John Schneider

Put it on the ballot.

^ I'm aware of only two buildings on the streetcar route that Towne Properties has any interest in. If together they represent more than 1/10 of 1% of Towne's net worth, I'd be surprised.

And Seattle, longer.

Assume the opponents are monitoring this site.

I received a notice from the city today that the deadline for submitting RFQ's to select a contractor to design, build and operate the streetcar has been extended to January 20th. They were to be due tomorrow, December 18th. Here's the list of planholders: http://www.demandstar.com/supplier/bids/agency_inc/bid_list.asp?f=search&LP=BB&mi=10253

^ No, I don't think the manager's report to city council is dependent on the fundraising progress. He said he'd give a report on the plan. Whether that's late this year or early next year, I can't recall.

Much ado about nothing, according to Chris Bortz. What you're hearing from Monzel is arbitrary. The streetcar plan has never been in the budget. TIF's are not a part of the city's budget. They are special purpose pass-throughs. The proceeds from the sale of the Blue Ash airport are not available yet, so they're not in the budget either. And city capital funds won't be specified in the capital budget until they are needed.

^ It's more fundamental than that. Cranley is a long-time opponent of any kind of rail transit. He fools a lot of people who believe he is a supporter. Whatever the plan -- and this goes back to the beginning of this decade -- he always has another plan. You will never change his mind. In his heart of hearts, I believe Monzel is a rail supporter, but his backers would never let him vote that way. So he does what he's told.

I'm relying on the Regional Rail Plan developed by SORTA in 2002. No one I know thinks the Eastern Corridor Rail Plan has any viability. It's a stalking horse for a highway plan.

^ The main problem is, was, the CL&N doesn't go anywhere near UC. It bypasses it. Plus, it's been built on. It's a non-starter.

^ Sixty-six feet, I think.

^ You would use a Tunnel Boring Machine. They're in service around the world. My recollection is that it would have taken a year, starting at the foot of the Main Street steps, to bore a twin tube to Corryville. Fred Craig, who works for PB, wanted to reduce the amount of bore by daylighting the tunnel through the area just west of Christ Hospital. Sometime drive up to the Christ Emergency Room entrance and look over the rail into the valley to the west. I think it was a good idea that was never fully investigated prior to the time SORTA decided to drop the tunnel from the plan. We did find out that the soils -- rock, actually -- under Mt. Auburn was ideal for tunneling. The tunnel plan, as is, definitely needs some tweaking. URS had both portals emptying onto Main Street north of Liberty with the southbound direction crossing Main diagonally just west of Main and Liberty. Then it went through the Uptown Arts parking lot and behind Grammer's, which is now a development site. I think the tunnel needs to split just inside the Mt. Auburn hillside with the southbound direction emerging onto Lang Street and then to Walnut well north of Liberty.

^ That's true. But the consequence was the loss of a one-seat ride to UC from the south. A lot of people didn't like that. And the alternative was running LRT up Reading Road, which was a push. I think the tunnel will come back again. With respect to the interchanges, I assume they will preserve ROW for LRT just as they're doing in the planning of the I-75 rebuild right now. I think the other thing is, in 2002, you had a declining Uptown and OTR, and people had doubts about putting more money into infrastructure there. That view has clearly changed.

^ There's hope. A month ago, the City Planning Commission voted not to sell a parcel of city-owned land at the south portal of the tunnel precisely because it might be needed someday. We'll have another shot at this. Jake, can you blow up the the segment between, say, Liberty and MLK and Reading?

Jake, you wanna post something on the Mt. Auburn Tunnel? That's the real answer for the direct rail connection to Clifton and beyond -- eight minutes from Fountain Square to Jefferson and Corry, way faster than driving. With three LRT routes -- the Central, Northeast and Eastern Corridors -- pulsing through the tunnel, there would be a train every three minutes at peak. It would pretty much be transit on demand. It would fundamentally change the way our city works.

I do have question regarding the quoted text above. If the airports are too concerned with parking revenues to allow rail, most times, why do they allow public bus shuttles on airport property? Is it usually a government intervention to ensure that public buses reach the terminal pickups? Couldn't the same be argued for rail and access to each respective city? I suspect the reason is that they really can't bar buses from roads that were probably financed with public money. But they can make it difficult to obtain ROW through private property. And I suspect they have made a calculation that most bus riders would probably never be parkers anyway. On the streetcar vs. light rail issue, i.e. which should come first, I think they together represent two ways to skin a cat. Light rail corridor-level transit is all about moving people over distance. Streetcars are more about making the city so desirable and multi-use that people no longer need to travel much of a distance. Either way, you're getting cars off the freeways.

