Eigth and State

It kind of makes sense because the airport already has a lot of heavy infrastructure related to fuel. There is even a fuel depot on the Ohio River connected to the airport by a pipeline. If they can't sell fuel to the airlines, why not try to sell it to truckers?

"I'll start with what hopefully is the start of a ridership trend signaling a more robust and nationwide economic recovery." Umm, doesn't increased ridership signal an economic downturn, because people are taking the bus instead of driving? Sort of like Wal*mart increasing sales in a recession because customers can't afford Macy's anymore, so they shop at Wal*mart instead? Or Campbell's soup doing well because people are buying soup instead of steaks?

Well, the original idea was for townships to serve as the farmer's government, and any towns would incorporate. Today, suburban sprawl and growth of metropolitan areas has exceeded what the original law writers had ever dreamed of. Bit by bit, townships are acquiring the rights of cities. The big suburban townships have their own zoning boards, the ability to write certain laws, township administrators, economic development specialists, etc. Even the ability to enact income taxes, once the monopoly of cities, is being acted on by entering into partnerships with adjacent municipalities in Joint Economic Development Districts (JEDDs,) which in my humble opinion is an abuse of power. There really isn't that much different between municipalities and townships anymore, so I'm not sure if changing the laws is going to have that much of a difference. In general, cities in Ohio are controlled by Democrats, and suburban townships are controlled by Republicans, at least in southwest Ohio. That's really what the difference is.

"A kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt-hour." Not really. Is that kilowatt-hour during peak load periods, or low load periods? Is it absolutely imperative that it not be interrupted or can it tolerate interuption? Is it tied to the grid, or mobile? Is the demand constant, or fluctuating? Where is it located? Ad advantage of coal-fired generation is that the coal can be stockpiled, and the output of the generation can be adjusted to meet a changing demand. This is much, much harder to do with wind or solar. Wind or solar, when used as a supplement to coal, may be nearing grid-parity, but wind or solar without backup by coal is a completely different story.

"My goal would be to get more trucks off the highway, and more cars off the highway." That should be an easy goal to meet, seeing that the number of vehicles on the road today seems to be declining.

Excess capacity in wealthy areas is a function of wealth, not the form of government.

"You're all whippersnappers." From Rob, of course.

Salt Lake City has very wide, straight, level streets. Salt Lake City has a growing economy. Salt Lake City has increasing population. I won't say it won't work here, but there is no question that Salt Lake City had every advantage.

The way to restrict automobile use - and this is the only way I can think of, legally or otherwise - is to construct the environment so that it does not accomodate cars. Namely, place bollards, moats, stairs, narrow passageways, etc. in the street. Cars are not allowed in buildings (except garages,) and some buildings today have more square feet of floor area than entire traditional towns. The real reason why cars are not allowed in buildings is not some law, but because they physically cannot get in, and if they could, they would be useless. Buildings remain the world of the pedestrian. Some buildings have moving sidewalks, or golf cars for transportation within the building, and many have elevators. There are a few cities in the world that remain car-free. Some such as Fez, Mykonos, and Sienna do so with very narrow streets that will not accomodate cars. Venice has canals. Doi Suthpei is situated at the top of a mountain. Macanac Island is isolated from other roads. Many German cities have a car-free town center, where cars are very limited. There are a few car-free areas in the United States. Fountain Square in Cincinnati is one of them. Newport-on-the-levy is another one. What else can be done? Well, in most commercial areas it is very hard to prohibit cars, but perhaps the sidewalks can be widened at the expense of the street in traditional town areas. Certain streets can be closed to cars. (Think of the Cincinnati steps.) And most importantly, stop widening existing roads and highways! The federal government was not in the highway construction business until about 1915, other than a few exceptions such as the National Road. What might have happened if the interstates had been tolled makes for some interesting discussion. But few have considered the simple fact that the federal government built miles of interstates and other federal highways WITHOUT accomodating any parking! So, picture this situation. It's 1950, and American cities are densely built with few parking lots. Some early expressways such as the New York Thruway and Pennsylvania Turnpike have captured the attention of politicians, engineers, and automobile owners everywhere. States start building highways, but without a coordinated plan. Some engineers get together and start drawing lines on the map, basicly connecting cities with a web of interstates. This drawing is given to another set of engineers for detailed design. The Engineer begins designing a highway from, say, Columbus to Cleveland. The highway doesn't go directly downtown, because property is expensive, but comes close, where there are a lot of worn out buildings. The engineer designs a ramp from the highway to the local city street. At this point, the engineer could have also designed a parking garage, or a big surface lot, right at the end of the ramp. He didn't even have to connect the ramp to the street! But that's what he did, and it was repeated in every city in the country. Now suppose that the ramp has a capacity of 20,000 cars per day. There's plenty of capacity, so that should be good. But no one ever checked if the local street had that capacity, or if there were enough parking spaces in the city to accomodate all those cars! Herein lies the drawback to the interstate highway system. Soon, engineers were widening the local streets, until many of them were wider than the interstates themselves. Property owners starting tearing down buildings for parking lots. Eventually, things sort of came to an equilibrium, with enough activity moving to the suburbs until urban density and suburban density were about equal. At this point, it doesn't make sense to walk or take transit, because the density just isn't high enough, even in the old urban core. Entire generations have been born in the automobile era, and have never been away from home without a car, because it's too far to walk out of their own subdivisions. The reason why it's so hard to sell a transit project today is because automobiles are the default mode for most people in most places. Construction of any kind of rail in an area with a lot of parking lots just doesn't have the density to support the rail transit. The Cincinnati Streetcar, etc., is based on the assumption that the proposed transit will ATTRACT higher density development, and although it does not pay today, the transit will pay in 20 years. This is a tough sell in a local economy that is stagnant or declining, though it certainly makes sense if the economy is already growing.

