Eigth and State

I find all these photos fascinating, and I am impressed by the level of interest on this board. Still, I feel like I should say again that unless we know more details about what kind of utility is beneath these manhole covers, it doesn't make much of a case against Duke. On another project, Duke wanted 10 feet of clearance from an existing steel gas main, because over the years steel gas mains have gained a reputation for breaking during construction of another utility nearby. Jake's Photos 11 and 13, with the streetcar that says "Gresham," appear to show a man entering a manhole just a few feet from a passing streetcar. The same photo shows an asphalt trench cutting across what appears to be concrete imitation brick pavers, leading to the manhole, indicating that the utility was installed well after the streetcar tracks were built. Finally, in the background is a flagman providing traffic control.

^I didn't search for a utility worker - streetcar fatalty, but construction work in general has a very high fatality rate among workers in the United States.

The first page of Google results has three since 1998. I didn't look any further than the first page. San Francisco, 11-16-1998 New Orleans, 1-19-2011 Toronto, 1-11-2011 Also, lots of links to scanned newspaper articles from around 1910. I didn't know Google would find words in scanned newspapers. Google is amazing.

Since you asked,... I don't work for Duke or anything, so this is my own opinion only. I suspect that Duke's motivations are to protect their bottom line by not contributing to the streetcar project anymore than they have to, to keep their workers safe and protect themselves from lawsuits due to accidents, to take advantage of someone else's money to upgrade their own utility lines, and to make a statement that they are not going to be pushed around by the City of Cincinnati. I do not suspect that they are involved in any conspiracy to stop the streetcar project. I think the timing of the letter was coincidental. In the big picture considering all of the projects that Duke has going on, the streetcar is not one of their big concerns technically, though they are wary of media attention that could affect their stockholders' perception. Again, this is my own opinion based on my own experience and nothing more. One of my resources is a book published by Duke's predecessor, CG&E, called "The CG&E story." I've worked with Duke employees before, and they seem to be reasonable people just doing their jobs.

I think people are discouraged from driving on Elm Street by the pavement. If they don't avoid it alltogether, they definitely slow down. The use of Belgian Blocks (someone told me that this is the correct technical name) in urban design should be considered more often to address automobile dominance. The drawback of Belgian Blocks is that when automobiles do drive on them, they generate a lot of noise. Imagine when almost all streets were paved with Belgian Blocks, but streetcars rode on smooth rails. The ride must certainly have been smoother on the streetcar than in an automobile or bus, and motor speeds must have been lower. Paving streets with asphalt must have really encouraged people to drive, both by reducing vibration and increasing velocities for automobiles.

^^ No, no, no. I'm not saying what the safety clearance should be. I'm saying that Duke has their own idea of what it should be, and whether it is reasonable or not, I expect them to stick to it, to the point of fighting the city in court. This is serious. I don't think at all that we are embarking on radical new technology. The fact that Duke and the Mayor have issued letters to each other stating that neither will respect the other's opinion has formalized a grudge match between the City of Cincinnati and Duke (among other grudge matches already in progress). This is a really big conflict between two institutions, not solved by technology.

^It would be more helpful if the specific utility was known. It could be a city-owned utility, and it could even be part of the streetcar system, such as communications lines connected to trackside signage or ticket kiosks. Just sayin'. I wish I had construction drawings from the Portland streetcar on hand for comparison.

The difference is that work crews on the New York City subway and other heavy rail systems are employed by the same entity as the driver of the train. That is, the rules can be laid out and both the construction crew and the driver will follow them. Put yourself in the position of a work crew superintendant. What if the streetcar doesn't stop, and a Duke employee gets killed? Better have some legal recourse ahead of time to protect oneself. In the case of the streetcar, the Duke employees have no guarantee that the streetcar will actually stop. You may think that this is a silly argument, but gas and electric employees have extremely strict safety procedures, to the point where devising a safety plan to perform some task often takes longer than performing the task itself. In practice, this idea would probably require a legal agreement between Duke and the streetcar operator, and that agreement itself could take a year or more to draft, considering all the beauracracy on both sides. Railroad rights-of-way are strictly controlled. Work crews are often protected by a derail device, which will throw the train off the track if its gets too close. By comparison, streets are a free-for-all.

