Eigth and State

I don't know why you all think that I am opposed to the streetcar. I am open to it, but my point all along has been that it is a much more difficult project than it is made out to be. Historically, thousands of workers died in all kinds of job-related accidents, with mining and railroading being two of the most dangerous. In those days, labor was cheap, and it was acceptable to suffer losses of life, if not of profit. It's a different economy today. A poor safety record puts businesses in deep trouble. Also keep in mind that Cincinnati's historic streetcar system was built up over many years, starting with horsecars. Often, the tracks were there first. Today, the sewer is there first, and MSD is not prepared to deal with a streetcar wire. Are they being overly cautious? Well, the 10 foot horizontal rule came from the Portland expert, not from MSD. The problem is technically solveable, given enough funding. As is often the case, the hard part of the problem is the funding, and deciding which government agency is going to do the funding.

I think you got the urban and suburban areas mixed up, my friend. Urban areas should have light rail / subway / metro systems, and suburban areas should have streetcars.

"Time - Charting the decline - why the U.S. is not the land of opportunity it once was..." Interesting that the word "decline" has gone mainstream and is no longer only to be found on doomer internet forums.

Hamilton lacks interstate highways. That probably helps keep sprawl to a minimum, and perhaps gives a hint of what our other cities would look like without highways.

^ Huh? :?

"MSD doesn't own the streets, or the air rights, or (most likely) the sewer that you mentioned." No one is claiming air rights over a street. As has been mentioned before, it is not good practice to have utility access points between the tracks. Obviously, a maintenance worker cannot have access at the same time that a streetcar is passing through. In a typical street, the area around the utility is closed for maintenance. In most cases it's just a minor inconvenience, but in the case of the streetcar, closing one lane of a street could effectively shut down the entire streetcar line until the work is done. Obviously, the solution is to relocate utility access points away from the streetcar tracks. If the utility crosses the tracks perpendicularly and there happens to be an access point within the footprint of the proposed tracks, it is not to hard to build a new access point over the utility a short distance away. If the utility is parallel, that is, directly under the footpring of the tracks, it is much more difficult. What do you do, relocate the whole utility line? This is where it can get expensive really quick. So, the streetcar itself will be something like 8 feet wide, 4 feet on either side of the centerline. So will the footprint of the track, counting all of the supporting concrete. That means that there will have to be a strip 8 feet wide with no utility access. But that doesn't count the safe distance from the overhead wires! Those wires are going to carry 16,000 volts or thereabouts. A worker who accidentally touches the wire with anything metal is likely to die of electrocution. Granted, the wires are going to be about 19 feet high, so touching the wire is not something that happens normally. But keep in mind that sewers are often 20 feet deep, and it takes a rod 20 feet deep to reach the bottom. Sewer workers are trained to look overhead before inserting any rod into the sewer; the tendency is to stand the rod straight up, and then lower it into the manhole. So, it is in fact very conceivable that a sewer worker can be electrocuted. Besides rods, MSD owns a fleet of trucks with specialized equipment for maintenace of sewers. Many of these trucks have booms that can reach 20 feet high. The solution is to keep access manholes a safe distance horizontally from the wire. What is that safe distance? According to the engineer I talked to, an expert from Portland pegged it as 10 feet horizontally from the wire. Thus, in terms of utilities, or at least sewers, there can be no manholes within a strip 20 feet wide, 10 feet on each side of the centerline. On Elm Street, the proposed streetcar line intersects a row of manholes on a 48" combined sewer. MSD doesn't care about air rights or anything like that. The only thing they care about is keeping their workers safe. How would you like this headline: "MSD worker electrocuted by streetcar wire."? Just like every other government agency, MSD has a budget. They don't have $15 million laying around for projects like this. From a sewer point of view, there are 100 other projects that are higher on the priority list than relocating manholes for the streetcar. So, if the City Manager asks the director of MSD to solve the problem, the director of MSD is going to say, "You provide the funding, and I will solve the problem." It all comes down to funding. Since funding for MSD has to be approved by Hamilton County, it would be interesting to know what the County Commissioners think about the streetcar. In any case, the utility relocation budget doesn't seem to have enough money to do the job. What is the alternative, leave the manholes where they are and occassionally shut down the entire streetcar line so that MSD workers can safely access the sewer? Did you think it was going to be easy? Laying streetcar tracks and hanging wire is very complicated, and is not something to be taken lightly.