Great questions and comments. The plan on www.protransit.com is the Regional Rail Plan that was developed in 2001-2002 by SORTA and TANK. With respect to the airport, I remember a lot of that discussion, which is pretty much echoed on these pages today. First, the airport stop didn't have great ridership, even in the days when Delta was rolling and going. My recollection was about 2,000 boardings per day, and most of those were airport workers. In fact, some people in and around Boone County -- and maybe even TANK too -- thought an Erlanger or Florence terminus made more sense. This was never settled and was dealt with this way: the line would split at the I-275/75/71 interchange -- one branch would go to the airport, the other to Florence. You'd run an "A" train and a "B" train, alternately, to each terminus. Mark Donaghy, who was TANK's manager then and Dayton Regional Transit's manager now, had a really clever idea. Run the line to near-Florence just short of Burlington Pike and then cut though (what was then and may still be) the small golf course and come into CVG from the back way. This was never fully examined prior to the 2002 vote, but it clearly killed two birds with one stone. You know, it's funny, everyone always wants service to their city's airport, but it never seems to materialize. I bet there aren't ten cities in the U.S. with a one-seat ride on rail from their airport to their CBD. I've heard this is because airport managements always find a way to kill the deal -- because they are too dependent on parking revenues to tolerate the competition.

CINCINNATI The Alliance for Regional Transit is tonight reintroducing www.protransit.com -- now more streetcar-friendly and with enriched graphics. There's a NEWS tab with regional and national articles about higher-level transit and New Urbanism going back to 2001. You'll find an FAQ'S page and lots of info on modern streetcars in general and the Cincinnati Streetcar proposal in particular. I'm particularly happy with the PICS section which enables viewers to copy and distribute images of light rail and streetcars in service around the country and around the world. It's a visual story, after all. Credit goes to Heyob Design, here: http://www.heyobdesign.com/portfolio.shtml and to Shannon Reitenbach, who has diligently posted news items to the site since it was created. And to the many dozens of Cincinnatians who have underwritten the cost of this project. The work has been extensively fact-checked. You can rely on it. Have a look, starting with this really cool map: http://www.pro-transit.com/Maps/

When you have an extra minute, take another look at the great pics of the Museum Center's streetcar posted yesterday, for therein lies a story. People often ask, "What's the problem with climbing hills, the old ones used to do it.?" True, so far as it goes. The old streetcars had comfy seats because streetcars were, then, the primary means of travel over fairly long distances. Each vehicle accommodated maybe 40 or 50 people. The vehicles were about the size of a modern bus, some smaller even. This is not the case with modern streetcars. They are much larger, so large that they bend in two places to make it around corners. And they maybe have thirty seats. The remaining hundred or so people stand. That's the opportunity -- to move a lot of people at fairly low cost because the driver's salary and benefits are spread over many riders. That's also the problem, because if you're on a vehicle that's climbing or descending a steep slope and making curves on a grade, it's not particularly comfortable to be standing, densely packed. Stand up on a bus going up or down the Vine Street or Clifton hills, you'll see what I mean. In Portland, they've pretty much decided that the West Hills will never have streetcar service because it's, well, just too hilly there. It's just the way it is. That's why, if we're really serious about car-competitive rail transit to Uptown, Gilbert's probably the best way to do it.

