Robuu

Enquirer's recipe for steak tartare: 1) Dollar figure greater than the median income 2) Streetcar 3) Intentional lack of context

OMG, it seems the TRAFFIC STUDY is about to be revealed. Traffic study: shorter green lights, ride-share zones, streetcar signals, more parking meters Published 9:16 a.m. ET March 19, 2019 Among the recommendations: Retime traffic lights so vehicles get a shorter green light and pedestrians get a longer light. Vehicles would lose four to five seconds while pedestrians would gain the same. Set designated pickup/dropoff zones for taxis, Uber and Lyft cars. Give the streetcar signal priority at four intersections. That would cost about $80,000 – largely for new hardware – and would require city council approval. Add more parking meters Downtown, including some pay-by -cell-only zones for a pilot program. That would also require council approval. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/03/19/cincinnati-traffic-study-shorter-green-lights-ride-share-zones-streetcar-signals-more-parking-meters/3210128002/ Funny how only the cost of the streetcar-related item is reported.

One might argue that air gaps over a highway have a greater deadening effect than surface parking lots.

It's replaced the shuttle service for CareSource (and Premier Health?) downtown workers, which took them from the Transportation Center garage to their office buildings. I've never seen it way over-crowded, but I've seen it standing-room-only around 5 pm weekdays. There's probably a similar wave during the morning, though I haven't seen that. And at lunch time a lot of downtown workers use it to go to Brown Street for lunch. On off-peak hours, I've never seen many people on it. But I haven't ridden it much, so I'm not sure of the actual data.

I was thinking maybe a Water Buffaloes lodge a la the Flintstones.

RIP The Serpent

What other types of ironic "clubs" does Northside need, after the yacht and country clubs?

Given the shooting incident, it's likely they're going to want to fortify the building to some degree. Hopefully that doesn't mean making the square- and street-facing parts of the building feel colder.

^ Interesting that the Friday spike isn't especially after business hours.

10 minutes is generally considered the point at which people are willing to forget about looking at a schedule and just use a transit line. At some point, adding a minute to the average wait time becomes too much. Like if you keep accumulating grains of sand, at some point you have a "heap". It's also much simpler to do mental math regarding when trains show up at 10-minute vs. 12-minute headways -- if I know one was at a certain station at 12:06, then I know another will be there at 1:16 without bothering to do any calculation. When you intuitively know the schedule in your head, the theoretical average wait time doesn't apply. It's the "clock schedule" concept.

It's no more feasible to have a single-seat transit ride to every destination than it is to have a parking spot in front of every destination. Transfers are inevitable, and they aren't so burdensome when the fare structure is accommodating and frequencies are high. The streetcar should make riding a bus into downtown or parking downtown more flexible, as you can exit the bus or park farther from your destination(s).

Good point about Google Maps. I think that's part of the 40% on-time schedule.

I'd agree for 11+ minutes, but 10 minutes makes the mental math virtually trivial for calculating when a train will arrive, negating any effect of the "double-digit" phobia. Not to mention the proportion of time an arrival sign would actually display double-digits with 10-minute headways is tiny.

Likely a significant contributor to the increase in pedestrian fatalities.

Haven't you seen Ferris Bueller? ?

It may be less important (people aren't actively receiving "fake news"; that's a big step), but it means the advertised headways aren't being met, which is another form of unreliability: But I would guess that the ability to get reliable information about when a streetcar will arrive at a station is fueling the ridership increases seen over the past few months. As people who have been burned in the past start to learn that they can check an app or check the signs for reliable info, hopefully that effect snowballs. Achieving 10-minute headways would be a game-changer for ridership. Failing to hit the advertised 12-15 minutes is a game-changer in the other direction. These are achievable goals that probably wouldn't even require the mayor's support, if council were motivated to have DOTE implement signal priority/preemption. This could be done in phases, starting with off-peak hours and a goal of hitting the advertised headways. Then maybe eventually aiming for 10-minute (or less) headways when all vehicles are running and utilizing signal priority/preemption during peak hours so that commuters could benefit from it.

Does anyone know: How accurate are the real-time arrival signs? The Transit app? What are the real frequencies being hit? What is the on-time performance? Those have been problems in the past, and reliability is a prerequisite for a useful system, and usefulness is a prerequisite for healthy ridership. I believe these are bigger issues than the shape of the route.

Speculating. No insider info.

Co*ugh*lumbus

More momos is never a bad thing!

^ https://www.xkcd.com/37/

^ Did you just respond to you-from-four-months-ago?

I think I read that the entire country of Luxembourg is going fare-free this year. Not that there are any big cities there.

Any chance the traffic study is being slowed by this UBER data sharing thingy? https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/uber-cincinnati-partnership-one-year-later/547964/ When was it the contractors were supposed to report back? I remember Landsman and others on council wanting to hear back shortly after the first presentation. Did that happen?

Now I'm scared the project will stall after they tear the old hospital down. Getting flashbacks of my time at UC when U-Square @ the Loop was a giant field.