"I don't think it really matters, the county has nothing to do with the project." On the contrary, the Hamilton County Commissioners are responsible for funding the Metropolitan Sewer District, which controls the sewers in the area. What does that have to do with anything? Well, an engineer at MSD told me that there is going to be a showdown between the City of Cincinnati and MSD over the streetcar. The current plan has the streetcar line directly over a 48" combined sewer in Elm Street. MSD does not want the catenary within 10 feet horizontally from any sewer manhole, because MSD does not feel that it is safe to use any specialized equipment such as vactor trucks that have overhead booms to maintain the sewer. Well, MSD figures it will cost $15 million to solve the problem, which is more than the entire utility relocation budget for the streetcar. I don't see Hamilton County coming up with the money unless a majority of the County Commissioners are in favor of the streetcar. Plus, The Banks is a county project, so yes, the county has a lot to do with the streetcar. Incidently, this is another good reason to favor the Vine & Walnut route.

Can anyone tell me what the position of the Hamilton County Commissioners is on the streetcar? Thanks.

Ok, over the last two days I have spent about 2 hours watching that video over and over. There are some more versions of it online, in various forms of restoration, and with various music. One has sound effects added. On another forum it was pointed out that the photographer paid some automobile drivers to circle the camera to add more action. I don't know how the forumer knew this, but after paying attention to the automobiles, it seems believable. There seem to be four automobiles that circle the camera over and over, mostly crossing from right to left. Other than that, I can only find two automobiles in the entire film.

^---- Very Nice! Cable cars, electric streetcars, horse cars, horse and buggies, horse and wagons, horseback riding, early automobiles, bicycles, and lot and lots of pedestrians make this film an urban wonderland. 7 years later, in 1913, the Ford Model T would come out, and then by 1920 automobiles dominated.

On of my co-workers, who lived in the suburbs and sat in traffic every day on the way to work, said, "Light rail would be great. It would get some of these cars of the highways!" I asked him, "Will YOU use it?" "It won't do me any good. It won't go anywhere near my house."

Used to bike, walk, and take the bus for almost everything. Caught an occasional ride in a car, especially in bad weather. Started driving part-time at 19, and didn't drive full-time until 23. Unfortunately I drive way too much now. :cry:

In my community there were some problem properties that were the site of crimes of one kind or another almost every week. The local government decided to purchase the properties and demolish the buildings. There was nothing wrong with the buildings themselves. Well, that was the end of the crime at those sites. Whether the criminals simply moved to a new location, either in the same community or not, I do not know.

Too early to tell.

"I can't really argue with the notion that it's a gamble." The streetcar project might be a fantastic success or a dismal failure. For this reason, people get emotional about it. If the project had a marginal benefit for a marginal cost, then people wouldn't get so excited about it.

