John Schneider

My sources tell me The Banks' developers want it extended there. We're thinking completion would be three or four years from the point when it's recommended.

We can only hope that Randal O'Toole gets to make a personal appearance in Columbus. That will turn the skeptics to supporters. Todd Litman, who is with the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, critiques O'Toole's (and others') arguments in this doc. It's a great read: http://www.vtpi.org/railcrit.pdf

The streetcar study is underway and will be complete in April. On the walking distances, I wouldn't put much stock the the traffic engineers' handbook. I think most traffic engineering maxims are very sububan-oriented and don't account for real behavior in the city. Sure, if you're going to a mall, you don't expect to walk much, but cities are filled with walkers. And so are universities. Having said that, landing a stop in the center of UC would be great for UC. But part of the thinking of putting rail on Jefferson was that it would boost Corryville. That's a trade-off to be considered. Figure about $10,000 per lineal foot for a deep-bore tunnel.

Takes my breath away. Want to think about it.

Vine Street and Clifton both have ruling grades in the range of 9%. That's probably OK for streetcars, but too much for light rail which planners try to keep to 5%. People are willing to walk between 1,300 and 2,500 feet to access a rail connection, so I think having rail as far east of Vine is a bit of a push. Plus you've got a slight grade up to Vine from Jefferson. I think you'd want to keep the rail on Jefferson. People do walk surprisingly long distances to access parking - witness the thousands of people who park on Cincinnati's riverfront and walk up a grade into the CBD every day. DCI has tracked riverfront parkers walking as far north as Sixth Street, which must be 2,000 to 3,000 feet from most riverfront parking assets. In general, serving the University of Cincinnati is the biggest conundrum facing rail planners here -- partly because of the grades on three sides of the campus, but also because UC has sort of walled itself off by expanding the Superblock over the years and eliminating the internal street grid. The substitution of rail service for driving and parking probably has a lot to do with freeway congestion and the capital and operating costs of a car -- however that plays out in the next couple of decades.

Here's what Portland (OR/WA) as doing with tolls on I-5 over the Columbia River: It could be toll time for Interstate 5 drivers Fee to cross Columbia also is suggested for Glenn Jackson bridge By Jim Redden The Portland Tribune Dec 7, 2006 Drivers must be required to pay tolls to cross the Interstate 5 replacement bridge being considered between Portland and Vancouver, Wash. – and tolls may need to be imposed on the existing Interstate 205 bridge, too. Read the rest of the story: http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=116553448604480300

Here's some more anecdotal info. You know why Reading Road is what it is? At one time, probably before streetcars, bison herds moved between the lush grasses in the basin of the CBD and a salt lick in Reading, Ohio. While Bison probably aren't very smart, they eventually figured out that Reading Road was the flattest grade up out of the Ohio River Valley. If you had to carry around a couple thousand pounds of fur and fat, this would be important to you too. Anyway, Native Americans hunted bison along what is now the track of Reading Road, which became the region's first thoroughfare. When the first white settlers came, the followed this path and eventually extended the track to what is now Chillicothe, which became an early pioneer settlement and, I think, the first Post Office in Ohio - maybe even the first capital. There are written reports of General St. Clair's troops' leaving Fort Washington at the foot of Broadway and marching up the valley that lies between Reading Road and Gilbert Avenue on their conquests of territory. I remember one of them recounting the fear of the soldiers who knew that the Indians were thick in the woods that flank the valley. I think about 87% of this account is true.

The Purple Line enables people to go cross-county without having to go downtown. It's not so much of a "Line" unto itself but rather a combination of three lines that are used to produce this result. Starting from the left at the Yellow Line along I-74, Metro added a segment between Northside and Elmwood Place to connect it with the Blue Line running through the Mill Creek Valley. Then it follows the Blue Line to Xavier where it connects to the Red Line (the Wasson Line along Dana) that goes to the eastern edge of Hamilton County. You wouldn't change trains as you traveled along each of these different alignments; it would be a one-seat ride from Dent to Newtown. It was just an economical way of using discrete parts of other alignments to produce a fifth line in the system. I've walked a lot of it; it makes more sense on the ground than it does in the schematic map. For those of you who wonder what we're talking about, go to www.protransit.com. ENTER the site and the map crawl starts to run. This is the plan that was on the ballot in 2002, and the map crawls reflect the sequence of construction Metro intended to follow in the thirty-year build-out of the system. To answer your question, there is no way to cross Uptown by rail from west to east. So we had to go around the top of Uptown. It was a great plan. Still is.

