John Schneider

Todd Portune got some email today. Based on his responses forwarded to me, here's why he opposes the downtown streetcar: * It will cost "a good half a billion dollars" to build. This is untrue. More like $100 million. * There is "very little appetite" to build it. If you know of any other reasons why he opposes the downtown streetcar, please post them.

The subtitle of this proposal should be: "How can we fool 'em today?"

Can't top that! Maybe I'll be smart enough to figure out how to upload photos by then.

Dear Cincinnatian, The city of Cincinnati's study of a downtown streetcar is underway and will be complete in May. A tentative route has been selected, and the economists have commenced an evaluation of the streetcar's benefits compared to the costs of building and operating it. There is strong support for the project from elected officials, the business community, civic groups and from downtown residents who voted 2:1 for it in 2002. If approved by City Council, construction could begin in a couple of years, and the line connecting The Banks with Findlay Market could be operating by 2011. In order to understand how rail transit might work in a city like Cincinnati, the Alliance for Regional Transit has been leading area residents to Portland, Oregon for several years. Portland has the nation's only modern streetcar and one of the nation's best light rail systems. Portland routinely shows up on the lists of cities where young people most want to live, and downtown Portland is a forest of construction cranes right now. Nearly 300 of your neighbors have made this trip, and sometimes we've been joined by residents of other cities who've heard about these trips and tag along. Ask around. You undoubtedly know a colleague or neighbor who has gone to Portland with us, probably several people. This is not really a streetcar tour. We get the light rail trains and streetcars out of the way very quickly. It's more about what rail transit can do for a drive-in/drive-out city like Cincinnati: less money spent on cars so that more can be spent on housing, less need for heavily subsidized parking facilities, more pedestrians on the street patronizing unique stores at all hours, cleaner air, less crime. You'll come to understand how cities that weaken their links with the highway economy can become better places to live, work and visit. Someone has suggested that you participate in our next tour of Portland on Friday, May 25th. It's a holiday weekend, and so I have rooms booked for several days before and after the day of the tour. May is one of the best months to be in Portland. You can still ski on Mt. Hood, and its beautiful hiking trails are starting to re-open by then. Memorial Day is a big weekend for wine tours in the Willamette Valley, and Oregon's rocky seashore always beckons. Seattle is four hours away by train, Vancouver a little further. We'll be staying at Hotel Monaco, Portland's best hotel -- here: http://www.monaco-portland.com/ The Monaco will charge you a discounted rate of $139 per night, and they won't charge for a second person in the room. In addition, the Alliance charges $99 per person for the tour including your lunch, a fine Friday evening dinner and tickets for the trains and the Portland Aerial Tram. We need all of your time between Noon and 10:00p on Friday, May 25th. Other than that, you're on your own. Most people will arrive the Thursday evening before the tour. Don't book any flight that arrives in Portland later than 10:45a on Friday, or you may miss the start of the tour. Based on the calls and emails I've been getting, this trip is going to be extremely well attended, so if you're sure you want to go, I'd book your flight soon and be done with it. The Delta nonstops are expensive but convenient. People sometimes get out there on Northwest or United for under $300, but I wouldn't bet on it. Airfares will rise steeply the closer we get to Memorial Day Weekend. If you are interested, please write back, and I'll send you more information. Thanks - hope you can make the trip. John Schneider email: [email protected]

Actually, I think that's good at this point. The next phase, comparing the actual costs and benefits of the several routes -- maybe even tweaking them and coming up with a hybrid of a couple routes -- that's what's going to make the decision more obvious. My guiding thoughts include the need to connect the office core -- the source of the most likely suspects to repopulate downtown -- with Findlay Market, downtown's once and future grocery store, which is coincidentally tangent to OTR's best, most untouched raw material for future housing. If we can pick up big attractors like the ballpark and arts institutions and generators like big and small housing sites along the way, so much the better.

I wish. 12th Street is in there, but not 13th.

Today the Downtown Cincinnati Stakeholder Group met and selected a specific route that connects Findlay Market with The Banks. The consultants had lots of findings which, when you put it all together, suggested a first among equals, even though any of the four alternative alignments might have worked reasonably well. It was a very analytical approach based on what is possible compared to what you'd like to do. Using this alignment as a sort of testbed, the consultants will now examine the costs of building and operating the first phase of the streetcar, together with a compilation of the benefits derived from it. They will be back in town during the second week in April to talk about what they have learned.

