John Schneider

Little known fact: 45% of the ridership of the Downtown/OTR streetcar loop is projected to be persons earning less that $20,000 per year. It's in the city's study. It will certainly save a lot of money for low-income families in the area served, many of whom spend a quarter to a third of their disposable incomes on local transportation. UC students generally do not make over $20k in a year while in school Not sure what the point is, but the estimations probably included very few UC students since the city's study was limited to Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, and I doubt many students live there.

The group that went to Portland this weekend heard a lot about the opportuny dividend -- that's what I'm calling it -- promoted by streetcars. Here's the consensus: bringing many more people to an area, even if some of them don't spend a lot, just by those persons taking care of their life's needs in their own neighborhoods and often within walking distance results in a lot more aggregate spending. And some of that spending gets capitalized in increased property investments. Jobs rise as the buildings are built and as companies and residents occupy them and buy other goods and services. Don't think for a second that what's happening in Portland isn't real. Sure, it's over-built and under-employed right now, but Portland will power-out of this recession a lot sooner than Cincinnati will. The quality of the new buildings, starting at the airport and evident throughout the city, the mass of people walking the sidewalks, on the streetcars, and at events, was amazing. They are building a great city there.

Little known fact: 45% of the ridership of the Downtown/OTR streetcar loop is projected to be persons earning less that $20,000 per year. It's in the city's study. It will certainly save a lot of money for low-income families in the area served, many of whom spend a quarter to a third of their disposable incomes on local transportation.

^ Messer is not involved with either of the teams that want to build the streetcar.

^ Think river and city views maybe had something to do with it? The city's best park?

^ Hey, it's a big project. These things don't happen overnight. Portland's streetcar took eleven years from concept to opening. We've been at this about two years now.

^ I think so. It's a 15-16 minute streetcar trip from the riverfront to McMicken and Elm, depending on the time of day and day of the week. If you had to leave your riverfront condo, retrieve your car from an underground car park, drive this distance, park it and walk to the destination, it would probably take you about that long. In terms of door-to-door travel-time, it's pretty competitive. It would be a good idea to look at the maps in the Appendices of the city's streetcar report and see how much care has been given to lane assignments and the like.

^ Not really. I've taken most of them to Portland over the years, and they are all big supporters of it. They just don't see the need for it. Our traffic engineers have actually come up with something that really benefits the streetcar. Where it has to cross from one side of the street to the other -- it does this a few times in the 3.9 mile Downtown/OTR loop -- they give the streetcar a five- to ten-second head start to pull ahead of the rest of the traffic and make the lateral move when the light goes green.

So far, city of Cincinnati traffic engineers have not agreed to give the streetcar signal pre-emption, and so the streetcar will stop for traffic lights. Some of the stops outside of downtown may be call-stops, where you signal for the streetcar to stop, like on a bus.

^ I did not mean to be unkind, just frank. Vine Street and Clifton, especially considering the awkward pivot around Findlay Market and reversing the direction of travel southbound to get to Uptown, do not have shorter travel times. To see this for yourself, drive Vine and Gilbert between Fountain Square and University Plaza. You'll find both are ten minutes going downhill from University Plaza to Fountain Square. But Vine Street is thirteen minutes going uphill from Fountain Square to University Plaza, while Gilbert remains at ten minutes. I've won a few bets with people who didn't believe this. From an economic development point-of-view, if each dollar spent on a mile of track gets you 2.7 dollars in return, why limit the amount of track? We really should be thinking about more track-miles, not fewer. The discussion we're having is really about the difference between corridor-level transportation (where you are focused solely on mobility) and circulator-type transportation where you are promoting mixed-use, walkable communities. To me, we have plenty of the former, hardly any of the latter. Vine and Clifton between downtown and uptown are more of the same -- auto-focused with no possiblity of scaleable commercial or retail projects, just marginal residential uses.