"Capitalism does not depend on growth." Capitalism and growth are inseparable. If you borrow capital to purchase a machine in order to produce more than you did before and pay off the debt as well, that is the very definition of capitalism. Do not confuse economic systems with political systems. China today runs a capitalist economy; so did the Soviet Union in the 1950's. Capitalism is by definition investment in tools and machines; this is what China is doing today and what the Soviet Union did. Now the Soviet Union had a political party called the Communist Party that ran a command economy, but that command economy was capitalist. Capitalism does not equal free enterprise. "Throwing money into a savings account barely counts as investing." Banks operate a number of services, mostly to do with two things: bookkeeping and investing. A pure checking account with no interest is pure bookkeeping, and purchase of stocks is investing. Between there are innumerable combinations of checking accounts that also offer interest and so on. Obviously, banks pool resources from small investors and invest institutionally, and make a profit on their ability to secure different interest rates in different markets. "The world is a long, long way from running out of natural resources." "Running out" is not a good phrase to describe resource depletion. If you start with a million tons of coal and you use one ton, are you "running out?" How about if you use 900,000 tons? The supply of coal can only move in one direction: down. Indeed, some resources, such as limestone, iron ore, aluminum ore, seawater, and so on are so plentiful that no one is even paying attention to them. However, many precious resources have peaked, or are near peak. Wildlife resources in this country were depleted almost as soon as the settlers arrived. Old growth forest resources peaked around 1920. Gold and Silver extraction peaked around 1915. Whaling is practically non-existant, and fishing has seen substantial declines. Petroleum peaked in this country about 1970. It takes 4 main resources to refine steel: Iron ore, limestone, water, and coal. Of these 4, coal is the most precious. It doesn't matter if we have 1000 times as much iron ore, because coal is going to be the limiting resource. Yes, I know it's possible to produce steel in an electric-arc furnace powered by nuclear power instead of coal, but nuclear power is a step down in energy economics, not up! No amount of fixed resources can keep up with exponential growth. "Why are 6% interest rates on savings accounts good things?" As you know, the interest rate can be said to be the price of borrowing money. Lenders want high interest rates; borrowers want low interest rates. That's the market. Please do not get worked up over interest rates on savings accounts versus other forms of investing. If you take a composite interest rate over all forms of capital over the long term, then that, my friend, corresponds to growth in the economy. A high interest rate coorreponds to high growth; a low interest rate cooresponds to low growth, and a negative interest rate cooresponds to decline. "Social Security is collapsing more for demographic than economic reasons." Demographic reasons and economic reasons are part of the same system. The assumptions in 1965 were that existing trends would continue; the founders of the social security system were wrong on many counts. "The market is not a horse race, or any other zero-sum game. It is a positive-sum game." It was for the last two centuries, but who knows what it will be in the future? Population is stagnant, and natural resource reserves are not getting any bigger. Growth itself is still positive, but the rate of growth is slowing. This is not to say that there will not be technological innovations, or that life will be any worse in the future. It may very well get better even in the face of economic decline. The GNP is one attempt to assess the size of the national economy. It measures output, in dollar value. It does not measure efficiency, productivity, population, or happiness. If the Ford company produces an automobile worth $25,000, then the GNP increases by $25,000. If Ford produced 100,000 of these vehicles in 2009 and produces 99,999 of them in 2010, then that is a decline in GNP. Perhaps the 2010 models came with GPS navigation, automatic driving systems, fancy stereos, higher efficiency engines, and many other things that were not available in the previous model. Sure, the customer benefits. But it is still a decline in GNP. Is better fuel efficiency a positive thing? Of course it is. But one less automobile is still a decline in GNP. GNP is about VOLUME. So is natural resource depletion. It is not about effienciency or happiness. "Your jaded view of humanity's future." I hope I am not projected a jaded view. I am excited about the future. If it wasn't for the sour economic reports that continuously tell how many jobs were lost last quarter and things like that, then maybe no one would even notice the recession. Does it personally make you happy that the number of jobs in this county is large or small, or that the GNP is larger or smaller than last year? For me it does not. For me, my own life matters more than any economic report. I am blessed to have a cell phone and the use of the internet, things that my parents never dreamed of when they were my age. I do expect substantial decline in many measurements, however. Why, I have seen it in my own neighborhood in my own lifetime. After all, it might not be so bad to live in a world without quite as many automobiles.