My guess is, this is not much of a problem, at least not a problem that would have to be addressed anytime soon. The region's Number 1 highway project right now is widening I-75 through Hamilton County. Next is a replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge. The new access to Uptown from I-71 probably won't happen until Year 2020 or so, if then. And I suspect the super interchange at MLK won't be built, ever. Instead new access roads will be built alongside I-71 as it passes along the east side of Uptown and, functioning like Second and Third Streets in the Fort Washington Way system, that's how you will get on the freeway. I suspect the Taft, McMillan and MLK bridges -- perhaps altered somewhat -- will remain in place and that new ones will be built at Lincoln and Oak Street, thereby extending the Uptown street grid across the freeway. This will help unlock the area east of I-71 and diffuse freeway access across the breadth of Uptown rather than concentrating it as it is now. If the Taft and McMillan bridges needed to be replaced, I'm guessing that the streetcar would initially be built along the south side of each bridge with the rails anchored to the deck, not embedded as is typical. You'd need to install Jersey barriers to segregate this lane from auto traffic, but there's hardly any traffic using those lanes anyway. To prepare for the day when the bridges had to come down, the engineers would probably build crossovers at, say, May Street and Highland Avenues. You need to have crossovers anyway to be able to reroute the streetcar if there's a car accident blocking the tracks or if there is other trouble. For example, crossovers and turn-backs are already planned for the downtown loop on Central and !2th Street. So if, say, the Taft bridge had to be rebuilt, a streetcar heading west from Gilbert on Taft would turn left at May Street to McMillan and use the McMillan bridge to cross the freeway. At Highland, it would turn right and travel a block to rejoin Taft. When the McMillan bridge had to be replaced, you would just reverse the process. Sophisticated signalling would safely control the 1000 or so feet of two-way traffic on the active bridge. It would be a hassle, but not much of one for a system that's bound to last a hundred years. I don't see any reason to hold the Cincinnati Streetcar hostage to a highway plan.

You know, the thing that's really striking about Randy's map is that the base map still shows the old CSX line - I think that's what it was -- through western Hamilton County. Nice if it were still there today. Central Parkway would seem to be the path for west side light rail now. I'm guessing that LRT wants to be on Glenway eventually.

Here's another view: a streetcar is a circulator. Its route could literally be a circle. It's not intended to be the shortest distance between the end points of the line. Like, say, a route straight up Vine or Clifton. The other thing is, I think Uptown residents value circulation within Uptown as much they do a direct connection to Downtown, which they have already via many and frequent bus routes. The Ludlow to Peebles corner to downtown route does what no other bus route does -- cross Uptown on the diagonal and connect all four of the major Uptown business districts. Oh, and it will cause plenty of walking. So, my question is, if the Gilbert route is no longer in terms of travel time -- it's ten minutes both directions between Fountain Square and University Plaza compared with thirteen and ten minutes uphill and downhill on Vine Street respectively -- why wouldn't you prefer a route that touches more destinations? To me, it's the best of both worlds. By the way, the reason Vine Street takes longer uphill is because the streetcar has to go north to McMicken and then reverse direction and go south on Race before finding a street it can get through to Vine Street -- probably Green Street, a block south of Findlay Market. People won't like reversing their direction of travel. Plus, it has to negotiate two complicated intersections north of Green and Vine. Someone said it earlier, the vacant land is east of the university. You're not going to add much value unless you serve that market.

Central Parkway through Broadway Commons to Gilbert to Taft/Calhoun to Clifton to to Ludlow. Drive it -- it's as fast as any other route, and you connect many more dots on the map. I could definitely see a two-way loop around the UC superblock.

Just heard the city has put an RFP on the street for a vendor to Design, Build, Operate and Maintain the Cincinnati Streetcar. Proposals are due on December 18th.

This is untrue. Reductions in Vehicle Miles Traveled on account of the streetcar were estimated by the economists engaged by the city to study the streetcar's benefits. When you convert this number into the greenhouse gas reductions due to less driving, the burning of coal to power the streetcar produces only half the amount of CO2 that the cars do for every VMT. So, the streetcar's transportation benefit alone has a 2:1 "net positive effect" in greenhouse gas production. But the mayor's Climate Change Task Force found there were even larger reductions in greenhouse gases on account of changes in settlement patterns around the streetcar line. Because it's known that people who live in dense areas served by rail transit live in buildings that require less energy to build and maintain, because they tend to work nearer to where they live and shop and entertain themselves much closer to home, the net CO2 reductions are actually many more times the CO2 used in the streetcar's operation. Read about it here starting on Page 53: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cmgr/downloads/cmgr_pdf18280.pdf. The finding was a reduction of 7:1 in greenhouse gas produced when all factors are considered. I'd call that a "net positive effect" for sure. Just as an aside, New York City has a small per capita greenhouse gas profile compared to, say, Houston or Atlanta. You could look it up. In any case, the power used by the downtown/OTR leg of the Cincinnati streetcar is not significant -- maybe as much as fifty houses or a small office building use in a given year.