Eigth and State

"The government is heavily involved in subsidizing traffic of every kind." KJP, you have said that maybe a hundred times on this forum. Well, I know that, and you know that, but the typical voter doesn't know that. Life isn't fair.

"You can see a stone arch bridge..." The bridge carried Third Street over the Miami and Erie canal. There are some other surviving hand-drawn pictures that include that bridge.

"If that guy's gone without a car since 1982, he's saved over $100,000." Good for him. :-) In Cincinnati, only 14% of the jobs are downtown. Having a car opens up a lot of job opportunities. If one can get an extra $10,000 per year by finding a higher paying job outside that he has to drive to, the extra salary just about pays for the car. I'd still rather work downtown, though.

^--- The assumption is that it is a zero-sum game. The contractors association, etc. fear that the 3-C will divert economic activity away from the status quo toward rail. Whether it really will or not, I don't know, but that is the fear. If we were living in a growing economy we wouldn't have this issue. There would be plenty of economic activity to go around. In the 1950's and 1960's, governments built all kinds of infrastructure with hardly any resistance; that's because the economy was growing rapidly at that time. It isn't 1955 anymore. As for the Republicans being for it, and then against it, I think that Obama's campaign to bring more high speed rail to this country has something to do with it. Unfortunately, that's the way the political game is played.

Think of it this way. Highways and passenger railroads are part of the same transportation system. Ideally, the two parts should complement each other. In this country, we have too many highways. No one on this board should disagree with that. But do we have too many highways and not enough rail? Some would say we do. If only we could turn back the clock to 1955 and make smarter decisions, we might be able to remedy this. Of course, we can't change history. So, our choices are to: 1) maintain what we have, 2) maintain what we have and add more highways, or 3) maintain what we have and add more passenger railroads. Most posters on this board will probably say maintain what we have and add more passenger railroads. However, this is simply unaffordable. Our only affordable choice is to 1) maintain what we have, and we might not even be able to afford that! This is why the 3-C is such a tough sell in this economy, not because people are opposed to trains, but because they are opposed to raising taxes. Saying that the money will come from the feds and not from Ohio is just skirting the question. Unless the political situation changes drastically, any federal funds for the 3-C will come at the expense of federal highway funds. "Every other advanced nation has both rail and highways." It doesn't matter. We are not talking about building railroads in other nations. "Our country is still growing." 50% of the growth is in the three states of California, Texas, and Florida. Ohio is not growing, at least not by much if at all.

^---- I agree with everything from the previous post. I think what would really happen is that existing firms that build railroad infrastructure would expand, while existing firms that build highway infrastructure would contract. Some of the highway workers will lose their jobs and find work in the railroad infrastructure industry. They are likely to start at a lower pay scale because they are starting all over in a new, although related, industry. Some of the construction equipment such as dump trucks will be able to make the switch into a new industry, but much of it including paving machines will simply have to be retired. When it's all said and done, it is NOT an easy switch. Contractors would definitely prefer to leave things the way they are. This is why business owners tend to be conservative. Conservative in this case means "resistant to change." Every long-term decision is made based on some assumption about the future. The most common assumption is that things will remain the same as they are now. If you owned a construction company that specializes in highway infrastructure, and your company owns $10 million in construction equipment, most of it specialized toward building highways, and someone proposes that we divert $400 million of federal funds from highways to railroads, would you be happy? "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." - Woodrow Wilson There is understandibly some bashing of Republicans on this board. Republicans tend to be conservative, and tend not to favor the proposed 3-C line. It's not because they don't favor rail. After all, most of them will take the train on a trip to Europe or Japan. It's simply that they don't like abrupt changes. Also, they tend to be fiscally conservative. If we didn't already have a highway system, then it would make sense to expand passenger rail. However, it doesn't really make sense to have a highway system AND expand passenger rail, especially in competing corridors.

I have a photograph of my grandmother at her office circa 1940. She had two rotary telephones on her desk. Two phones! Not one phone with multiple lines, but two phones! I think that photo is so quaint. :-)

"And your point is?" I've got no problem with the $128 million estimate. It could be high, or it could be low. I just don't know, and no one does, but the folks who put the estimate together know more than I do. I was trying to distinguish between an estimate and a budget. The estimate is what we think it is going to cost; the budget is a collection of funds to pay for it. We don't have a budget yet.

There is no budget yet. The $128 million figure is an estimate that came from a feasibility study, not a budget.

"I agree with him about the dangerously aging state of some of our infrastructure (we've already had one major highway bridge collapse recently, after all)" I assume you are referring to the Minnesota bridge. That particular bridge collapsed to due a design error, not due to aging. The remarkable thing is that it lasted so long before collapsing.