Here is the image I was remembering. Thanks Cincinnati Kid for posting this in The Banks thread. <img src="http://www.pbase.com/csdameron/image/129263695.jpg> As I remember, this was the last image of the proposed stadiums that the Enquirer published before the stadium campaign. By the way, there was never a ballot issue to pass a 1/2% tax levy for the stadiums. The County Commissioners took it upon themselves to enact the sales tax, and the voter of Hamilton County collected 80,000 signatures to put a measure on the ballot to REPEAL the sales tax. The repeal of the sales tax failed. As I remember, election day had brutally nasty weather, and the ballot language was as confusing as ever, requiring a "YES" vote if you wanted to repeal the tax, and a "NO" vote if you wanted the tax, or in other words, "YES" if you didn't want the stadiums and "NO" if you did want them. After the Florida mess in the 2000 election, I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of voters got confused and voted the wrong way. But I digress... The picture shows an awful lot of things besides two stadiums, including a new bridge, new light rail, a new Fort Washington Way, and an awful lot of other development. There are plenty of technical details wrong, such as a bridge over the entrance to the marina that will be too low to pass boats, but all in all, they got most things right. The FWW looks remarkably like the real thing as it was built. The stadiums are reversed. This is what people were expecting when they voted. Sure, everyone on UO knows the difference between a rendering and a real plan, but most people do not. The Banks, and the streetcar too, have been associated with the riverfront development. Quite frankly, the streetcar has probably suffered from The Banks, at least so far, because voters have been mislead about The Banks. They thought that The Banks were part of the stadium package; "excess" funds from the stadiums were supposed to pay for it. We all know that some of the bridges across FWW were designed with Light Rail in mind; the Kingsport (Airport to Kings Island) light rail was supposed to use these very streets. At least on the local level, the light rail concept morphed directly into the streetcar concept. (Normal people outside of UO don't know the difference between a streetcar and light rail anyway). Even though the stadiums got built, there is still widespread bitterness about them. (Sports fans thought it was a good idea.) What good are stadiums when our schools are failing? Whether it is fair or not, the streetcar is still associated with the stadiums, and there is no doubt that the stadiums generated a widespread mistrust of the local governments of Cincinnati and Hamilton County which haunts the streetcar project to this day.

Oh gee, the proposed casino is only 3 BLOCKS from the proposed streetcar, as shown by the blue line. If Americans won't take the streetcar as it is proposed today to the proposed casino because 3 blocks is too far to walk, then both the streetcar and the casino are hopeless as pedestrian traffic generators. By the way, the proposed casino has a HUGE parking garage, just as expected.

