Eigth and State

"Ohio fought the Interstate system..." Ohio loses money on the Interstate / federal gas tax situation. Basicly, the federal gas tax is collected into one fund, and then distributed to the states based a on formula including miles of highways and population. The result of that formula is that Ohio receives about 80% of what Ohio contributes. So, we are subsidizing highways in other states. It would have been better for Ohio to build the same highways with Ohio money instead.

"I do know that diesel takes more crude oil than gasoline to produce one unit of fuel." Each barrel of crude oil is refined into various finished products including gasoline, diesel fuel, and others including asphalt. Refinery operators have some ability to adjust the percentages somewhat in an attempt to match the market, but they do NOT have the ability to convert the barrel of crude into 100% of any one product. President Obama's administration had the idea to convert the nation's trucking fleet from diesel to natural gas, thinking that the demand for diesel fuel would be reduced. However, it doesn't work that way. Diesel fuel is a "by-product" of gasoline production in the same way that gasoline is a "by-product" of diesel fuel production. So, on the world market, diesel fuel tends to flow toward Europe because they have a lot of automobiles that burn diesel fuel, while gasoline tends to flow toward the United States.

From Gramarye: "Therefore, to continue high levels of employment, we need a level of growth and job creation sufficient to match the jobs that are made redundant or automated, as well as to handle our population growth." Reminds me of economist Karl Marx. Didn't Marx say that capitalism requires growth, and since the economy can't grow forever, capitalism is doomed eventually? Textbook economics says that there are three components to the economy: Land, labor, and capital. Perhaps a more appropriate description would be Natural Resources, Labor, and Capital. Of those 3, Natural Resources are limited, at least on earth. There is no such thing as sustainable growth, at least on earth. Even steady 1% growth will end eventually. Whether we are at a peak, or THE peak, has yet to be seen. It is NOT a given that the economy will ever again experience the same sustained growth rates of the last century.

Enjoyed. Thanks for posting.

As for the urban / suburban / rural split, I would offer this: Prior to WWII, there wasn't so much suburban sprawl, and cities reached their peak populations. Obviously, the suburban sprawl happened at the expense of the city, and city populations declined. Much has been written about this. Not as much has been written about the exodus from rural areas to suburban ones. Just as populations shifted from cities to suburbs, populations also shifted from rural areas to suburbs. The increase / decrease numbers above can reflect two things. One, they can reflect families getting poorer. Two, they can reflect poor families moving in. There seems to be some evidence that the "brain drain" to New York, Chicago, Seattle, etc., is offset somewhat by folks from Adams and Meigs county relocating to Cincinnati and Columbus. I'm not so sure about Cleveland and Toledo.

"How can everyone be made to understand the 3C is a viable project??" Get it running! If it isn't possible to get the 3C running, then get a smaller project running! Maybe a Cleveland - Columbus, or Cincinnati - Dayton line would be viable at less cost. The 3-C passengar rail idea has been around for at least 30 years. There are people in this state that are just tired of hearing about it. The annual road budgets in the 3 urban counties of Hamilton, Franklin, and Cuyahoga for just one year could pay for the capital cost of the 3-C railroad. There is plenty of money to get it done, but there isn't the political will. Studies are useful for designers, but not necessarily for politicians. The majority of voters in this state just aren't interested. Yet, if it was actually built, they would be asking to make it better.

Well, I got hooked on Cincinnati from looking at the downtown Skyline, particularly the Central Trust building, while riding in a car on the (old) Fort Washington Way on the way to grandma's house as a kid. I would MUCH rather see some 4 story buildings, or even grass, on some of the parking lots surrounding downtown than the FWW caps.

"Most people will want to go to the real park, the one they're building on the river." I'm not too excited about either a new park on the river or the caps. Parks work best when there is activity on all four sides. The riverfront park is a sort of dead end space - there is no reason to walk across it. Other than a few events such as Riverfest, Paddlefest, Tall Stacks, and things having to do with the water, our riverfront really isn't all that useful as park space. The caps, besides being expensive and cutting off the view from the highway, would be surrounded on four sides by streets. It's better to have direct pedestrian access to buildings.

"Sorry, I'd rather a smooth ride on steel rails, with a roomy seat and the option of walking into a cafe or bistro car for coffee and a snack on the way to a business meeting... or a beer on the way home" I prefer the train as well - but I prefer a real bus over an imaginary train. The train doesn't do me any good if it never gets off the drawing board. "A living dog is better than a dead lion." "When was the last time you were on a train?" 2007, on the TGV, SNCF, ICE, S-Bahn, and others during an 11-day tour of 11 European cities. It was a wonderful experience, and really shows what the U.S. is lacking. Driving home from airport was a big downer. "I still maintain that most people who compare bus and train as if they are interchangeable have either never ridden a train or never ridden a bus before." Not sure if that comment was directed at me, but I have ridden both. A particular story that I remember is one time when I couldn't get a train ticket because the train was booked, so I took a 10-hour bus ride instead. Everything came out OK in the end. "Rail has numerous advantages over bus..." Yes, I know. But sometimes the bus has the advantage. How about ability to use existing highway infrastructure, choice of routes, choice of schedules, ability to adjust routes, access to central cities, familiarity to riders, and a very important one, capital cost? Yes, I understand the comforts of a train and the stigma of a bus, and that those two things will affect ridership. Yet, the choice is basicly of technology. Riders don't really care about the technology. They care about schedule, access, price, and service. In theory, a bus could carry a cafe. An RV is basicly the same vehicle as a bus, except that it was designed to carry a handful of people in comfort rather than a crowd in coach. Megabus is quite successful between Cincinnati and Chicago. Compare to the similar Amtrak route. If nothing else, a 3-C bus line could be used to develop the ridership, and if the economics warrent it, the bus could be replaced by a train later. In any case, excessive highway-bashing doesn't help the case for a 3-C passenger railroad.

^--- Gee, KJP, do you think we need a separate thread for highway-bashing? It's wearing some of us down, enough to discourage reading the 3-C thread. Yes, I know that Ohio spends who-knows-how many $billions on highways with just a token amount for rail. Life isn't fair. Nevertheless, the 3-C has to stand by itself, considering the world we live in. Whether there is a genuine conspiracy or not, the people who benefit from highways, whether they be contractors, politicians, or users are not interested in change that they view as detrimental. After all of these pages, I am really leaning toward the idea that the 3-C line should run on rubber tires on I-71, if it is to run at all. Some pages back, I showed some calculations that a bus route will outperform a railroad in terms of operation costs, based on the projected ridership. Megabus is doing well.

Ahh, the quest to remove vice! It is unquestionable that addressing problem properties reduces crime in the area, whether the problem property be a liquor store, hotel, teen club, or whatever. The question is whether the crime is really eliminated or just moved somewhere else. "Where there are people, there is trouble. Where there are no people, there is no trouble." - Josef Stalin

It's not just you. To my eyes, Cincinnati looks the most "mixed" of the Ohio cities shown. Funny thing is that Cincinnati has a reputation for being racially segregated, moreso than other cities. I even knew a real estate instructor who had lived in both Cincinnati and Columbus who said that Cincinnati was more segregated than Columbus; the maps seems to show otherwise.

Sharon Village in Cincinnati is an example of entire village composed of buildings moved from other places. Sharon Village is a museum piece; no one lives there.

Even if you ignore the racial component, these maps are interesting from a density point of view. There is a very noticeable boundary line in Toledo, for example. These maps remind me of the nightime aerial photos were cities are defined by lights - but these maps show only residential population density. In effect, the Census measures where people go to bed, not where they spend the day.

If you haven't been to nearby Lockport, I would recommend a trip there.

