Eigth and State

Germany essentially has multiple layered systems on the same tracks. A local train stops at every stop. A regional train bypasses most stops and stops only at the main stops. You might have to change trains to get where you want to go. There are options. I wouldn't worry too much about where the stops are located until we actually get something running.

John, is there any way we could get copies of construction drawings from Portland? We could see what their standards were and see if it works here.

In this photo of a Cincinnati PCC car notice that the front end of the car extends quite a way beyond the track: Here's a technical drawing showing required clearances for the type 100 car. The minimum radius to the inside rail is about 33 feet, but the minimum clearance radius to the outside of the car is about 33' + 5' + 8' = 46'. And yes, parked vehicles were a concern.

In all fairness, that curve is tight and could be problematic. On a trip to Germany I paid attention to the streetcars there and I found one that squealled on a tight turn, so yes, modern streetcars can in fact squeal. Some previous studies on light rail showed some turns that I don't think met the minimum radius requirement, which for light rail I think is 90 feet. Again, there is some confusion over vehicles since "light rail" and "streetcars" are the same thing to some. That said, I think that the challenges can be overcome. The feasibility study was not a final construction plan, and this project would take at least a year to design. Still, the straighter the alignment, the better.

Just a funny little story that I remember: It seemed that my family was always the last one to purchase the new technology. One day the neighbor kid, about 6 or 7 years old, was in the house and he asked if he could use the phone to call his mom. This was before cell phones but well after most folks had touch-tone. First, the kid couldn't reach the phone on the wall, so he had to stand on a chair. Second, he had no idea how to use the rotary phone!

At one time there was a rumor that the Army Corp of Engineers would not allow construction of another bridge unless one of the existing ones were removed, because the Cincinnati area of the Ohio River is already difficult to navigate because of all the bridges. I don't know if that story is true or not.

^---??? I wonder what the reasoning for that move was.

We have discussed this already. The Ohio River is about 1000 feet wide at the Brent Spence Bridge. A typical lane on a new highway is 12 feet wide. Say the new bridge is 5 lanes wide with shoulders. This is about 80 feet. 80/1000 is visually much wider than say, 24/1000. It's almost four times as wide. 80/1000 is always going to look chunky and not graceful. That Lousiville photo is also pretty because of the background: water, trees, and sky. The Brent Spence replacement is going to have a lot of access ramps. At present, one of the ramps is higher than the bridge deck because it had to clear a railroad, which is itself elevated.

Those cable stays are fake, or at least if they are real, they are poorly designed. What a goofy bridge. Nice photos. Thanks for sharing.

There will be political pressure to have free transfers with Metro busses, which will further complicate the issue. A planner at Queen City Metro told me that his single biggest hassle is transfers. Often, people will want to make a stop for shopping and then continue in the same direction with a transfer.

I don't know about the law in Michigan, but in some states a city must tax and provide services within city limits equally. That is, a city may not charge twice as much to one resident for garbage service because he happens to be the only one living on his street. Is it possible to de-annex that one street? That is, change the city boundaries? That way, the city could stop providing services, but not force that owner to move. The city would lose the tax revenue from that one property, however. On another note, this might be just the beginning.

^---"Eliminating say, Interstates 71 and 75, and then expecting traffic to magically disappear, won't happen. It will just migrate." Not exactly true. There is a cost associated with transportation, and this affects the supply and demand for transportation. The less it costs for transportation, the farther that goods will be shipped. The overwhelming pattern over the last 100 years was for transportation to become more affordable, and therefore traffic counts have risen. It can also work the other way. If transportation becomes less affordable, traffic counts will go down. If the Brent Spence would disappear, some of the traffic would be diverted to the other bridges, but not all. Some of the traffic would disappear. Traffic counts do not add arithmetically.

"As much as I support mass transit, cars and trucks will always be with us..." See the peak oil thread. It is my humble belief that the automobile age will be over sooner than most people think.

^---- To provide lots of street life for urban photographers. :-)

Isreal Ludlow surveyed about half of the Indiana Line, to a point near Fort Recovery. Shortly thereafter, Isreal Ludlow's line was followed by another surveyor who set a second set of monuments. So, the south half of the line has two sets of monuments, which has caused some confusion. The method that Isreal Ludlow used is not known today, but judging from what we know of the period he probably used a magnetic compass. Magnetic compasses can be corrected to lay out a true bearing, but the accuracy is about a half of a degree at best. The Ohio Indiana line has another name, "The First Principal Meridian." It was supposed to be a true meridian, which is a true north-south line. As it was laid out, the line at the northern end deviates by about 10 miles. Given the length of the line, it is within a degree or so of being a meridian, which matches the expected accuracy of the magnetic compass. In the 1880's, I think, after some alarm about the border being severly misplaced, a survey was performed to check how close it was laid out to a true meridian. The method they used was this: two surveyors, one at the north end and one at the south end, made an observation on the same star at that same time in order to determine their longitudinal difference. They coordinated their observations by telegraph, since good clocks with the required accuracy were hard to come by. The closest telegraph station to the south end was Elizabethtown. They set some kind of monument there; I ought to go look for it to see if it's still there. There's a great big stone monument on the border, about 6 feet high, alongside U.S. 50 at state line road in Elizabethtown. Another one like it exists on the island at the confluence. "The entire Symmes Purchase was surveyed illegally using magnetic north." The Symmes Purchase was a private subdivision rather than a sale of government land. That is, Symmes purchased the whole thing at once from Congress and sold it as he saw fit. The problem with Symmes Purchase was not that his surveyors used the magnetic compass, but that Symmes sold land without laying out all the lines, sold the same land twice, tried to start over with a new layout after selling some land, lost his records in a fire, and generally wasn't a good businessman. Even so, in those days the rules of laying out land were not well defined, and governement surveyors were often chosen for their military rather than technical experience. Only later did the government issue proper written instructions, including allowance for the convergence of the meridians.

