John Schneider

Something I heard recently: the Taft and McMillan bridges over I-71 east of UC may not be able to carry the weight of a modern streetcar.

Aerial tram from the Findlay Market North Lot to the Christie's lot at McMillian and Clifton. It is a straight shot right over Bellevue Hill Park, it solves the comfort level, and utilizes Findlay Market as a natural transfer point. You've got a big hill. Either you go over it, or you tunnel through it. I love the idea of an aerial tram.

Bill Butler is a long-time rail opponent.

I suspect Vine is constructible but will present lots of operating problems. Back in the days of the Mount Auburn Tunnel, a 5% grade was no problem. UC is about 500 employees away from being the fifth largest employer in the state of Ohio. In truth, we should be talking about serving our city's largest employer with mainline light rail, multi-car trains. A stop at Jefferson and, well, University. If it takes a tunnel to do that, that's what we should do. How would an attorney put it? Let's see. Oh yeah, "a streetcar is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success." So to speak.

You can size the motors and gears to be able to climb steeper than normal grades, but then you carry that hardware penalty around on the flat parts of the route. So say we're building six track-miles to start, and a mile of that is an 8-9% slope, the remaining five miles of (relatively) flat track has to live with the ruling grade solution. Might not be very efficient from a systems approach. That said, passenger comfort is an important aspect. After graduating from UC, I rode the #46 bus downtown to work, and you never wanted to be standing on that bus especially carrying a briefcase (back when people carried briefcases). Almost everyone stands on a modern streetcar at peak. I think it's problematic. I watch people on the 8% slope from Portland State to the South Waterfront. Over the several years that I've been doing that, I often see people standing as they start to ascend or descend that slope. Because that's near the end of the line, a seat is generally available. And by the end of the ascent or descent, I see that a number of the former standees have grabbed a seat. Throw a few curves in there, and you may not have a very comfortable journey. If you want to see for yourself, we're going to Portland again in mid-January. The air fares and hotel rooms are scandalously cheap, and the weather is really crappy. But the wine's good.

I think two-way streets are terrific and the wave of the future (past, actually). But they do complicate on-street operations for rail.

True, but it would do wonders for the "Empty Quarter" of Uptown east of I-71. That's an important area for reinvestment, maybe with as much potential as OTR. Remember, a streetcar isn't intended to be corridor-level transportation. It's a circulator. Its route could literally be a circle. A one-seat ride passing as many origins and destinations as possible is what's really importnat.

Looks good to me.

Hey, it may be lame, so blame Sir Isaac Newton: "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest." The first sentence describes what's going to happen to passengers as they get thrown back and forth on the steep, twisty Vine Street or Clifton Avenue hills. The second describes what's going to happen when a streetcar tries to start moving from a standing stop on one of those hills during a snowstorm.

Problem is, there is no comparison between vintage streetcars and modern streetcars. Modern streetcars are much, much heavier, they're longer, they carry three or four times as many people. They are not as nimble as the ones from 100 years ago. Of the three modern streetcar systems that exist in America today, only one of them has a slope equal to Vine Street, and it's only about 1,000 feet long compared to 5,000 or so feet between South Clifton and McMillan.

Here's the problem with David Cole's map on Page 291. Actually, there are no problems with the map per se -- it's the best map of the Cincinnati Streetcar route anyone has ever produced. But it illustrates the problems perfectly. In order to get from Elm and McMicken to UC, which is only 3,000 feet away as the crow flies, you have to travel east for a block, then reverse direction and go two blocks south, then go another block east, and finally travel two blocks north to more or less get back to where you were heading when you were at Elm and McMicken. This is an extra six blocks of travel with at least six traffic signals. It will take the streetcar at least five minutes, maybe ten, to make this reverse and continue on its route. Buses coming up Vine Street will do this in a minute or so. There are other problems. While the track crossings look simple on the map, they are extremely expensive. Each piece of cross-track is specially fabricated from a solid piece of metal. The company in Austria that does this -- I think that's where they are -- charges about $250,000 for each section of track like this. Plus, wherever tracks cross you tend to get the spider-web of wires -- not only from all the power wires but also from the structural cables put in place to carry all that weight. Turns are problematic wherever they occur. Oilers have to be installed to prevent wheel-squeal, and the track usually wears unevenly between the low side of the curve and the high side. San Diego is now replacing all of the curved track on the first line it opened in 1980. In my view, what needs to happen to get to UC is to find the flattest, straightest approach possible. It's either a tunnel or Gilbert.