I voted for the extension in the Planning Commission today. The developers said they need to be able to sell the units for $260 psf or rent them for $1.60 psf/month, neither of which is attainable there right now. The only for-sale product that has come close are the Park Place condos on Lytle Park that started selling for $225 psf and ended up selling for just under $250 psf. I think what Jim Tarbell was saying is that -- if you're a true city person -- living in the northeast quadrant of downtown is far better than living at Lytle Park, even though the market doesn't reflect that yet, far from it. When I first moved downtown, I lived at Lytle Park. It was pretty, but it felt like the suburbs. You had to get in your car to access any kind of service. So I moved closer to the center -- near the Broadway Towers in fact -- and I can tell you that it's much better, even though it looks rough to the casual observer. That's what Jim was trying to get across at the Planning Commission today. He's frustrated that the developers haven't been able to exploit what he sees as an obviously good location. And coincidentally I was talking with a resident of Park Place late today who has already concluded that a move closer-in is in the cards for her. After living downtown for a year or so, she wants a real city experience. The problem is, the cat's out of the bag on this one. Our city already has $2 million embedded in the foundations to carry the apartment overbuild, which the developers have to pay back to the city once construction commences. So if you only build fifty units there, your starting point -- before laying the first brick of the first apartment -- is already $40,000 in cost for that apartment. The only saving grace is that the parking for the tower is already built, an avoided cost worth something, I suppose. I'd say this is a problem, if it only were. It's a dilemma. Problems you can solve.

I bet if you asked them in a really nice way, they will put on extra Sounding Sessions. The two they scheduled for next week sold out the first day, so they know there's more demand than what they have provided for. If you'd like to see Michael Moose's really excellent presentation, "The Case for a Downtown Streetcar", you could come to City Cellars, 908 Race, at 5:30p this evening. It will last until 7:00p. More than anything else, I think it's what convinced the city to undertake its study. Space is limited. If you interested, please RSVP to me asap: [email protected] I am sure the information shared at the YP event will not be new data to anyone on this thread. Actually, that's not exactly true. What Mike Moose, Dan Deering and I are doing is talking to groups about the "what and why" of a downtown streetcar in Cincinnati. The city's process involves the nitty-gritty "who, when and where" of a downtown streetcar in very specific terms -- a plan, if you will. Dan, Mike and I are using the Portland example to show in a very general way how an improvement like this might benefit Cincinnati. On the other hand, the Sounding Sessions are more about how a streetcar would really work here -- when it might be built, where it would run, how it might be paid for, etc. We don't presume to answer those questions. We're laying the groundwork. The city of Cincinnati is really doing the hard work. If you're really interested in this, I'd follow the city's process closely. The three of us are useful idiots in the city's process, necessary but not sufficient. See what I mean?

I bet if you asked them in a really nice way, they will put on extra Sounding Sessions. The two they scheduled for next week sold out the first day, so they know there's more demand than what they have provided for. If you'd like to see Michael Moose's really excellent presentation, "The Case for a Downtown Streetcar", you could come to City Cellars, 908 Race, at 5:30p this evening. It will last until 7:00p. More than anything else, I think it's what convinced the city to undertake its study. Space is limited. If you interested, please RSVP to me asap: [email protected]

IHOP was interested, but it fell through. I think one side of the old Walgreen's could be a small food market. Can't imagine a more convenient location for office workers and for central CBD residents.

SORTA (Cincinnati, Hamilton and surrounding counties) has been down in the city, but doing well in the suburbs.

Also, check the pricing first. Almost all municipal lot, garage and curb parking is underpriced, which is why you can never find a space. The estra revenue could be used to fund additional spaces if need or to operate the streetcar.

I think -- and this is only my opinion based on bits and pieces I've heard -- that they want to serve the Calhoun/McMillan pair next, perhaps as a way to decrease the parking burden on the new condos there. They prefer to use Vine to get there, but they really need to figure out a way to get up Clifton with the larger streetcars. I'm sure they will be taking another look at this. The gain for Clifton Heights would be huge, and the loss for Vine Street would be nil. Modern streetcars have three doors on each side, and they can dock on either side of the street. This is a huge advantage over buses. I doubt the traffic engineers would have a problem with this. In fact, it might reduce conflicts with buses.

