Eigth and State

I disagree. "Sprawl" is a slang term that means extended. Urban sprawl is an extended urban area. Suburban sprawl is an extended suburban area. So what's the difference between urban and suburban? Well, the words mean different things to different people. The U.S. Census does not distinguish between the two, and uses the word "urban" when refering to either urban or suburban. In a simplified kind of way, to me "urban" means "walkable" and "suburban" means "auto-dependent."

The author said "sprawling urban landscape." Small buses, are, in fact, appropriate for urban areas They are not well suited to sprawling suburban landscape. For a given seating capacity, large vehicles are less expensive to operate, because fewer drivers are required. However, larger vehicles are more expensive to use, because more stops means slower travel times. Would you rather take a large bus that stops 20 times per mile, or a small one that stops twice per mile? An effective transit network balances the cost to build and operate with the cost to use. Here is a photo of small buses serving an urban area. The red vehicles are buses; each one is operated by one driver and has a capacity of 12 people. There are three of them captured in this photo. For comparison, Cincinnati's first cable car route, the Walnut Hills Cable Railway, used vehicles operated by a crew of two, and carried 12 passengers each. Headway was 6 minutes, with extra cars for a headway of 2 minutes at rush hour! At that frequency, it makes no sense to own an automobile.

Here's a photo of bi-directional rail running through a narrow place in a street.

I'm shocked that you would be glad the CL&N line is being severed. Granted it may not be the best route because it doesn't go to U.C., but it does connect Cincinnati and Norwood, the two largest centers in the region, and extends to the northern suburbs. The tunnel may not be ideal, but it is certainly useable. The Pennsylvania Railroad actually had double track in that tunnel for a while, until two locomotives sideswiped each other. Even so, a single line section would not prevent the whole line from being useful. Bi-directional traffic could be controlled with signals. Or, one direction could use the tunnel and the other direction could use another route. It costs only $1 million per mile to lay heavy rail track on an existing graded right-of-way. I have a plan from 1976 that advocates use of the CL&N for transit. Unfortunately, it has been broken up bit by bit over the years; the casino is the latest offender. Once these old rights of way are gone, it is very difficult to reestablish them.

Just a word of caution: "Operation Cost" could mean total operation cost, operation cost minus the fare recovery ("subsidy"), or operation cost minus the fare recovery and any other source of revenue such as advertisement (again, "subsidy"). It's important to know what is included any time a figure is quoted. Its not that any of this matters anyway. :roll:

There have been many of them over the years. Here are just a few: As I keep saying, a plan without funding is just a dream. Anyone can draw a line on a map. It's not the lack of planning, but the lack of funding that is keeping Cincinnati from developing a rail system.

Has mayor Cranley done anything illegal? Politicians are not obligated to be rational, or even to act in the best interest of the public. The study could come back and state that Cincinnati has every reason to build the streetcar, and the city could still cancel it.

You guys crack me up sometimes. It's just a streetcar project, not a battle between good and evil, although the debate devolved into a grudge match a long time ago.

I'm not opposed to the streetcar. I find the debate interesting, but I really do think that there's a rail cult mentality. Cincinnati will be set back 10 years or more if the streetcar is cancelled? Come on. The Cincinnati Metro is a big economy; the proposed streetcar is just a small part of that economy.

I have to imagine that Messer, etc., saw this coming, and bid the job higher than normal to allow for the political uncertainty.

Cranley campaigned on a promise to stop the streetcar. I'm not sure why the dollar figures even matter to him. The same goes for the council members. I'm surprised that no one mentioned on this forum that city manager Milton Dohoney is resigning, under pressure from mayor-elect Cranley. There could be more changes coming.

^Regardless of what the law is, making an effort to dislodge Cranley is not likely to get him on the side of the streetcar supporters.

^Poking at someone else's project does not gain any advantage for your own project; it's a lose-lose situation. The streetcar debate ceased to be rational a long time ago, and has devolved into a grudge match.

^Property owners along the route could organize a corporation, raise the capital, and build the streetcar line. This is the way that streetcar lines were built historically. Jim Uber is willing to pay his share.