My guess is that the casino owner makes a proposal to extend the streetcar to Broadway Commons. I've been thinking through how to do that and maximize the benefits for others along the route. Seems like just sending it along the Seventh/Eighth couplet to Gilbert would be a waste. Sure it would get there really fast, but there are bridges around which you really can't do much. It wouldn't really contact the city that much. So I've been thinking it needs to go up Main north of Central Parkway and turn right on short Reading behind the Alms and Doepke Building and follow short Reading Road across Sycamore to Reading Road and Broadway Commons. Returning, I think you'd want to use short Reading again and continue west on 12th Streeet across Main to Walnut and then turn left from 12th onto Walnut to meet the mainline on Walnut South of Central Parkway. This would give MSED and Gateway quarter (some) exposure to the casino precinct, assuming they wanted it.

Too far apart to work as a couplet.

... the connection to uptown has the potential to bring significant ridership pretty much out of the gate. Without that connection, the circulator could flounder ... It' s an article of faith among all of us that there's a huge travel market between Uptown and Downtown. I doubt that this is the case. Would be nice if it were, but there's never been any evidence to support what we'd all like to see. Hence, I suspect that the Uptown extension lowers, not raises, the rate-of-return on the Cincinnati Streetcar.

... because they preceded the 1969 passage of the National Environmental Policy Act.

I do think Ludlow is the best end-point for the Uptown service. If the line served the Calhoun/McMillan, Corryville and Ludlow business districts, you'd have a pretty powerful asset for repopulating our city. You could easily get to Nothside from Ludlow too. One problem with going through a park is that if you use Federal funds, there is a very time-consuming process to endure. I think it's a non-starter.

I wouldn't bet on it, but the Uptown study will probably take a look at all the alternatives for serving UC, and that would be something they ought to take a look at. There are several rail systems in operation or being planned now with stops on or tangent to college campuses -- San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Tucson, Phoenix come to mind. Most urban college campuses are land-constrained and can't dedicate any more real estate to parking, so it's a logical thing to do. Here, it could become part and parcel of a strategy for repopulating the area of OTR north of Findlay Market, which is closer to UC than it is to Fountain Square.

Stay tuned ...

They need to move manholes in the path of the streetcar to one side or the other so workers can access them while the streetcar is running. Some old streetcar tracks will have to come out. Others may still remain where they are. They won't always move pipes and conduits. Instead, they will often install sleeves under the trackway adjacent to the pipes and conduits. If and when they leak or break, they will just abandon the old ones, and put new ones through the sleeves. They will install sleeves at strategic points around vacant sites in preparation for future development. You generally want to split the route onto two streets to expand the streetcar's zone of influence. Probably better if both of them are one-way. Running both directions on narrow two-way streets is, in my view, very problematic for each of the Vine and Clifton alternatives. The contractor the city has hired, Stacy and Witbeck, is a total first-class operation. Once they get utilities hogged-out, you'll be amazed how fast the trackway is built. I wouldn't worry about any of this.

The streetcar won't be running in the curb lane. It will be in one of the two middle lanes, and the sidewalks will be bumped-out to meet that lane every two or three blocks. Its path through downtown has been designed to minimize conflict with utilities.

We voted.

Economists have concluded that drivers who face uncertainty due to weather or accidents value their time lost due to these kinds of incidents at up to four times what they value their time in a non-eventful commute. As truck traffic increase by 2.5 times on I-75 over the next 25 years, there will be more events like this and more demand for rail running on its own guideway and unaffected by weather or accidents.

If we use Federal funds, going through Eden Park woud require a "4F" review, which can take as long as four years. I think that's the only way you could get there. However, if the streetcar to Uptown uses Gilbert, you could get pretty close. I personally think it's likely there will be a spur from Central Parkway and Main east through Broadway Commons, perhaps all the way to Gilbert, but that would require the casino developer's contributing a fair amount of money to get it done.

Kinda doubt you want center-street operation if you're trying to stimulate economic development in addition to providing a transportation benefit.

Don't think so.