John Schneider

Took eleven people into the woods west of Vine Street to show them the Clifton Forest alignment as an alternative for getting to Uptown. Totallly works.

^ Sir, you have totally captured why opposing the Eastern Corridor is so important for Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

I'll be there. Probably.

^ When all the shooting's over, look for light rail to go south of the airport before doubling back north to the terminals, where there is surprisingly little demand.

^ I dunno about this. AAA says Cincinnatians spend about $9,000 each year on their cars. Getting rid of the car and living your life around the streetcar line -- those annual savings, or a large fraction of them, will cover $100,000 of the mortgage. If we're going to repopulate our Cincinnati, we're going to have to move money from the highway economy to the neighborhood economy, which is what is happening in much of the CBD and OTR right now.

They are building an Interstate Highway. None of the other stuff is going to happen.

I wouldn't count Winburn out.

^ Precisely.

Very fugly. Looks like more examples of engineers ruling the roost. Definitely interested in seeing Glaserworks's design solution. But my instinct is to agree with taestell (and jwulsin) that these could be relatively simply hidden in a building. Though we seem to have passed the point where that's economically feasible for the foreseeable future. Bob Pickford, who used to run Findlay Market, told me that these substations have to be out in the open so truck-based equipment can easily reach them for servicing.

I've led dozens of streetcar tours to Portland, and I can't recall ever seeing one.

Cincinnati is neither applying for a planning nor a construction grant for Uptown.

A light-rail-ready tunnel, I'd imagine... We live in a city of hills and valleys, so we're bound to have some tunnels and bridges. I don't think you get car-competitive rail to Uptown without a tunnel.

One thing we looked at was turning the streetcar east across Vine @ Thill and into a tunnel where the retaining wall is at the east end of Thill. That tunnel would travel a short distance under a peninsula of Inwood Park to the large area that's been cleared north of Christ Hospital and on to Auburn to Euclid to Corry to Jefferson. However, that's a grade change of 9% or so from Vine to Auburn, probably too much to negotiate. But it would be great to bring Christ and Mt. Auburn into this.

Because the CAF cars will meet the stop perfectly at each door - they actually continuously calculated the weight on the vehicle and adjust their suspensions such that they are always 14" above the street, which is the curb level at the stops - the stops needs to be on flat land. Is there even one flat area on Vine Street? Anywhere?

From what I hear, there is no City Council consensus to put up the match that the Feds will want to see to consider Cincinnati's application seriously. And the truth is, we're not ready to start building to Uptown. There is no champion, the large institutions there have not come to the table, and the route needs a lot of work. To me, it seems like the only thing Uptown cares about right now is the new I-71 interchange -- perhaps a bit of over-generalizing there. The city should apply to the Feds now for a planning grant, build stakeholder consensus and apply for construction money when it has perfected a plan. We're a long way from that today.

Lower Ohio Avenue @ McMicken to Van Lear, probably in a combo tunnel/cut, and continuing north via a series of paper streets and private property to Vine. About 3,000 feet. Avoids all the back-tracking and busy Vine Street intersections. I figure if we could walk it with a six year-old, someone can build it. You're talking about staying to the west of Vine all the way up to Inwood Park/Hollister? [/img] This map has changed somewhat. After hiking it several times now, we would make it almost a straight shot from McMicken and Ohio to Vine near Hollister. It works nicely.

Lower Ohio Avenue @ McMicken to Van Lear, probably in a combo tunnel/cut, and continuing north via a series of paper streets and private property to Vine. About 3,000 feet. Avoids all the back-tracking and busy Vine Street intersections. I figure if we could walk it with a six year-old, someone can build it. You're talking about staying to the west of Vine all the way up to Inwood Park/Hollister? [/img] Yes, about 2,600 LF until it rejoins Vine a little south of Hollister, the first 1,000 or so feet to the south in a tunnel under Lower Ohio Avenue giving way to an open cut and then to flat land. The advantages are: * No moving of utilities until you get much further up on Vine; * Ability to work longer hours instead of the 9-3 regime we've had going on in OTR and the CBD - except for the shorter Vine Street section north of Hollister where traffic would restrict work hours; * Ability to build over 1,000 feet of this on ballasted concrete ties instead of the reinforced slabs we're doing downtown; * Not having to build 1,500 of track on Elder and Vine @ $5,000 per LF; * When finished, a beautiful ascent/descent through the forest west of Vine opening up to vistas of downtown; * Hardly any loss of buildings; * Ability to serve another neighborhood -- Clifton Heights -- via a stop in the forest and restored steps @ Conklin leading up to Ohio Avenue; * Less disruption -- compared to downtown and OTR where we have mostly one-way streets that each host one direction of streetcar travel, with the current alignment we'll be putting both directions of streetcar travel on Vine, a busy two-way street with curb parking on each side -- think about that; * But the main reason -- it will be a much faster, more comfortable trip. I used to ride the 46 bus up and down Vine, and all the twists and turns often made standing uncomfortable. Since most people stand on a streetcar, passenger comfort will be affected by the Vine Street route (try it yourself someday, standing the whole way, both directions - it gets old). And of course, it will save a bunch of time - eight minutes per trip on average according to someone in the know. The streetcar will miss having to negotiate five intersections in an area of OTR that's bound to get much more congested over the next few years. Valuing this time saved by 3,000 estimated daily riders at half the city's average hourly income and then discounting that by 7% makes that time-savings over the first thirty years of the streetcar's life worth $19 million in Present Value. Plus a faster trip will drive ridership. The forest route will be faster than driving and parking. Other than those and probably half a dozen more if I had more time to write them up, I can't think of a single reason for moving the alignment off Vine. PS: The court case still has some months to run. Duke has hired private counsel which, from what I understand, is trying to make this case more global. Here's hoping they continue down that path until the Cincinnati case attracts the interest of road builders who also could have big problems if cities can't use their streets in the ways they want.

^ Again, there will be no problem rebuilding the steps, which is often use. I'm imagining they would ascend at one side of the tunnel portal. It's a non-issue.

The steps can easily be rebulit as part of the tunnel portal, no problem there. Litterbugs are pretty much destroying the area now. Go have a look.

Lower Ohio Avenue @ McMicken to Van Lear, probably in a combo tunnel/cut, and continuing north via a series of paper streets and private property to Vine. About 3,000 feet. Avoids all the back-tracking and busy Vine Street intersections. I figure if we could walk it with a six year-old, someone can build it.

The steering committee of Believe in Cincinnati hiked the forest route of the Uptown Streetcar yesterday. I've never been more confident that we can get the streetcar off Vine Street, save a bunch of money, and make the trip between Downtown and Uptown much, much faster. I'll be posting pics on Twitter @prostreetcar later today.

^ Whatever the plan is, they will always want a different plan.

The Fifth pic in Jake's series shows the path to the right of St. Phillipus Church that the streetcar could take to Uptown, going north of Henry and under Clifton Avenue. It's pretty open.

Taking the long view ... we're going to have an entirely new and highly reliable utility infrastructure in most of downtown and Over-the-Rhine when all of the streetcar and gas replacement work is complete. It's remarkable this has happened. This, plus a couple new parks, some new schools, hotels and the streetcar -- you can paint a really positive future for Cincinnati, especially as this spreads out into other neighborhoods.

^ Traffic engineers still rule in this town. They drove a lot of these decisions. Was worse before people started pushing back.