$128 million is a very rough estimate, based on a unit cost per mile as completed by other cities such as Portland. No one really knows what it will cost without a design, and even with a design it's tough to predict a bid price in this economy.

Cincinnati's downtown core has a square 6 blocks by 6 blocks, surrounded by a ring of parking garages, then a ring of surfact lots, then access ramps to the highways, which fan out in 6 directions. Or at least that's what the concept drawing in the 1948 Master Plan shows. In reality, the parking garages don't form a perfect ring, but are scattered. The surface lots are beyond the highways in some places, forcing drivers to park farther from the pedestrian area and cross the highways. But overall, Cincinnati's downtown has better access by automobile than many American cities. The Cincinnati downtown core loosely resembles a typicall American shopping mall, with a pedestrian core surrounded by a sea of parking. Unfortunately, Columbus does not have a consolidated core, nor a ring of parking. The good side to this is that the downtown merges with surrounding neighborhoods, but the bad side is that neither automobile access nor pedestrian access is served all that well. There's more to parking than just the number of spaces. Parking spaces that are not connected to buildings, or connected by an unpleasant path through too many other parking lots, or do not have easy highway access, are not as productive as a well placed parking space.

cbus does have parking out the wazoo but people are 1) lazy and do not want to walk through a sea of parking lots even a block if they do not have to Fixed that for you. :-D

I have a recommendation for the next trip. Go to Ohio Tile and Marble at West Fork and Colerain during business hours. If you are into urban exploration and don't mind really gritty stuff, check out the graffiti gallery in the West Fork Channel.

^--- Because a lot of it is made of concrete and steel

Here is my attempt to locate the pioneer roads that formed the backbone of Northsides street layout: Except for the dual Spring Grove / Colerain branch to the south, all of the other roads are dendritic, and followed natural drainage, fanning out to the west, north, and northeast. This led to so many funky angles in Northside, and continued nightmares for traffic engineers. Interstates 74 and 75 even mimic the pioneer roads. I'm not sure how McMicken Avenue fits in. Old maps of downtown call out McMicken as the "Road to Hamilton," and McMicken branches off smoothly from Main Street. McMicken can be traced all the way to Howell Avenue near the old workhouse on old maps. Maybe it was obliterated by the canal, not to mention Central Parkway and I-75? In any case, the routes taken by St. Clair and Wayne must have crossed the Mill Creek somewhere in the vicinity of Knowlton's Corner. Interestingly, Spring Grove and Colerain used to cross each other very near the Mill Creek, and had separate bridges! Also, the ramp from north I-75 to I-74 incorporated an older underpass for Colerain Avenue under the CSX railroad. When driving that ramp, you can see stone abutments, which is unusual for an interstate.

The courses through Cumminsville of the two early military roads, which have become historic and form the bases of tavel and traffic routes of the present day, are of interest. One, the most westerly of three well-defined trails, was traversed by St. Claris army when it left Ludlow's Station on its way to the ill-fated field of the east branch of the Wabash (1791). The expedition moved along the hills to the west of Millcreek Valley almost exactly on what was afterward made into the "Mount Pleasant and Hamilton Turnpike." and where are now a large part of Cumminsville, College Hill, and the village of Mount Healthy, thence to the Miami River, where St. Clair built Fort Hamilton. The portion of this road passing through Cumminsville will at once be recognized as the present Hamilton Avenue. This road is frequently referred to in local history as "St. Clair's Trace" or "St. Clair's Trail." The second road, and the one of greatest importance in the growth of the town, was that taken by "Mad Anthony" Wayne in 1793. It followed the general course of an old trace running along the MillCreek Valley, which had but recently (1792) opened as the "great road" from Cincinnati to White's Station (now Carthage). This was later known as the "Carthage Road." and occupied almost identically the course of the present Spring Grove Avenue. This is frequently alluded to as "Wayne's Trace" or "Wayne's Trail." Both St. Clair's and Wayne's Traces met at what is now Knowton's Corner, and continued as a single road into the town of Cincinnati (town in 1802, city after 1819) by way of McHenry's Ford across Millcreek, follwing practically the course of the present McMicken Avenue "to the northeast corner of the meetinghouse in Cincinnati." -Souvenir History of Cumminsville

The abandoned railroad through Northside was the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton railroad, which was the second railroad in Cincinnati and the first one in the Mill Creek valley. The same railroad passed through Glendale, which is known for being an early railroad commuter town. I am not aware of any stations in Northside, but if anyone knows, please share. I have been looking for a good book about the CH&D. Anyone know of one? The Cincinnati and Lake Erie had a terminal in Northside and a connection with the CH&D, but that's another story.

