John Schneider

Another choke point during the week is Central Parkway and Main. Lots of traffic movements, lot of peds

Anyone know anything about an accident, not involving the streetcar, at 5th and Walnut?

Ok fine, here's what I'm sending out in a few minutes. Email me at [email protected] Dear Friends, Thanks for giving up some time to work streetcar stops this weekend. The attached spreadsheet has your name associated with one or more of the several time blocks, some of which are still open. If you haven't picked a slot -- pick two if you can - please do that now by responding to this email. I'll build this spreadsheet as I hear from others through today and Saturday. Metro will send me a list of what it believes will be the busiest stops. The objective is familiarizing Cincinnatians with the streetcar. Here's a very short video on the ticket machine. Keep it on your phone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTnXzIoWuRg The things we are trying to emphasize during the event: People should buy a $2.00 Day Pass and avoid the lines on their return or other subsequent trips - only one transaction! There may be big crowds at the Banks and other downtown stations Better yet: Show people how to download the Cincy EZRide app! You get one free Metro ride with a download and it will import your information if you already use Cincy EZPark. Skip the lines and the ticket machines! Make sure people validate their tickets when they are ready to ride - this is something Metro is trying to get the word out on Suggestions for volunteers: Wear colors that emulate the livery of the streetcar - teal, or blue and green If asked, say you're just a citizen volunteer with no affiliation Do not touch anyone or anyone's money, credit cards or phones - let them insert the cash themselves If you see something/say something - if there is an emergency, dial 911 Metro customer service is 513-621-4455 Passengers should not be on the platform edge (red area) when a Cincinnati Bell Connector is approaching the platform What I'll do: I'll be in touch with Metro throughout the weekend, passing along info by email about which stops are being jammed and where we need help. We're gonna need more people. Can you recruit others? Have them contact me by email with a general idea of when they want to work. I'll add them to the list and re-broadcast this email and the spreadsheet from time-to-time. Please don't forward the spreadsheet. The top of the spreadsheet has the most important stops to cover, ranked by importance. I'm not assigning stops. Just observe and use your best judgment as to where to go. If a stop isn't busy, move on to somewhere else. Thanks again, John Schneider 513-470-1300

email me and I'll tell you

Can I get you guys to agree to help staff the stops in 3-4 hour shifts this weekend? If so, message me at [email protected] with a preferred time-window. I'm building a spreadsheet and will be back in touch. Especially need people tonight and tomorrow afternoon. thanks.

I told some reporters yesterday that we haven't had trains on our streets in 65 years, so we're not going to be perfect after six and a half days. I'm with Jake.

This is a local circulator, that's all. The average trip is a little over a mile. It will get faster as the city improves the signals, but it's never gonna be BART. If you want speed, we need a tunnel to UC

Pretty sure Metro has a rule against that

Ryan, I sent a note to Grether. He thinks your idea of getting rid of scheduled arrival time on the reader boards and just reporting out when the next three streetcars will arrive has merit. Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet. Since you guys are "in the know" and talking to these folks, I just have to press on some details here. What do you mean by reporting "when the next three streetcars will arrive"? Do you mean using the eventual RT arrival data (after those problems are solved)? Since we don't have that information now, I'd also ask that Grether be requested to eliminate the scheduled times entirely from the board, until the RT data is online. That's what he's looking into. No posted schedule. Just GPS-actuated arrival times

Might see those today.

Ryan, I sent a note to Grether. He thinks your idea of getting rid of scheduled arrival time on the reader boards and just reporting out when the next three streetcars will arrive has merit. Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet.

^ Seems like we're zeroing in on signal timing as the main problem. The flow of traffic in the CBD runs east-west as it moves to the freeways. Our traffic lights are designed to expedite that flow. The streetcar principally moves north-south. So consequently we get a lot of red lights. That's what we need to work on.