The Stakeholder Working Group of the Cincinnati Streetcar Feasibility Study -- that's the exact title -- met for the first time at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon, and the meeting was heavily attended. It might be the most diverse group of people I've ever seen in one of these corridor studies -- definitely not the same old suspects involved. The presentation put on by the city staff and the consultants was first-rate, and the questions and answers were penetrating. There was a healthy amount of respectable debate. The process is off to a good start, and recommendations will be out in early May. Here's the gist of what I learned: * This won't go to Uptown or east or west from downtown in the first phase. They're going to recommend an initial segment bounded by McMicken on the north and I-75 and I-71 on the west and east. * Everyone seem to accept the consultants' recommendation that the alignment use a couplet, i.e. run on parallel streets one block apart. Everyone seemed to understand the the system has to be legible. * There was no interest in anything but a fixed rail system -- no gussied-up buses or anything like that. * There was strong consensus that the route use Elm and Race to Findlay Market north of Central Parkway. In fact, there was no dispute by anyone in the room that Findlay Market should be the northern destination. * Surprisingly, there wasn't much sentiment to continue south on Elm and Race to serve the Convention Center and the hotels. The director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau said that he didn't think tourists were the primary market, and that they wouldn't mind walking east if they wanted to use the streetcar. * I made the point that connecting to the office core was essential because downtown workers are the most likely suspects to repopulate Over-the-Rhine. They have purchasing power, and they are downtown already -- they don't need to be sold on the prospect of urban living so much. They are the ones who might be willing to live in buildings there that don't have, nor ever will have parking. But they might live there anyway if they had frequent service to where they work. Plus a lot of them already have parking at work, and they could leave their cars there and drive them home on the nights they needed them. I said that a systematic solution to the permanent non-availability of parking in OTR is essential if that community is to succeed. Counterintuitive as this is, people seemed to accept the logic. * There were about a hundred different opinions of where and why the streetcar should on different streets south of Central Parkway on the east side of downtown. The consultants recommended that it use Main Street as the northbound leg of the couplet. Quickly, the discussion focused on Vine Street as the symbolic heart of the city with the new Fountain Square the keystone of that. One person suggested banning cars from Vine Street and running the streetcar there, but that idea didn't get any traction. * Using Sycamore Street as the southbound leg seemed to be a little out of the swim of things -- too far east -- so attention turned to Walnut as a possibility. It borders Fountain Square and several attractions like the Aronoff and the Public Library, and it is tangent to Government Square for people transferring to buses. * The group was mixed with respect to whether the line actually had to cross south of Third into The Banks. Interestingly, the Cincinnati Reds spoke up in favor of this idea. One problem is that game day traffic will shut down the streetcar near the Great American Ball Park -- it won't be able to keep schedule working its way through game-day crowds. A consultant noted that the streetcar will only carry maybe 100 people, so that it really won't move than many people to and from the game. So service into The Banks was kind of left dangling for the next meeting; they seemed to want to think more about it. The consultants did note that the Walnut and Main Street bridges over Fort Washington Way were designed in 1998 to carry light rail, and that the ramp from Second Street to Broadway is also designed to carry light rail, so using Walnut and Main to get to Newport and Eastern Avenue seems to work. It was probably the best first meeting I've ever attended on a transportation project, and I've attended just about all of them over the years. The group meets again in a couple of weeks. This project has strong momentum. There's just a lot of will to get it done and not waste years talking about it. You should thank Chris Bortz for his leadership on this. He is the person who is making it happen. More later.

Been a while since we checked in with Jim Kunstler. So I did today: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/26973 March 5, 2007 Singing the Vegetable Opera The jive-finance economy had a few acidic burps last week -- or, at least, that's how it may seem in the days ahead as the equity markets finally upchuck the toxic notional junk "money" they have been gorging on in recent years. Has there ever been a financial collapse with brighter or louder warning signals? I suppose the expectation (or hope) is that the quasi-mythical "plunge protection team" -- a "working group" of federal reserve officials and bankers -- will jump in and administer some soothing pepto-bismol, but frankly I don't see how that's possible this time. The poison at the bottom is a fetid mass of "non-performing" mortgages, billions upon billions of loans that strapped borrowers are not paying back, loans which, in the meantime, have been rolled over, rebundled into jive "securities" (ha!) and sold, and rolled over again and used as "leverage" for massive exotic bets and bloated arbitrages involving mere abstract figments of electronic digital pulses completely removed from any reality-based productive investment activity.

Yep, that's the problem. There aren't any winners, only losers who lose less.

Yeah, well ...

Existing and acquirable rights-of-way and some level of neighborhood interest exist to build light rail from downtown to the UC Medical Center to Xavier to Rookwood and through Hyde Park/Oakley to Cincinnati corporate limits. And maybe, using the southern part of the same alignment, from Xavier to Tri-County. The other three light rail lines are less likely.

“America can always be counted on to do the right thing … after they’ve exhausted all the choices.” -- former British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill

You'd have to lay new track. The existing track isn't good enough for passenger service. Probably some new structures too.

Me too.

Here's a suggestion: try to divert him from talking about his "Cadillac transportation plan". It conveys the wrong message on many levels. And congratulations on your appointment.

"You can have high mobility without high car use." I doubt that's true for many people. I think you can have a "high-access" lifestyle by living and working and playing in your own neighborhood. But in most American cities, you're not going to be very mobile without a car. I live downtown and have access to where I work and almost everything I need within walking distance, but I still have to rent cars on days where I need to be in a lot of different places or to travel to other nearby cities. Or to get stuff at places where the buses don't run.

Many people will chase the high-mobility lifestyle to the bitter end, and government will try to do what it can to help. But the alternative fuels will be more expensive, and the sprawlers will suffer diminished disposable income. Their property values may suffer, and they may be upside-down on their homes and car leases for a long time. I feel sorry for them. On the other hand, people who have centered themselves closer to work and other things may enjoy a windfall as new stores and job opportunities start to reverse the centripetal forces of the last sixty years. They will demand transportation choices, and they'll gain some. Mainly they will gain piece of mind knowing they are in control of their lives. I saw a story on the news last night about how propane suppliers around Greater Cincinnati haven't been able to keep up with demand because, they say, their trucks haven't been able to get to all the back roads because of ice. Some people have now run out of fuel with no certain prospect of getting more. While I think there's more to the story than that, imagine having to live for two weeks in one room with only a kerosene or electric space heater and relying on electric blankets to keep you warm at night. I think Katrina was the first straw in the wind of the tornado of economic changes coming. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans saw Americans who were very vulnerable -- and even the Feds didn't have the resources to help, or didn't use them if they did. I suspect it registered with a lot of people.