John Schneider

Cincinnati has such a law - you can't leave your car on the street without moving it for more than 14 hours. But imagine if we gave out 500 residential parking permits in OTR. How would meter readers ever keep track of who's been where for how long?

Parking revenue now goes into the General Fund and is spent in a thousand different ways. I doubt there's a problem. Plus, parking meters are voluntary. You don't have to use them. You don't have to purchase a residential permit, either, but it would only be OTR residents subject to such a fee -- whereas meters could collect money from anyone. My understanding is that "people who live in OTR" is not considered a fair group to target with fees extending beyond the minimum required to sustain a service, while "people who choose to park at an OTR meter" is not (likely to be) seen (by the courts) as a "targeted group." This is my interpretation of John Curp's interpretation re: parking fees as revenue generators. When I met with city officials on this, I learned that the yield from residential permits in OTR would be so small it would have almost no impact on funding the operations of the streetcar. If they do implement such a system, it will be because they want to make more parking available for residents there, not to pay for the streetcar. I suggested something else: install meters in some parts of OTR that have 24-hour durations and cost, I dunno, 25 cents, 50 cents, maybe a dollar for 24 hours. This would keep people from simply storing there cars on the street for long periods of time. This should not be a burden if you really need to use your car most days. If not, you should bury it in a lot or a garage somewhere and make the curb space available to others who really need it.

Parking revenue now goes into the General Fund and is spent in a thousand different ways. I doubt there's a problem. Plus, parking meters are voluntary. You don't have to use them.

^ Kevin's been the key actor in this. Mayor Cranley and City Manager Black deserve a lot of credit too.

It's a great plan, we should all get behind it.

Across the nation, county commissions love diesel commuter rail. Serves their suburban constituencies with long commutes. Doesn't contact urban areas much. Can you think of a rail project in Greater Cincinnati that shares these characteristics?

Austin urban rail plan lost by a sizable margin. Not a good plan. Many rail advocates opposed it.

Proposed 24-mile light rail line between St. Petersburg and Clearwater lost big today.

Then there's this: http://www.maniacworld.com/Train-Drives-Through-Bangkok-Market.html

I don't think we can talk people into supporting public transportation. We have to show them. Make it real to them. Think back to December of last year. Probably the fact that there were tracks in the ground, progress you could see, plus the prospct of wasting money already spent on the streetcar -- that reality caused the Enquirer, many more Cincinnatians and eventually a super-majority of City Council to continue along the path to a balanced transportation system. And I think improvements like MetroPlus and, yes, the Cincinnati Streetcar will slowly move the needle toward greater support. I mean, face it, people in Cincinnati don't travel that much (we're the 27th largest Metro but something like the 50th largest air travel market), and people here know very little about what's happening in this field all over the country and around the world. So it's just going to take getting some more wins before voters come around. And I think they will. Maybe they'll come around by 2016. Too bad Metro isn't testing support for rail.

Fascinating results. 92.9% agree with this statement: "Even though you may not use public transit, ensuring that the system can provide transportation to seniors, students, workers and people without cars is essential to the economy and the basic quality of life in the community." In general it seems like most of the respondents still view public transportation as a social service of sorts, not some thing that should actually be "nice" or that they feel they would rely on. Travis nailed it. Too many people here view public transportation as a social program.

What is the reason 3CDC doesnt develop this lot themselves? It is a great location at one of the busier sections in that area. I wonder if its because they dont want to lose the cash flow generated from the lot for the time being? That's the best site in OTR for a new office building. My guess is that's what they're saving for -- for the day when office rents have recovered and OTR and the north frame of the CBD are more populated.

Cincinnati's credit is better than 80% of all the cities in the U.S. So if something that consumes 1/2 of 1% of the city's budget can throw it into bankruptcy, then lots of American cities have lots to worry about.

Is this because there isn't enough time to make it happen and no entity (DCI) has stepped up to coordinate the implementation? Would it be fair to future phase properties if phase 1 properties are not in a taxing district for streetcar operation but future phase properties would be? If we don't have a SID to pay for streetcar operations in the CBD and OTR, I suspect it will be because: * SID's are very difficult to set up. I was involved in setting up the DCI SID, and I estimated for someone who asked that it would cost $200,000 to $300,000 to do the same thing for the streetcar ... * And it would probably take a year or more to do it ... * And many commercial landlords in the CBD won't sign the petition to increase their taxes ... * And unless 3CDC really got behind it in OTR, it would take forever to getting signatures from all the other OTR property owners, assuming the land records for OTR are in really good shape ... * And then you have to repeat the whole process every four or five years. Other than those things and maybe a dozen more obstacles, I see no problem creating, adopting and maintaining a SID in place to pay for streetcar operations.

Probably never for Phase 1, perhaps for subsequent phases.

Doubt there's going to be a tax district for the streetcar.

I'm guessing that when all the shooting's over, Cincinnati will bite the bullet and build light rail north of 12th on Main and Walnut connecting to UC near Jefferson and Corry via a tunnel through Mt. Auburn and continuing from there through the hospitals to the city limits at Xavier where it can branch to the I-75, I-71 and Wasson Corridors. And then see which suburbs want to take it from there. When all three extensions are built perhaps in 20-25 years -- you'd have a train between the riverfront and Xavier every three minutes at peak -- subway frequency -- and it will dramatically change how our city functions. Living in the city without a car will be convenient. And cheap. Bottom line: I think the connection between the region's two largest employment centers needs to be served by something more than a streetcar.

Lemme see, $25 per month = four beers at Rhinegeist. Yeah, that's really going to hurt OTR.

I think it had to do with correcting a discrepancy between the elevation at which the tracks were installed and the elevation of the paving.

^ This is why the opponents fought it so hard for so long. They know people will want more of it.

My guess is he's done some polling and found support for rail -- perhaps due in part to Cincinnatians getting comfortable with the streetcar.

Just got back from another trip to Portland where we dug deeper into how they pay for operating expenses. I'll be putting something out on this soon, but guess the percentage of the operating cost that is paid by property owners along the streetcar lines there. Not capital costs, but operating costs. 100%? 50%? You'd be wrong. The correct answer is ... ... 0%.

Mariemont, at least, is not anti-transit. It voted for MetroMoves at a higher percentage than Cincinnati did.

The juxtaposition of the sleek streetcar stop and the broken sign behind it is fascinating. Yep, that's a keeper. One thing the people in Portland seem to regret - there are very few "before" pictures of the route of the Portland Streetcar. Keep these coming. Not to mention the crumbing building, billboard, and cinder block tire repair building. These will make for some pretty amazing before-and-afters... just wait until the Liberty Street road diet goes through and the streetcar is operating.

Oh hell, it's Friday, why not throw a little more gasoline on this fire. Question: why should residents have preferential rights to park on the street paying the city much, much less than what shopkeepers, office workers and restaurant workers are willing to pay?. Don't say it's because residents pay taxes to the city because the people in all those other examples do too. I think this is another example of the inner-suburb/ outer-suburb mentally being grafted onto a city that needs to change. Sure you can park on the street in College Hill for free. Downtown and close-in neighborhood business districts are different. They offer jobs and services that you don't have to drive to. A different culture exists.