^But we can't even measure how much money is spent on highways, much less control it. I often wonder how much of the local police levy is spent on motor traffic - not police chasing criminals, but police directing traffic or responding to accidents. How much of our fire and ambulance fund is spent on responding to motor vehicle accidents? How much of our health care is spent on treating motor vehicle accident injuries? How much electricity do we buy for highway lighting? How many storm sewers? Somehow, motor vehicles got out of hand in this country. We can't change that fact. What to do about it, I don't know.

^But it's not about improving mobility; it's about white-collar welfare. Politicians don't do what's right; they do what's popular. Anyway, they don't need to introduce legislation banning highway spending; they need to just stop spending money on highways.

It's hard to say what the cost of driving is. The AAA pegs it at $0.55 per mile or something like that. This only counts the cost to the driver such as the purchase price of the car, fuel, repairs, insurance, license, and so on. In theory, the cost of the highway is included in the cost of fuel, but we all know that local property taxes, police levies, general fund money, and all kinds of other things go into the highway. Of that $0.55, you are right that most of that goes to the purchase price of the car. (If you drive a beater that you bought for $500, you are below the average. Balance that with the family that bought a $35,000 minivan.) Meanwhile the cost of taking the bus might be $1.75 for a 10 mile trip, averaging $0.17 per mile. Clearly, the bus is less expensive for the user. I can conclude from these numbers that cost is NOT the primary reason why people choose to drive instead of riding the bus. People drive to save time. Automobiles are free from routes and schedules. Unfortunately, I think that people really miss the big disadvantage of cars, which is the need to park them. At home in the suburbs it's not too bad, but parking in the city is just awful. Suburban shopping strips are wastelands of parking lots and highways. It's really the shopping strips that make the suburbs awful, not the residential streets. This is where the external cost of driving is the highest. To top it off, going shopping in the suburbs by driving to the big box actually involves MORE walking than shopping in the city, because the distance from the parking space to the inside of the store is so great. Parking lots have ruined are cities and generated awful suburban shopping strips. If there's any good news, suburban shopping strips are getting more pedestrian friendly than they were for the last 40 years. I have been wanting to take some photos of suburban strips and remove all the parking lots using photoshop and see how it compares to a traditional city. But yes, you are right that the road portion of the cost of driving is a small proportion. The variety in the price of cars is actually an advantage of cars over transit, since rich people can buy nicer cars and poor people can buy beaters in the used car market. We don't have luxery buses for rich people and beaters for poor people, though I suspect that our friends at Queen City Metro are steering newer buses toward the richer part of town because the rich riders don't abuse them by tagging.

The public landing was always open space.

Very nice. Thanks for posting.

Probably LeCorbusier's most significant achievement was getting his book published and becoming the "father of the modern movement." Although he didn't invent the modern trends, he did publicize them. The "Cincinnati Metropolitan Master Plan of 1948" was very much influenced by the "City of Tomorrow."