The important thing about the fuel tax difference is this: 1. The final cost of fuel including taxes is higher in Europe than it is in the United States. This will discourage more people from driving in Europe compared to the United States. 2. A portion of the fuel tax revenues in Europe are used to fund rail transit, which encourages more people to use transit. A portion of the fuel tax revenues in the United States are used to fun highways, which encourages more people to drive. I don't think that planners, engineers, etc., are any smarter in Europe for constructing more transit, but they have a fundamentally different perspective based on the fuel tax. Besides the fuel tax, there are other factors, of course. If the real world was SimCity, we could turn back the clock and reverse the tax policy and see what happens. Back to streetcars, streetcars in Europe are a whole lot more effective when they are complimented by high speed rail, regional transit, etc. The same streetcar in Europe will do a whole lot better than the Cincinnati streetcar due to the rest of the environment.

"Europe has $10 gas yet they are building new subway lines all the time." The reason why they have $10 gas is because most of it is taxes, and furthermore, they use that tax revenue to build rail, not just highways. I think that the single most important difference between the United States and Europe in terms of transportation is the difference in the way that fuel is taxed. Here, highways have an artificial advantage due to the funding situation; there, railroads do. If our gasoline goes up to $10, Europe's will go up to $20, unless they change their tax policy.

"Ten-dollar gas someday may make a lot of this stuff feasible." This is a topic for another forum, but ten-dollar gas someday will more likely make a lot of this stuff unaffordable.

Wow! I didn't realize that. I had assumed that it was due to Central Parkway's "Parkway" status. The school of thought that was held by traffic engineers at the time of Central Parkway's construction was to separate different kinds of traffic, and specifically keep trucks off the parkway, which also connected to the top deck of the Western Hills Viaduct. Even today there are signs prohibiting trucks from the parkway. The top deck of the Western Hills Viaduct was reserved for cars, while the bottom deck was open to cars, trucks, and streetcars. I don't know if there was ever any city ordinance prohibiting streetcars from Central Parkway.

"Why does anybody drive when driving is slower than flying?" Because you can only fly to airports. The point to point trip can easily take longer by airline, especially considering parking, security, waiting, etc. Airlines are really only competive with automobiles for long distance trips.

Greece is a big tourism country. While they may not be producing some product in a factory and exporting it by boat, they have a steady stream of customers coming to their shores to spend some time at the beach. These customers buy food and pay for hotel rooms. Again, it's not the traditional definition of export.

"You know, it just seems like opposition to rail has now become a core Republican issue..." Well, when KJP calls Andy Griffith's Mayberry a backwater, he's going to make some folks angry. Andy Griffith is very popular - it has to be if it's been able to survive on television all these years. "We weren't rural. We were regional, but not rural." - Andy Griffith Mayberry was very urban; not large, but definitely urban.

Isn't there an old city ordinance that prohibits streetcars on Central Parkway? I guess it doesn't matter - the city won't enforce the law if there is one. It is ironic, though, that we are talking about a streetcar practically on top of the subway. I still prefer the Main/Walnut alignment without the zig-zags, though. As crazy as it sounds at first, I woulnd't mind making Central Parkway into a parking lot, with angled or perpendicular parking like Court Street or Short Vine. There is no perfect formula for the proper proportions of parking and moving lanes, but since Central Parkway seems to have ample moving lanes, why not try it?

"When Yellowstone last exploded, a pack of fossilized rhinos was discovered 1000 km (621 miles) away from the blast zone." I didn't know we had scientists 630,000 years ago discovering packs of fossilized rhinos. And, I thought it took some time for packs of rhinos to fossilize. For that matter, I didn't know that fossilized rhinos even came in packs. At least they got they got their metric conversions right, though they converted a rounded 1000 km to a neat 621 miles. :roll:

Rob, I'm surprised that you didn't mention that the upside-down building is meant to be the White House. Torture Museum - :whip: