John Schneider

The problem is, construction of Cincinnati's new riverfront park pretty much precludes the construction of another bridge that could serve central Covington. A Race-Madison bridge was once on the books, but neither city was ready to act on it and the money was moved to build the new cable-stayed bridge at Maysville with the (sort of) promise that whenever the two river cities got their acts together to build a new central riverfront bridge, the money would be made available again. Somehow, with two freeway bridges now seeking funding in Louisville, plus the new Brent Spence, I'm guessing we'll all be dead before this happens. Plus, I think Cincinnati's new riverfront park effectively blocks another central riverfront bridge forever. And it does connect all the dots with a single line. The effect is that a direct Cincinnati - Covington rail connection, on the most obvious alignment, will never happen. In my opinion, rail will cross the river on the Taylor Southgate to Newport and use a new Fourth/Fifth Street Bridge over the Licking River to serve downtown Covington and then on to the airport. Essentially, there will be a "hook" in the alignment. Seeing as how light rail is pretty much programmed to run on Main and Walnut, it's not so bad.

Here's something else: a friend of mine who knows something about Warren County -- which National Geographic in 2001 cited as a poster-child for sprawl -- he says that building permit activity has virtually stopped in the past six months. Food for thought.

James Kunstler weighs in: http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary21.html

ARTICLE: "PORTLAND'S GREEN DIVIDEND" "Commitment to green policies and the prevalence of green lifestyles has attacted people and business to the region." [Read the entire article - five pages, large type] http://www.ceosforcities.org/internal/files/PGD%20FINAL.pdf

By the way, I wonder how the cost of adding four single-track bridges across these short valleys compares to the cost of a bridge that has to be elevated above the flood plain across the entire Little Miami River Valley.

Nice.

I commute along eastern/Columbia out to milford and have to say this rail line is a joke, it's not needed. Make it a rails to trails and call it a day. Write letters to The Enquirer and neighborhood weeklies.

Anybody know who wrote this? They have obviously done their homework: http://connectourdots.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/eastern-corridor-terrible-idea-2/

Jake, you're making too much sense. Accordingly, you are disqualified for any kind of government work.

And you know, the really funny part of this is, there's a perfectly good railroad bridge over the Little Miami just below the bluffs of Mariemont. Right now, from what I understand, it mainly carries transmission parts between the Ford plants in Batavia and Sharonville. The former will close soon, and so it's probably available someday soon -- at least for daytime use. So there's really no really to build a bulked-up bridge that carries rail and cars and trucks. When you bring this up to the Eastern Corridor planners, they respond, "Yeah, we know."

Precisely.

The Oasis Line is a stalking horse for a bulked-up Interstate-ready bridge over the Little Miami River. My guess is, the bridge will someday get built, but the Oasis Line rail probably never will be built. The order of things ought to be: built the rail line from Downtown to UC to Xavier to, say, Terrace Park, never crossing the Little Miami. Then and only then - if traffic is still a problem - think about building the freeway. Last night, the leader of the Eastern Corridor Project was telling me that rising gas prices -- he says they are going to $6-8 per gallon -- will make the Oasis Line really vital someday. And I responded, "Really? If that's the case, why are you fueling it with petroleum?" He was speechless. Electrification of rail lines is not particularly expensive in the scheme of things, maybe $1-2 million per mile. Many rail lines around the world are now being electrified.

So many questions. Jake, how do you remember all this stuff? You're right, there was a branch in the "airport" light rail at about where I-275 and I-75 meet. It was in the plan because Kentucky interests were divided over which market needed to be served best -- the airport or workers in Florence wanting to go to downtown Ohio and Kentucky. So in the typical Cincinnati mode, they tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one. All the Cincinnati-centric people wanted a faster trip to CVG. People living in Florence tended to view the airport as a hostile occupying force, and they could care less if Cincinnatians got there a little faster. So the choice was never really made, and there was really no need to make a choice because Kentucky wasn't going to be voting on it anytime soon. So it just remained on the map as a bifurcated alignment. However, there are always heroes in these things. Mark Donaghy, who was then general manager of TANK and a really great guy (he now runs Dayton's system) figured out a way to serve both Florence and the airport on the same alignment by entering the airport through the golf course thats, what?, I guess, SE of the airport property. It was maybe a mile or so longer and you did have to tunnel under one of the runways, but everyone was kind of intrigued by it. But then the 2002 vote in Ohio happened, and it never received any more advanced planning, officially at least. A few days after the campaign in 2002, we did extensive polling and focus groups of people who actually voted for or against the issue to capture their top-of-mind thoughts on why they voted the way they did. We agreed to seal the results, and only two copies of the poll and focus group surveys exist today. It is valuable information for the next time. Without revealing what the conclusions were, suffice it to say that a driving factor was the prevailing political environment that was in effect in Cincinnati and Hamilton County in the fall of 2002. It was very useful information, and if an issue like Issue 7 ever comes to the ballot again, it will be used in shaping the campaign. These kind of polls cost about $20,000, so I doubt that one would be taken today simply to take the pulse of what people are thinking, but I do agree that gas prices, which were at about their lowest level since the end of WWII in the fall of 2002, would be a factor. Plus, I think people know that -- cost aside -- there are problems in the highway economy. Over breakfast today, I read the Financial Times, and the front-page headline was something like, "There will be a 'crunch' on oil supplies in 5 years." So I think people not only worry about price, but simple availability and the cost to keep the supply lines open, and prudent people are starting to reconfigure their lives. Look at the boom in downtown housing in every city in the country including places like Houston, LA and Atlanta. The Oasis Line is a 10 mph line right now over most of its length. All you have there is ROW. There's no signaling to meet passenger standards, no park and rides, no stations, no shops and yards, and the viability of some structures are in doubt. Some sections flood, and so they have to be elevated. Trust me, if Todd Portune could get the price down to $100 million, he'd do it. By the way, I think the $400+ million was in 2004 dollars and not adjusted for the year of expenditure like we've done for the streetcar. But OK, say you could build it for $100 million -- for the hell of it, say it required no capital funds at all -- then you've still got to find almost $20 million per year for operating expenses. All to serve 6,000 commuter rides per day (3,000 commuters) and ... well ... you get the idea. Sad to say, the Oasis Line is just a total loser in every respect including the dubious choice of petroleum-based fuel and how the route fails to serve the heart of downtown. I'm afraid that if it is our first rail line, it will be the last one built for at least a generation. Sorry to be so long.

