John Schneider

^ Except for one very short section that approaches 8%, all 7.9 miles of Portland's streetcar track are on flat land. They have specifically excluded Southwest Portland from ever getting streetcar service because of the hills there. Just the way it is.

Portland has hills comparable to Vine Street, but they've been smart enough not to put streetcars on them.

^ Hey, that's my pic!

I'm just willing to verbalize it. Trust me, there are real doubts about Vine Street.

^ I'm hearing that Clifton Avenue is back in the game for the route to Uptown. Whether it's just window-dressing or really a viable alternative, I dunno. But I do know there is a general distaste for Vine.

^ Great American Ball Park

^ They will order streetcars and start moving manholes soon after they get another slug of money. I bet we'll start to see things happen by Labor Day.

Just returned from leading a bunch of Cincinnatians to Portland to see the streetcar -- 402 of us have now done this. Next trip is October 22nd if anyone's interested. We met with Charlie Hales of HDR, who is working on our project and ones in several other cities. He says Cincinnati's chances are excellent for success in the next round of Federal funding, which is going to happen sooner that you think. He names Salt Lake City, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Worth as likely recipients too. Some interesting info: remember that $23 million that Dallas got for its streetcar in Tiger 1 along with Portland, New Orleans and Tucson? Remember how no one could figure that out since no one knew anything about Dallas' plan? Turns out, Dallas never had a viable streetcar plan, and now they're going to have to give the money back. I'm guessing Fort Worth tries to grab it. Charlie stressed to be prepared for and embrace unexpected happenings on account of the streetcar. For example, he recounts a meeting with a social service activist who vigorously opposed the streetcar in Portland prior to its construction (Justin Jeffre still reading this blog?). He ran into her after the line had been in operation for a while, and she apologized profusely and thanked him for his leadership on the issue. Turns out -- and this is no surprise to anyone who's been on any of our Portland trips recently -- people with disabilities are moving in large numbers to the streetcar line, and this has made life a lot easier for them and has reduced the public cost of providing transportation for them. Also, Portland's 200-foot blocks have produced another unintended consequence. The resulting building floor plates are too small to work for national retailers, especially after accounting for elevator and stairwell shafts and parking garage entrances. So developers found themselves stuck with a bunch of small spaces that, for a while, appeared to be unrentable. But the small spaces were the ideal sizes for restaurants. And the restaurant scene in Portland is exploding partly as a result. New chefs get trained in the more established restaurants and then go out and start their own. They lease old garages, buildings, whatever, with no obvious use in order to get their start.

God, I hope the knuckle-draggers who inhabit Cincinnati.Com don't start poisoning the well here.

Good LTE on Cincinnati.com this morning. Of course, it's not in the print edition: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2010/05/25/young-professional-votes-yes-on-streetcar/#pluckcomments

Politics Extra is impossible to find for the average reader on the front page. I don't even consider what they post here to be "published." Somebody reads it. It's getting some comments. My guess is elected officials who may read it don't comment.

Enquirer has another story up: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2010/05/24/what-theyre-saying-about-the-streetcar-poll/#pluckcomments

You know what I think? I think the Enquirer has realized that every time this issue heats up, it really drives its web traffic, and they don't want that to go away. I mean, look at the Comment counts on any streetcar article -- some exceeding 1,000. Once construction starts, all of that will stop. I suspect they are egging-on the opponents to launch a petition drive just for that reason. It's a no-lose situation. The publisher hates the streetcar. I hear that's where the opposition, not so much in the newsroom, so it's heads she wins, tails she wins. Whatever the outcome, it sells (some) more papers, but also gives them a story of robust web traffic to push to their advertisers. In a way, we aid and abet that story.

Randy, I'd say "Virginia-based" in the first para.

I called 1-800-876-4500 to cancel our Enquirer subscription of over thirty years, but whaddaya know?, they won't take cancellation orders on Sundays. I guess cancellations are so numerous there these days, they can only handle them Mondays through Fridays.

