John Schneider

Seattle's streetcar is 1.3 route-miles end-to-end, but it has 2.6 track-miles. Cincinnati planners are using track-miles instead of route-miles. My guess is, even if you were building both directions of a streetcar line on the same street, most planners would describe it in terms of track-miles. If the downtown/OTR phase of the Cincinnati's system were described using either one-way track miles or two-way route-miles, it would still be, in each instance, the longest first phase of a modern streetcar ever built in the United States.

Here are the facts on this. The first phase of the Portland Streetcar began construction in 1999 on an "L"-shaped route between 23rd and Northrup and 10th and Market, a total of 3.8 track-miles, one-tenth of a mile less than what's being proposed for downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine. During the course of that construction, Portland State University got a second phase of the route funded and extended through its campus, bringing the total to 4.8 miles of track. This was done by a simple change-order to the original contract. The first two phases opened simultaneously in July 2001. Two subsequent phases brought the streetcar first down the hill to "Riverplace" on the Willamette River and later to the new "South Waterfront" neighborhood -- Portland's "Banks" project, a total of 7.9 track-miles. That was completed last year. And that's where it stands today. Portland just received a $50 million Federal grant to take the route across the Willamette for an additional 3.3 track-miles. They are now planning a very comprehensive system -- I dunno, maybe fifty track-miles or so -- serving most of the close-in "flatlands" of Portland. It would be built out over the next fifteen or twenty years. So here are the lengths, in track-miles, of the initial phases of the only modern streetcar systems now open in the United States: Portland: 3.8 miles Tacoma: 3.2 miles Seattle: 2.6 miles I don't generally think of these systems in terms of "track miles." That's really inside-baseball lingo used by engineers and financial types who have to finance, build and maintain these systems and also by Cincinnati's streetcar planners. I like to think of them in terms of "route miles" -- the distance between the end points of the line including both directions of travel. Light rail systems are almost always expressed in terms of "route miles."

Who does get paid for doing that, besides city council members and their staffers? In which case, you are.

Perfectly stated.

Why am I thinking that "chance.mcgee" is a Cranley staffer?

^ Yes, great!

Earlier today Chris Monzel talked with Brian Thomas on Brian's 55KRC morning show. If you didn't hear the broadcast, here is a link to the discussion: http://www.55krc.com/cc-common/podcast.html And following is the email I sent to Brian Thomas in response: Brian, Your interview with Chris Monzel was heard by streetcar supporters today, who sent the link to me. Allow me to fill you in on some important details. The idea of connecting UC with downtown in the first build is nice if you can do it, but it's not essential for the success of the project. As presently conceived, the 3.9 mile Cincinnati Streetcar would be the longest first phase of a modern streetcar ever built in the United States. So it's already a pretty ambitious project. To go to UC from the get-go would require us to achieve in one phase what it's taken Portland four phases and six years to achieve. That's pretty tough. Monzel is wrong that we absolutely have to connect a university or a hospital to make the first leg successful. Portland didn't connect Portland State in the very first phase. Once construction started, that leg was added by change-order. Neither of the other two cities with modern streetcars, Tacoma and Seattle, connect to their universities. I haven't heard a single person in Uptown complain because the first leg of the streetcar isn't going there. The Present Value Benefit/Cost Ratio for the 3.9 mile segment between 2nd and Main and 20th and Elm is 2.7 to 1.0. This finding was arrived at by the same transportation economists who estimated the B/C ratio of widening I-75 through Hamilton County at 1.13 to 1.0. So if the downtown segment of the streetcar is only half as successful as the biggest transportation project currently on our drawing boards, it would still offer a higher rate of return than widening I-75. The reason is that the streetcar's benefits are sustainable -- they rise over time while the highway becomes congested after a few years. Portland's streetcar misses the center of its downtown by five blocks, and it travels through a formerly (and partially still) low-rise industrial area similar to Over-the-Rhine for many, many blocks. Our streetcar line will pass through the center of regional employment and serve two major sports venues. Portland's doesn't. Our alignment serves many performing arts venues. Portland's serves one. Night and weekend ridership is "found-money" for these kind of systems. Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland is a smallish hospital, sort of like, say, Deaconess in Cincinnati. In no way does it resemble any of our major hospitals. In terms of population, Cincinnati is much denser than Seattle or Tacoma and is equal in density to Portland. This isn't merely a plan to connect Findlay Market with downtown, although that's an added benefit. There's an amazing amount of high-quality building stock north and west of the Findlay Market -- that's what we're trying to get to. That area is not walkable to downtown. The idea is to try to attract people who want to live downtown without or with fewer cars. Streetcars do that. In Portland, they're able to sell condos along the streetcar line with much less than 1.0 parking spaces per unit, so they're cheaper to build and more affordable. In Cincinnati, developers ask the city to subsidize the parking for condos. What's equitable about that? The first phase goes through the The Banks and serves our next large redevelopment site, Broadway Commons. Monzel says he doesn't want taxpayer money to support the operations. In a perfect world, neither to I. But, do people pay for the streets they use by the mile or by the minute? Do I pay to enter Eden Park? Does the Cincinnati Fire Department ask for your Visa card when they come to put a fire out at your house? The Cincinnati Streetcar is a public amenity. If highways had to meet the same standard, there wouldn't be many new ones. Look at the outcry over charging tolls on the new Brent Spence. How come those folks don't want to pay their own way. Food for thought. Thanks for listening, John Schneider

