Eigth and State

I read a story about a massive traffic jam in Cleveland around 1960. Any Clevelanders know about this?

Cincinnati's influence reaches way into southeast Ohio. A small number of commuters drive all the way from Brown County and beyond. The shopping influence is even farther. When people say that the Cincinnati metro area is expanding, I ask them which boundary they are using. Sure, Warren and Boone counties are gaining population, but the southeast Ohio counties are losing population. While most people say that the trend is moving from the core city to the suburbs, they forget that people are also moving from the country to the suburbs.

Houses these days ARE built for cars. The geometry of the entire development is built around the car.

^---- Massive beyond description? Tell them to view it from the west. At the right angle, QSC is hidden by the Carew Tower, the Dubois Tower, or even the Central Trust Tower. I don't mind QSC, but I wonder how the editorials and forums would read if they never had tried to promote it as "Cincinnati's tallest."

Well, I've seen worse.

"I think the real goal of the layoffs was to cut wages." Wages, which are essentially the price of labor, are different than price of most other things because there is an expectation that wages only go up and never go down. Gasoline prices go up and down daily. So do stocks, wholesale goods, and all kinds of other things. Retail prices might be a little more stable for the simple fact that store clerks have to change all the price labels at the shelf, and customers have come to expect relative stability. Even land prices, after so many years of increasing, are now dropping in many places. But wages are a different story. People expect wages to increase and never drop. If the present market is actually deflationary, and some economists think it is, then wages should go down along with everything else. As you said, it is easier for a company to lay off some older worker with experience and hire some recent college graduate who will work for half as much. Apparently people are more willing to be laid off than to take a pay cut. On the other hand, I am familiar with a company of over 100 employees who laid off 19 in 2008 and the rest took pay cuts. Since then, they have hired two or three.

"Northside and Clifton/Ludlow are so culturally connected, it would be foolish not to take this into account when planning streetcar routes which service them." There is a pretty big ridership that transfers at Knowlton's Corner to get to Uptown. A streetcar or light rail that connected Downtown, Knowlton's Corner and Peebles Corner would tie together Cincinnati's three biggest transfer points together and make the bus system a lot more useful, but that's a project for another day.

"Reversible streetcars and trains have been standard operating procedure for about as long as rail travel has existed." Yes, but has Cincinnati ever had reversible streetcars or trains? Going all the way back to the horse car days, even the horse cars turned around on turntables. What people are used to using in Cincinnati is Metro buses, which invariably have doors on the right side and stop at the curb. Sure, there are folks who have been to other cities, and I know you used to live in New York City, but many, many Cincinnati folks have not been on a reversible train. If the Jefferson / Short Vine couplet is used, then there is a legitimate reason for passengers to ride through the zoo turnaround.

There have been building regulations in cities since ancient times. Some old cities have gone through several different sets of regulations. Typical American zoning has two main features: density restrictions and separation of uses. If form-based zoning still uses the same density restrictions, it's really not all that different from the previous method.

Interesting that they are marking bike lanes on Spring Grove when they just built a separate bike path next to Spring Grove. I guess city planners don't talk to each other.

Really? I was unaware. A crossover switch at just one end would mean that the streetcar would be facing opposite directions every other trip. So, if there was a bike rack, for example, on the left side of the streetcar interior on one trip, it would be on the right side on the next trip. Also, people sitting facing forward toward while riding toward the zoo would be facing backward riding away from the zoo. It seems disorienting. A single loop would result in the curb side always being on the right. A crossover switch would result in a passenger potentially getting on the streetcar on one side and getting off on the other side. I know of an elevator in one of the downtown buildings with two doors, one for the ground floor and one for every other floor. People are constantly confused when they face the door they came in through and the one behind them opens.

I saw QCS and the Carew Tower from the west the other day in the evening sun on a light sky-blue background. While the Carew Tower has a high-contrast, sharp edge, the tiara really blends into the background so as to be hardly visible.

