John Schneider

Can you imagine how much more money Cincinnati could have gotten if we just starting selling ads now, capitalizing on all the good will the streetcar is generating? I've seen this happen many times: Cincinnati always negotiates from weakness

I've heard Cincinnati Bell has the right to make five marketing announcements each way between the riverfront and Rhinegeist.

Repopulation takes a while, but it will happen. In the meantime, I'm happy with whoever is using the streetcar. If just 1% of the 200,000 people who've used it so far decide to move downtown or to work downtown on account of the streetcar, that's huge over time. Think of all the young kids who are being exposed to trains, to our terrific riverfront parks, to the diversity of Findlay Market -- that's gonna pay off big for Cincinnati as they grow and decide where and how they want to live

Probably Germania Building

I guess they could use the first floor of the existing building for parking. That's long, deep space with high windows -- not very usable for anything else.

Yeah, unless they use a car elevator, I don't see how you ramp and circulate in a garage on that site.

I told the city they are going to have to renegotiate the contract. We'll see.

^ Christopher Smitherman reportedly on suicide watch

Randall O'Toole and the like always propose BRT as an alternative to rail, but oppose any BRT proposal that is not competing with a rail proposal (Nashville, Indianapolis). Well now he's got another trick -- suggesting that cities should abandon their rapid transit lines for BRT. You can't make this stuff up. Randal O’Toole Cato Institute senior fellow I love trains, and the first time I stepped into a Washington Metro station in 1977, it was like entering Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Today, it’s like entering Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The problem is that rail lines are expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain, especially after they reach 30 years of age. The federal government paid most of the cost of building Metrorail and local governments pay the subsidies required to operate it, but funds to rehabilitate the lines that are over 30 years old are sorely lacking, so the system is falling apart. Rather than assist with rehabilitation, the federal government has a slush fund dedicated to new rail construction. This enticed the region to build the Silver and Purple lines, when the matching funds required to build those lines should have been spent rehabilitating Metrorail instead. One way the region can solve the problem is to kill the Purple Line and stop construction on the Silver Line and rededicate those funds to the existing system. WMATA may also have to accept the painful reality that rail was probably the wrong choice for D.C. in the first place. Rail transit is both expensive and inflexible, while Curitiba, Brazil has shown that a well-designed bus corridor can actually move more people per hour than WMATA’s eight-car trains. Rather than rehabilitate the existing lines that are falling apart, WMATA should consider replacing them with bus-rapid transit lines. Over the next ten years, shared, self-driving cars are going to replace most transit. WMATA’s cost of moving one passenger one mile by rail is more than twice as expensive as moving them by automobile today, and Uber (which recently hired 40 self-driving car engineers) has promised that its shared, self-driving cars will cost less than owning a car. This means transit won’t be able to compete with self-driving car sharing. Until this becomes a reality, WMATA and other transit agencies should focus on low-cost bus service rather than expensive and clunky rail systems. O'Toole is a real tool, alright. He's a rail hater of the 1st order. I can't believe he actually stated that D.C. would be better off with BRT over the Metro. Any fool would recognize that, although the DC Metro is obviously going through a really bad period due to deferred maintenance issues, it is still one of the ideal transit networks in the nation and world -- once the fix is made, however long and expensive it may be, people will once again realize this. Metro is the 2nd leading rapid transit network behind New York, in terms of both track miles and patronage. Then O'Toole really sounds like a fool in prognosticating that shared self-driving cars will replace most transit. really!? even in light of things like car costs vs. personal income and traffic congestion (what, is he suggesting self-driving cars will fly?) ... O'Toole must exist in some parallel, right-wing universe. I just wonder whether O'Toole, at the end of his scurvy life -- after maybe two or three dozen more of these rail systems open and others are rapidly expanding -- I just wonder whether he'll look back and think,"Did I waste the best years of my life?" Also something I wonder about .. why he never came to Cincinnati to blast our streetcar. I mean, he has shown up everywhere else over the years. I was disappointed, actually. I had a well-crafted news released to send out upon his arrival here talking about what a creep he is .. his applauding the Madrid train station bombings, preaching to cities how to re-fashion themselves as car meccas while living in an Oregon mountain village with one stoplight and one minority resident. I guess he does it because CATO pays him so much to do it.