"How about tolls on the EXISTING Brent Spence to pay for transit?" A new Brent Spence is pretty much baked in the cake at this point. Maybe it could be smaller if tolls caused some commuters to move to transit. And of course if you built a regional transit system, most of the new transit customers wouldn't be river-crossers. Brent Spence tolls would be a proxy for marginal cost pricing of regional travel. It would be far from perfect, but it would be an improvement.

I don't know the answer. Probably a question for Jake Mecklenborg.

"Life is not perfect." - John F. Kennedy

They do have a preference for a route connecting downtown with uptown, but their recommendation will have to run a long gauntlet through several city departments and councilmembers' offices before it sees the light of day.

Tolls in the new Brent Spence would be one way to secure the local match for a regional transit system. They could vary by time of day and the day of the week, and the price could change instantaneously based on traffic levels. Charge the trucks $5.00 at rush hour, but let them use it for a fraction of that sum in the middle of the night. You wouldn't need a huge toll plaza. A lot of this can be done electronically through vehicle-mounted transponders that communicate with an overhead sensor. Commuters would get a bill something like a telephone bill each month. Large trucking companies would pay in the same manner. The fundamental problem with local transportation in this country is that all the focus is on the supply side and none on the demand side.

I think, pretty good. The idea of connecting Hyde Park, Corryville, Clifton and Northside seems like a natural too me. The stops are too far apart for streetcar; they're more like urban LRT spacing. Rather than using Jefferson to get to Ludlow, I might simply continue on MLK to Clifton and then north on Clifton to Ludlow. That way, you contact UC better and pass Good Samaritan Hospital. The city's traffic engineers would never allow rail on Vine through the CBD, even if it were made one-way again through OTR. Vine Street is about as steep as Clifton, and there is very little flat land to enable the placement of a level stop between the top and bottom on the Vine Street hill. If the goal is to get to Xavier, I'd probably use Gilbert or maybe Reading Road, assuming Uptown freeway-destined traffic gets diverted from there as part of the Uptown Transportation Plan improvments. Gilbert is pretty sweet - very wide in places, lots of excellent buildings, lots of vacant flat sites along the way. The problem is, you'd have to transfer at, say, MLK to get to UC, and that's a little roundabout. Getting a direct rail route from the CBD to Uptown has always been the problem for rail planners here. The Mount Auburn Tunnel is unquestionably the best way to do it, but it's pretty expensive. But imagine: eight minutes from Fountain Square to Jefferson and University. And, once a regional system is built and you had the I-71, I-75 and Eastern Corridor lines running through the tunnel at two minute rush-hour headways between downtown and uptown, it would be so convenient you'd never need a schedule.

Just a couple of thoughts: * The endpoints of these routes are getting outside the range of a streetcar's operation. I'm guessing they're each about five miles in length. Remember, streetcars are more like neighborhood circulators -- there are relatively few seats, the ride is not as smooth as LRT, and they run in mixed traffic. Five-mile alignments start to sound like light rail to me. * The Downtown to Xavier route uses Clifton, which has a ruling grade in the range of 9.5%. That's a lot. You can size the electric motor to (maybe) manage that, but then you carry around all that extra weight as a penalty over the balance of the route. Much as I'd like to use Clifton, people I've talked with think it's a push. Having said that, the idea of two rail routes crossing in Uptown is very sound. The devil is in the details.

Don't get too excited yet. We have a long way to go on this. But we'll get there.

That's correct. HDR Inc., an international transportation engineering firm based in Omaha, has commenced a study of a downtown Cincinnati streetcar. HDR is involved in perhaps a dozen of so of forty similar studies underway in North America today. The consultants were in town this week scoping out potential routes. Part of the work includes a benefit-cost study of the investment, although about 75% of it involves the physical planning of the route.

The best thing is, whenever you have an opportunity to write a 100-word letter to a local paper or call in to talk-radio in support of a more balanced transportation system -- do it. They're tired of hearing from me. New voices are needed. And in another vein, I'd love to come to talk to any group that you're a member of.

