John Schneider

Does this help the discussion?: Cincinnati Police District 1, which includes Downtown, Over-the-Rhine, Mt. Adams and the West End, now has the lowest crime rate of any of the five Cincinnati Police Districts? This is a little-known fact.

This is a fascinating discussion.

^Also, no electric rail system that has opened for business since the end of WWII has ever gone out of business. And, the rails embedded in parallel streets provide visual cues that if you wait there, a train will come along, and if you walk a block away, you can find your return route. It requires very little knowledge to figure it out. And lenders will underwrite loans on real estate located near fixed guideway transit under criteria that assume that residents will have more disposable income and that the parking burden on office workers will be less severe. Then too, rail transit is just a nicer experience -- more car-competitive.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

... supported it in the 45% range.

^It won in the triangle bounded by I-71, I-75 and the Norwood Lateral, but lost in the city overall. The west side was heaviliy against it, 6-1 in some jurisdictions. Anderson voted heavily against it. It was closer in the northern suburbs. Mariemont, Wyoming, Lincoln Heights

Dunno. But Astoria isn't much of a tourist mecca. Parkersburg WV comes to mind in comparison.

^Not even that big. Astoria, Oregon, Pop. 10,000, has a streetcar.

^Why stop at five? Why not, say, 25? I'm reallly hard-pressed to name a really great American city that doesn't have rail. But take a shot.

OK, sports fans. Here's the comparative bus and rail ridership, cost and other operating data from Portland: http://trimet.org/pdfs/ridership/busmaxstat.pdf You should remember these. What they say to me is * rail recovers over twice as much as its operating costs * rail passengers are subsidized at less than one-third the rate of bus passengers * trains only collectively travel about one-sixth the miles that buses do in Portland but they carry way more than half the passengers the buses do * bus ridership is less than it was ten years ago; rail ridership has tripled * I could go on These are the things you never hear from O'Toole.

If you have too much time on your hands this evening -- Thursday -- watch CitiCable, Channel 23 on Time Warner, at 11:00p. It's a half-hour interview show about the Cincinnati Streetcar that originally aired last summer. The host, David Surber, has had many requests to re-air the segment, and he's done so over the past few months, and so it's on again tonight. He seems to think it was one of the best shows he's done over the last thirty years he's been doing public affairs television. It's got a lot of video and still images. Probably worth watching to sharpen your arguments.

I agree with Brad. These guys want to bait us and keep the story going. You'll never change Bronson's mind. I've talked with him at length about this. He's an idealogue. I'd drop it and hope it's a one-day story. By the way, the "relieve congestion" argument is another straw-man. Did anyone ever hear anyone say that was an objective of the Cincinnati Streetcar? Frankly, our downtown and OTR could use a little congestion.

Randal O'Toole is a liar or a fool. Probably a little of each. Here's the Tri-Met fact sheet that says that transit ridership has increased in Portland for 18 straight years: http://trimet.org/pdfs/trimetfactsheet.pdf First, consider the argument that transit carries only only 2.3% "of the people." The opponents come up with this argument by counting "trips." So today, if you walked to lunch and back a block away from where you work, that's two trips. Would you ever take transit for that? If a parent picks up nine Little Leaguers, one at a time, and moves whoever's in the car to pick up each player successively and then returns all of them to their origins, that's about 100 trips. If they stop for ice cream afterwards, that's another ten trips. Would you take a train to do that? But it makes transit's contribution seem really small. Here's the more relevant figure with respect to the 2.3% "of the people." The Brent Spence Bridge carries about 2% of our region's auto trips each day. Replacing it at a cost of $1-2 billion is our region's highest priority. Should we then not replace the Brent Spence Bridge, based on O'Toole's reasoning? And the thing about the subsidies? That's a typical straw-man argument. Nobody ever said that the Cincinnati Streetcar would eliminate subsidies. Reduce them maybe. Make buildings too small to garner subsidies developable without them. But not necessarily reduce. Some people think that Portland is starting to wean itself from subsidies. A new waterfront apartment building is going up right now, projected to rent for $2 psf per month. Not one penny of subsidy. And the subsidies that Portland does employ serve a public purpose. They're given for including store-front retail, building green buildings or having a component of affordable housing. Next time to see a beautiful photo of the Pearl District, look at it closely. See if you can tell that 20% of the skyline you see are apartments for low-income renters. I can't. Oh, and residents of the City of Portland have never voted against any kind of rail initiative. Sure, some efforts to extend rail to Portland's suburbs have failed, but within the city where transit is rich and part and parcel with the urban ethic, no vote has ever failed. This is why I take people to Portland -- to compare what scoundrels like O'Toole say about one of the most successful urban turnarounds in American history with what Cincinnatians can actually see there. You're all invited on February 15th to do your own due-diligence and reach your own conclusions. I saw a $167 RT fare out of Louisville today. The sprawl opponents can't afford to celebrate Portland's success because, if they do, many of the investments this country has made for the last fifty years start to come into question. But don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself.

