Eigth and State

Columbia Parkway, Central Parkway, and Victory Parkway were all conceived by 1907 when the Kessler Plan was published. Of course, that was even prior to the Model T! The grade separated interchanges were not conceived in 1907, but separated traffic was.

Public housing is a losing proposition no matter where it is located. Instead of warehousing the poor people in centralized public housing or dispersing it among functioning neighborhoods, why not work toward the goal of ELIMINATING public housing? Anything less is just going to shift problems from one area to another.

The question is whether or not the general market can provide a higher payout in interest than the railroad can pay in rent. I'm betting that the general market will go down while the railroad interest will remain the same. Railroads are likely to become more valuable as a percent of market share in the future, in particular this one because there are few alternate routes.

The Post Office still uses the railroads but not like they used to. The steam railroads, interurbans, and even some city streetcars used to get Post Office contracts that effectively helped subsidize passenger rail. Today, besides the airlines, the Post Office has a lot of its work carried out by private contractors, much of it on trucks. The work is competitively bid. As an example, the Post Office may let out a contract for carrying 20,000 pounds of mail daily from Cincinnati to Middletown, and some owner-operator will get just that contract. In Cincinnati there was a whole building dedicated to handling mail built as part of the Union Terminal complex. It was located right next to the Dalton Street Post Office and connected to the Union Terminal passenger station by a covered truckway.

"Things would be greatly simplified if SORTA and TANK catch up to the 1970's..." Don't you think this would be a good idea to do now, whether or not the streetcar gets built? What is stopping TANK and SORTA from making the improvements?

"Last time I checked total family income in the Portland region was almost identical to Cincinnati's." www.city-data.com Portland 2008 population: 557,706 Population change since 2000: +5.4% Estimated median household income in 2007: $47,143 Estimated per capita income in 2007: $28,305 Cincinnati 2008 populaton: 333,336 Population change since 2000: +0.6% Estimated median household income in 2007: $33,006 Estimated per capita income in 2007: $23,960

Just wondering: I rode the streetcar in Germany. They had a system where you purchase tickets from a vending machine at stops, and then you have your ticket validated by another machine in the vehicle. It seemed to work well, except that I don't speak German and couldn't read the directions, but that's another story. I have seen all kinds of mischief on metro buses. I've seen children under age 10 illegally selling transfers for $0.50 each. I've seen people open the back door on a crowded bus to let people on without paying. I've seen all kinds of arguments with the driver over fares. It's hard to imagine an honor based system. I guess you will always have someone to abuse the system, but gee, we have a lot of troublemakers. I guess the theory is that the streetcar will attract the choice riders and the proportion of troublemakers will go down. I don't mean to say that only a bunch of smelly old bums ride transit, but I wonder how our current clientele compares with other cities. Portland has a significantly higher average income than we do, so I have to assume that they started with a more honorable crowd.