Had this conversation with a different voter: "For whom are you voting for Mayor of Cincinnati?" "Qualls. I like that she supports the streetcar. The other woman wants to stop the streetcar."

Heard this from a voter: "They should tear up the rails and give the money back to help pay off the national debt." I still think that some of the forumers underestimate the opposition to the streetcar. This isn't just a group of nutcases that oppose it; the streetcar has widespread opposition outside of the core.

The new Central Bridge cost $24 million when it opened, in 1996, if I remember correctly. A new bridge at any random place over the Ohio River should cost less than $50 million. Even a new Brent Spence shouldn't cost that much. The reason why the proposed Brent Spence bridge replacement costs so much is because of all of the approaches, which can be several times the cost of the bridge over the actual river. At one point they were talking about rebuilding I-75 all the way back to Union Terminal! All of that work requires taking of valuable real estate. On top of all of that, it is presumed that traffic will be maintained during construction. A new West Side bridge would be cheap in comparison. By the way, the shortest line between Downtown and the airport goes through Delhi. A route from downtown to the airport via Anderson Ferry is about a mile shorter than a route from downtown to the airport via I-75 and I-275. The reason why the ferry doesn't take more traffic is because it is too slow and because the approaches are poor on both sides of the river. If you are travelling between Delhi and the airport, the ferry is faster, but for anything north of Delhi it is faster to take I-75 and I-275, or for some folks, to take I-74 and I-275 around the other way past Lawrenceburg. None of this really matters, since airline traffic is declining anyway. The airport is becoming less and less important.

Sorry I don't have a link but I found someone on another forum who studied just that. He attempted to come up with a total household economic outlook based on the typical home mortgage, CPI, price of cars, price of gas, typical wage, etc. The result was that the worst time since the end of WWII was the recession of 1981. The second worst time was the recession of 2008.

There are construction fences and an O'Rouke sign around Wilson Auditorium at the University of Cincinnati.

Malthus proposed that the definition of happiness is getting married young and having a large family. Indeed, pioneer families often had 10 children or more. There were definitely a higher percentage of families with 10 or more children in 1790 then there are today.

Malthus didn't write about oil. Malthus wrote about food. Basicly, he said that human population cannot rise faster than the food supply rises. He also said that under ideal conditions of food supply, human population doubles every 25 years. The corollary is that if human population is NOT doubling every 25 years, then humans are not living under ideal conditions. Hubbert wrote about oil. Hubbert theorized that the plot of global oil consumption would look like a bell-shaped curve, with the peak around the year 2000. The duration of the oil age would be remarkably short. "A child born in the year 1970 will see 80% of the world's oil consumed within his lifetime." Although Hubbert advocated a new kind of money system based on energy, he didn't predict a catastrophe. He DID explain that the recession and lack of growth of the 1970's in the United States was due to depletion of energy resources and not by something that was "wrong" with the economy that politicians could do anything about. Ehrlich wrote "The population Bomb," which (inaccurately) predicted the end of the world in an overpopulation catastrophe. It's a shame that Ehrlich is associated with Mathusian economics. Malthus didn't predict the end of the world; he merely showed that population is limited by the food supply. Malthus didn't advocate population control; he said that if people didn't voluntarily control the birth rate, then nature would control population by famine, war, pestilence, and disease. I think that Malthus was basicly correct, and so was Hubbert. Ehrlich, on the other hand, was an alarmist that advocated population control. The United States today is underpopulated by world standards. We really don't know what it's like to face starvation. Neither do we know what it's like to see the growth rates of the 1790's. In those days, population in the United States really was doubling every 25 years.

Have you actually read Malthus? He didn't claim that the world was going to end. He showed that human population cannot increase geometrically forever as long as the food supply doesn't grow to match. The earth has enormous, but finite resources.

That's great news, but we really didn't need a streetcar for reform. Cincinnati should reform all of the regulations that hamper development all over the city.

Grade separating Central Parkway and Hopple might be ugly, and not pedestrian friendly, but it should really free a lot of traffic. It's presently in the top 20 busiest intersections in Hamilton County.

Looks like both buildings had their towers removed. Was there some defect that prevented this sort of architecture from surviving?