Eigth and State

The P.A. Denny is an authentic sternwheel riverboat that was moored near friendship park with a live band during Paddlefest. Riverviewer, for as much as you like rivers, I'm surprised that you don't have a boat. Or do you? I would be happy to share my canoe with anyone who wants to take a ride.

For anyone interested in water level photography, my canoe want to get in the water again.

Riverviewer, you must have passed me near the P.A. Denny. That's where I saw the pirate guy. I stopped at the P.A. Denny for about 20 minutes on the way back down. I wonder what the Nightmare used to be. There is a substantial crane, and a sort of catamaran bow, so it may have been a stump puller or a pile driver, perhaps? Also, the stern end is damaged. Do you think it was a wreck or a fire? I wonder what will become of that boat. Thanks for the photos. It was a wonderful day.

Speaking of soil, Before about 1890, most of the food and agricultural products consumed by a city came from about a 40 mile radius. How many subdivisions used to be farm land, or orchards, or hay fields, or grazing land? Will people ever abandon the suburbs and return to the city, especially regarding the end of cheap energy? If they do, they will have to contend with the fact that so much of the topsoil of the suburbs is gone.

"It is a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word." - Andrew Jackson :-D

It's called Mariemont Concourse and it's two blocks south of Mariemont Square on Miami Bluff Drive.

"I'm Dubious. ....That doesn't sound like we're declining or deteriorating." Population loss is often taken as bad news, and people tend to question the Census estimates only when there's a loss. I haven't heard anyone say that the Census estimates are too high. The number of people per house is declining across the board. We've discussed this before. If your community doesn't have new housing, you are probably losing population. If your community is losing housing or has a lot of new vacancies, then you are losing even more. Incidently, Green Township has a lot of new housing. "Being No. 1 comes from having good schools, low taxes and great services," -And having 70% of your land developed as residential. Most townships in Ohio are mostly farms or forest. Cheviot "has lot 8 percent of its population since 2000. Yet, our earnings tax is up 3 percent from last year..." Inflation? Higher salaries? In any case, I suppose that's good news, assuming the tax rates didn't change.

"The U.S. is said to have a 250-year supply at current usage rates." That's the first time I have read the 250 number in a mainstream media article. I have been accustomed to 300. "Current rates" is the key. It has also been said that rates are expected to quadruple. Then, we won't have 250 years left anymore. Applying the Hubbert Curve method to coal shows that coal will peak around 2100. "The sad truth is that Americans know much less about energy than we think." The more I know, the more I find out I don't know. I don't think there's anyone that knows it all.

^---- Those numbers are very telling.

"The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre area that stretches across the western part of Alaska's north slope, was set aside as a US Navy oil stockpile in 1923. The US Geological Survey has estimated the reserve could hold anywhere from 820 mm to 5.4 bn barrels of oil." http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntn70401.htm To give you an idea how much oil this is, if extracted at the present rate of conumption of 20 million barrels a day, 5.4 billion barrels would last the United States about 275 days. :-o

"In my experience road engineers hate angled parking no matter how wide the street; it's seen as impediment to traffic flow." Some of my favorite neighborhoods have lousy automobile traffic flow.

^---- Had a friend who had a particularly small little girl. He made her use the baby seat until she reached 40 lbs, while all of her friends grew out of it. She hated it! :x

Legally, Dan B. is right. It is the fault of the person opening the car door. My dad had a similar case some years ago and it was determined that is was the fault of the person opening the door. You are probably fortunate that the mirror gave way and the accident was not worse. Whether this is the best way to allocate public space is a different question. In our auto-centric world, pedestrian-automobile conflicts typically favor the automobile. As an aside, I find it notable that old cars typically had bench seats and it was much easier to slide across the seat to get to the curb side. I often do this in my truck, which has a bench seat in the front. It's much harder to do this with cockpit seats, especially with the parking brake, shifter, etc. in the way. Some cars of the 1910 era only had doors on one side! Finally, baby seats are relatively new also. The law is much older than that. Hitting an open door while riding a bicycle at speed would be catastrophic. I think perpendicular or angled parking, such as on Short Vine or Court Street, would make a great solution but unfortunately many streets are not wide enough, often by just a few feet. If we could all drive smaller cars...(sigh) :|

I took it to mean that neighborhoods are becoming more segregated economically, by means of richer people moving to exclusive neighborhoods. This was the key line: "But it speculates that a sorting-out process is underway in the nation's suburbs and inner cities, with many previously middle-income neighborhoods now tipping rich or poor."

^-----Some people see an empty storefront and say, "This would make a great place for a coffeehouse or bookstore!" Others see the same empty storefront and say, "This place has seen better days. I wonder what used to be here?" Finally, there are those that say, "Let's get outta here."

