John Schneider

Other than talk radio, I think media has pretty much tuned the opponents out at this point.

Thanks for your estimate. I didn't know the car capacity. I had taken the Liberty and Race comment from your earlier post. "One Streetcar is arriving at 2nd Street stop, one is departing the 12th & Vine stop, and one is boarding at the Liberty & Race stop." 200 people - sure about that?

^ Building over bridges.

The section of trackway on Walnut and Main from Third Street south may take most of a year to build. Very complicated.

^ No way. Cars won't be in Cincinnati by the time of the All-Star Game. But yes, the track work is flying! Travis, thanks!

Travis, I'm giving a presentation next month at Rail~Volution on the Cincinnati Streetcar. Ok if I use this one ^?

^ I think it's more a fear that these reviving neighborhoods represent serious competition for the prevailing housing solutions out there.

^ I just hope he keeps digging a bigger hole.

It's gonna take a tunnel.

Oh, trust me, some people desperately tried to shut it down early-on, but no one ever heard about it. One elected official tried to get me thrown off the DCI Board for proposing it. He told P&G that "Schneider's idea for changing Fort Washington Way is 'messing with the Pyramids.' " -- his exact words as recounted by the Procter exec who told me about it.

We actually closed down the westbound lanes of Fort Washington Way for nine months during its construction. Nine months! No one at the time could recall a major component of the IHS ever being closed down for anywhere near that length of time. Having written that, I can tell you that traffic and business disruption on account of light rail or streetcar construction is a major ongoing story. I recall really negative stories coming out of Seattle a few years back when they were building LRT through the Rainier Valley to SeaTac and more recently, from Tucson during its streetcar construction. Things will get worse here before they get better. Just wait until they close down a block of Walnut soon to facilitate streetcar construction. We are just going to have to power through it. I think people have generally been pretty supportive here so far. Media is just trying to stir things up.

Smitherman is desperate to have the streetcar fail. Otherwise he looks totally stupid for opposing it for so long and so fiercely and will lose whatever credibility he has left. And so he figures the best way to have it fail it to make sure it never operates. Think about it.

Cincinnati has signed a contract with the Feds and many others to complete a modern streetcar and operate it for thirty years. There is zero chance it will be canceled at this point.

^ If they do, we'll get the signatures again. No problem.

Why don't you think the Parkway Subway will happen? ^ Just my considered guess. Do I smell inside information, sir? No, just looking at the reality. Subways are only being constructed in principal cities of the world these days, not in cities with 300,000 people. In the U.S., the only subways under construction today are in NYC and SF, although I guess LA will extend its subway to Santa Monica one of these days. Plus a fair amount of tunneling in Seattle for its next LRT extension. Surface-running rail is probably better for commerce in most cities. Underground systems are more expensive to operate due to the cost of elevators, and escalators, ventilation and safety. Travis is right - we might see the existing two miles of tunnels re-used in conjunction with an I-74 LRT, if someone reading this expects to live that long, but I don't see the current tunnels being extended.

Why don't you think the Parkway Subway will happen? ^ Just my considered guess.

I'm guessing the Uptown Streetcar happens sooner than that and the Central Parkway Subway never happens.

^ Would be an excellent site for a new UC College of Law. There are other plans for this site.

Actually the ROW for the widened Liberty was originally assembled as the alignment for I-71 through downtown Cincinnati. Eventually the Fort Washington Way route was selected. Sort of boggles the mind to think about how different the CBD and OTR would be today had the northern alignment for I-71 been selected.

^ They're looking into it.

^ One of the comments I made at one of the recent "Plan Cincinnati" community meetings was to consider what a Complete Streets redo of Liberty would mean in terms of gaining buildable sites from the many cut-ups along Liberty today. I"m certain it could be sizable and that ought to be taken into account when re-drawing the zoning maps there. But if the road diet never happens, I told them they need to think about zoning for small-lot development along Liberty. Would be necessarily low-rise, but it would soften the edge of Liberty. Right now, most of those irregular parcels are too small to meet zoning requirements.

I could def see taller buildings along Liberty.

I doubt ODOT is really interested in the red route, the one that would theoretically serve Cincinnati commuters. They're interested in building I-74 through Cincinnati via I-75, Norwood Lateral and Red Bank Road. If you look at it from an interstate perspective -- say Indianapolis to Wilmington NC -- it's a fairly direct route. That's what's so sneaky about this plan.

^ I hope they didn't lose the pages where Jason Haap and -- what's his name, the guy in the former boy band? -- those pages where those guys tried to show us how much they knew about urban rail.

Sounds like a road trip to Elmira this winter.