Eigth and State

If Cincinnati wants to save money, they should turn off the gaslights. :x As with so many other city issues, there wouldn't be as many glaring streetlights if there wasn't so much sprawl. A well designed street needs very few if any streetlights. Light from adjacent buildings should be sufficient to light the street.

No matter what the source of oil is, it seems to be peaking, based on historical consumption data.

Wayfinding is extremely important. People will not use the streetcar if they don't know where it goes. This is another reason why straight alignments are best when possible. A planner at Queen City Metro told me that if he changes a bus route, it will take over two years for people to catch on. People are creatures of habit. UrbanOhio forumers are generally good with maps, but this is not a skill that everyone has. Many bus riders learn the routes from other people, not from maps or schedules. That said, changing street names involves a host of problems, many having to do with change of address, records, using old maps, etc. It can be done, but should not be taken lightly.

Jake - thanks so much.

Can you add number for the entire State of Ohio?

According to the Hamilton County Auditor, larger building farthest east near Kemper Road was built in 1945 and originally owned by The Auto-Lite Company which made auto parts such as spark plugs and oil filters. A quick search of The Auto-Lite Company indicated that it supplied parts to the Army and Navy and was sold to Ford in 1961. The building was sold to the Frank Tea and Spice Co. in 1965. The one on Kemper Road farther west was built in 1953 and has been an industry related to steel since 1957. The third one was built about 1954 and occupied by the River Raisen Paper Company until 1982.

Quote from DanB from another thread. "As long as gas is still available and reasonable, I'm not taking a train to Cleveland." At least he seems to admit that maybe someday gasoline will not be available and reasonable. DanB - I agree with you that a lot of people will continue driving as long as they are able. DanB - I think gasoline will be available through about 2030. At that time, we will have about half of the gasoline available as we do today.

Nowdays they call it the City of Cincinnati Department of Transportation and Engineering. This group deals mainly with streets and public spaces rather than buildings. Pavement, drainage, traffic, and utilities are the main line of work. Oh, the City of Cincinnati has a hiring freeze right now.

Paris is special. It has the Metro, the RER, and 6 passenger railroad stations. Most of the main passenger railroads operate in a radial pattern with Paris at the hub, but the 6 stations are not connected. If you want to transfer to travel between, say, Germany and Spain, you have to get from one main station to another. Formerly, the Paris metro was overloaded with these transfer passengers, so they built a whole new system, the RER, to connect the passenger railroad stations.

There are no true alternatives to petroleum. The so-called alternative technologies will become less affordable, not more affordable. That's the scary part. I agree with you that governments often make matters worse.

The Cincinnati and Lake Erie was abandoned in stages with the last part in operation through 1941, according to "Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad" by Jack Keenan.

I agree that showing the rivers on the map helps a lot. It's hard to imagine Queensgate as high density urban development. The urban renewal that wiped out the original neighborhoods there put in such wide streets that Queensgate became unwalkable.

Take away the purple line and your plan would best be charaterised as radial with downtown as the hub. This tends to encourage extremely high development right at the hub. This is the way Cincinnati was historically developed. The Moscow and Paris subways, two of the most popular in the world, are more widely distributed, and the development of those two cities reflects that. When I said that fountain square doesn't have a lot of room, I was thinking street widths rather than concourse space. If each line is one track in each direction, along with room for platforms, it is going to be really hard to fit a 4 track subway in the street, unless perhaps you were going to tunnel underneath buildings. Add the fact that you are proposing two levels of 4 tracks each - whoa! Does Hardinsburg still exist? Your plan is the first mention I have ever heard of Hardinsburg other than in a historical context. I like the two lines to Miamitown. Yay for Miamitown!

Yes, that site next adjacent to the canal lock was a paper mill for about 150 years. I have the ownership history of that site if you are interested. It was finally redeveloped by the Village of Lockland with the help of Clean Ohio brownfield grants and became Moxy Trucks and IUPAT.

Just like everything else, roads and bridges used to be designed by many different people. As highway construction expanded, plans were standardized and little attention was given to aesthetics. A typical highway overpass bridge was taken straight from a book of standard drawings. More recently, highway engineers are getting away from that. Take the Paddock Road bridge over I-75 for example.