^---- I had the opposite problem with peak and off-peak pricing. If I remember correctly, rush-hour pricing began at 3:00 p.m., or was it 3:15? Anyway, I used to take a bus that was scheduled to stop at 2:52. If it was late, I had to pay more. What made it frustrating is that I would have exact change in my hand and when I got on, the driver charged me more. Meanwhile, the next bus was at 7:15, a whole 4 hours later! The reason was because the rush-hour buses took a different route. I could still get home, but it took an additional transfer that typically added 25 minutes to the trip.

Judging from SORTA's track record (he he :-)) they will not pick the right price. The 17 from Ludlow & Clifton to downtown is sometimes so packed in the morning rush that they have to turn people away. Meanwhile, they charge extra for some of the suburban routes because they are outside of the City of Cincinnati, and they run nearly empty. There's something wrong with this picture.

Sometimes the reason for operating in this way is due to taxes. To reduce property taxes, railroads reduce infrastructure to the minimum.

"It's not so clear cut as you may think either." I will be the first to admit that this is a large, complicated project and I don't have a full understanding of all of it. "What you fail to consider is that the increase in ridership will also require more vehicles..." Good point.

A fareless system should at least be considered. That's all I'm sayin'. :-) The cost of collecting fares, including the slower travel times due to the fares alone, is probably more than people realize. Queen City Metro recovers about 20% of the operating cost in fares. Suppose the streetcar costs $120 million to build, and $2 million per year to operate, and they collect 20% of the operating cost in fares. That's just $400,000 per year - a very small percentage of the total cost. Why bother?

^---- You need: 1. A ticket machine for every stop. Say 25 of of them. These things need a power supply, need to be serviced, need have the cash collected (assuming they take cash,) and they need street space. All of these incurr some cost. If one gets vandalized or damaged, then that stop is out of service. 2. Some method to process credit cards and reduce fraud. Again, not free. 3. Some method to collect tickets. A conductor? Honor system? Driver? 4. A fare policy. This is not as simple as it sounds. Queen City Metro has struggled with a fare policy ever since they have been in operation. What if a rider only wants to go two blocks? What if he is a rush-hour commuter that uses it at peak times? What if he is a tourist that wants to take a ride to the zoo and back a single time? Attempting to match fares with cost on a circulator system is not easy. 5. A way to tell the difference between infants, children, and adults. Again, this isn't as simple as it sounds. Queen City Metro has mothers carrying 5-year old kids onto the bus trying to claim that they are "infants." After all, some day an infant is going to graduate to become a child, and on that day the mother is going to have to pay more. Naturally, the mother wants to put that day off as long as possible. If you don't belive this is an issue, ride the Metro until you see it happen. The difference between children and adults is even more problematic. Do you go by age? Height? The Delta Train at the Airport is free, and it works beautifully. In fact, it's a step up on the proposed streetcar because it runs on a private right-of-way automatically without crews. Elevators in buildings are free. Escalators in the malls are free. In Cincinnati, use of streets and parks are free. City playgrounds are free. Why not make the proposed streetcar free?

Tolling for bridges, tunnels, long distance passenger trains, subways, metro rail systems, ferries, airlines, and limited access highways is efficient because there are a limited number of access points and few alternatives. Tolling for normal streets and roads is not economically efficient because it costs more to collect the tolls than the tolls are worth. Governments allow a mechanism for property owners to pool resources and maintain roads for the common benefit. For streetcars and buses, tolling is only of marginal benefit, if at all. Just look at the difficulty that Queen City Metro has with fares. Assuming that Cincinnati is going to build the streetcar, there are two alternatives: to charge fares, or not to charge. If fares are charged, then a fare structure and collection system has to be set up. It is unquestionable that ridership will be higher without fares, which should, in theory, result in more development opportunities and higher property tax revenue. It is also unquestionable that costs will be lower without fares because it costs a lot of money to install and operate vending machines, an electronic fare card, fareboxes, or whatever system is chosen. So the question becomes, for which system will the City of Cincinnati be better off? One with higher property tax revenues, lower operation costs, but no fares, or one with lower tax revenues, higher operation costs, and some fare revenue? It depends on the actual numbers. I honestly don't know which is better, but I hope that a fareless streetcar is at least considered. What concerns me is that a fare will be imposed based on some completly arbitrary and possibly counter-productive reason, such as keeping the fare higher than what Queen City Metro charges in order to preserve revenues to Queen City Metro. I don't see a publicly operated streetcar any differently than a publicly owned street. The City of Cincinnati doesn't charge for normal use of the streets, even though it costs lots of money to maintain them, including not only pavement maintenance but also policing.