Less than meets the eye. Certainly not enough to pay for the $25 million cost of building that section and the $700,000+ annual cost of operating it. And the buildings are abandoned and dingy for a reason -- it's a noisy, under-parked, bus-choked street. I don't think the streetcar makes those problems go away. Wish there were more to work with there. Anyway, that's just one of the problems.

Actually that's the problem, or rather -- one of the problems, with using Vine or Clifton to get to Uptown -- there is little potential for development along the route. You're essentially building a mile of non-revenue track that will have high operating costs.

^ I believe that the money to build the Downtown/OTR starter line is now within the City's reach. You have to start somewhere.

The notion that extending the streetcar to Uptown ensures its success sounds logical, but it falls into the category of an urban myth. During the early part of this decade, The Uptown Transportation Study estimated travel patterns within and around the several Uptown neighborhoods using the OKI Travel Demand Model. You know what? It showed hardly any O & D travel between Downtown and Uptown. Sure the buses running on Vine Street and Clifton are full, but those passengers are mainly coming and going somewhere else, not traveling between Downtown and Uptown. Surprised everyone. With respect to the Dowtown/OTR loop's being a risky investment -- say like a house or a credit card -- far from it. The Risk Analysis estimated there was less than a 2% chance that the Downtown/OTR loop would fail to produce present value benefits in excess of its costs. And there was only a 10% chance that it would fail to produce benefits equal to at least 160% of its costs. So the idea that the OTR/Downtown route is some kind of risky venture and has to be altered is a little inconsistent with the facts. Then there's this. Everyone takes it as an article of faith that connecting our region's two largest job centers is absolutely essential for the streetcar's success. Why, exactly, is that important? Sure you want to connect large reservoirs of potential housing demand with job centers, like OTR to the CBD. But how much potential travel is there, really, between job centers? Think about it.

Yep, that's what they do: discredit, dissemble, delay. Meanwhile, I think it's interesting that in the case of our region's highest transportation priority, a replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge, no one has even bothered to calculate the Present Value of that project's Net Benefits. It would make an interesting comparision.

Thought of the Day: Say, did President Obama ever get around to answering Chris Smitherman's letter?

^ I hope they don't wrap them. I could see where we'd let a business "own" a streetcar in the sense of naming it for them in exchange for a large contribution to the project. But consumer advertising, I dunno.

Some of the fare "revenue" will occur as a result of transfers from Metro and TANK, when trips originate there and are continued on the streetcar. And similarly, fare "loss" will occur when trips originate on the streetcar and are continued on Metro and TANK. Treaties between Cincinnati Streetcar, Metro and TANK will be needed to sort all of this out. And, in my view, if the streetcar relieves Metro of providing service, then Metro should pay Cincinnati Streetcar for that. Assuming the streetcar at least gets to Findlay Market to start and later to Peebles Corner and Knowlton's Corner, it would be logical to transfer passengers from 44-passenger Metro buses to 130-passenger Cincinnati Streetcars at these points and send the buses back to the neighborhoods to get more passengers while avoiding downtown traffic. And it would be good for downtown traffic too -- one streetcar taking the place of three Metro buses.

^ The economists who studied the Cincinnati Streetcar estimated that, by 2025, there would be 2,290 units of new housing produced in OTR and Downtown due to the presence of the streetcar that would not otherwise occur. And it estimates new commerical space that would be added at an average rate of 148,000 SF per year over what would othewise happen. I do think Randy is right. Gateway succeeds because it is walkable, focused and subsidized. The Brewery District has no such backing, and it's just too far away from employment centers to make it without the streetcar or a huge investment in parking infrastructure. I doubt quality and extensive redevelopment will occur north of Liberty Street without the streetcar. I will be happily surprised if it does.

