10albersa

Gotcha, let's stop all development across the entire city. Can't improve Mt Airy because Warsaw Wireless might have their rents increased. Can't improve Hyde Park Square because Graeters might have their rents increased. If rents increase in Hyde Park Square to match demand, then any good business that attracts people will still be in business on the square, and will probably be making more $$$, despite having higher rents.

Also, am I the only one who thinks "Save our Square" is kinda dumb? It's not like Hyde Park Square is in 'good' shape and some of the businesses keep flaming out there too. It could use a glow up and more residents supporting the already high level of businesses there. Oh, and there would be a parking garage, that's a huge win for the square and surrounding neighbors that have their streets flooded with cars every weekend with good weather.

I'm frustrated too, but his political capital was blown on Connected Communities, which is a huge win. He's going to have to defend that (and attempts to water it down) for the rest of the term. The Hyde Park fight is becoming a proxy for Connected Communities too, it's not going away. Not to compare their careers, but it feels like Obama and the ACA. He blew his capital there and (among other reasons) was not able to keep his agenda moving. He should take more risks, but he's absolutely consultant-driven. We're lucky we got Connected Communities is my perspective on it.

Exactly. Gotta have a robust rail infrastructure that is effective at delivering people to places fast. Europe has all sorts of private rail operators... on publicly-owned rail infrastructure that they spent "interstate highway money" on.

So much arena talk this past year. Not mentioned in the roundtable was the Bengals threatening to leave Cincinnati. We aren't going to have the funds to finance an arena and whatever final negotiated agreement we come to with the Bengals. It's one or the other. The arena will have to be privately-funded. If Nederlander won't, then it will go to the West-End with the Lindner group's plan.

Being from Cincinnati it's so difficult to listen to this. They have proactive people getting problems solved and advocates from the business community for the streetcar. We don't respond to any of the quick fixes that would help reduce variance in headways. The quote that absolutely floored me (because it would be impossible here) is that they "ELIMINATED street parking in areas where cars were parking across the line into the streetcar lane." Here in Cincinnati, we blame the streetcar for being in the way of the cars.

I think it boils down to a simple argument: Boulder: Retain the mountain spirit and exclusive-feel of the festival Cincinnati: Growth Which would the voting members prefer? We'll find out!

If this was actually an issue with Sundance, then Cincinnati is out out of the running. Ohio will pass equally as bigoted legislation eventually.

Yeah I saw that headline and feared the worst: no signal priority or no removal of on-street parking.

Certainly Texas Central will be cancelled as that's an easy win for Elon and his DOGEbags and it's a direct threat to his business in Texas. Amtrak's weathered some pretty hostile governments (ones that were much more anti-spending than this one). I have doubts that they'll move to shut down the long-distance routes.

It does probably mean a governor run, which may be his personal preference, but it's just not going to be impactful for Ohio. We need a governor in office after the 2030 elections so that we can re-draw the maps to be competitive. He'll get railroaded at every point if he wins a term from 2026-2030. I guess you could argue he'll have an incumbency advantage in 2030 if he wins in 2026, but I don't know how much that matters, he's a known quantity. If it is a Sherrod vs Vivek governor election, Sherrod will win easily in this environment. Vivek is so abrasive. That also takes a competitive candidate out of the running for Senate in 2026 and 2028. Given our complete lack of a bench, it's pretty much just him and Tim Ryan that would be viable Senate candidates.

They also specifically said 'retaliatory tariffs' are the issue, and didn't say the reason that there's retaliation happening in the first place. I'm sure that's so they don't piss of Trump. I wish they'd come out and just say it. No one wants to be first, but large players need to push back on the current 'kiss the ring' methodology that our economy is operating under.

The fact that they spent money on this study is crazy. Maybe they had to as proof to the corps near Gov't Square that they shouldn't do this, but it was plain as day that the RTC would add way too much time to existing routes and would cost more to maintain. Plus it takes you a 5-10 minute walk away from the heart of downtown, rather than actually being in the heart of downtown. May it makes more sense if the streetcar had more frequency and a bunch of planned routes spurring from 2nd St, but it doesn't. *Oh, and you'd need well-maintained and higher capacity elevators. At least one was out of order during BLINK and it was a 10 minute journey to find the other one hidden in the Banks development that actually had access to the RTC.

