John Schneider

Yeah, right.

^ I expected they would do this. I wouldn't want to speculate on the legal aspects because I assume streetcar opponents read everything we write here.

^ I'm guessing the canopies won't be historic. But scale and transparency are important. Lighting too.

^ There are no serious issues. Historic preservation types just want a better idea of what the shelters will look like. I agree with them. It's a critical part of the overall design.

^ I think we're fine, really.

^ Not before April. They are jumping through all the Federal hoops right now. No problems, just takes time.

^ They support it.

^ The Corporation for Findlay Market owns a lot of it.

^ I recall that a year or so after it opened, SLC's first ligh rail line was named "Retailer of the Year" by the downtown business association.

^ Nope, SLC has built a couple more LRT lines since the Olympics and is about to start on a streetcar line. It's attitudinal.

A friend of mine attended a transit conference in SLC a couple of summers ago. One of the speakers at the plenary meeting as a VP at the University of Utah. He talked about how much light rail had done for the university and talked about SLC's several plans for future rail investments. When he finished, he took questions. Once question went like this, "Utah is one of the most conservative states in the nation. How did you convince voters to support all of these projects?" He thought for a minute and then answered, "Because we think about the next generation here." You could have heard a pin drop.

Here's the lowdown on the new Enquirer editor: http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/cincy-will-washburn-get-nod-this-week.html

^ The city knows the stops are too far apart in this area. I'm certain they will add one on 12th just west of Main.

^ None that I know of.

^ It's getting there. When you accept Federal funds, there are a lot of hoops to jump through.

^ I dunno Ken. I think it's especially relevant to this page because the Eastern Corridor project has long been sold as a rail project when, in fact, it is a highway project. I think it's important to understand the games the highway guys have become good at playing.

Jake Mecklenborg wrote a terrific article about what's really going on with the Eastern Corridor project: http://www.urbancincy.com/2011/01/809m-identified-for-long-planned-i-74-extension-through-hamilton-county/

^ From Second and Main, east on Second Street Ramp to Taylor-Southgate Bridge through Newport to a new bridge over the Licking River at Fourth? Street and through Covington to MainStrasse.

^ It's never the money. It's that rail doesn't comport with its opponents' views of how the world should work.

"I put it in there for the president." I remember a sort of cringe when I heard Rahm Emanuel say that -- the $8 billion that he inserted into the stimulus bill, almost as a sort of after-thought. At least that's the way it came off to me when I saw the video. But read the article. The R's initially made no complaints about what Emanuel calls Obama's "signature issue." I wonder how much the combination of Emanuel's flippancy - at least that's the way I recall it coming off - on an issue of importance to the president, I wonder if that's what made high-speed rail suddenly so toxic, something they all almost simultaneously decided to be against. Article follows: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18924.html

Oh, right.

Here's a really absurd ziz-zag route, so absurd that it only carries 12,000-13,000 passengers a day. http://portlandstreetcar.org/node/4

I confess. I once put a nickel on a train track to see what would happen. About what I expected.

^ Here's the problem with "killing the parking" on Vine Street Hill. There probably won't be more than one or two stops between the bottom and top of the hill simply because there aren't many places flat enough to stop a streetcar. So you're not going to have a lot of streetcar-oriented development on the Vine Street Hill; it will continue to be automotive-oriented. If the street parking gets taken away and isn't replaced by surface lots -- which could be done, there's some vacant land in places -- then you may just have a perpetual slum there.

The streetcar will go much faster than 10 MPH. That's an average end-to-end speed including stops, traffic lights and layovers. The 7.9 mile long Portland Streetcar route takes about an hour to traverse = 7.9 MPH. It nevertheless carries over 12,000 passengers a day.