I would like to express thanks to all on this board but especially John and Jake for taking the time to explain things. The reason why I have repeated myself is because I was asked to. A few weeks ago Rando asked specifically what my choice of route was. The other day LIG did. I am sorry that the CL&N route hasn't attracted as much attention. Granted, there are some drawbacks. I'm not to concerned about the tunnel, as it could be run in both directions safely with proper signals with only a minor loss in operations efficiency. I realize that a portion of right-of-way has been lost at the Baldwin Complex - a short segment of elevated rail may be required. The biggest benefit of the CL&N route is that it has an overall easy alignment with very few conflicts - and much of the land is already owned by Sorta. Out of the $26 million per mile commonly cited as the cost of a streetcar route, much of that goes to cost of construction in a street. The cost of open rail in a private right of way is about $1 million per mile. The benefit to cost ratio may be just as good or better. "Before long, it will be running across the L&N bridge." The L&N bridge lines up reasonably well with the CL&N route. If there is a way to snake the route through the Eggleston Avenue area, one continuous line from Newport to the McMillan Street underpass would be possible. "Basicly, there will be one mile of non-revenue track." Is this all that bad? What if the streetcar goes all the way from Schwartz's Point to McMillan without any stops? The distribution of fares along the route doens't matter as much as the total fare collected at the end of the day. Queen City Metro operates some express routes that are always full. I've seen 20 people get on at one suburban stop, and then everyone gets off downtown. I'd say that this is definitely preferred over a bus that stops 20 times to pick up 20 people over the course of 10 miles. Jake - I don't know how Portland does it, but in Cincinnati working around utilities is not as easy as simply keeping the track foundation shallow. The utility companies will resist any streetcar line over their utilities because it prevents access. A perpendicular crossing is not too bad, but what if the streetcar line is directly on top of a utility line? If there is a watermain break, the water works will have to shut down the streetcar line, remove the tracks and track foundation, uncover their utility and make the repair, and rebuild everything. The water works does not want to take liability for the streetcar, and they do not want to spend the money to repair the streetcar. Not to mention, the whole streetcar line would be out of service, unless they construct some temporary track around the problem. This is even more of an issue when you consider all the new development that is supposed to occur. Suppose a developer wants to connect to the water main, which is now buried under the streetcar tracks. What do you do? The solution is to relocate all of the utilities away from the streetcar rails. Those streets are already congested with utilities, and ironically, the old streetcar rails. Paul Brown Stadium was originally supposed to be located one block west of where it was built. The change was made because of existing underground utilities. The streetcar feasibilty study estimated $15 million for utility relocation. Again, it's not a show stopper, but utilities are easily underestimated. I rode the bus regularly for 5 years. I was traveling between the U.C. area and a point in the suburbs. Frustratingly, my bus bypassed the U.C. area in favor of an express route on I-75 to downtown during rush hours, which was just the time I needed it. I grew weary of waits up to an hour long at Knowlton's Corner to catch the 17 to U.C. After I while, I discovered a trick: by taking the express bus downtown, I could transfer to another bus to U.C., avoiding the crowded 17 and the long wait at Knowlton's Corner. In fact, sometimes I wouldn't even have to switch buses! Anyway, I took a lot of rides between U.C. and downtown. I didn't want to go downtown at all, but it was the more convenient transfer point. I met a lot of folks on the bus. One thing that suprised me was the number of folks who shopped at Findley Market and downtown department stores because it was easier for them to get there than to go to the suburban stores. Many of these people lived within a mile or two of Northgate Mall and suburban grocery stores, but since they didn't have cars, it was easier to ride the bus 12 miles downtown than to walk 2 miles. So, a surprising number of Findley Market shoppers actually live in places such as Colerain Township, and they aren't shopping at Findley Market by choice. Speaking of Findley, have you ever noticed that Queen City Metro does NOT allow transfers at Findley? At least they didn't use to; I don't know how it works now. I think the reasoning was this: Queen City Metro's policy is that transfers are used to connect two routes into one long trip. It is NOT their policy to allow riders to transfer in the same direction, or to make many stops on one fare. If you want to do that, you have to pay more than once. Therefore, making lots of stops on one circulator is going to cost more than one fare. Raising the price discourages riders. If I want to stop at three stops along the streetcar line, I am going to have to pay 3 fares. (Assuming that Metro's policy is followed.) A chain-linked trip is VERY different in transit than it is in a car. A route planner at Metro told me that his single biggest hassle is folks who want to stop and transfer in the same direction without paying again. "The only case I know of where passengers are forced to change trains to travel on the same "line" is Boston's red line." Cincinnati had at least two. The Cincinnati, Lawrenceurg and Aurora interuban transfered with the Cincinnati Street Railway at Fernbank this way, and so did one of the east side interurbans that I can't remember the name of. Finally, I am not stopping anyone from building the OTR loop. Go ahead and build it. I just enjoy the discussion. Cheers to all.

Yes, city streets are already public property, but at the same time they are already also congested with utilities, including old streetcar rails. In OTR in particular, the old rails ran down the center of the street. The utilities, in order to avoid the rails, are often located at the curbs. Utilities are a big deal. They are not a show stopper, but they will add cost and scheduling constraints.

Even for a streetcar speed is important, and it's not just the running speed but the mean route speed. If the streetcar is stopped at a red light, you are paying for a vehicle that is not moving and a driver that is not doing anything. Plus, the faster the vehicle is, the fewer of them you need to cover the same route. And since faster transport saves time, you will attract more riders or be able to charge a higher price. The worse thing you can do is make your streetcar stop for automobiles. At the minimum, the street traffic patterns should be reworked to give priority to streetcars. Ideally, the streetcars will not have to stop at all. The proposed OTR loop crosses itself, which I was never happy about. One streetcar will have to stop for another. It may not seem like much, but a single stop for a traffic will be mulitplied thousands of times over the course of a year. That's unnecesary operations cost including wear on the brakes.

As I understand it, a consulting firm picked the OTR loop based on developable properties. Then, under pressure to include U.C., the "phase 2" extension to U.C. was sort of tacked on the the OTR loop.

