Cincinnati are trying to expand their economies, and nothing would hurt us more than to increase the total cost of business in the region. That is why the future will play heavily on electricity production/storage/usage because it will allow for larger power plants with better control of emissions vs. the current situation of millions of tiny, dirty power plants on the road today. Also, Jason mentioned that the trolley would be better because it would allow for change in habit/newness of development. This is exactly the opposite of what we want for a healthy mixed development. The streetcar provides the permanent needs to have a business district last for a long time. Many commercial districts have died in the past/present because a newer one was built a few exits to the north. With the rail line, its not going anywhere and it is unlikely that development would more further out on the rail line.

I would like to ask these representatives how the interstate system got built in the first place, private investment? So, in a fair market place, road and rail would both compete for the customers dollars. When you simply spend billions on interstates, how would that be any different if we built a nationwide high-speed rail network? How can rail compete in a market where one product is controlled and the other is expected not to be? In a free market (which we seem to be forgetting) for the customer: Road: Purchase of a vehicle $$$, maintenance of vehicle $-$$, toll/maintenance fee(all roads, not just freeways) $-$$ Rail:Purchase of a ticket $-$$ I would argue, which the new ODOT head seems to do (YA!), that in our current system, all transit is subsidized, except for the turnpike(?). Am I alone on this concept?

^ You took the words right out of my mouth. There are simply to many open store fronts around CBD to have stores hidden inside the Carew. I would think they could do a great job with renovating the space into something different.

Man, have the costs of this project ballooned! He is what should have been done and has built in cost controls: 1) Maintain current lane configuration, general purpose lanes: 4 south I-74/3 north I-74. 2) Upgrade safety by widening shoulders, adding distance to merge lanes and reconfigure interchanges. 3) Establish a toll authority. 4) Using money from the state and bonds from the toll authority, acquire ROW to provide HOT lanes. HOT lanes would be intermost lanes, separated from mainline with barrier. 5) Establish BRT/Express Bus lines. By doing this, you would not promote increased SOV driving as will happen with an additional general purpose lane. Also, this would setup for easier tolling of the new bridge. South of Western Hills, provide 'Open Road' tolling for those with the transponders and a single toll facility on the Ohio side of the river for north and southbound traffic. Or, if funds are secured, simply continue the HOT lanes into NKY. If so many cities are going this route, it clearly shows this is the direction freeway management.

http://www.neyer1.com/display_building.php?id=57 The site plan has changed drastically since I last checked the Neyer website. Total redesign of the building. The site plan includes the FBI office. I am not sure what will happen with the neighborhood behind all of this.

Also, a major Fortune 500 company is to relocate to downtown Cincinnati! The stimulus plan will cover the $2 billion needed to build a comprehensive light rail system! City of Cincinnati and West Chester Township create joint partnership, City Hall to move to Emerald City complex at Union Centre! Northern Kentucky University over takes the University of Cincinnati as regions top university, NKU students quote "We be smarter than those ghetto hoodlums!" I will take these announcements as seriously as the one about this airline. I guess we will find out at the end of the week. There is possible cut backs at ATL do to costs of a new contract. http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090120/BIZ/901200309/1076/rss01 So, CVG may be able to position itself for some gains here. This is the main reason why I will edit posts instead of adding length to the thread. While YtownNewsandViews is an established member, this thread should be closed and reopened when an actual announcement is made. Otherwise, my post is no different, because I could easily say I have the inside tip on all that was typed.

I hope for more competition in the uptown hotel market. The Marriott is able to mark up and the Manor needs to clean up, it is rather dumpy. The Hampton Inn and Hilton Garden Inn would be great additions.