Fund was the wrong word, but if the national parks devolve into chaos like we're anticipating, they won't be able to ignore the loud rebuke they'll get and go ask King Trump to solve it. And he will, because he loves looking like he solved problems he created. I know there's plenty of reason for pessimism, and our NPS is one of the best things about America, but there's more than one way this plays out.

Not just the stories, but the congresspeople will be inundated with calls from people of all political leanings, and ultimately fund the things that need to be done. I think about West Virginia, Wyoming, and Tennessee, both of which have significant portions of their economy rely on national parks tourism and have 6 VERY red senate seats. Those senators and house members will not be able to ignore the pleas of constituents if things are as bad as we expect them to be for those places.

Agreed, he'll cruise to victory here. But, unless he changes tack, I think this may be as far as he goes in elected office (unless you'd consider county commish a promotion). He'd probably be better served career-wise as a cabinet pick in a theoretical Democratic administration post 2028 elections.

He's very much the type of Democrat that got crushed (nationally) in 2024. A consultant-fed, plays-it-safe Democrat. He has higher aspirations, but I don't think that play-it-safe path is the way to rise through the ranks in today's political environment. You need grassroots enthusiasm and to get attention. That said, he did get Connected Communities passed, and I do appreciate him spending capital on that.

I'll call out that this is anecdotal (unlike someone else), but wasn't UC a pretty huge Cincinnati area commuter school in the 80s - 00s? No way that the % of students living in uptown has gone down since the turn of the millennium. So I doubt that far fewer students brought cars to college. I tried and failed to find commuter data for UC. What could be happening is that there are 60% more students enrolled at UC than in 2000, in which case, yeah there are probably more cars. Potentially 60% more cars than in 2000.

With our luck we’ll get some amazing bid that’s residential and high build quality and then tariffs or mass deportations go into effect and everyone pulls out of the build due to 100% construction cost inflation and it sits vacant for another decade.

I assume this is the third tier of Ohio cities (Canton, Youngstown, Springfield, Hamilton). In which case, yeah, it's running away with it.

Construction is chaos though. In no way would a softer, predictable one-lane each way street be as bad as one where people are used to 3+ lanes and are surprised when it shrinks to 1. Maybe it isn't the right decision, but comparing a finished street to a construction zone isn't accurate either.

It looks like the sign that Metro puts up when a project that's funded by the 2020 referendum is ongoing. I looked back at the 2021-2023 project award winners and the closest one is the Gilbert Ave complete streets project, which is across the casino from this, so that's probably not it. Not sure what would be going in here.

Acton's messaging seems on point, but I just don't know how she'll be able to escape the "shut down" ads that will be flooding the airwaves from Jan 26-Nov 26. If it's super low turnout, maybe she could pull off a crazy upset. At this point in time, she's probably only the preferred candidate of wealthy and highly-educated people in Ohio. Whitmer and Evers won Michigan and Wisconsin by basically only running on "fix the roads" after previous governors were so batsh** insane that their states were literally falling apart. Acton isn't necessarily running on "fix the roads" and our outgoing governor is 'meh' instead of insane. Hope she proves me wrong, she certainly has a lot of image-building to do to expand beyond the white lab-coat

Honestly, those of you that are Cincinnati City residents, ask Mark Jeffreys to square his comments (side by side) with the comments from the CEO of the BRT project... I'd love to hear his thoughts.

So it's rebranded MetroPlus then. Fewer stations, but fancier. Also, this quote isn't giving me much hope: "We need to make sure BRT doesn't get in the way of our congested streets"... Instead of, "fast and reliable BRT will reduce congestion and should be the priority" How is this person the head of the BRT initiative? This is so uninspired. Even Indianapolis went all-out on their BRT infrastructure, but I guess we can't.