What if your school system is built for 10,000 students. You have the proper number of classrooms and teachers, and then one year you find that enrollment has dropped to 9,600? You need to lay off about 20 teachers and lose 20 classrooms. Of course, if you have the money, it's easier to pay the teachers to do nothing, or put them in useless jobs. When the system blows up is when you don't have the extra money to pay them and you have to lay them off. Private businesses lay off people all the time when business gets slow, but private businesses are not democracies. The City of Cincinnati is in a bind because they are stuck with long term contracts. It's not easy to lay off someone just because things are slowing.

Since you asked, I would like to see the Metro Bus routes improved first before a streetcar is built. I think that the former CL&N route, with a terminal next to P&G or near the Taft Museum, and extending toward Norwood, could be the spine of the system. I don't think that the Vine street route would be bad if it went straight up Vine without all of that looping through OTR west of Vine. I would also consider a McMicken/ Calhoun loop, a Fourth Street line, a Boathouse/Longworth shuttle, a U.C. east/west shuttle, or maybe a circulator in the U.C. area. I am very happy that we are talking about a small scale streetcar and not some grand scheme such as Metro Moves, but I think when the uptown connection was added to the OTR loop it made the project unbuildable. I would caution that rail in a street is MUCH more expensive than open track in both construction costs and operations and every efflort should be made to separate the rail vehicles from cars, either on a private right of way or a street without much automobile traffic.

Ha! You guys crack me up sometimes. For the record, I am NOT a member of COAST. I don't even live in the City of Cincinnati. I have said before that I am NOT opposed to the streetcar, though I am skeptical of the supposed benefits that it will bring, and the OTR loop would not have been my first choice in routing. Cheers. :lol:

"I must have missed the part where he factored in the capital cost of two airports and an air traffic control system." I think that the point is that all of construction cost of existing infrastructure is a sunk cost. There was a time when we had a choice to build highways or high speed passenger rail. Today our choice is whether to maintain our highways or maintain our highways AND build high speed passenger rail. It might be easy enough to build a rail line from, say, Cincinnati to Columbus, but how is the passenger going to get from a Cincinnati suburb ro the Columbus suburb? Rent a car at one end? We're in a tough spot with regards to passenger rail transportation.

You required impervious paving?

Developers have no time to mess around with variances. I don't know why everone thinks that Wal*mart builds enormous parking lots, much bigger than what they need. In all of the development plans I have seen, the developer tries to build the minimum required by the zoning, or even less.

I like the Dayton threads, though I am not so familiar with Dayton.

That was super cool! I like the street scenes as much as anything. I pick 1915 as a time I would like to see. There was a good mix of transportation technology, including railroads, streetcars, automobiles, and horse-drawn vehicles.

No, I won't commit to working at Edgewater. But I spent the morning collecting litter on the bank of the Great Miami. :-) 10 people picked about a ton of trash, including 10 tires.

Independent of what the banks say, Cincinnati has a zoning code that requires minimum number of parking spaces, making some properties practically undevelopable, even in pedestrian oriented areas. Cincinnati needs an overhaul of the zoning code.

The real reason that voters approved the stadium tax was a combination of fear and confusion. The most cost effective way to win an election is by negative advertising. Stadium proponents said that Cincinnati would wither away and die without an NFL team. Pictures of the Cleveland Browns fans walking away with seats ripped out of the stadium is what got the fans worked up enough to go to the polls. The weather was nasty that day, too - cold, dark, windy, and raining hard. What the stadium project had going for it was a proponent with money. Mike Brown stood to profit from the stadium, and poured advertising money into it. His friends at WLW certainly helped, as radio and sports go together. The stadium debate was the most popular political debate in recent Cincinnati history. 80,000 people signed the petition to get the stadium tax on the ballot. By comparison, the streetcar debate stirs up a little attention, but doesn't stir up the widespread emotion that the stadiums did. I still have people ask me if I've heard of the proposed Cincinnati streetcar as if they are sharing breaking news. Will the streetcar, if it is built, attract some new development? Probably. Will it transform OTR into Times Square in Manhattan? No. Will it increase city revenues so much that the city can finally get out of it's budget woes? No. Will it result in millions of tourists flocking to OTR? No. Will thousands of residents give up their cars and move to OTR? No. The Streetcar, in my opinion, will result in a modest improvement for a modest cost. It's not going to transform Cincinnati into some urban utopia.

Why not invite media people to tour UrbanOhio?

Given that we already have a highway, bus service to the airport is much less expensive than a new rail alignment between downtown and the airport.

What new interchange?