Now comes Peter Bronson -- the blind, leading the blind ... Bad ideas: Red-light cameras, streetcars Have you heard about the terrorist plot to bring Cincinnati to its knees by tearing up the streets, blocking traffic and rigging stoplights to cause crashes? Oh, wait - that's not terrorists. That's City Council. Council members and the city manager want to install red-light cameras and spend $100 million on a four-mile line for street cars. They say the cameras will make us safer, and the street cars will resurrect Over-the-Rhine. If you buy that, I hear they also have a few bridges for sale.

This meme is starting to build across the board.

Sean Donovan is Chief Deputy to Si Leis. Lives with his wife and child on West Court Street and owns City Cellars at Ninth and Race.

Well, this is different. Bill Butler was one of the leading opponents of the LRT/streetcar plan in 2002. Maybe his years of buiding in Denver have changed his mind.

For those who are new to this thread or totally have too much time on your hands, here are all the articles written about the Cincinnati Streetcar over the last several months. It's a good refresher course. I'm told we'll be back at City Council Finance in mid-January, say Monday January 14th. Please plan to be there. Next Portland trip is February 15th. This one will have a real estate focus. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071211/NEWS01/712110346 Cincinnati Enquirer Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Streetcars work for Portland BY MARGARET A. MCGURK | [email protected] PORTLAND, Ore. - When boosters envision a Cincinnati streetcar line running from The Banks to Findlay Market, they pin much of their belief in the idea being an economic boon on what's happened in this Pacific Northwest city. Six years ago, Portland launched a streetcar linking rundown, underused property near downtown to the city center. There were several goals, but the most important was to jump-start development and redevelopment. It worked.

This is untrue.

Actually, I think Bill Cunningham has become a lot more open-minded in the ten or so years I've been appearing on his show and often talking about this issue. He totally understands the logic. However, I can't think of any medium that has its economic interests more at odds with higher-level transit than talk-radio does. Why would talk radio ever want to get people out of their cars? Institutionally, on this issue, talk-radio is an out-and-out opponent.

Not a problem. First there are three doors on each side, two of them double-doors. Second, no one waits to pay. You pay at machines hanging on the wall after you board, even after the car starts moving. If someone tells me how, I'll post a picture of the ticket machine.

Nothing but the facts. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071211/NEWS01/712110346

Debby, I've think city policymakers have kind of soured on the notion of free fares, perhaps as a result of the Portland experience with Fareless Square, which enables rowdies to board the light rail trains without paying. some people in Portland now seem to think Fareless Square is the first link of a chain that leads to bad behavior on the trains there, such as it is. Since you're there, what do you think of Portland's Fareless Square?

I expect that the Cincinnati Streetcar will be owned by the City of Cincinnati and that it will be operated by the city's Department of Transportation.

this is a totally correct way to look at it. Cincinnati's projections were heavily discounted relative to Portland's experience. For instance, Portland achieved a 30:1 economic impact in six years. Cincinnati is projecting a 15:1 economic impact in twenty years. And here's the most important point. Portland has had light rail for twenty years, so people who want to live along a rail line have had many options for a long time. So, at the margin, the streetcar line wasn't really that much of novelty. Here, we have no rail. So for people wanting to live a non-polluting, walkable lifestyle, the streetcar will be the only game in town here, for a while. I think it will attact a whole new demographic to our city.