John Schneider

Why is this such a great idea?

The Alliance for Regional Transit is leading its 30th trip to Portland on October 22nd -- streetcars and light rail. Airfares are cheap, the hotel's cheap. Write if you'd like to go.

^ My sense is that Kasich and the "R"s opposition to trains is more political. Few Ohioans have any experience with trains. So it's another way to make the Dems look exotic and out-of-touch. And it's happening all across the country, amplified by Obama's push for high-speed rail and streetcar projects. They've become easy targets.

No one I talk with says the $400 million will be inadequate, but then maybe I'm just not talking to the right people. I think the "R''s fear that the $25 million for the engineering studies will clear up all the confusion and myths plus produce some pretty good marketing materials to advance the project. Opponents gain followers when the costs of a project are known but the benefits are uncertain. Doing the engineering will confirm the costs and benefits. I suspect some don't want that to happen. They succeed due to a lack of information.

MetroMoves had the I-74 line using the tunnels with a couple of stations between downtown and the Western Hills Viaduct. The trains in the tunnels would have surfaced to meet up with tracks to be built on Main and Walnut leading into the CBD. This was the truly ironic thing about re-using the tunnels -- you'd be running in a grade-separated configuration on Central Parkway where there's not a lot of traffic but then in mixed-traffic on streets through the core of downtown. Also, SORTA estimated the tunnels to be "worth" $250 million in 2002. Turns out, they're worth a lot less. We need to look at the tunnels in context. They were built at a time when Central Parkway -- before I-75 -- was a principal artery of our city. Not so much anymore. I doubt that anyone planning to build rail on Central Parkway today would call for new tunnels to be built there if they weren't there already. I don't want to beat up on the Central Parkway tunnels. But they were built under a different set of circumstances for a much more dense central city. Jake, jump in here ... enlighten us.

Conceding, for a moment, your point that $400 million is a LARGE amount ... . Then the HUMONGOUSLY GARGANTUAN amount of $1.7 billion for the I-70/71 split in Columbus, which a lot of people don't feel confindent about, should be getting a whole lot more scrutiny than 3-C. But it's not. I’m not going to argue against that, I think ODOT should spend more money on rail and less on highways. I’ll point out the dozens of ways highway designs are inefficient and waste money and real estate in the proper thread. I can’t stand the fact that the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati is getting 10 times what the 3-C is getting. But, it is a solid deal. What I’m saying is $400 million is a lot to spend on a project if it becomes a failure. If anything, ODOT should be spending much more on 3-C at the onset; for instance if cost $1 billion but was a plan I had more faith in, I’d be supportive. Maybe I haven’t been making myself clear. I support rail, I think the state and feds should spend more on new rail infrastructure and service (and less on new roads), I just don’t like the particulars of 3-C. How do we know the new Brent Spence is a "solid deal?" No Benefit/Cost study has ever been done on it. In fact, no one has ever asked for such a study to be done. Yet Ohio and Kentucky and the Feds have already invested many millions in the project. Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of replacing the Brent Spence. Ten years ago, I wrote the first article that ever appeared anywhere calling for a new Brent Spence. Today I sit on the architectual committee for the new Brent Spence. But we tend to think that just because a project has all the politicians behind it, because it's something a lot of people use, it's a winner when, in fact, we would have been better off if some "solid deal" projects had never been built.

Correction: Pittsburgh is currently building a subway extension under the river, and Pittsburgh is probably the most similar city Cincinnati has. I agree that it's highly doubtful, but don't say never. A subway compared to a simple tunnel is a distinction with a difference. When I think of a tunnel, it's something you have to build to get through a natural barrier like a mountain or a river. Generally, there's no station within the tunnel, hence no ADA, lighting or ventilation. Just a round bore hole with tracks and electrification in it. Subways are quite different. They usually run under streets and so lots of deep utilities need to be moved. The costs to maintain continuous movement of traffic above and access to adjacent businesses are significant. And they are active places, needing lots more investment than a tunnel if you're going to have people actually going down into them and boarding a train.

^ They were recently appraised to be worth about $100 million for transit purposes. Offsetting that found money would be the cost to make them compliant with ADA and install ventilation, lighting, whatever. In the aggregate, that wouldn't wipe out the $100 million value of the tunnels, but it would materially reduce it. Then there's this ... which part of Cincinnati would the tunnels serve? They're undoubtedly ideal for accessing the west side. But if you wanted to get to I-75 -- which would likely be built sooner -- we'd be better off with David Cole's plan to connect to I-75 at Mitchell via a series of tunnels (not a subway, per se) through Mt. Auburn, maybe some street-running around UC and another tunnel down through the Vine Street hill. It's a staright-line route that connects a lot of dots and gets you to, say, Tri-County, faster than the roundabout Central Parkway route. Or, if that were cost-prohibitive, a surface alignment using mostly Gilbert to Xavier, connecting to I-75 around Elmwood Place. Bottom line, I doubt the tunnels pencil out in the near future, though they're worth preserving. Ten-dollar gas someday may make a lot of this stuff feasible.

The city is not moving the water main out of the Central Parkway subway tunnels. This comes up a lot, and the confusion probably results from the city's installing a redundant water main alongside Fort Washington Way during the latter part of the 1990's. At some point, the switch can be made, but it's not in the cards right now. I'm also doubtful that we'll ever see the Central Parkway tunnels used for trains. Subways are today only being constructed in principal cities of the world, and even that's become a formidable task -- see: NYC's Second Avenue Subway or LA's "Subway to the Sea." Not likely for Cincinnati because you'd still have to build new tunnels all the way through the CBD south from Central Parkway at $200 million a mile. Or more. Plus I dunno where you install the subway entrances and elevators along downtown's thirteen-foot-wide sidewalks. Not happening any time soon.