I highly recommend the book "City of Tomorrow" by LeCorbusier, which was first published in 1924, about the same time that the photo was taken. LeCorbusier argues for urban renewal. "It is a dreadful thing to look at these old realities which are so shocking to the spirit of today." Whether it's right or wrong, this book offers a good insight into what planners were thinking at the time.

In Ohio, the state budget is basicly one third education, one third social services, and one third everything else put together. For all the highway bashing in the 3-C thread, ODOT is only a very small part of the state budget. Its pretty clear that states with a lot of urban poor have a pretty big burden from both the education and social services side. When the economy is declining, its even worse than normal. For perspective, Phoenix, Arizona is now the nation's fifth largest city, having recently passed Philidelphia.

Maybe a more appropriate question is whether or not state-supported schools should have sports programs.

There's more than one way to estimate population other than take what the U.S. Census tells us. Marketers make their own estimates, and schools are pretty good at projecting enrollment. Guess how the State of Ohio projects prison populations, to make decisions on whether or not to build new prison space? They look at 3rd grade proficiency test results and project the numbers forward. :police: (Saw that in the paper the other day.)

Whether 30% too high or too low, the inaccuracies in the Census do NOT necessarily affect everyone the same. The participation rates are not the same in all places. Suppose there are 100 people living in city A. 90 of them fill out the Census form. Then the Census sends workers and discovers 5 more people. The population as reported by the Census is 95. City B has 100 people. 70 of them fill out the Census form. Workers discover 20 more people. The reported population is 90. Basicly, the higher proportion of people who cooperate, the more accurate the reported population is. Cities with higher rates of homeless, illegal immigrants, poor and disabled, etc., are more likely to be undercounted because those groups are less likely to cooperate with the Census.

^Some have claimed that the U.S. census official numbers are 30% too low. The reason for this is that the Census misses a lot of people. Some years ago, there was a debate in Congress about whether or not Census numbers should be adjusted scientifically to come up with a more accurate number. This could be done by sampling a certain city or neighborhood, making a more thorough count, and coming up with a correction factor to apply to the rest of the state. Since it is assumed that statistical sampling would account for more homeless, illegal immigrants, poor and disabled, etc, who did not fill out the Census form or otherwise did not cooperate, then states with a lot of said demographic groups would come out ahead in the Census. Naturally, the political party that expected to win seats in Congress, namely the Democrates, supported statistical sampling, and Republicans resisted it. At that time, the Republicans had a controlling interest, so the Census remained as is. The purpose of the decennial census of course is to distribute seats in Congress. This is one of the very few duties of Congress that is actually specified in the Constitution. However, the Census has been used, or even abused, for so many other things that it is starting to get out of hand. Federal funds are distributed based on Census numbers, causing local governments to pay more attention to the Census. The Census has collected all kinds of data such as race, income, employment, etc., that wasn't really relative to the number of seats in Congress. If you noticed, the 2010 Census form was very much simplified from that of 10 years ago. Perhaps they are getting back to basics. Of course, all along the Census has been a "nightime" Census; that is, it counts where people spend the night. Nowdays, the typical commute to work is 20 miles, which can lead to huge differences between daytime population and nightime population. Why, in Cincinnati, we have 80,000 jobs downtown, yet the population of downtown as measured by the Census is just a few thousand. So, the Census is no longer as good of a measure of how big or important a city is than it was in the past, when commutes were much shorter. This leads to all of the MSA and CSA debates, which are really no more than where one draws the boundary lines around cities.

^That's a gain of 6141 people per year over the entire state or 0.0005 or 0.05%. Ohio is basicly stable (or stagnant, depending on your point of view.) To imagine this growth rate, picture an auditorium that holds about 10,000 people. Fill it up, and then wait a year. During that year, a few babies will be born, a few people will die, and a few will come and go. At the end of the year, the population will have increased by 5 people, which is barely enough to notice. Ohio's population is barely growing.

Engineers make technical decisions. Politicians make political decisions. The decision to collect fuel taxes and fund highways instead of rail is a political one. If we had a fuel tax that funded rail, more engineers would be involved in rail instead of highways.

I'm being facetious, but Gramarye is correct: it doesn't pay to build a highway for peak loading on just a few days per year. Nor does it pay to build rail for the same reason. I think it is a cold, hard fact that Americans are going to be doing less travel in the future. That's not necessarily bad.

"Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, and Ohio State games overwhelm the highway." Solution: stay off the highway during Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, and Ohio State games. :-D