You know, one of the problems with a putative Cincinnati CBD-CVG rail line is that there's just not a lot of expected ridership. I remember during the planning for the I-71 Corridor light rail a few years ago, the model predicted maybe 2,000 O&D passengers a day at the airport stop. And that was before Delta cut 26% of its flights. Most of the ridership was airport food-service and ramp workers, not the briefcase-toting day-trippers you'd find in a lot of larger cities. The model was tweaked to and fro several times, and it just never showed a lot of demand. It surprised everyone. I do know that CVG airport planners have pretty much determined how rail would get into the terminal area if it ever happens, and they're reserving space for it. In a lot of cities, though, airport managers are often loathe to accommodate rail, and they fight it in very subtle ways because they depend on the parking revenue too much and don't want the competition. Because of that, there are literally a handful of cities in the US that have a one-seat train ride to the airport. With respect to the BRT to the airport, we kind of have that now. I routinely take the TANK Airport Express from in front of the Federal Building @ Fifth & Main to the airport, three blocks from my home. It goes north on Main to Sixth, turns on Sixth to Race, and south on Race to FWW and the airport. I don't recall it ever making another stop in downtown. No stops between downtown and CVG until it gets to the rental car area NW of the terminals. Then it drops you by the Delta baggage claim. I think it's faster than driving, parking and walking to the terminal. And with a Metro Pass, it costs 45 cents. Beats a $30 cab ride, except on the return trip when it stops at the Covington Transit Center on Madison and meanders through Covington to Cincinnati.

By the way, did you read that Air France is going to start selling European rail tickets part and parcel with its air tickets? In other words, someday if you want to travel from Paris to Milan -- say-- the reservations agent or the web site will give you all of your options -- both by rail and by rail. That's a breakthrough.

Interesting fact: an executive with Toyota in NKY has written to me inquiring about our next trip to Portland.

The meeting tonight is mainly about the diesel trains on the Oasis line, not the streetcar on the Oasis Line - although it ought to be. There are two rail lines in the Eastern Corridor plan. First and foremost is the diesel line from the Central Riverfront to Milford. The second is a electric light rail line from Milford to Xavier but not continuing on to UC and downtown. So, the former is $450 million to yield 6,000 commuter rides per day (3,000 people), and the latter misses the region's two largest employment centers entirely. Go figure. This is really not about rail serving the Eastern Corridor. It's about building an Interstate-ready bridge over the Little Miami River near Newtown that will someday carry I-74 from Red Bank Road to an improved SR 32 through southern Ohio. This project will accomplish in eastern Cincinnati what I-74 has accomplished in western Cincinnati -- a major disinvestment in close-in eastside neighborhoods and more sprawl into outlying counties. I'm amazed that the city of Cincinnati continues to favor this project.

I think they also bought used rails for the airport to downtown line. To me, that section seems to ride rough compared to other systems. Keep this in mind as you read about the proposal to use the existing rails along the Oasis Line for passenger service.

How about ... ? ... extending Central Parkway due east from Sycamore Street (where it turns slight north to be become Reading Road) directly through Broadway Commons to Gilbert, thereby gaining direct access to I-71 NB and creating about ten new street-fronting commercial blocks on East Central Parkway, with laterals exending north and south from the extended Central Parkway to ber used for housing sites.

Eden Park loses money. The firehouse at Ninth and Broadway loses money.

A couple of things that are top-of-mind with respect to the Portland Aerial Tram: - it connects Oregon's largest employer -- the Oregon Health Sciences University -- with Portland's seldom-flooded riverfront project that is probably four times as large as The Banks. - it was estimated to cost maybe $15 million and ended up costing $57 million. - huge crowds seem to the riding the Portland Aerial Tram. - as a result, the critics have been silenced. Never seen anything like it. - the only application in Downtown Cincinnati is maybe from the foot of Main to Downtown Kentucky somewhere. Maybe. - from Downtown to mid-valley somewhere, maybe Wyoming and East Hyde Park, fast trains around the Uptown hill with streetcars connecting Uptown to the central and eastern corridors might be the way to go. I think about this all the time.

Two miles, $57 million, about 3.5 minutes of travel time between Portland's South Waterfront Neighborhood and the Oregon Health Science University, maybe five minutes between departures, $4.00 per round trip unless you have a streetcar pass -- then it's free.

Ain't gonna happen.

Wake me when it's over.

I've lately been thinking that Uptown has a lot more to do with Uptown than Uptown has to do with Downtown. So, if you had the money in your pocket to build two route-miles (four track-miles) of Uptown Streetcar, would you: (a) build an Uptown-centric streetcar line connecting, say, Ludlow, Clifton Heights, Corryvile and Peoples Corner with faster-running light rail running from Downtown to Xavier on Gilbert; or (b) build an Uptown-Downtown streetcar? Food for thought.