^Fascinating. Just fascinating. At a nice round number of $300 / foot for cost of street replacement, $15 million would replace about 9 miles of street. Cincinnati has about 1000 miles of streets. So, the railroad profits would allow Cincinnati to replace the entire street system in about 110 years on an ongoing basis. These are just some rough numbers to give an idea of the scale of capital improvments and the budget.

I understand that presently the railroads frown on single car load deliveries. They prefer whole trains between two points. Of course, this may change. Also, in a peak oil scenario, the types of freight would also change. Auto parts, finished cars, and road building materials are a big source of traffic for railroads. If cars drop out of the picture, so does the need for all that railroading. Railroads peaked in 1916 in terms of miles of track - about the same time that automobiles and asphalt highways started to appear.

"The number of cars is basically irrelevent." I disagree. Why do we have 8 lane highways? Because there are so many cars, and they take up so much space, that we need all that pavement to hold them all. Even without trucks, we would need to resurface the pavement every 20 to 30 years due to weathering. "There's no non-political reason..." So true. As has been said many times, railroads pay property taxes on the ground they occupy, while DOT's pay no taxes and receive tax money from other sources, mainly the gasoline tax. The railroads get to a point where they would like to build more track to increase capacity, but the increased taxes prevent them from doing so. Politically, it is not easy to change this. Still, keep in mind that a lot of truck traffic is short-haul, and thus not well adapted to railroads.

^---- True, fewer cars on the road means less pavement to maintain. That's why DOT's don't mind low efficiency cars. Say your state sells 100 gallons of gasoline. At 10 mpg, thats 1000 miles driven. At 20 mpg, thats 2000 miles driven. 10 mpg yields fewer cars on the road. Either way, the DOT collects taxes on that 100 gallons. Fewer miles to maintain means more money left for DOT salaries. :-D

You know, if you drove an electric car, or a bicycle, or a horse-drawn wagon, you wouldn't pay any gasoline taxes and therefore could drive on the highways for "free." Of course, very few people choose those options. That's why the gasoline tax works so well. Presumably, heavy trucks use more gasoline and therefore pay more tax. If there was an alternative to gasoline, it would be great for drivers but bad for the DOT, because they may not be able to collect taxes on it. The DOT doesn't really care about fuel efficiency; instead, they would rather have a lower efficiency because there would be fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars means less pavement to build. Everone pulls for his own basket. The Peak Oil scenario, which projects that oil consumption will decline sometime in the near future, implies that the number of gallons of gasoline sold will decline; therefore, unless rates rise, the amount of revenue from gasoline taxes will also decline. This would happen regardless of fuel efficiency. In the long term, say the next 50 years, DOT's are in trouble. And yes, recording people's movements is invasive. It may be technically easier to put the taxes on yearly renewals, but not politically. Say the average person drives 12,000 miles a year at 20 mpg and pays $0.20 per gallon tax. That's $120. Politically, it's easier to spread that $120 across all those fill ups instead of one big payment yearly. Plus, what happens when someone doesn't have the money at the end of the year? It's easier to capture the money at the pump.

In my humble opinion, the weather and environment aspects are overrated. It is taken for granted that there are jobs. I can think of lots of places I would not mind living, including rural areas, except that job opportunities are scarce. Some jobs are less dependent on location, and these are easier to move. For example, computer programing and coding can be done anywhere with electricity and communication lines; hence Silicon Valley California and Boise Idaho have become tech centers.

The year was 1912. William Howard Taft was president. There are still a few old folks around who can remember those days. My grandfather was born in 1912; he died in 2002 at age 90. Here's a link to a neat silent movie about the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912. It shows the Titanic leaving dock, the Carpathia that responded to the distress call, and interviews with survivors. I like the New York background scenes: women in Victorian dresses, horse drawn vehicles, some early automobiles, a cable car, and lots and lots of hats. The video is 7 minutes long. http://media.putfile.com/The-Titanic-leaving-the-Thomson-Locks

Not to start bashing Amtrak, but the Cardinal just crosses the southwest corner of Ohio, passing through Oxford, Hamilton, and Cincinnati. Does it even stop at Hamilton anymore? As far as Ohio is concerned, the only benefit of Amtrak is for Cincinnati people to travel to Chicago or Washington, which they don't do simply because it's easier to drive. Only a handful of people use the Cardinal from Cincinnati. The only people I have ever heard of to use Amtrak out of Cincinnati are railfans who are more interested in watching passing trains, etc. Why would Ohio fund a railroad with just one stop in Ohio? Now if we had a Cincinnati - Columbus - Cleveland line that would be a different story.

^--- Yes, I think Beechmont Avenue is four times as bad as Colerain, but Colerain is the traditional whipping-boy for traffic for some reason.

"Funny how the criticism they throw at Amtrak and mass transit doesn't apply to aviation." Could it be because our Congressmen are always flying back and forth between their hometowns and Washington, D.C., yet few of them have ever ridden Amtrak? :wink: