Eigth and State

A deep tunnel under the river would probably be more like 600 feet below uptown and 300 feet below downtown because of geologic factors, and it would cost something on the order of $15 million per mile for a single track tunnel, not including accessories. Not only would deep elevators add to the cost, but they would also add to commuting times, reducing the utility of the system. Tunnel under construction in northern Kentucky

ODOT's policy regarding railroad crossings is that they don't want any new crossings. If the CH&D were reused, there would at the minimum be a crossing of U.S. 127, Hamilton Avenue. If not sure if there is enough room for an elevated line that would cross over U.S. 127 yet also cross under I-74. So, putting the Cardinal on the CH&D is a long shot unless ODOT makes an exception. I really like the idea of a passenger train sneaking around the back way and avoiding all the congestion in the Mill Creek Valley. It should improve travel time for both the Cardinal and the freight traffic. Dividing the present Cardinal route in half would avoid the need for it to cross the river, and also provide the option to increase frequency on the Chicago route but not the Washington D.C. route. It's a shame that Cincinnati has rail service to Chicago and hardly anyone uses it, mainly because of the poor schedule. Incidently, the very rough crossing of the CH&D, which is now called the "Cincinnati Industrial Track," and Gest Street has recently been rebuilt. That section of the CH&D is still in service at least weekly, serving one customer near Gest Street.

I've been toying with this idea: 1. Split the Cardinal into two halves at Cincinnati. The Chicago route would use the abandoned route through Spring Grove Cemetary and Northside to connect to the former CH&D, and terminate at the transit center. The Washington D.C. route would terminate in Newport. I'm not sure how the train would be turned around at either terminal. 2. Terminate the 3C at Sharonville, as previously proposed. (Sorry to those that wanted it to terminate in Downtown Cincinnati.) 3. Construct a new light rail line from Newport down Saratoga Street, crossing the L&N bridge, passing alongside downtown and continuing out the former CL&N to a new right of way connecting to the former Pennsylvania all the way to Sharonville, connecting all three passenger train stations. Instead of the 3C line between Cincinnati and Sharonville without any intermediate stops, why not build something with more local ridership potential? Most passengers going to Chicago, Washington D.C. (very few) or Columbus will drive to the station anyway, but the light rail offers connections. There is really no reason to have all passenger railroads terminate at the same station. Paris has 6 stations serving 6 lines in different directions, connected by the RER as well as the Paris Metro. Before Cincinnati Union Terminal was built, Cincinnati had what, 7 stations? Carl Condit argues in his book that the situation was better for the user prior to construction of CUT, which was built to facilitate connections instead of serving passengers terminating in Cincinnati. Diverting the Cardinal to the CH&D would not only avoid the need for a 4th main, but would also clear up a little capacity on the freight lines.

^Please be nice. Kjbrill, welcome to UO.

^And some of those connecting passengers were Cincinnatians who drove to Columbus or Indianapolis and flew through Cincinnati to get a better ticket price. This just shows that transportation systems aren't necessarily rational.

~150,000 resided in the basin including Downtown, Over-the-Rhine, the West End, what is now Queensgate, Pendelton, and part of Mt. Auburn around 1950, which was near the peak population of the City of Cincinnati. Today, ~80,000 are employed downtown. Roughly 1/3 take the bus to work, 2/3 drive, and a few live there. The listed capacity of the football stadium is 65,000 for comparison.

^Look how narrow that street is!

^Those paint lines refer to EXISTING utilities, with colors indicating the various utilities as JJakucyk said. The standard protocol is to mark PROPOSED utilities (for example, streetcar track) in white. They may or may not paint the streetcar tracks, however. I am not aware that ANY of the utility relocation work has been started yet. If someone knows otherwise, please share.

^It doesn't matter what I think the number should be. It's not my project. It's not the Business Courier's project, or Charlottes' project, either. What matters is that Duke thinks it should be 8 feet, and the City is not willing to pay for 8 feet. 16 or 80 feet wouldn't hold up in court, and everybody knows that. Would 8 feet hold up in court? I don't know.

Because Duke is used to throwing its weight around. They are not obligated to provide documentation. Duke is in a position where they could care less if the streetcar gets built or not. They have no incentive, financial or otherwise, to see this project get built. Then can replace their aging utilites with or without the streetcar project. Pretty much everyone across the board is hurting in this economy, and just like everyone else, Duke is not in the mood to be spending money unnecessarily. So, maybe Duke is being uncooperative; I'll give you that. That's not something that the city can do anything about. Duke has made an offer to do the required utility work for a certain price; the city had a choice to either come up with the money, or turn down the offer. The City chose to turn them down, but instead of disagreeing peacefully, they issued a letter to the media stating that Duke was being unreasonable, and then followed up with a groundbreaking ceremony. To me, this seems like a grave mistake. Now, the conflict has been elevated beyond the technical details of dimensions between rails and utilities; it has become a battle to see who is stronger, Duke or the City. The letter issued by the city was a shot across the bow; a line in the sand; a rattling of swords. I do believe that Duke is trying to make a statement that they are not going to be pushed around by the City of Cincinnati, or any other city. Duke is a corporation, and they are the servants of their stockholders and their customers, but not of any municipality. I don't think Duke is fearing a PR nightmare, because the streetcar project is already extremely unpopular outside of a core group of streetcar supporters. I do not think that Duke is going to give in, and I think they will go to court before moving any utilities. Even if the city wins in court, the construction schedule will have been set back significantly. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that this is serious. If anyone has any information that I don't know about, please feel free to share.

^I'm telling you that from my experience that's not the way it works. On any other project, it would go something like this: The City wants to build a streetcar route. They send plans to Duke, along with a letter asking them to relocate the utilities. Duke sends a letter back, telling the City what it will cost, and asks for authorization. The City signs the authorization, Duke sends a crew to perform the required utility work, and Duke sends the bill to the City of Cincinnati. In this project, we got to the point where Duke tells the City what it will cost, and the City quite plainly said that they were not willing to pay. Again, I'm not saying whether 8 feet is reasonable or not. I'm saying that there is a serious conflict here, and while I haven't been invited into the conversation, I don't see any progress in resolving this issue. What, pray tell, is the City going to do if Duke doesn't move the utilities?

^ Sorry to rain on anyone's parade but I agree that the Duke issue is an important one. While I don't know what may be going on behind the scenes, the groundbreaking ceremony to me seems rather pretentious, as if the City doesn't care about the Duke issue. Once again, the City CANNOT force Duke out of the street. Duke has a right to be there, and the authority for that right comes from state law, not City of Cincinnati city council. If an agreement is not worked out, this could take a long time to get resolved. For that matter, if this goes to court, it could be as much as a year before the case is scheduled, much less resolved.

^I think something that would really improve both Downtown and Mt. Adams is a new street, not connected to any highway ramps, between downtown and Mt. Adams. Make it farily narrow, pedestrian, bicycle and bus-friendly, and put some storefronts on it. For that matter, a better connection between Downtown and Queensgate on the west side of downtown would help also. At least we have some sidewalks, but sidewalks over, under, or adjacent to an expressway are not very inviting. Legally, bicycles aren't supposed to ride on the sidewalk, and there are no good bicycle connections. Busses have to take a round-about route. Even so, part of the reason why downtown and Mt. Adams are isolated from each other is simple because of the hillside.

Another way, and I think the most direct route, is to take Sixth Street as far east as you can go. There is a sidewalk on the north side of Sixth Street that is adjacent to a ramp leading from Columbia Parkway, and it doesn't look inviting at all, but it takes you across all of the highway to Monastery Street in Mt. Adams. From there, you can climb Monastery Street, or take another route. Considering that the ramp is high, and you don't have to descend to the riverfront before ascending the hillside, it may be an easier climb overall.

That assumes that the number of people downtown remains constant. If downtrown foot traffic were growing, we could have both the street and the skywalks full of people. Also, Cincinnati's skywalks were the national model, kind of like Portland's streetcars today. A lot of work went into those, and architecturally the bridges improved over time. I think the most useful one was the pedestrian bridge over old FWW to Riverfront Stadium; due to the grade difference, it met the sidewalk on Fourth Street. There was a National Geographic article that showed a concept plan for separation of motorways and pedestrian streets into two distict levels. Downtown Cincinnati never achieved this, but if the trend had continued, it is imaginable that eventually as new buildings replaced old ones, a new pedestrian street could have been built one level up from the original street. A good example of that is the government center in Frankfurt, Kentucky; Union Terminal over Dalton Street, and parts of U.C. and NOTL display this pattern. In addition to downtown Cincinnati, skywalks can also be found at the downtown Library, U.C. Main and medical campuses, the Hamilton County Justice Center, and Music Hall. There's a bridge from an earlier era between the Central Trust tower and annex.

I wonder if Mr. Portune thought that the streetcar should interchange with the Eastern Corridor - allowing a one-seat ride from, say, Music Hall to Lunken Airport. Of course, the two systems would be incompatible for a number of reasons. For those who grew up with automobiles - where one can drive from practically any driveway or parking lot in the United States to any other without changing vehicles - rail can be a culture shock.

I like the incline, and I notice that there is a pedestrian bridge over the highway. I have to wonder. Can you tell me if the incline remains in business as an attraction, or is actually used for transportation?

^In addition to all of the things already mentioned, I-75 carries a very high percentage of heavy trucks, which introduces further complications. The canyon concept facilitates cross-streets. A pair of one-way streets on either side of an expressway, such as FWW, with cross-streets over the expressway, is one of my favorite patterns for expressways. That pattern is common in Detroit. It works well for rivers, too, as long as the river or waterway is not too wide. The irony of expressays is that they are safer at lower speeds. During the oil embargo of the 1970's, speed limts were reduced to 55mph with the intention of saving fuel. After the embargo, speed limits remained at 55 because it was found that it saved lives. The 55 mph speed limit was a federal rule; although the rule never became a law, the feds were able to enforce it by withholding funding from any state that did not follow the 55 mph rule. Eventually, state's rights prevailed. I understand that the original design speed for most of I-75 was 75 mph, which incidentally a lot of people drive.

Wow! At least give Mr. Portune credit for taking the time to write back with that response, and not waffling.

^Ride down I-75 sometime and watch the berm, and try to imagine another lane there, without more widening. There are lots of places where there just isn't room: the southbound section through Lockland, the Brent Spence Bridge, etc.

Maybe a better way would be to allow them to work for tips? There's a little bit of street theatre going on at NOTL. I've been to a wonderful little town where the street theatre was so good that it actually attracted people to the square, and all the artists worked for tips.

^I think we are saying the same thing. Both parties are trying to defend their position. I am trying to present it from Duke's point of view, since there are plenty of presentations from the City's point of view already on this board. Personally, I don't know enough about the technology to say what is reasonable, and I am not trying to take sides. The thing that bothers me the most is that both parties have issued letters stating that they will not respect the other's opinion, and brought what should be a technical issue into the public arena, with lots of media attention. Usually, some uncelebrated guys in muddy boots driving pickup trucks meet in the field to work out utility conflicts. Now, we have the guys wearing suits involved, with spokespeople making statements on television. This is not a good sign for the streetcar, because even if the City wins this conflict, it is going to cost more time and money, and generate a lot of animosity.

The media reported "Eight feet from the tracks," which is ambiguous. As I recall, a poster previously reported that they wanted "8 feet from the streetcar envelope" The California standard is "Three feet from edge of rail to the manhole opening" and the quote from Charlotte said "Three feet from the edge of the slab to the utility." I honestly don't know what Duke is requesting, but whatever it is, it is obviously a whole lot more than what the City of Cincinnati is prepared to pay. There could be some simple miss-communication, but I think that a more likely explanation is that the City of Cincinnati did not put enough effort into working out the utility relocation costs until AFTER they published the project budget, $110 million or whatever the latest figure is, and instead of increasing their budget to allow for the real cost, they are attempting to save face and hold to the published budget by imposing their wishes on the utilities. The City of Cincinnati has some control over MSD and Water Works, because those utilities are operated by the City, although MSD is funded by Hamilton County, as we have discussed before. The City of Cincinnati, however, does NOT have any control over Duke, and we haven't even gotten to Cincinnati Bell, Level 3, Sprint, and others yet. Remember, in Ohio, streetcars have the same legal status as utilities. It may be different in other states. The City of Cincinnati CANNOT simply claim ownership of the street and force the other utilities out of the way for the streetcar project. (They CAN force them out for road projects. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.) I'm not sure that the City of Cincinnati even knows this, but Duke certainly does. And I do think that Duke is making a statement that they are not going to be pushed around by the City of Cincinnati, or any other city.

I didn't think of this before, but this is another aspect of clearance between utilities: Any pipeline made of iron or steel tends to rust. Rust is an electrical process, which can be accelerated by the presence of water, salt, minerals in the soil, and electric currents in adjacent utilities, including streetcar rails. I have no idea what clearances are considered safe, or even if this is a concern of Duke, but I bet it varies by electric current, soil type, and pipe material. The situation may be different in Cincinnati than it is in Charlotte; I know that there are some very old utilities in Over-the-Rhine. Cathodic protection is a method to counteract electrical currents in the soil by imposing an electrical current in the opposite direction (simplified explanation).

The street is a free-for-all. Ultimately, the checks and balances would be determined by a court, if the utilities can't work it out among themselves. I can tell you how it normally happens on other projects. Suppose that Cincinnati Water Works wants to install a new water main, and there's a pole in the way. The first thing to do is figure out who owns the pole. Suppose it's Duke. Then, water works sends some plans to Duke, and requests that Duke move the pole. Duke will provide a price, say $8000 (that's what it costs to move a pole these days,) and get Water Works to sign it. Duke will send a crew to move the pole, and Duke will send the bill to Water Works. Obviously, if Water Works wants to save some money as well as some hassle, they will design their project in such a way to avoid the need to move a pole in the first place, but sometimes it's unavoidable.