Eigth and State

The next time you ride on the interstates with someone else driving, pick a distance, say 20 feet, from the edge of pavement and imagine a new railroad there. Count how many things are in the way: sign posts, fences, bridge abutments, entrance and exit ramps, steep cross grades, drainage ditches, culverts, and so on. What would seem to be an easy solution gets expensive really quick. Where the interstate crosses another highway or railroad, there's usually a lot of stuff in the way. The big river crossings such as I-71 over the Little Miami are going to require new bridges - thats a good $20 million right there.

One of those roundabout signs is upside-down.

No one likes to hear bad news. If our president told us that within 50 years, automobile ownership will be reduced to 10% of the population, airlines will be all but gone, and Social Security will be bankrupt, how do you think the electorate will respond?

Super cool! I had no idea. Thanks for posting.

There were three settlements, which were called Columbia, North Bend, and Losantiville, settled in that order. Columbia, near the site of Lunken Airport, was practically abandoned due to flooding and eventually became part of Cincinnati. The name survives in Columbia Township and the Columbia Tusculum neighborhood. North Bend flooded as well, though not as badly. It is still there, but has grown very little. North Bend expanded in the railroad and interurban area to Cleves, which became a separate municipality. Losantiville of course gained pre-eminence due to the fact that it was invulnerable to flooding, which in turn was chosen as the site for a United States fort, Fort Washington. Being at the intersection of two natural routes, the east-west Ohio River and the North-South Great Miami / Mill Creek / Licking River valley ensured that Losantiville would surpass North Bend and Cleves. In the early days, Lawrenceburg, Indiana was also a contender to become the dominant metropolis. Businessmen constructed a canal from Lawrenceburg to Metamora, Indiana, which was analagous to the canal between Cincinnati and Dayton in the ecomonic battle between two states. However, the Great Miami river valley in Ohio was much more conductive to business than the Whitewater river valley in Indiana. Meanwhile, Cincinnati businessmen cheated on Indiana by construting canal between the Whitewater Canal and Cincinnati, stealing some of the trade from Lawrenceburg. (They were able to pull this off because the Whitewater Canal looped into Ohio for a short distance due to topography.) So, here was Cleves, on the canal between Metamora and Cincinnati. The canal didn't amount to much, but when a railroad was built on the towpath and extended to Indianapolis, Cleves found itself on the main line between those two great cities. Today Cleves resembles most any other small midwest town, except that it is just beyond the fringe of a metropolitan area and has attracted a little bit of sprawl development. Interestingly, I-275 bypassed Cleves for a route farther west near Lawrenceburg, whereas in comparable American cities the highway would have passed near Cleves. I-275 is the longest loop of any American interstate ring road, and this decision was based on topography. John Cleves Symmes is buried near the border between North Bend and Cleves. His tombstone reads, "who at the foot of these hills founded the first settlement" or something like that. His daughter married president William Henry Harrison. His nephew circulated a theory that the earth was hollow and tried to organize an expedition to the center of the earth. You can't really blame Cleves for thinking that North Bend would become the dominant city. After all, it was near the mouth of the Great Miami. The Great Miami was the primary transportation route at that time. However, there is a short cut from the Ohio River to a point on the Great Miami: the Mill Creek Valley, which goes past Cincinnati and connects Hamilton and Dayton to the Ohio River by a shorter route. By the time the canal and then the railroads were constructed, the Great Miami ceased to be used for navigation. Many Cleves residents are employed in the Cincinnati market but I doubt that the population is high enough to warrent transit service to downtown. There is a Metro bus route that goes almost to Cleves but ridership is very low.

Without the overall numbers, you can think of it this way. Suppose the typical dwelling in 1920 was a 3 story apartment that had 50 feet of street frontage and housed 3 families, each consisting of 2 parents and 3 kids. The same thing happened on the other side of the street. The population per foot of street is 30 people per 50 feet, which means that each person has to pay for 1.66 feet of street including water mains, gas mains, and sewers. Today the typical dwelling is a single family house with 100 feet of frontage and it houses one family of two people. The population per foot of street is 4 people per 100 feet. Each person has to pay for 25 feet of street. Even so, the cost of infrastructure is not that much compared to the cost of social services, the Iraq war, etc. Every dollar I spend on federal income taxes is one less dollar I have to spend on the local school district.

The United States has 4% of the world's population and consumes 20% of the world's oil. The United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day, of which 9 million barrels comes from the United States and 11 million barrels are imported. The United States is going to continue to purchase oil until she is no longer able to. Calling for energy independence really is misleading the public.

