John Schneider

Last night, Cincinnati's clownish streetcar opponents applied bullet-hole decals to all the streetcar stops in OTR. The decals have now been photographed and removed. There may be some in the CBD. If you find any, they peel off very easily. Feel free to do so. And if you see anyone doing this, get a pic. They will probably do this again. This could be a good story for the blogs, illustrating streetcar opponents' willingness to vandalize and impose more costs on our city. And their juvenile eagerness to trash neighborhoods trying to make a comeback.

^ Actually, Mark Miller is a nice guy. Good hardware, bad software. Still runnning DOS.

A national firm is looking to hire several planners for its Chicago office. The specialties are transportation planning and envirnomental planning, and you must have 3-10 years experience. In particular, they are looking for someone is understands control systems for environmental documents. So if you're interested and I know you and could recommend you, please contact me at [email protected]. I'll forward your name to them, and they will contact you. Mark Miller, Stephan Louis and the other trolls on this site need not apply.

^ Not really. And that's the problem. I think you just have to kind of forrage around these days.

^ Yes. We do. One more time.

^ So someone go out tonight and take them all down. I mean, people are always asking what they can do, right/

This is no longer relevant. The Feds made the City break up the for Development Partners group and put everything out for competitive bidding in a formal procurement process. Josten is a great contractor but they have no lock on this project.

Check out the pics. Only one partial shot of the huge crowd there today, but ... wait for it ... just a second, now ... yes, two pics of Tom Luken. http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110816/NEWS01/108170317

Well, that's interesting. Sittenfeld told me on December 15th that he didn't support the streetcar. However, the Governor didn't withdraw the $52 million -- thereby causing the original route to be shortened -- until this spring. Always good to get your stories straight because, you know, people do talk.

Well, that interesting. Sittenfeld told me on December 15th that he didn't support the streetcar. However, the Governor didn't withdraw the $52 million -- thereby causing the original route to be shortened -- until this spring. Always good to get your stories straight because, you know, people do talk.

I'm pretty certain that the Cincinnati Streetcar will have electonic notifications of the next three streetcars' predicted arrival times and that this information will be available on your phone.

^ They will get the signatures. There is too much ego involved at this point not to.

Columbia Parkway between the CBD and Fairfax will be hugely and negatively affected by the construction of the Red Bank (sooner or later, I-74) freeway when: * I-71 clogs up around Hyde Park or UC and a lot of the traffic originating in northeastern Cincinnati diverts to Columbia Parkway via the new Red Bank freeway. * The new freeway is extended from Fairfax to Eastgate and much of the downtown-destination Clermont County traffic that now uses I-471/275 diverts to Columbia Parkway. Once this highway is high-speed limited access and extended to 275 @ Eastgate, I don't see how there is any way these things won't happen.

The city manager now has all the legal authority he needs to build the streetcar.

MetroMoves won by almost 2:1 in Downtown and OTR.

The deadline is August 10th.

Story on Channel 19 tonight: http://www.fox19.com/story/15160412/debate-ongoing-between-naacp-and-hamilton-county-board-of-elections?redirected=true The more he's on the news, the better for us.

This may reveal who the streetcar supporters/opponents are and also which candidates support or oppose COAST's anti-rail ballot issue: http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/blog-2212-council-forum-set-for-friday.html Can anyone go and take notes?

If Smitherman thinks he has problems now ...

I am feeling very confident about Cincinnatians for Progress' campaign against the COAST ballot issue. We're meeting continuously, raising money and getting some great endorsements in opposition. We've had a professional campaign manager working for months. We are hiring professionals to scrutinize their petitions when they submit them, people who know where to look for evidence that signatures were improperly collected. COAST has over-reached. Few Cincinnatians are today aware of how deceptive and dishonest the ballot language is. When people actually read what it says, they react almost viscerally against it. Even people who aren't crazy about the streetcar understand that it is a back-door scheme to kill light rail, which a growing number of people now seem to want. I believe we'll be done with these guys after November 8th. They will have little credibility for opposing rail in the future. Or anything else, for that matter. If Chris Smitherman thinks this is going to propel him onto City Council, he's likely to discover that this has backfired on him. Meanwhile, another CFP fundraiser is planned for August 25th, after work. Please save the date.

Probably not a guy we can count on when the going gets tough. And it will be tough for the several years while we're building the streetcar. There will be more votes before the first streetcar rolls. Simpson is very much a supporter, very strong in her testimony in defense of the streetcar at the May City Council meeting Winburn called.

STREETCAR SUPPORTERS: Bortz Qualls Quinlivan Thomas Young Riveiro Simpson Hollan Seelbach STREETCAR OPPONENTS: Winburn Lippert Ghiz Murray Mills Sittenfeld

Here's the COAST ballot language. Make sure everyone you know understands how bad this is. http://blog.cincinnatiansforprogress.com/2011_06_01_archive.html

No private property to develop? Well, I guess that's true if you fail to consider the 14-acre, $1 billion Banks project between Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park.

^ God knows, we tried. Kentucky would have nothing to do with it. One problem was, the I-471 bridge is not designed to carry the amount of truck traffic the Brent Spence carries. And there are a series of grades on I-275 through Kentucky that would have challenged trucks going from I-471 to I-75. Plus the suburbs were going to fight us on the increased truck traffic on I-275, claiming they didn't have hazmat capabilities to deal with incidents. I suspect I'll live long enough to see the day when there are trains in half of the current FWW trench.