Their excuse for KC is that the streetcar is free. But most cities have free bus circulators and hardly anyone rides them. I know both Nashville and Baltimore have them and probably a few more. The Southbank Shuttle wouldn't get many more riders here if it was free. BRT, where it exists, is not making America great again. There are very few examples of it in the United States, and each example is much different than the other. The Orange Line BRT in LA is very different from the Health Line in Cleveland which is very different than the Silver Line BRT in Boston. Nobody riding on a light rail train or streetcar is saying "gee, I would rather be on a bus". These bloggers always seem to find a new argument against streetcars. You'll recall their recent conclusions that they would all fail because they're not in dedicated lanes. Now we'll deal with this one. Plus, look at the examples this writer is coming up with: Washington DC -- probably the most troubled build in the whole country; Little Rock and Tampa - tourist things. How come they don't talk to Tucson or Seattle. Sure they talked to Portland and praise it. What they neglected to mention is that Cincinnati's streetcar is carrying 160% of the riders per mile that Portland is. We've been open three weeks, Portland 15 years.

Would you guys quit calling me Mr. Schneider? Makes me feel older than I already am. Thanks.

Yet again, The Enquirer fails to call out an official for suggesting moving money in a way that is completely illegal. It's like suggesting that a football player use his college scholarship to buy a house. It's like saying parking tickets should fund NASA. It's like saying we should reduce the national debt by selling off the Capitol Mall to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Portman really weaseled out of answering the question

^ I think the city and/or Metro build the line to Xavier where three lines converge serving a large area from Springdale to northern Anderrson Township and let the county take it from there. If the county doesn't want to play, then the city will be just that much more competitive

Underground station is probably at least $30 million

I wonder if Hamilton County will figure out it would be in its interest to offer a combined pass for the Banks parking garages and the streetcar.

Pretty exciting to think about the currently pathetic block (2500 block, I think) of Vine between McMillan and Calhoun bordered instead by significant buildings and a subway station beneath. Might be enough to motivate Kroger to eventually replace its new University Plaza store with a big mixed-use development. Then the next station could be close to University Ave. My thinking about this is that the next phase is all about transportation, not economic development because there's not much to develop between downtown and uptown on account of topography

Our best guess is 11 minutes from University and Jefferson to Fountain Square, maybe more with a station serving Calhoun/McMillan. You could save some time by launching the tunnel south of Liberty and avoid that mess

Extend the tracks on Walnut and Main from where they now end at Central Parkway and 12th. Enter tunnel somewhere between Liberty and the Main Street steps. Daylight the tunnel just north of TCH on a city-owned vacant street. Enter second tunnel under Inwood Park to somewhere on Jefferson, daylighting as soon as we can once we're past Calhoun. Might not be able to daylight until Daniels. Bottom line; it would be a fast one-seat ride from the Banks to UC

Studied it in MetroMoves. A non-starter

^ Just FYI, some of the loudest opposition to MetroMoves came from Pleasant Ridge. For no good reason. John - do you think that would be true today. Pleasant Ridge has changed a ton since 2001. I think the younger population that is there today would embrace it much more than 15 years ago, don't you? Maybe, maybe not. One good thing though. Stephan Louis, who lives in Pleasant Ridge and led the opposition to MetroMoves, has been thoroughly discredited since that campaign, so he's no longer a factor

^ Just FYI, some of the loudest opposition to MetroMoves came from Pleasant Ridge. For no good reason.

^ Good, Jake. I've lately been wondering if we could daylight the Mt. Auburn Tunnel a little sooner, say between Calhoun and Corry

2nd and 3rd Streets are already too wide... it would be a shame to add additional setback. If anything is built on the caps, then it should be built out to the sidewalk. Each of the "blocks" is ~350'x150', so you'd want to take full advantage of the 150' dimension. ^ Unless you take a lane out of each for light rail to the airport someday

They are going to beef up the a/c to overcome this

It's called a learning curve. It'll work itself out. You're ridiculous concerned hand-wringing is getting absurd. :roll: Yeah, it really is. Eight days into a 100-year investment, we're going to change the whole financial model?