Someone posted something along the lines of "people won't drive in from the suburbs and take the streetcar to Findlay Market, blah, blah, negative, pissy ... " and they're right, of course. But a lot of Cincinnatians, wherever they live, are going to be interested in the following proposition: Drive any of four freeways that converge on our region's best interchange, Fort Washington Way, and park in a brand-new garage for a third of what parking goes for around Fountain Square during the weekday. And then hop on the streetcar that comes around every few minutes to get to your job up in town. In a few years, several thousand people will be doing this every day. They will have better parking, and they will save a lot of money. And we'll free-up for higher-and-better uses some of the 90+ acres of downtown land now used for surface parking. I can also imagine Music Hall patrons parking cheaply at Fountain Square, having dinner there, and then taking the streetcar to a concert, then returning to downtown for a drink afterwards. And I'm sure some Reds fans - the city estimates up to 2,000 per game -- will park cheaply or for free in Over-the-Rhine and jump on the streetcar to go to GABP. Then go back to OTR bars after the game. And for those who can't get the "streetcar to nowhere" idea out of their minds, our continuously improving Findlay Market will at last be recognized for what it is -- downtown's once and future grocery store. And that's just the Downtown/Over-the-Rhine story. When you add-in the eight other neighborhoods served in Phase One of the Cincinnati Streetcar, the streetcar contacts well over 50% of our city's jobs and 20% of its residents.

The Gilbert Avenue section could be built to light rail standards for eventual conversion to light rail. It would be cheap light rail because there aren't that many utility connections to deal with going up Gilbert. And you've got a lot of running room. But light rail would best serve UC through a tunnel from downtown to Jefferson and Corry Street, with the UC station at Jefferson and University. Eight minutes from Fountain Square to UC compared to probably 25 minutes going up Vine Street by streetcar to the same place. It would change our city in a big way.

Easy. After the first line is underway from The Banks to Findlay Market, start a second line that travels through or around Broadway Commons to Gilbert Avenue to William Howard Taft to Hughes Corner. Drive it sometime. It doesn't take any longer, and the uphill leg is actually about three minutes faster than reversing directions around Findlay Market and going up Vine Street. Plus there are many more large, flat development sites and ultra high-quality building shells along Gilbert and east of UC. The Findlay Market line should eventually be extended through the West End and Camp Washington to Northside. The Gilbert to Hughes Corner line could easily be extended to Hyde Park, Avondale and Clifton/Ludlow. And another line should be built between Price Hill and Columbia Tusculum. When it's all done in about twenty years, we'll have three interwoven streetcar lines connecting almost half of Cincinnati's neighborhoods. Plus a loop through Northern Kentucky. Light rail would pick up many of the rest. That's why the opponents need to stop the first streetcar line. Once the first one is built and succeeds, there will be huge interest in other lines throughout Cincinnati's close-in neighborhoods.

Below is a picture of the first American-made modern streetcar being delivered to Portland Streetcar last Friday morning. This car was built in Clackamas, Oregon by Oregon Iron Works under license from Skoda. I've talked to people at OIW about their process, which is entirely different from the Skoda cars made in the Czech Republic that have been used for several years in Portland, Tacoma, Seattle and soon, Washington D.C. The European cars are shop-built, one at a time. No two are exactly alike. The OIW cars are built to more precise specifications in more of an assembly-line method. They claim the result will be streetcars that are more reliable and durable. A friend of mine advises to let some other city buy the first few OIW cars and see how well they do before considering purchasing a whole fleet of them. HERE'S THE VIDEO -- http://portlandtransport.com/archives/2009/05/streetcar_deliv.html#more

Sure. I own one building on the streetcar line that represents a tiny fraction of my net worth. It's always 100% leased. There's little, if any, personal upside for me. So you lost the bet. Where do you live, Dan?

I think DanB just has a fundamental misunderstanding of one of the main things streetcars are intended to do -- repopulate cities. Sort of like the old baseball saying, "hit 'em where they aint'." We could, I suppose, send the streetcar to Hyde Park. But what good would come of it? Think Hyde Park needs a lot of improvement?