^ They haven't endorsed. There were some folks in town a few weeks ago, and we looked at a couple of sites. The one that intrigues me the most is by Lunken airport that has a rail connection to Evendale. It would enable passenger rail to avoid the freight congestion in the Mill Creek Valley (remember -- passenger trains in this country often have to wait for freight to pass, not good). It could be connected to downtown by a streetcar running on the Oasis Line along Eastern Avenue.

^ Michael, I just linked to what the Business Courier published. You have information that was unavailable to the article's author, apparently. I'd write a LTE to the Courier rebutting the facts as you know them.

Not a big risk. Ridership was estimated for the Hamilton County part of the Regional Rail Plan in 2002. Even with $1.50 gas at that time, there were about 100,000 daily riders. That's a little more than the combined bus ridership on Metro and Tank in seven counties of Ohio and Kentucky today. In a sense, I think this is Quall's problem with the streetcar. She wants to go after those 100,000+ light rail riders instead of focusing, for now, on the 4,850 daily riders estimated from the first leg of the Cincinnati Streetcar. Nice if you can do it.

^ I doubt that either Cranley or Qualls are aware of these data.

For those who believe that it would be more prudent to subsidize the construction of more downtown and OTR condos instead of investing in the public realm by building the streetcar, read this: http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2008/03/31/story2.html?b=1206936000^1611958 Downtown has a 27-month supply of unsold homes right now. Food for thought.

I wanted to recount a conversation I had over breakfast last week. The consultant who led the first phase of the Uptown Transportation Study was in town last week getting the lay of the land in preparation for bidding on the next phase of the Study, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a new I-71 Interchange serving Uptown. He's a big rail supporter who follows Cincinnati news pretty carefully. From time-to-time, I get a note from him asking what's going on. A little history on the Uptown Transportation Study. It's one of, I dunno, probably six or seven corridor studies that have been conducted here over the past thirteen years. They've been done for I-71, I-75, I-74, the Central Area Loop, and the area around CVG, and probably a couple others I wasn't involved in. One is now underway for I-471. We've all learned a lot about how regional traffic flows and what's possible to build and what's not. I can't imagine how much time that volunteers and public officials have collectively spent on these corridor commissions -- probably tens of thousands of hours over the years. A lot has come out of them -- the new Fort Washington Way and the Regional Rail Plan come immediately to mind. The Cincinnati Streetcar's genesis was in the Central Area Loop study of how to connect Covington, Newport and Cincinnati. The reason we reinforced the Main and Walnut Street bridges over Fort Washington Way for light rail and streetcars was because someone on the I-71 Corridor Commission was thinking ahead. Anyway, back to our breakfast last Thursday. Toward the end of our meeting, he brought up the subject of the Cincinnati Streetcar. He seemed puzzled at the turn the debate had taken, the insistence that it go Uptown in the first build. Both of us recalled that Downtown/Uptown travel was estimated using OKI's Regional Travel Demand Model and that it showed very little origin and destination travel between these two points. He couldn't remember what the counts were, just that they were quite small. He seemed kind of surprised that some Council members were making such a big deal of the necessity to go to Uptown, or else build nothing. He remembered that in the early days of the Uptown Study (this was probably in, say, 2004) Clifton Heights developer Dan Deering and I brought up the idea of laying out a Downtown/Uptown Streetcar route as a placeholder for when we were ready to build it -- just to ensure that we built nothing that would conflict with it and so that everyone would have an understanding of where it would go. We brought this up at the first couple of meetings. The reaction: no interest. Of all the members on this huge commission of probably fifty or so Cincinnatians that included UC, Xavier, all of the hospitals, the Zoo, neighborhood business districts, you name it -- no one wanted to talk about rail transit from Downtown to Uptown. Of all the recommendations made in the course of that study, my recollection is that way over 90% of the funds were reserved for roadways. So it does make me wonder why there's all the fuss now. Oh, and the elected official who led the Uptown Transportation Study, the one who pulled together the money to pay for it from the city and other levels of government, the one who takes credit for the study, the one elected official who could have ensured, but didn't, that streetcar service to Uptown would be part and parcel of any plan to build a streetcar in Cincinnati -- who was that? John Cranley.