You know, I bet if you figure-in fueling time, whether it occurs before, during or after the travel, plus restroom and maybe meal breaks, it's not that much slower than driving. And maybe you had to get the car washed before or after -- more time. And maybe there's a wreck that closes down I-71 for an hour. Few people honestly account for the time and money involved in driving. For example, I drove to a funeral in Indianapolis last week. Did some non-freeway driving there to get to the funeral and then drove through my old neighborhood after. On the way back to Cincinnati, I pulled off I-74 for a minute to see my old summer camp (kind of in a pensive mood that day). When I turned the rental car in back in Cincinnati, the speed calculator said I had averaged 31.5 MPH for the day.

I think 3C got off on the wrong foot right from the get-go by framing the service in terms of total end-to-end travel-time, Cincinnati to Cleveland, of what? 6 hours and 45 minutes or something like that. That's the 39 MPH average everyone talks about. The truth is, relatively few people will ever travel the entire lenghth of the line. For example, I've lived in Cincinnati since 1966 and have never been to Cleveland. So you've got all the layover times of six or seven stops embedded in the calculation of the average speed, dragging the average way down, and it's never recovered from that. Someone should have been smart enough to say: Here's the travel from Cincinnati to Dayton, and the train will average 55 MPH, say. Or that it will average 57 MPH from Cleveland to Columbus. Instead we're stuck will this millstone of 39 MPH that the project can't seem to shake.

You know, it just seems like opposition to rail has now become a core Republican issue like abortion, lower taxes, gays in the military, immigration, that sort of thing.

I think Skoda and the aforementioned Inekon are related companies. Skoda and Inekon are actually competitors today. Skoda was first with the design, and then Inekon adapted it. The Oregon Iron Works prototype that was made for Portland used the Skoda propulsion system, and they've had a lot of problems with it and still can't get it certified for U.S. use. Skoda is an old-line Czech Republic manufacturer of lots of things. Its car division is now owned by VW.

Kinda think that it is either both directions on 12th or both directions on Central Parkway. I come down slightly in favor of wanting to land both directions right in the Gateway District., i.e. 12th. Seems more pedestrian friendly to me. And safer.

Need to correct something I wrote earlier. Streetcar will continue north on Vine past Taft onto Jefferson and turn right on Corry and lay over on Corry along the north edge of what is now the University Plaza shopping center. Then reverse its way out of Corry to Jefferson to Vine. One thing they're debating is whether both directions of east/west travel should be on Central Parkway or 12th Street downtown. There are merits to each. School bus and parent drop-offs around the new School for the Creative and Performing Arts are a complicating factor. Also, eventual LRT or streetcar service to CUT figures into this.

^ Another reason to send the streetcar to onto Hollister to Auburn to Corry.

I'm not sure that Kroger hates its OTR store. In fact, my understanding is that its ex-CEO, Joe Pichler, is really proud of it. And it's really a pretty good store given its age and size -- and important for the neighborhood (try to find ... I dunno ... Crisco, at Findlay Market). Pichler's been a "behind the scenes" streetcar opponent, and I've always wondered whether the streetcar's inseparable identification with Findlay Market has served to enhance his opposition.

^ My guess is that Kroger has say over what the new shopping center -- God, what an outdated name -- will look like, and Kroger has not been a supporter of rail in Cincinnati. It's kind of ironic since some of their Portland Fred Meyer stores are integrated part and parcel into some of the rail/bus transit centers there, and I see people with groceries often getting onto the light rail trains at those stops. My guess is that, at some level, grocery chains figure people will buy less if they can't stuff it into the trunks of their cars.

^ And some others: Portland State - streetcar and light rail through the campus; San Diego State - light rail through campus; U Minn - building light rail through campus; probably others, too early in the morning.

The plan as it exists today is for the streetcar to continue north on Vine past McMillan and turn right onto Taft into a protected counterflow lane on Taft. The operator would drive the vehicle into the chute, pick up his radio, clipboard, and lunch bucket and walk to the other end of the vehicle and then drive it out to the west and south a couple of minutes later. You'd like to avoid this, but it's done in some cities where you don't have a loop at the endpoint. At the other end of the line, on the south side of Freedom Way in the Banks project, there is a loop from Walnut to Main, and so the driver won't have to change positions, although there will still be some layover time there. I hope they can find the money to turn right from northbound Vine onto Hollister to Auburn to Corry to an end-point on Corry @ Jefferson opposite UC's East Gate and reverse. Or be really bold and continue west across Jefferson deep into the campus terminating near Nippert Stadium. Serves many more people, a struggling business district, a hospital that's recommitting to the city and gets the streetcar deeper into two neighborhoods with good housing stocks. And sets up the streetcar to continue west to Clifton Heights, north to Ludlow and/or the Zoo, or northeast to the medical campus. If you're thinking in terms of network effects, it's the way to go. But it probably costs $5 to $10 million more not including the penetation into the UC campus.

City sees rising property values, revitalized retail [the haters were up early on this holiday morning] "We think the streetcar will help accelerate development, and I expect that it will start long before the tracks are actually laid." http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100906/BIZ01/9050355/Streetcar-path-lined-with-hope

^ I'm guessing there are fifteen people working nearly fulltime on the Cincinnati Streetcar right now -- not all of them in Cincinnati.

^ It was great. The best accumulation of data in support of the Cincinnati Streetcar that has ever been brought together in one place. A really high-quality presentation.

^ If you only knew ...

^ The City Administration will select the route, as it should be. We are still an administration-led city.