Channel 12 just had a really positive report

The stop spacing is good but the speed is low. Unfortunately you can't do dedicated streetcar lanes because of the narrow streets unless you make most of the streetcar's streets transit/pedestrian/bike only. I liked that the streetcar has traffic signal priority but signal preemption would make it even faster. Several online articles have appeared in recent years deriding the new streetcar systems that don't have dedicated lanes, which is pretty much all of them. A lot of the complaint about "streetcars" seems to originate in Washington, DC. I haven't seen that thing but because most writers are centered on the east coast, that is the one system they are familiar with, and so have assumed that the rest are like that. There isn't an option to do a dedicated lane anywhere in DT Cincinnati (except maybe Linn St.), and the wide streets in uptown are all wide enough to permit construction of a 2-track line adjacent to them without disrupting many utilities or requiring any reconstruction of the street. Clifton between the law school and Ludlow Ave., a distance of about 2 miles, could have streetcars on its east side on the UC campus and through Burnett Woods. MLK could have streetcars on the north or south near UC, and on the north side from Vine to Reading (except for the 1970s Piedmont Apts). There is also plenty of space along MLK between I-71 and Victory Parkway. Jefferson has plenty of space on its west side for streetcar tracks and Vine has space on its east side north to the zoo, with the exception of one small VA building. Replacing that building and the Piedmont Apts might be cheaper than reconstruction of those streets. Meanwhile on McMillan and Calhoun there will likely be a lot of push-back from individual business owners if the city sought to build a dedicated lane for streetcars on each. That area needs to retain loading zones and at least one lane of on-street parking. So if a lane is dedicated to streetcars, there is no way that there could also be a dedicated bike lane without some sort of remarkable change in attitude. ^ This is just the latest tactic of the opponents. They realize dedicated lanes in most Eastern cities are impossible, so they try to de-legitimatize streetcars by claiming they can't be successful without them. If, early-on, we would have starting planning dedicated lanes here, the opponents would have shut us down in an instant. Like Derek says, "just moving the goalposts."

Not bad considering it didn't open to the public until after 12. When will the numbers for Saturday/Sunday come in? The folks from KC I met were worried that Cincinnati would eclipse their streetcar's first three days of boardings. Dunno when they will publish official counts. I wouldn't put this out there until they do

A lot of these issues will be worked out. if ridership is as good as I think it will be, there will be pressure on the traffic engineers to give the streetcar more priority. Two and a half days into this, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

We moved 16,000 people on Friday

One guy who got on the streetcar on Elm and went around the car barn -- when the streetcar stopped at Race and Elder, said to his wife, "C'mon, this is Fountain Square, it's where we get off

^ Sand is not for stopping. It's for starting on ice and on grades.

Pretty sure these early inclines carried horse-drawn trolleys. Electric streetcars didn't come along until the mid-1880's

Under Ohio law, political jurisdictions have the power to do "quick-takes" of property for transportation improvements. So if we needed to go under someone's property, the city would make a claim and rely on a court to determine the fair value, if any, of drilling under someone's property. I doubt the awards would amount to much. In any case, much of the tunnel -- two tunnels actually -- is under streets and Inwood Park, both owned by the City. Plus the west garage of The Christ Hospital, which would have an above-ground station immediately to its north. I don't see TCH objecting too much. This is a non-issue, but I expect COAST and Smitherman to try to make it one.

The tunnel is nowhere near "a half-billion dollars." We can build a tunnel or have a really crappy streetcar on Vine that few will use because it is so roundabout and slow. Well half-billion is obviously just a guess, but I will reserve judgement until I see an actual plan that lays out the cost of the tunnel and the overall plan. I don't think you can sell Cincinnati on building a tunnel unless you also convince them to build multiple lines that branch off at the north end and serve different neighborhoods. And that seems like a "Metro Moves Lite" plan that we'd need to take to the voters. I see the tunnel as the keystone for MetroMoves II, hosting at least two and maybe three rail lines. My thinking is, getting one rail line to Uptown will be hard enough. There will never be two in any of our lifetimes. So assuming we want to have UC on the Main Line of a regional rail network, the connection between Downtown and Uptown needs to be built for all time and able to handle multiple lines as we flesh-out a regional rail network. It needs to be straight and direct and fast to be car-competitive. Otherwise, you pretty much have a bus. I'm probably an outlier here, but I don't think there is enough travel demand between Uptown and Downtown to justify an Uptown extension that never goes farther than Uptown. It needs to be fed by lines funneling into it from the north.

The tunnel is nowhere near "a half-billion dollars." We can build a tunnel or have a really crappy streetcar on Vine that few will use because it is so roundabout and slow.

Even when Delta had 600+ flights a day here in 2001, we could never get the airport ridership to prove out. Needs to serve the KY valley towns principally with the airport at the end of the line

I think it's grade-separated between OTR and UC and grade-separated again along the south side of the east campus, then somewhere in Avondale picking up the Blue Ash Line to Xavier, and from Xavier on to the Mill Creek Valley, to Mason and to Milford, say. So, in a built-out regional system here, not much street-running. Seattle's the model for Cincinnati