Eigth and State

^I think what is really wearing people out is the ~40,000 deaths per year plus countless injuries and untold property damage caused by automobile accidents, highway noise, and acres and acres of parking lots and motorways dividing people from each other. The economics of driving favor the automobile as an individual choice. That's why people do it, and they willingly pay a fortune for it, and tolerate all the drawbacks. However, the economics of society do not favor the automobile, and I think the automobile era is approaching the half way point, but is not near the end just yet.

Also keep in mind that many of the statistics about teen drivers are on a national level, and the trend is particularly apparent in L.A., where gasoline prices have always been higher than most places in the country, and the economy is terrible. There are enough teenagers in L.A. to influence the national average. I think that the trend is mainly due to cost. Driving is expensive, and it's an item that fewer can afford. When I was in high school, the standard reason to get a car was to be able to drive to work. At the same time, the standard reason to get a job was to be able to afford a car. It didn't make sense to me, but it must have resulted in a net positive benefit for most teen drivers. Sometimes the parents contributed, just to get their kids some job experience if nothing else.

Building a bridge inside a bridge seems complicated, but it is interesting that they chose to add arches.

"The tipping point is coming." Gramarye, I understand that you think that sometime in the future, electric cars will be less expensive than gasoline cars, on a life cycle cost per mile basis. But that's not what peak oil is about. Peak oil implies that gasoline cars will be more expensive to produce and operate than they are today, and electric cars will also be more expensive to operate than they are today. It's not about comparing the future costs of two different technologies. It's about comparing future costs to today's cost. Just about everything you can buy consumes petroleum in one form or another at some point along it's life cycle. Petroleum accounts for 40% of our total industrial energy, and 90% of our transportation energy. It takes petroleum to manufacture cars, whether they be gasoline cars or electric cars.

Might change the game in the way that highways are funded, too. Ready for taxes on electric cars? Or maybe on batteries? Or electricity? Or maybe highways will be tolled instead?

^Looks more walkable than most sprawl areas in Ohio but I'd still prefer to walk in the European village. Just look at the difference in the street widths! Walking is a lot more sensitive to distance than you might imagine, and that includes the distance from one side of the street to the other, especially when there is the potential of being struck by a car. Would you let you 5 year old child cross that street by himself?

^John Schnieder can probably tell you more but it seems like a long way to go before any track or overhead wire will be built. I know everyone is excited, but gee, it was just a little water main project.

I disagree. Walkable, urban areas will tolerate a few cars, but not many.

It IS a chicken and egg thing. An area tends to be either walkable or not, without much middle ground, because it is impossible to design an area to be both walkable AND driveable. In my humble opinion, this is what makes new rail transit in auto-oriented areas such a challenge. To achieve enough pedestrian density to support the transit, cars have to be limited. If the area around the stops is redeveloped complete with parking, there will not be enough density to support the transit.

If she's renting a dedicated space, where's the hassle?? Besides having to pay for it, her parking place is located some distance from her apartment, adding to her commute time and partly defeating the purpose of having a car. She lives downtown and works less than 2 miles away. Seems like it would be a possible car-free lifestyle, but she chose to drive. If I were in her situation, I might consider living car-free. That's not my point. My point is that SHE chooses to drive, and I think that most people would do the same. How about in Cincinnati? It seems that every new development I see, whether it be in the suburbs or the core, comes with parking.

But depletion of non-renewable resources often follows a bell-shaped curve, where most of the growth occurs in the first half of the curve. Suppose that a new car that gets 100 mpg is developed. Yes, you are correct that the new car will probably follow the exponential curve model, until the market is saturated and everone has one. The trouble is that the 100 mpg car will result in depletion of the petroleum reserves just as fast if not faster than present. It will not make our pertroleum reserves last any longer. Peak oil really isn't about technology; peak oil is about depetion of non-renewable resources.

More generally, cities can benefit from branding and that includes typefaces. Cincinnati already has an established typeface, as demonstrated in the article. We also have references to the Queen City in Queen City Metro, Queen City Tour, Queen City Sausage, etc. The Flying Pig is catching on, especially in sports. We have the riverboat theme established around the riverfront. The mosaics in the baseball stadium mimic those in Union Terminal. The Cincinnati Bengals derive from the Bengal Tigers at the Cincinnati Zoo.

I agree with you except for one thing: do you really think that the streetcar will promote living car-free? I know you don't own a car, but not everyone is like you. What I imagine is that most of the new development in Over-the-Rhine, if it happens at all, will come with parking. Either that, or it will be targetted toward the poor or disabled who do not drive. I have a friend who lives downtown. I asked her how she liked living downtown. The first thing she said is that parking is such a hassle. She rents a parking space in a garage. She drives to work.

^I worked in Mt. Auburn and was told that I was crazy to walk around the neighborhood at lunchtime. I think we all, myself included, tend to underestimate how much fear and animosity there really is. The real world is not necessarily rational. Plus, I don't think that most suburbanites do a whole lot of walking around in their own neighborhoods, not to mention one that they think is dangerous.

^Technically the Wasson line was never a railroad, but an interurban. I don't think the "rails to trails" program applies. It could still become a bicycle path, but not under that program. Someone tell me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the "rails to trails" program involves railroads that are unused but not officially abandoned, with the possibility of re-using them as railroads in the future. The line has to be connected to an active railroad; isolated sections do not apply. I think the Little Miami folks would go crazy if the bike trail was proposed to be converted back to an active railroad, but that's the way the paperwork reads.

^We think of Downtown Cincinnati as an urban paradise where everyone walks, but I think the reality is that Downtown Cincinnati is a lot more auto-oriented than we on UO like to give it credit for. Downtown Cincinnati does have the advantage of easy highway access that's even better than many suburban locations, with downtown streets connecting directly with numerous ramps to highways in 6 directions. In round numbers, 80,000 are employed downtown. About 20,000 to 30,000 take the bus to work, and a few live within walking distance and walk to work. The other ~50,000 drive, and many of those park in parking garages and barely walk on the street at all.

In photo 12 I spotted a balcony over the sidewalk pattern. For some reason I am becoming interested in those. :?

You have to admit though that it is different. Also, don't you think it's interesting that the landlord is the Cincinnati Park Board, instead of, say, the City of Cincinnati or one of the 24 other city departments? Renting concession space to an ice cream vender in a park is completely different from renting land to a tavern business that employs 300 people. I am just bewildered by the scale of it. :-o

I'm confused about this whole relationship also, but it is interesting. There's nothing new about concession companies that rent land from a public park board. For example, the folks that run the hotels in Natinal Parks do so under a license, and the National Park Service gains some revenue from it. The Cincinnati Park Board rents out certain shelter and facilities. The difference here is that the Lager House has the potential to be an attraction in iteslf, not just an accessory to the parks. It's almost like the Park Board has become a major landlord. In some parts of the world, landholding is thought of in a different way. The king owns all the land, and the tenants pay rent. In the United States, individuals own land, but they pay property taxes. So, we have an example of tenants paying rent again.

Architect Christopher Alexander advocates small cemetaries in towns, that people pass on a daily basis, rather than great big sprawling ones on the edge of town that hardly anyone visits.

Do not confuse gasoline, which is a finished product, and petroleum, which is a raw material. According to the article, United States exports of gasoline are up. The article didn't say anything about petroleum. Sure, the United States is an oil exporter. Some oil produced in Alaska goes to Japan, for example. But the United States imports quite a bit more than it exports. The United States has been a net importer of oil since about 1940. In round numbers, the United States produces about 9 million barrels of oil per day, but the United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day.

I thought you were going to Portland. Anyway, Congrats, and please send photos.

^It's from a tunnel under construction in northern Kentucky. More photos can be found here: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=20751.0

That's an interesting way to say it.

The $15 million per mile is based on the tunnel in northern Kentucky that is pictured. The finished tunnel with liner is 12' in diameter, but the actual bored tunnel was 15'. They used a Tunnel Boring Machine. The bottom of the Ohio River Aquifer is about 200 feet below the bottom of the Ohio River in the downtown area. The same geologic formation exists in the lower Mill Creek Valley, where the pilings for the Western Hills Viaduct had to extend over 100 feet underground. A tunnel boring machine can bore through soil, or it can bore through rock, but it does not do well boring through a soil-rock transition because it would have to be removed to replace the cutting heads. Also, building a tunnel in a soil formation that bears water is problematic; one of the London subway tunnels had a severe accident when they hit water and the tunnel flooded. So, to stay in rock and clear beneath the aquifer, it would have to be much deeper. Another factor is that the rock beneath the surface changes in quality, and the rock 300 feet deep is a better quality for tunneling. We know this due to some work by the Army Corps of Engineers for a flood control project that didn't get built. The rocks that you can see outcropping on Cincinnati Hillsides are OK for tunneling. This is the formation that the never-completed Deer Creek Tunnel was in, or the proposed Mt. Auburn tunnel that didn't get built. Incidently, I wonder why they took the time to take test bores for the Mt. Auburn Tunnel when all they had to do was look at existing information that we already had. A tunnel from some point in Over-the-Rhine to Idlewild beneath uptown is feasible because it would stay in the same rock formation. It's also significantly less expensive to build a tunnel when access is through a portal rather than a shaft, because material can be hauled straight out in hoppers rather than having to transfer it to an elevator and lift it. There are other existing crossings under the Ohio River but they were't built with Tunnel Boring machines.