John Schneider

Can you imagine that a neighborhood could get better by having fewer bars?

How was the line from the airport to downtown suppose to be funded? Gas tax? Vehicle title tax? As far as I know, no one has ever written a financial plan for rail transit in Northern Kentucky. I'm not optimistic that rail will ever be built from downtown to the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport. By the way, if you want to get to the airport from downtown Cincinnati fast and cheap, try the TANK Airport Express. With a Metro pass, it costs 45 cents and will get you there faster than driving and parking. Catch it on Main, Sixth or Race. The return trip through the Covington Transit Center is much slower, however. Take a cab.

"Does any one know why the KY part of the light rail haven't been voted on yet?" Light rail has never been on the ballot anywhere in Kentucky. The Kentucky constitution does not allow for a local option sales tax for transit.

Walked by it the other night after the Reds game. All the lights were on. It was stunning.

Looking for confirmation that The Metropole is owned by the Showe Family of Columbus. Anyone know?

You don't necessarily need high "population density" to build light rail. Salt Lake City and Phoenix are good examples of this. But you do need "travel density" -- corridors that everyone uses all the time where it is difficult to expand highways. In the Midwest, these corridors generally run from the city center to the north or northeast.

You know, following this discussion from Cincinnati where our 2002 half-cent sales tax levy for rail and more buses failed 2:1 in Hamilton County but won by 2:1 downtown and by almost that much around the University of Cincinnati, it just confirms my feeling that rail needs to go where it's wanted. In Cincinnati, that means a Downtown Streetcar and a three-mile connection up to UC as logical places to start. I don't think people will demand rail until the alternatives get worse -- $4.00 or $5.00 gas, maybe. So maybe the comparative advantage for Ohio's downtowns and university areas is to position themselves as transit-rich environments where you can live without a car. Remove the parking burden that stifles development in these areas. And have a unique product to offer when the crunch comes. Trying to force it into the suburbs before it's wanted will bring enough political heat to shut the whole thing down. It's not the money; it's that many suburbanites simply don't want anything to do with it. Even it were free, many wouldn't want it. So downtowns and near-downtowns may have to go it alone, kind of like your mayor is doing. More power to him.

"I think we need to strengthen the core of the city and what better way to invest in OTR by having a CBD-Clifton connection with a stop in OTR." Think about a streetcar connecting Third and Main with Findlay Market -- no hills, no bridges, one jurisdiction, about $100 million. It would strengthen Findlay Market as downtown's permanent grocery store and enable people to live without cars, which is what it's going to take to have a real downtown. Later phases could go up Vine to Clifton and from Third and Sycamore to Newport and Covington. Or -- I don't presume that it's possible -- Sycamore Hill to Auburn Avenue to Clifton @ Ludlow.

In the November 2002 vote for better public transportation, Downtown supported Issue 7 by a 2:1 margin. Over-the-Rhine and Uptown neighborhoods voted in the 55 - 60% range. There was good support in Evanston, Hyde Park, Oakley and Mt. Lookout, but it still lost in those neighborhoods. It did pretty well in Mariemont and Wyoming. As for the Eastern Corridor rail project -- the one that runs along the river to Lunken and from there to Eastgate -- it's a real loser. The cost/benefit ratio is about 26:1, it has only 6,000 or so riders a day, and it costs a half-billion dollars. It's been sold as cheap way to introduce rail to Cincinnati, but it's not. No rail advocate I know supports it. A much better project would extend rail from downtown to Uptown and from there to Xavier, Rookwood, Hyde Park/Oakley and to Mariemont ending somewhere west of Terrace Park. You'd really connect a lot of dots with that line, which was part of the 2002 ballot issue and which was estimated to attract 20,000 riders a day. The Eastern Corridor project is all about extending I-74 from where it ends near Cincinnati State through the middle of Cincinnati and on to North Carolina. Don't believe it? Pick up a new Rand McNally Atlas and you'll see where they are already building sections of I-74 in North Carolina. Does it seem like they would be building it there but not eventually bring it through Cicninnati?

Here's a Cincinnatian's view of Portland's streetcars and what they enable that city to do. http://www.citybeat.com/2006-02-15/cover.shtml

This article should needs to be understood in the context of the newspaper in which it appeared, The Wall Street Journal. Wonderful paper that it is, the WSJ has shown an anti-transit bias. And not just on the editorial page, but in the news articles as well. It's been going on for many years. Just start following the WSJ's drift on the subject of a more balanced transportation system; you'll see. Why this is true, I don't know. You'd think that for a paper based in Manhattan, where most commuters arrive by buses and trains, that there would be an inherent understanding of the power of these systems. Some newspapers get it: USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News and the Dallas Morning News come to mind - the last four are all new light rail cities. My general observation about how a newspaper will report on this subject is that if the number of pages of car ads on a typical Saturday morning exceeds the number of pages of news, then you'll seldom read a balanced article about transit -- especially rail transit since it is so car-competitive. Food for thought.