I'm looking forward to see the google maps version. 3 bridges over the Ohio? Yep, you are bold. :wink: My initial reaction is that the red, orange, and yellow lines are going to be the most popular by far, and they all meet at Fountain Square. That's going to be one busy station, in an area that doesn't have a lot of room. I wonder about so many lines to the West Side. It seems that the East Side, being more populated, should have a higher concentration of lines. Thanks for sharing.

This is my take on the odd numbers for Cincinnati. The Census Bereau has access to birth and death records prepared by doctors in hospitals. They also have data from the decennial Census where they attempt to actually count people. The decennial Census is most likely undercounted. It is easier to miss people than to count them twice. Some estimates say that the Census is off by as much as 30%. I hope it's not that bad, but I imagine that perhaps it could be. The poor, illegal aliens, criminals, etc., are not as likely to be counted because they resist it. The Census publishes estimates for intermediate years based on the prior decennial Census along with birth and death records. The trick here is to figure out where people live. Thus, the Census knows that baby X was born in Good Samiritan Hospital in 2001, but they don't know where 8-year old X lives in 2009. So, they distribute the people geographically based on percentages from the previous estimate. The CIA, World Health Organization, and others use a completely different method to estimate population. They take aerial photos and count houses. Then, they count the average number of people per house in a given area, and estimate the population so. In the United States, the U.S. Census Bereau has been prevented from using statistical methods of estimation by Republicans, who fear that the results will hurt them by allowing states with a lot of poor people a greater representation in Congress. The Census Challenge, though, incorporates some housing counts. So, my guess is that the decennial Census has undercounted all these years. The Census challenge resulted in a higher number. The increase in population is not an increase at all, but shows a difference between two estimates. Population is still declining. The next decennial Census should be interesting. Since Cincinnati and so many other cities successfully challenged the Census, I expect a lot of other cities to challenge the Census also. And since the Census is now recognized to be inaccurate, maybe there will be less trust in the Census numbers. All along, the purpose of the Census as stated in the Constitution is to allocate representatives among the states. The Census has since become the basis for allocation of funds, the reason why some businesses all rush for the fastest growing county, and the basis for bragging rights on internet forums. Like so many government programs, the Census is growing out of control. Whether a person lives in Mason or Over-the-Rhine doesn't matter to the state population.

I'd say that downtown Cincinnati DOES compete with Mason, and downtown is losing.

Yes, that first photo is the location of the Lockland Canal locks.

May I ask how you acquired the tower?

"In 1840 the Ohio/Mississippi/Missouri River System was the superhighway of the interior of the country." You are absolutely correct. All of those immigrants that came to Cincinnati via Pittsburgh on the Ohio River are who built OTR in the first place. We will likely NEVER have an event like that again. Cincinnati had incredible density in those days, and since then (1890) the density has only dropped. OTR is no longer an immigrant neighborhood. Furthermore, all of the natural resources in the Ohio River Valley upstream of Cincinnati were easily shipped down the Ohio to Cincinnati. This included iron from Pittsburgh and the Hanging Rock region of Ohio, and many square miles of timber and wood products. Products of the Miami Valley came to Cincinnati by canal. Today, the forests are logged out, the steel industry moved first to the Great Lakes and then overseas, and the canal is gone. There is no real reason for OTR to exist near the Ohio River like it used to. The river connection is still important, but Cincinnati has dropped in rank from 6th to about 35th, depending on which ranking you use. Cincinnati was dropping in rank even as our streetcars were still running. In fact, Cincinnati was dropping in rank BEFORE our first streetcar. I'm all for the streetcar, but I don't believe that the streetcar by itself will change the major trends.

A subway is a natural for fare gates because there are a limited number of entrances. A typical bus route with stops every block or so will not work as well. Curitaba, Brazil has a unique system where they operate extra large buses on exclusive rights of way with fare gates as a subway. Also, fare gates relieve the driver of the task of collecting fares. In the old days, Cincinnati's streetcars were operated by a two man crew, a driver and a fare collector.

Cincinnati ranked 6th in 1840.

"On the trip Mayor Mallory led out there, three ex-Cincinnatians, all under 25, joined us. They're not coming back." Portland +3. Cincinnati -3. Stop taking people to Portland! (just kidding. :-D)

^----"It's interesting to see how the discussion comes full circle. If you take a look back through this extensive thread you will find this discussion about Portland vs. Cincinnati several times." That's because John Schneider makes periodic trips to Portland, which invites all the comparisons.