John Schneider

Roxanne said it best tonight: "Our job is to ensure the continued progress of the city."

Turnout is good downtown. Encourage your contacts to get out and vote.

Can you give up time 1:00p - 4:00p on Saturday or Sunday to knock on doors for Roxanne? She has a major citywide canvassing operation underway this weekend. Like all close elections, this one will come down to the sum of a lot of individual efforts. Go here and fill out this short form: http://goo.gl/NQ9Cgt The meetup spot is Qualls Campaign HQ, 2718 Woodburn Ave., 45206 both days. Questions, call: [email protected] This election is about a lot more than the streetcar. Think about it. John

^ That's what I'm most worried about. He can definitely cause it to fail in any number of ways -- $5.00 fares, anyone? -- and with COAST, Smitherman and Luken prodding him, he will. But he's going to lose, so I've put that out of my mind. By the way, why don't all the armchair quarterbacks on this board get out and canvass for Roxanne this weekend? She will have a massive operation going across the city. Forget the streetcar for a minute, there is much more at stake here. Get volunteer instructions here: [email protected] Do it now, please.

^ They will now. Just sent it to media.

Because, I guess, the BC feels there is great interest in this issue, they have unlocked the article.

^ To my knowledge, never has a light rail or modern streetcar project been canceled -- for any reason -- after construction has begun. What's being proposed by John Cranley, if carried out, which it wont' be, would be unprecedented.

Oh yes, this is the most-watched transit election in the nation this year.

You should take down the Kasim Reed video until a disclaimer is added to it. Not sure it needs one, but I'd do it anyway.

This will probably cause him to lose more votes than he gains.

I'm no longer listing him as a supporter.

No girder rail is produced in the U.S., and the project must comply with "Buy America" requrements. They are using specially-fabricated sections on the curves to prevent wheel-on-flangeway spalling.

Look, the election is a three-point race, too close to call, and within the margin of error. Plus Roxanne clearly has the momentum. That same poll has Sittenfeld, Winburn, Smitherman, and Mann as top four in Council. If that's true Cranley is going to crush her. You are one poll behind.

Look, the election is a three-point race, too close to call, and within the margin of error. Plus Roxanne clearly has the momentum.

^ I guess it depends upon your objective. Cranley won't be able to cancel the streetcar that's under construction, but he can surely cause it to fail and prevent it from being extended to other neighborhoods.

^ No.

Little correlation between who the Enquirer endorses and who gets elected. Still, it's time to get off the computers and go volunteer for Roxanne -- phoning and knocking on doors, the stuff of winning campaigns. Streetcar supporters are meeting up at Neon's at 4:00p today.

^ Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

Mayor James killed it in Avondale. You should come to his news conference at Memorial Hall at 2:15p.

You'd have a much larger barn and yard for light rail. Minimum five acres.

Kansas City has had a much longer and more hard-faught effort to get rail built than Cincinnati. Going back well before MetroMoves here (2002), Kansas City had something like seven different rail initiatives over maybe fifteen or twenty years, most of them led by a sponsor who didn't live there. One of them, which directed the city to build a light rail line, actually passed. The city said it didn't have the money, nor could it get Federal money, so thank you and bye. So with its streetcar, KC is following the same route as Cincinnati is ... get something on the ground and show people the path to light rail. By the way, with a 154-person capacity, can we quit callng the CAF vehicles "streetcars" and start calling them what CAF calls them on its web site? And that's "light rail." Anyway, under Missouri law small transportation improvement districts may be formed to make improvements, and so such a district was formed in and near downtown to pay for the capital and operating funds of the KC Streetcar. That's been done, court-tested through at least the appeals level, and KC will start building soon. Not sure it has all the money, but there is no doubt this project is a go. KC is using four of Cincinnati's remaining options on future cars made by CAF. KC is planning its next line.

This is quickly becoming a non-story, at this point almost disappearing from the WCPO web site. Gots to do better than this, John.

Stray currents were initially a problem in Houston in a low-lying area near the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. I guess the ground just would never dry out and was very conductive. Not sure how they solved it, but I haven't heard anymore about it for several years now. By the way, I've heard that Cincinnati's old streetcar system was apparently only one of two in the nation -- the other being Washington D.C. -- which had an overhead scheme which, instead of completing the circuit through the wheels to the rails, a second overhead wire was installed to close the circuit -- Cincinnati always having to be different, you know. This doubled the visual clutter and made the overhead structure carrying the wires much more massive. i'm convinced that this is one reason people who are old enough to remember Cincinnati's old streetcars hate the idea of reintroducing them to our streets. The new wires are very small. When I take people to Portland (next trip is 11/11, 20 people already signed up, let me know if you want to go, airfares under $300 now), after an hour or so on the tour, I ask if anyone has noticed the single thin wire supplying power to the cars. The usual response is, "Oh, hey, yeah, look at that, I see it now. Huh."

^ The rubber boots are a permanent aspect of the trackway. They insulate the rails so stray currents do not erode the re-bar and water pipes and iron storefronts along the alignment.

Posted without comment: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/16/why-this-is-the-most-decisive-mayoral-and-council-election-in-years/