CUT had three ramps for connections to downtown. One was for taxis, one for buses, and one for streetcars. These three each had separate entrances and exits, which can be seen on either side of the rotunda. In addition, there is an automobile loop right outside of the front door. The only part that wasn't used was the streetcar ramp. Inside the rotunda, you can still see the signs for taxis and buses, but not streetcars.

There used to be an interurban that went through Cleves on the way to Aurora and Lawrenceburg, as well as two steam railroads. Prior to that, there were regular riverboats, and for a short time the canal. The entire riverfront is incorporated all the way to Cleves, with the City of Cincinnati extending all the way to Muddy Creek on the border with Addyston. There is definitely a history of transit between Cincinnati and Cleves, though I don't think it was ever a high volume. The Cleves area was supposed to be the regional metropolis instead of Cincinnati when it was laid out by John Cleves Symmes.

Green Township, Anderson Township, West Chester, Warren County, and Boone County are the high "growth" areas, but they are offset by losses elsewhere. Hamilton County as a whole has been losing population since 1970; Ohio as a whole is projected to peak in population in 2018. Sure, if the average number of people per house declines with a steady population, the number of houses will increase. However, spreading the same number of people out among more houses is NOT consistent with mass transit.

^---"Even most of New York's subway lines were originally built through rural areas, and the development came later." True, but New York City as a whole was growing at that time. Cincinnati had the same experience at about the same time. Neither New York City nor Cincinnati is growing any more.

Well, the premise of the streetcar is to facilitate redevelopment of the area around the route, so if a route through a certain neighborhood is mentioned, we tend to discuss redevelopment of that neighborhood. It's tough to discuss one without the other. Redevelopment of the Cincinnati urban core and mass transit cannot occur without the other. Cheers.

But Queensgate is a suburban office park design! The only thing that distinguishes Queensgate from any other suburban office park is that it is surrounded by older urban areas, and connects to the surrounding street grid. Granted, there are a few vacant lots. Otherwise, Queensgate as an urban renewal project has been nothing but successful. Some will lament the loss of the neighborhoods that Queensgate replaced.

^---"What the city needs to do is clean up the vacant and underused properties and do the things cities have to do to entice modern industries to re-locate there, hopefully with some better building design standards than what have been acceptable the past 50 years." Um, isn't that what the City did with Queensgate? Almost all of Queensgate is a result of urban renewal.

Nice. Thanks for posting.

It's an awfully long walk from the front door of Cincinnati Union Terminal just to the street! The CUT passenger station is a wonderful piece of architecture but it was a failure from an urban standpoint. Carl Condit argues that the prior arrangement of 7 smaller passenger terminals scattered around the periphery of the downtown core was a better arrangement for the users.

"But why can they lend tons of money for a trac house in West Chester and not even consider a tiny loan in OTR?" They expect the value of the West Chester house to increase, and they expect the value of the OTR property to decrease. It's really as simple as that. Whether the bank is correct in it's assumptions is another question. You could argue that you think the value of the OTR property will increase, but it is their call.

^----"Walking from Union Terminal to the backside of Music Hall doesn't take long at all." You underestimate the effect of distance on normal people. Sure, UrbanOhioans love to walk. Most people do not. Just look at how much effort people make to park their cars close to downtown.

^---"I have no idea what sort of a price tag that would entail." Count on $1 million per mile for new track on existing right-of-way. Any new bridges, signals, etc., will add to that cost. In the case of the former CH&D on the west side of the Mill Creek, the I-74 crossing would have to be rebuilt as well as the part through Northside and a bridge over the West Fork Channel.

Read Carl Condit's book "The Railroad and the City" for a list of everything that is wrong with CUT as a good location for a terminal. CUT was built to optimize conditions for the railroads, not for the passengers.

^----We could build a new high-speed 3C line with the money that ODOT spends now. However, that money is already accounted for, and ODOT is not likely to give it up. That's like saying that we could build the 3C line with the money that we spend on Iraq war.

I was ignoring the funding stipulations. If Ohio had $400 million to spend without restriction, Ohio could purchase right-of-way, but there is no gurantee that Ohio will ever be able to come up with the money to complete the project.

"Well, if I am going to Dayton, why would I need to take the 49 MPH rail when I could travel 70-80 MPH on Interstate 75?" You wouldn't need to take the train. You could take I-75. Especially if you are travelling to a point in the suburbs at either end.

High-speed rail (over 79 mph) is going to require a lot of new right of way, complete with grade-separated crossings. It is expensive. There is no way around that fact. Ohio COULD start purchasing right-way and preparing for high-speed rail, but there is no completion date in sight without funding.

No offense to the good people of Cincinnati proper, but Sharonville and the other northeast suburbs are part of "Cincinnati" to most people.