From what I know, no one need doubt that Stephan Louis wrote these emails.

It's not a question of whether it's going to happen, but when. Higher fuel prices, an aging population, growing high congestion and a re-densifying core city will all be drivers over time. I'm guessing we'll start with a downtown streetcar that is cheap enough to build without having a regional vote and that in some not-so-distant presidential election year, a proposal for Cincinnati's first light rail line will reappear on the ballot. Looking at the votes from 2002, there is solid sentiment for rail in downtown, uptown and from uptown east through Hyde Park. Wyoming and Mariemont almost voted for it in 2002. Don't be discouraged by the 2:1 vote against light rail on the first try in 2002. Only twice has light rail won on the on the first try - Dallas in 1986 and Charlotte in 1998. Plus, over time, elected officials and voters travel and talk to people in other cities, and they get more comfortable with the idea. A wise person once said about the effort to build rail in Cincinnati, "We're running a marathon here, not a sprint."

So, insist that it does.

Look at the map above -- with all the red lines converging on the area near Xavier. Isn't that starting to look like a system? When you look at the photos of the green line (the "Oasis Line"), what do you see adjacent to it? A river, steep hills, lots of trees. Truly a beautiful environment, but hardly anyone lives there. There are no universities, no hospitals, no retail, not much density in housing, hardly any employment. Sure, it would be a pretty train trip, but it will serve maybe 6,000 riders (3,000 individuals) a day. That's a good bus route. Or a streetcar route. Not trains. Now scroll up two maps. The only thing I'd change about the red line route going east/west is that I wouldn't cross the Little Miami River at Point 9. I'd keep the line north of the river and south of Wooster Pike. There's room. I've walked all of it. It's only tight behind the Kroger Store east of Mariemont. And I'd end the red line somewhere between Mariemont and Terrace Park east of the new bridge that goes south to Newtown. That way you could intercept a lot of the Wooster Pike traffic that clogs up Mariemont every morning. And those big park and ride lots could be used by soccer teams at nights and on weekends. To me, this is about as clear a choice as you'll ever get to make in transit planning: Shall we plow across a greenfield flood plain on a path to more sprawl? Or shall be build transit to serve institutions that Cincinnatians have been building for generations - our universities, our hospitals, places like Evanston, Hyde Park, Oakley and Mariemont. So why has the red line been dropped in favor of the green line in the Eastern Corridor planning process? Simple. The green line requires the eight lane Superbridge over the Little Miami to (supposedly) carry trains and buses and, oh yeah, some cars and trucks too. The red line doesn't require a new bridge because it never crosses the river. It just carries three times the number of passengers as the green line, passes more destinations over a shorter route and gets people to the heart of downtown instead of dropping them off under Second Street. But the highway guys don't get their Interstate-ready bridge by building the red line. People are starting to figure this out. The Eastern Corridor Project is a long-term plan to bring I-74 through Cincinnati, cloaked in a touchy-feeling aura of greenspace planning, transit-friendliness and recreational development.

So true.

I think the thing is ... the Eastern Corridor project will bring more traffic in general, and more truck traffic in particular, through Cincinnati instead of shedding it to the beltway. Anyone in favor of that prospect? And forget about the diesel rail line. It's a real loser with about $26 in costs for every $1 in benefits. It's just a stalking horse for Superbridge. We'll get the bridge and the truck traffic, and the rail will never happen.

Trucks coming from western Hamilton County and wanting to go to Clermont County now use I-471/275 to Ohio 32. Once the bridge opens just east of Lunken Airport, a lot of those trucks will use Eastern to Kellogg to Wilmer to the bridge approach. You'll also have a lot more cars on Columbia Parkway. Now a lot of Clermont County traffic uses I-471/275 too. Many will use the shortcut over the Little Miami Valley that the bridge provides. The bridge will facilitate sprawl, doing for the eastside what I-74 has done for the westside. I think Mt. Washington, Fairfax, Mariemont, even Mt. Lookout, Oakley and Hyde Park are at risk because of this project. The Little Miami River flood plain has acted as a natural urban growth boundary that has kept eastern Cincinnati intact over the years. This project changes all that. I'm sure Clermont County developers are salivating at the prospect.