In my field, we started using some new electronic equipment that resulted in doubling production in just one year, at a cost of just $300 per person and some training time. This was in 1996. So, for a given workload, our employment was cut in half. But did those remaining workers make twice as much pay as before? No. They made the same pay, with a slight inflationary raise. In fact, I think they took a pay cut in actual purchasing power, if not in nominal pay, due to inflation. Of course, the workload did not stay constant. For a while, we were producing twice as much as the previous year, with the same people. After a few years, the market changed, and half the company was laid off. Did the client and the overall economy benefit? Sure, because they ended up with more product for the same price. But at what point do those unemployed workers start to influence the economy because they are broke? Some refer to this as Marx's Capitalist Paradox. Remember, Marx wrote the book on capitalism. If it wasn't for his later work, the Communist Manifesto, Marx would probably be more respected in the western world today. Basicly, Marx said, if companies keep replacing workers with machines, who is going to be left to buy the products? The answer, of course, is that the displaced workers go on to expand business in other areas. The key word is expand. Capitalism depends on growth. For many years, in fact, for over a century after Marx, the overall global economy has been expanding. Marx never dreamed of today's economy. Then again, the economy in Marx's time had not yet used many of earth's natural resources. Only a little bit of coal had been mined, petroleum had not been discovered in any appreciable amounts, and uranium hadn't been discovered yet. In Marx's day, there were still vast parts of the world with forest resources that had hardly been touched. Well, one by one the earth's vast resources have been depleted, or are on the way to becoming depleted. The 1700's in America were a period of unprecedented growth. The 1800's were likewise. The rate of growth slowed down around 1910, just about the same time that the world economy could be said to be global. The Great Depression of the 1930's were the first years that the economy in the United States had a substantial decline; the growth rates of the 1700's would never be seen again. During the 1930's, there was a renewed interest in Marx, and also in the Communist Party. Maybe Marx was right? However, with a return to growth after WWII, everyone was happy for a while again. Still, the growth of the 1940's, 50's, and 60's was not as rapid as it had been in the 1700's. The long term trend has been that growth is slowing. The mathematical projection of this long-term trend is that the economy will peak sometime this century. Does peak mean the end of the world? No, it does not. What it does mean is the end of economic growth. And the end of economic growth means the end of positive interest rates. My grandfather collected 18% interest on municipal bonds for a while. As I said before, maybe this was a fluke. Yet the average interest during my grandfather's life was high by today's standards, maybe 6 or 8 percent. He was able to retire and live off of his savings. Today, young people don't have much incentive to save money. Why bother investing money when you get around 1%? Inflation is probably more than that. Why, put some money in the bank, and it will be smaller in a year, in terms of purchasing power. Yes, there are opportunities to grow, but the average growth rate is very low. One person can win big at the horse race, but everyone can't win big. Watch the economic programs and you will hear things like "As soon as the recession is over," "When interest rates go back up," and things of that nature. Some of these folks are old enough to remember the 40's, 50's, and 60's, and think that those times were "normal." Younger folks can't remember those good years. Lots of older folks are counting on social security for retirement. After all, it seemed like a good idea in 1965. Anyone born after 1970 would be foolish to count on Social Security. Social Security was based on the assumption of steady growth indefinitely. Well, it didn't work out that way. The same goes for retirement plans of all kinds. Teachers in Ohio, for example, are invested in a fund that owns Key Tower in Cleveland. The idea was that construction of a tower would provide income in the form of rent as long as that tower is standing, which presumably will be for at least a hundred years. The assumption of course is that the tower will remain rented. If the tower goes vacant, Ohio's teachers will not be able to collect anticipated retirement benefits. Continued, steady growth far into the future is NOT a foregone conclusion! It is an assumption that may or may not happen. All of the present signs seem to conclude that our economy is peaking, or is at least slowing to no net growth. In the 1960's, the number of automobiles on the road was doubling every ten years; today, the number of miles driven is actually declining. Airline passenger miles peaked in the year 2000, and that was BEFORE 911! Ohio has lost an awful lot of jobs in the last 10 years. I know lots of people who are underemployed: folks who used to have high-paying full time professional jobs that are now working as part-time help in service jobs. Now Gramarye, I have heard your projection about technology. Yes, I agree that electronics have been enormously productive, and are likely to become even more so. My parent's didn't have cell phones or the internet when they were my age. But what they DID have was the ability to put their savings in a standard savings acount and earn 6% interest on it. They DO have some hope of retiring and living well off of their savings, plus interest. There is a widespread belief that the workers of today will be able to retire like their parents and grandparents did. This is based on the belief that things will continue the way they are. Most Americans these days who were born after 1970 have virtually no savings, no retirement plan, no pension, and no hope of receiving any Social Security. Yes, a small number of them have done very well, and you Sir, are probably one of the ones who is doing well. The vast majority, though, have not. People are really hurting, and it's not because they didn't work as hard as you did. Not everyone can be a winner in a horse race.

In a market economy, no one is "forced" to purchase anything. If a municipality wants to borrow money at a certain interest rate but cannot find a market for it, then the municipality simply won't borrow the money and won't build the project. Borrowers with unrealistic expectations are turned down all the time.

"Municipalities don't pay high interest rates because they can "afford" to do so; they pay high interest rates because they are forced to do so, just like any other borrower." In terms of borrowing, municpalities follow the same economic laws as every one else (neglecting artificial tax advantages). Bonds are rated by commercial rating agencies, and investors have to balance the effects of interest rates and risk. Suppose a city is extending water mains at a rate of 10 miles of pipe per year, and their water revenues are increasing by 10% per year. Another city is extending water mains at a rate of 10 miles per year, and their water revenues are increasing by 5% per year. Which one would you invest in? Even worse, what if the city is extending water mains and receiving declining revenues? In the 1940's, 50's, and 60's, cities were recieving increasing revenues. Now, they are stagnant if not decreasing. That's why cities could afford to pay high interest rates in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's and they cannot today. If you don't like my use of the words "afford to pay higher interest rates," perhaps you could suggest another phrase.