"They are going to look silly when this argument is done with." I feel that you are underestimating the importance of this issue. Historically, the courts have sided with the electric utility when safety clearances have become an issue. An example of a previous case is when someone constructed a house too close to overhead transmission lines. The courts have called for demolition of the house based on clearance standards presented by the utility.

^ The story from Local 12 says "Duke Energy also wants the city to promise to have an eight foot separation between the streetcar and the utility lines." As reported here, the measurement is not well defined. The operating envelope is even trickier, since it varies from the centerline around a curve, and the curves are to be placed in intersections where utilities are most congested.

^Thanks for taking the time to look that up. Just doing some math here, the California rule requires 3 feet of clearance from edge of rail to edge of opening. Standard gage is 4'-8 1/2", equivalent to 4.71 feet. Half of that is 2.35 feet. (Historic Cincinnati Streetcars were 5'-2" gage, as I recall.) The rail outside of the gage has some width, say 2 inches. That is 0.17 feet. A typical manhole opening is 24 inches in diameter, or 2.0 feet. Half of that is 1.0 feet. Of course, there are lots of different dimensions for manholes. Using these numbers, 3 feet of clearance translates to about 6.52 feet from centerline of track to center of manhole. 6.52 feet is a little less than 8 feet; rounding up to the next even number yields 8 feet. Lots of construction materials, such as lumber, come in 8 feet lengths, so it is a familiar measurement. I guess the point of all of this is that it's very important to define the way that measurements are taken. "8 feet from the track" is ambiguous. 8 feet center to center is approximately equivalent to 3 feet edge to edge. Dont forget that the manhole cover itself may be only a small part of the total manhole width, and the gage is only part of the track width including the footing. Using generous dimensions, 3 feet of clearance could mean as much as 9 feet center to center. I'm just amazed though that these technical details have made it into the political arena.

A few pages back, someone asked about the City of Cincinnati taking over control of Duke utilities. I just looked it up, and found that CG&E or a predecessor company has been forced to defend itself against organized campaigns aimed at municipal ownership three times, in 1933, 1941, and 1949. In 1949, the proposal was made that the City acquire both The Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company and the Street Railway Company and "return car fares to ten cents by subsidizing the Street Railway out of the proceeds of the Gas Company." (Source: "The CG&E story," Keagy and Strunk)

There was a lot of frantic negotiation between the City and the County in the days of the sales tax campaign. In the end, the County agreed to pay the Cincinnati Public School district (not quite the same people as the City of Cincinnati municipality) a certain amount out of sales tax revenue. As I understand it, the Cincinnati Public School district was concerned about potential income tax revenue loss from some 500 full-time jobs in the produce industry that would be displaced by the stadiums. Then again, maybe it was property tax loss; I never understood how it all worked. Anyway, the stadium tax demonstrates how complicated government can be, with overlapping jurisdictions, protection of budgets, and inter-governmental agreements. We like to imagine that government is neat and orderly, with everything under control, and everyone playing nice together, but that's not the way the real world works. Even departments within the same government struggle with each other, sometimes over the silliest things.

Yes, there are a lot externalities associated with roads, of which road salt is one, but ODOT can't take the blame for everything. Cities, counties, townships, and private owners build roads, including the attached driveways and parking lots, and most of them use salt as well.

The largest four of Jupiter's moons are named Io, Europa, Ganymeade, and Callisto. These were discovered by Galileo and called the Galilean Moons. I actually captured all four of them that night, and they all happened to be on the same side of Jupiter. One of them was too far out of the frame of this particular photo, which was the clearest photo of the night. I never did bother to figure out which one was which. In the American pioneer days, the most accurate clocks available were pendulum clocks, which could not be easily moved without affecting the pendulum. By that time, the geometry of the moons of Jupiter had been worked out, and one could look up a prediction of the positions of the moons at any given time. Conversely, one could calculate the time based on the positions, and this method was used to set pendulum clocks to the correct time.