"So if bringing the streetcar up the hill both ways on one street is going to be an issue, what's the answer?" I dunno. That's one of the questions that the $800,000 Alternatives Analysis for Uptown will answer.

They really are functionally very different and will attract different riderships. I don't know if you'd have to transfer from the uptown "connector", if that's what it's being called now. Part of the beauty of a circulator is its ability to offer a one-seat ride. What you lose in terms of straight-line travel-time, you gain in convenience. It's a trade-off. At night and in bad weather, it's probably essential.

This is a great question and most relevant to everything that's being discussed about the Cincinnati Streetcar. I think of a connector as corridor-level transportation, often the shortest land distance between two points. I-71 is a connector. Vine Street is a connector. Your driveway is a connector to your street. Light rail and bus routes are connectors. Streetcars are circulators. Columbus aside, they often follow roundabout routes that link together the most destinations possible and do not necessarily present the fastest travel time from end-point to end-point. On a modern streetcar, the ride quality is so good -- "car competitive", if you will -- that travel time is not the paramount consideration. The downtown plan for the Cincinnati Streetcar is clearly a circulator. Almost everywhere you'd want to go is within a few blocks of the route. The uptown "plan", such as it is, is a connector. It has little circulation value.

Then there's this: http://www.theotherpaper.com/top3-27/substory1.htm

^ There will be a move to change the alignment to Vine/Race from Elm/Race after the basic concept plan is approved. But it will fail. There's too much interest in Elm and the Brewery District, and Vine Street is well on its way already, perhaps, in part, because it is a two-way operation, and that's almost unique in the basin. But there's still this problem: if Vine Street is deemed to be the preferred route to Uptown, there's a serious chokepoint between Findlay and Clifton. I don't see how you get around that. Then there's the Vine Street Hill ...

^ Shifting the northbound alignment in OTR to Vine Street from Elm Street will increase the cost because Vine Street and its signalization will have to be converted back to one-way from two-way operation. I'm not sure how you handle two directions of streetcar travel between, say, Findlay and Clifton, even if Vine Street were to become one-way. No way could that segment remain two-way and host both directions of streetcar service plus all the vehicle turning movements. I wonder how many of the merchants moving in aroung the Gateway Quarter want to go back to one-way Vine. Just asking.

Thanks Jake. It's not so much the average slope, but the varying slopes combined with some fairly tight turns. There's a similar, but much shorter slope on the Portland Streetcar where I've been observing how passengers react to it. It's near the end of the line, and so there are relatively few passengers at that point. My conclusion is, passengers often try to be seated on this slope, whereas they don't mind standing along other points of the line. It' s pretty unscientific, but that's my sense. And I know what's it's like to stand up on a bus going up or down Vine Street Hill.

^ Take a few rides up and down Clifton and Vine Streets on the buses. Except, here's the thing -- you have to stand for the entire trip, as will be the case with 75% of streetcar riders. Tell us what you think.

^ 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches -- pretty much the standard around the world now.

It's a fact that electronic media -- all across the nation -- often have negative bias in their coverage to rail transit issues. Many of my counterparts in other cities have noted this over the years. Rail is too complicated for three minutes of TV, so the simplistic objections carry the story. Rail takes people out of their cars, so talk-radio isn't very interested. Generally newspapers give pretty fair coverage.

Why would a disabled person "come out against" streetcars since streetcars are perfectly barrier-free and offer a high level of comfort and ease of use for disabled persons -- far superior to buses? See for yourself: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xL7QEQuRqq0

^ Bus Rapid Transit = Bus Vapid Transit