Redevelopment plans for the Cincinnati Riverfront go way back farther than that. Ideas for redevelopment were proposed in the 1920's. A football stadium on the riverfront was proposed in the 1930's. The 1948 Master Plan put into print a concept including Fort Washington Way, Stadiums, and parkland, plus a ridiculous government campus that didn't get built. More recently, there was a picture published by the Enquirer in 1996 I believe that included two new stadiums, a re-built Fort-Washington way, a boat marina, lots of park space, a residential and commercial components, and so on. I wish I had saved that picture; that single picture explains so much of what happened in the last 15 years. The stadium tax was supposed to raise $260 million, which was supposed to pay for everything in that picture, or at least that's what people thought. Obviously, the numbers were never anywhere close; the football stadium alone cost more than $260 million by itself, and Hamilton County never saw the increased sales tax revenue that the stadium project was supposed to generate. Financially, the stadium project has been a dismal failure; the only good news is that it attracted the attention of the state and feds, who sent some money our way for the new FWW and transit center, and some utility improvements, if you can even call that good news. So, since the Banks is associated with the stadium tax, and since the streetcar is associated with the Banks ("A streetcar between Over-the-Rhine and The Banks"), the streetcar had a sour reputation before it even got started. I don't think some of the UO forumers realize how much indifference there is toward the urban core outside of the core itself. The Cincinnati riverfront, like the core area of a lot of other cities, is seen as a sort of politician's playground, a place to build a pet project and take postcard photos. The majority of the people in the Cincinnati metro have been to a Reds or Bengals game, they have been to Riverfest, they have been to the Museum Center and the Zoo, but beyond that they have very little ties to the urban core. I am dismayed at the number of people who have told me that they intentionally left Hamilton County, or they intend to, or they would never buy another house in Hamilton County. Sure, downtown Cincinnati is looking up; but the rest of Hamilton County is hurting.

"Do you really think the country would be better off if all of our various government units were paying 18% interest on their debts?" Maybe 18% was a fluke; I don't know. But it seems that the overall growth rate was high in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's, much higher than today. The reason why municipalities could afford to pay high interest rates during that era is that they were growing at an unprecendented rate. Utility lines were being extended, flood control works were built, transportation infrastructure was improved, and so on. Municipalities would invest in infrastructure, and make a return on their investment through increased taxes, user fees, etc. It's no different than a private company taking out a loan, except that municipalities invested in public infrastructure and municipal bonds enjoyed tax-free status. This business model doesn't work anymore, at least in Ohio. Cities are still investing in infrastructure, but the growth just isn't there. New development is offset by decline somewhere else. One could argue that cities have overshot the market, and are stuck with the bill of maintaining too much infrastructure. Underlying the economy are natural resources. As the industrial revolution began in England and swept the world, natural resources have been depleted, or are on the way to becoming depleted, one by one. No longer can venture into the wilderness and trade in animal resources with the natives; no longer can one purchase land from the government and sell timber; the best farmland is already taken; the best mineral deposits have already been mined out, or at least are active now. Some parts of the world got a later start, and are still in the phase of rapid growth. China, besides being located as far as possible from England, had it's growth suppressed by uncooperative governments for many years. Some places, such as most of Africa, simply lack natural resources. Get a map of hydrocarbon resources and productive farmland of the world. The developed parts of the world coorelate very well with either farmland or hydrocarbons, or both. Compare a person starting a business in 1960 with one today. In 1960, population was growing rapidly, and so was income. If you managed to make a profit, chances are that your profits would only grow along with the greater economy. Today, in an economy that is barely growing at best, it is much harder to start a business. When your customers die of old age, they are not replaced by new ones. When your custmer loses his job, he stops buying your products. In a zero-sum economy, the only way to get ahead is to displace someone else. In 1960, the pie was getting bigger, so everyone got more pie. Today the pie is barely changing, so to get more pie you have to take some from someone else. The hardest working, smartest, or luckiest, as the case may be, are doing better all the time, but look at the masses that are losing ground!

"Are you better off than your parents were at your age?" Depends on what you are measuring, but all in all, probably so. But that's not the point. The question is whether or not the next generation will be better off than this one. I concede that this country has had widespread economic growth for the last century, and especially for the decades of the 40's, 50's, and 60's. However, the rate of growth declined starting in the 1970's. There was a time when my grandfather received 18% interest on municipal bonds. So, he was able to retire comfortably at age 50. How many people can expect that kind of return today?