John Schneider

All true but unlikely to change. I think the city would have to buy and pave multiple parcels on both sides of Vine to get the cars off the street and sidewalks and then allow residents to park for free in them. Probably could have done this 10-20 years ago.

That's the problem. Few of the buildings on Vine have their own off-street parking

Further proof that we could never run a streetcar up Vine Street.

No way you could add LRT to Vine with two BRT routes going there. Also, the streetcar engineers long ago concluded that the Siemens S70 streetcar vehicle (used in other cities as an LRT vehicle) could not reliably make the climb up Vine. Putting two or three of them together to make up a train doesn't compute. Plus, all the other problems with rail on Vine.

Part of this is explained by the move away from four-year Council terms to two-year Council terms. Councilmembers are in a constant state of re-election and under the thumbs of big donors in the business community. They have little opportunity to develop support for their ideas. It's a fundamental problem.

Policinski has led transportation planning in our region for 22 years. Quick, name one of his accomplishments.

Here's hopeless. More interested in self-driving cars, flying cars and the still-elusive "tsunami of freight" coming through the drying-up Panama Canal to Cincinnati.

My understanding of the system is that. like WAZE, it relies on the outputs of multiple cell phones of passengers on the streetcar So, when a streetcar has a lot of passengers on it, it gives reliable information as to its position. If there are only one or two people are on a streetcar, it's less reliable.

What's especially surprising about this is that the streetcar has been facing a lot of headwinds. It's only tailwind this year was Blink. Consider: Convention Center is closed for reconstruction Reds had a s**tty season Bengals are having a disappointing season too FCC out of the playoffs

There is nothing rapid about BRT. More like "better bus." It's an improvement for sure in terms of customer amenities and better equipment. But there is nothing "rapid" about it.

My sense on this is that City Hall is now more interested in human services issues as opposed to infrastructural investment. They're doing some needed things like improving roadway safety and pushing for more and better housing. But sooner or later, failure to focus on major projects will catch up with us. Think of the things we love about Cincinnati and which are (probably) fueling visitor and population growth - our new riverfront and new homes for the teams, the streetcar, FCC's new home, new parks. We can thank some big-picture types for those things - Qualls, Mallory, even Cranley to some extent. To me, the current crew at City Hall is just focused on quick, non-controversial wins, not the kind of long-term and difficult projects which have taken our city to a new level. As for Uptown, a crunch is coming as the university community grows and spreads out to east and south. You've got a lot of density, transit-dependent populations, and increasing congestion. It's going to be a mess in a few years. Finally, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, Brendon Cull, speaking for "the business community," has put the damper on City Hall's interest in streetcar expansion.

Not taking it personally. In fact, it pains be to talk about it. But SORTA's selling the ROW's is a real thing - appraisals are complete, and I'm guessing we'll see sales starting soon. Understand, SORTA's board is no longer controlled by the city. Several counties, in the aggregate, now control it, and I'm sure they're very happy to kill commuter rail. It started with Cranley's loading the board with opponents including Brendon Cull, who is now president of the Chamber of Commerce. I know the San Diego situation very well; a friend ran that system and built it up over 20 years. SD had a unique advantage. There was a fairly extensive system of freight rail ROW's which used to move oranges and other produce to market. A severe storm in 1976 pretty much wiped out much of that ROW, which was not built to withstand that kind of weather. All of a sudden dozens of miles of ROW were abandoned, and SD picked it up for a song. So, they had that to start with and just built from there. And it's true, other cities have had multiple votes. I think Phoenix finally passed light rail on its fifth try. Kansas City had maybe six? failed votes for light rail and finally gave it up and built a very successful streetcar. Austin lost a squeaker vote for light rail in 2000 and now is perhaps on the verge of getting it if it can beat back the opponents in court. Along with Kansas City and Portland, Cincinnati has one of the most successful streetcar systems in the United States. It's a real asset that we can use to repopulate the city while the suburbs stew in their own exhaust. On the leadership of our city, that's become a real problem. When I led several efforts for the business community a generation ago -- FWW, GABP, MetroMoves -- we had Roxanne Qualls. Later we had Mark Mallory with the streetcar. These were leaders, not the "managers" we have now at City Hall. They were willing to look beyond the election calendar, to stick their necks out. Then we started getting guys like Luken and Cranley, and it was downhill from there. And the current crop is not much better. They want to get quick wins, nothing that really moves the needle.

Sad to say, but I doubt Cincinnati will ever get light rail. SORTA is selling its rail ROW's. So, any light rail would need to run on city streets. As you probably know, the 0.8 cent sales tax passed in 2020 forbids SORTA from using any of those proceeds for a "streetcar." if we tried to do that, rail opponents would quickly sue SORTA, claiming that a street-running light rail train is essentially a streetcar (note the comparisons in posts which precede this). I guess that language could be repealed or perhaps another tax adopted with specifically permits street-running electric vehicles. Even so, street-running trains will be slow and would probably be confined to the city core including Uptown and some other close-in neighborhoods where car ownership is problematic and the trips are short. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, just the way it is. Maybe it will change, I dunno.

Jeffreys said he wanted to get through Connected Communities before taking up the streetcar. Well, they're through Connected Communities now.

Write to City Council and the mayor. Especially Jeffreys.