A typical mass transit ridership consist of 60% commuting to work or school, 30% communting to shopping, and 10% everything else. Talk of streetcar lines to ballparks, casinos, and the zoo as big ridership generators ignore this fact. A typical resident might go to the zoo once a year, but the same resident will go to work 200 times per year. However, terminating at the zoo picks up the U.C east and west campuses as well as the V.A. hospital, as well as a smaller number of jobs at the zoo. Plus, the zoo makes an excellent reference point for a terminal. A streetcar line between "downtown and the zoo" is much more easily understood than a line between "downtown and Hughes Corner" or any number of other terminal points. Finally, there are options for a turning loop at the zoo. Extending the streetcar to Clifton and Ludlow or to Northside is really getting beyond the usability of a streetcar. A transit line, whether it be a streetcar, light rail, or subway, should have between 10 and 20 stops. A line to the zoo is already at the upper limit for practical length. Finally, too much talk of future extensions can kill this project. The higher the cost, the less likely it will be built. You can only plan so far ahead.

The Vine Street route has a slope of about 7%, which manufacturers claim is within the capabilities of modern streetcars. Indeed, Cincinnati's historic streetcars covered the very same routes. Cogwheel introduces a lot of complications. It is more appropriate for slopes over 20%, and slow speed at that.

In the old days, when farmers transported their goods to market by horse and wagon, it was important to be close to a railroad. Nowadays, farmers are willing to truck their produce 100 miles for just a slightly higher price for their goods. It's no longer necessary to have a grain elevator every few miles.

If it's nothing special, then the engineering firm could send someone out with a point-and-shoot and take another photo for about $50. I'd sell it to them for $25, and tell them that you are available for more photography work. If you are really feeling good about it, give them a business card saying you specialize in architecture and landscape photography and maybe you will get some more work out of them.

Gramarye, your ideas have merit but how do you execute them? Most teacher's unions, etc, have contracts that were signed by the previous administration. Plus, the unions have so many voting members that any political move not in favor of the teachers, etc., has a small chance of being passed.

"Under the status quo, cities could still simply zone minimum unit sizes or lot sizes to prevent that low-income residential from coming in..." It's not quite that easy. If cities get too agressive with zoning, the land owner or developer will take them to court, and often win. This usually applies to undeveloped land. If the land is already developed, and property values are dropping, then sometimes the high-income people will move out and be replaced with low-income regardless of zoning. "The low-income residents will suddenly become providers..." It costs more to educate a child from a low-income family than a high-income one because of parent involvement. From a school district's perspective, you want above-average students, not below-average ones, even if they all come with vouchers.

"Do I think municipalities should be running golf courses? Not particularly,..." What a fascinating world! I know of a couple of local governments that are purchasing as much parkland as possible in order to prevent development! Why so? Because they don't want low-income folks moving in and hogging all of the local school resources. So, in order to prevent some developer from building new residential, they purchase the land to pre-empt it. So, the "wasted" land is actually reducing the burden on the local school district.

^---- ??? :?

Slow news day?

Is this work meant for rolling stock as museum pieces? There has been talk in the past of starting a short tourist railroad of maybe a mile or so based out of CUT.

As a reality check, General Motors submitted a 700 page document to address the government bailout and some of their stockholder issues. A tidbit in that document that I noted was that GM admits that the Chevy Volt has not yet been proven commercially viable.

^----- But how many power plants will it take to produce that many photovoltaics? Of course photovoltaics have the potential to convert huge amounts of solar power to electric power. That's not the question. The question is whether or not photovoltaics can generate more power than it takes to produce them.

"I was really struck by how low the water level in the Ohio River was in the last picture." The Ohio River in Cincinnati is impounded by Markland Dam, which was completed in 1964. Before that, it was impounded by Fernbank Dam, which was completed in 1911. Few living people have seen the Ohio River in it's natural state.