^We've gone through this before, but to keep it short the City of Cincinnati has some control, but they do not have absolute control of public rights-of-way. The utilities have a right to be there, and the authority for that right comes from state law.

Sherman: I think I remember reading somewhere that the few remaining Kentucky River Locks were recently closed. Another good place to see old-style locks is on the Muskingum River. Those locks are hand-operated! ODNR operates them on summer weekends for recreational traffic, and even at that they are lightly used. Now might be a good time to see them before they close, too. On ODOT being a highway agency, well, they used to be called the "State of Ohio Department of Highways," without even a hint of doing anything else. Today, they dapple in railroads, bicycle routes, and other modes, but they really haven't changed much from their historical role. I have the DOH report from 1937, a big, hardbound book with lots of stats and photos. Hardly anyone alive today remembers what Ohio was like before highways; you can get a hint of it by traveling to undeveloped countries. Anyway, the first step in highway development was getting the farmers out of the mud, by improving the surface of roads. In 1937, there was still a lot of mud. The second phase was to improve speed and safety. Getting the farmers out of the mud, which occurred more or less from 1910 to 1950, is where the biggest advantage of roads comes from.

^I don't have that app but one of my friends showed it to me and I think that it's super cool. You can even point it straight down and see what the sky looks like from the opposite side of the earth.

I don't know what style it is, but I like it! I especially like the built-in furniture. :-)

Bill Bryson says that when he grew up in Britain, all the children believed that if they could dig a hole deep enough, they would come out in China. When he moved to the United States, he was surprised that all the children still thought they could dig to China. I also read that in the 1500's when they explorers were starting to fill in all the white spaces on the globe, it was thought that there had to be some supercontinent opposite Europe and Asia, or else the earth would be lopsided. Of course, all they found was empty ocean with scattered islands in the South Pacific. An interesting physics problem shows that if a deep tunnel could be constructed, that went on a straight line between any two points on the surface of the earth, and a frictionless railroad could be built in that tunnel, the train would gain velocity for the first half of the trip and lose velocity for the second half, under the effect of gravity. Guess what the travel time would be? Just 45 minutes! This is independent of where the two points were. New York to Paris: 45 minutes. New York to Bangkok: 45 minutes. New York to L.A.: 45 minutes.

Please be kind. Pictured is Jupiter and three of its moons, taken with a Nikon coolpix compact digital camera through the eyepiece of an 8" Newtonian reflector telescope. Sorry, I don't have the gear to see the Red Spot, and it wasn't visible that night anyway. As it stands, it took a drive a few miles away from the city lights with 50 pounds of gear and an hour of setup time to get this photo. I'm dreaming of better cameras and better telescopes.

The teenagers that I know are taking rides with parents or friends, not taking the bus. When I was in high school, I had two next-door neighbors who were brothers one year apart, who lived in the same house and went to the same high school at the same hours. Seems like the perfect car-pool, right? Well, to my surprise, they drove in separate cars. Today, there is less of this extra driving going on.

The article cites a "Project management plan version 4.0." Is that available online?

The number of teenagers in Ohio has stayed almost constant, with only a slight rise: Ohio population 15 to 19, 2000 Census: 816,868 Ohio population 15 to 19, 2010 Census: 823,682 So, a drop in the number of teenage drivers must really mean that fewer teenagers are driving. While I'd like to think that they are taking transit, bicycling, or walking instead of driving, probably what's happening is that they just aren't travelling as much, because they can't afford it.

SORTA does in fact own significant portions (though there are some gaps) of the former CL&N right-of-way between Dana and Court Street, and they have passenger rights on the OASIS line from the boathouse to a place called "pig farm" near Reading. The trouble is that those two lines are not really conductive to light rail. The CL&N, for example, bypasses the U.C. area, and the OASIS line takes a long, circuitous route through the east end.