Just got off the phone with someone who knows a lot about polling. He says the Enquirer is really parsing the results of this poll. Here's the gist of his take: 24% of Cincinnatians think it will revitalize the city's core, while another 20% say its a risky project but that it ought to be built. That's 44%. Another 48% think it's a waste. He says for a project that's not built, which the public understands very little because they have nothing to compare it to, being only four points down in the poll is pretty good. Plus 7% are not sure. And there's a 4% margin of error. Here's another thing that pops out at me: 19% of Cincinnatians think they would use the streetcar almost every day. Besides water, sewers and streets, do you think 19% of Cincinnatians can name another City of Cincinnati service they expect to use every day. I can't. Someone wrote me earlier: "Looks like the Enquirer has declared war on the streetcar."

Survey USA poll May 18-19: Cincinnatians oppose streetcar 2:1 Might want to review and Comment Click here: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2010/05/23/get-your-streetcar-poll-crosstabs-here/

^ I'm with Jimmy_James. Go to the PICS section of www.protransit.com and look at the wires. These were taken with a high-resolution camera under all kinds of skies. They're only noticeable on turns.

At this point, there's no chance the streetcar's route between The Banks and Findlay Market will change other than the westbound leg on 12th may switch to Central Parkway. Personally, I'd prefer to have both directions of travel on 12th. Central Parkway has the scale for light rail, not streetcars. They're too far along with the underground mapping and the lane assignments to make any major changes now. I think it's a terrific route. It cuts diagonally across the basin from SE to NW, leaving hardly any flatland destination more than three blocks away from the alignment.

^ I'm pretty sure the Sources and Uses of Funds for the Cincinnati Streetcar and Metro's buses will be kept separate. The arrangement will probably be something like the relationship between a cargo ship owner and its crews. The ship owner (read "the city") had the ship built, owns it, sets the rates, collects the revenue from the shippers, and decides where the ship goes and where it stops to take on more cargo. The crew (Metro) staffs and pilots the ship. Something like that.

I'm not necessarily against going straight up Vine instead of to Music Hall, but I think there are two major problems with the comparison you're making. 1) The Metro Moves plan had a completely different agenda than the streetcar plan. It was focused on being regional, and moving people from point A to point B efficiently. The current streetcar plan is designed to have a local impact, making the immediate area more walkable, not necessarily to get someone from a garage at The Banks to the gate of the Zoo. So it's okay to have it meander through neighborhoods to hit more destinations, because hardly anyone will be riding the thing from end to end. 2) This plan was voted on in 2002, but was conceived even earlier than that. The outlook for OTR has changed drastically over the last 10 years, so it's understandable transit plans drawn up today might look different than one that was proposed immediately after the riots in OTR. I led the MetroMoves campaign, and the two comments above are very succinct. In the early part of this decade, there was a fair amount of hostility against rail by the owners of new businesses on OTR's Main Street, a few of which have now become the streetcar's biggest backers. They mainly had problems with the scale of the trains and the wires, since forgotten after several trips to Porltand over the years. But JimmyJames is right, laying tracks through OTR was then mainly seen as the fastest way (via the Mt. Auburn tunnel) to get to U.C. When the tunnel went away and the alignment shifted to the Deer Creek Valley, the streetcar was subsituted in its place. My opinion then was, and is, that U.C. is too important of a destination not to be served directly by mainline trains. The idea of "urban circulators" was never in the MetroMoves conversation. Should have been.

^ I've driven it a few times. On a Sunday morning, sure, three hours is about right. But on a weekday peak, crossing the Columbia River can be a bear, and Seattle's traffic is always problematic. I'd guess for the average traveler, the train is faster if you're going downtown to downtown. And certainly more reliable.

The trains shown in the video are the trains I've been using on that route since 2005. I rode it in January and will again next week. Some of the pics Iv'e taken are identical to what's portrayed here. It's a very smooth ride. The Seattle-Tacoma-Portland trip would be quite similar to what you'd expect going Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus, though it would be 15-30 minutes longer, I think. If everyone in Ohio could experience these trains, there wouldn't be many vocal 3C opponents.

^ Metro is not going to build or own the Cincinnati Streetcar. It will be a City of Cincinnati asset. Metro drivers will operate the vehicles and (perhaps) maintain them. That's it.

^ I think the opponents have simply activated their email list.