Over-the-Rhine is fine. I expect to be at my new job for perhaps a year so I would prefer to rent or otherwise not have a lot of money invested in it. I'm just looking for a cheap place to crash.

Here's a water-level photo of the Miami Fort power plant. The confluence is to the left.

I've been there by boat many times, including overnight. About 1990, I saw what I thought were two river otters near the confluence. I do not know my animals that well, and could not positively identify them, but I later described them to a naturalist with the Hamilton County Park district. He said that I described an otter, but otters were not known to be in this area. About 8 years later river otters were confirmed in the Great Miami river. "The river and confluence have probably moved since it was designated the border between Ohio and Indiana." By law, the border was supposed to be a line "beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami..." Of course, the mouth of the Great Miami is several hundred feet wide, and today it is split by an island. In the 1790's, I think, Isreal Ludlow placed a marker near the mouth and headed north, marking the border. That line today passes through the island. There is also a marker on the CSX railroad bridge. Historically, there was a lead marker buried at the mouth of the Great Miami by Celeron when the French claimed Ohio. There is no telling where the mouth of the Great Miami might have been in Celeron's time and the lead marker has never been found, although a similar one at the mouth of the Muskingum, I think, has been found. The Great Miami loops through Indiana, with the border not easliy recognized from the water. My dad was fishing there once and was checked by an Indiana game warden. Something interesting about the water is that it is 40 feet deep in some spots, and less then 4 feet deep in some spots, in the area around the railroad bridge. It is easy to be crusing along in a power boat, with the depth finder saying 40 feet, and all of a sudden your prop is in the mud. These folks are trying to buy up all the land that they can around the confluence: http://www.oxbowinc.org/

Over a year later, I am again thinking about a downtown place because of a job change. Can anyone suggest an inexpensive place to stay in downtown Cincinnati or nearby? I am looking for a place as inexpensive as possible but not a crack house. Thank You

^--- If you read the cover page of those bibles you will learn that they are provided by the Gideons International, which is a charity dedicated to providing hotel rooms with bibles. They are based in Nashville, Tennessee. From their web site: http://www.gideons.org/Splash.aspx "Gideons praise the Lord for the opportunity to distribute Bibles and New Testaments in 188 countries. And the results of their efforts in hotel Bible distributions prove it. The first Gideon hotel distribution, back in 1908, was just 25 Bibles. In 2008, Gideons placed, or replaced, over one million hotel Bibles in the more than four million hotel rooms of the United States—and almost as many full Bibles in other countries. Gideons have been setting this strong pace for a number of years." "One-quarter of travelers surveyed by the hotel industry said they read the Bibles placed in their rooms by The Gideons." "Scriptures are placed in certain locations, including: Hotels and motels Hospitals, convalescent homes, medical offices and domestic violence shelters Prisons and jails" I have noticed that there are, in fact, some hotels that do not have Gideon bibles. And no, I am not trying to preach to you. I remembered the name Gideon from a bible that I found in a hotel and I just now looked them up by searching "Gideon" on the internet. The internet is an amazing thing, and the more that I learn about the world, the more I find out I don't know.

Yes, obviously. Technology has improved on almost every front. I am amazed at technology, and I feel like I can't keep up with it, even in my own field.

Some experts have estimated that the global supplies of recoverable oil amount to 3 trillion barrels, and at this point we have consumed about half of that. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe there are 6 trillion barrels, or even 12 trillion barrels. Maybe we have only consumed 10% of the global oil supply. No one knows for sure. But you have to agree that there is a FINITE amount of petroleum. It is not increasing by any known natural or artificial process. New technology does not change this number. This is true of any mineral. Take Silver for example. We started with a certain amount of silver in the ground. Silver is useful for many things, including jewelry, money, electric circuits, camera film, watch batteries, and so on. Global silver production is recognized to have peaked long ago, around 1915. This means that more new silver was extracted in 1915 than this year. This is despite having 85 years of improved technology. If it isn't there, it doesn't matter haw hard you look for it. Silver, unlike petroleum, can be recycled. So, the actual amount of silver IN USE approaches the amount that has ever been mined. Nevertheless, silver has been making it's way into landfills via camera film. Processing centers have always recycled the silver from film, but nevertheless, some of it ends up in landfills. Digital cameras have come a long way in replacing film cameras. So, we have another way to take photos without wasting all that silver. Digital cameras have changed the way that people take and share photos. Just a few years ago I was careful not to waste film. I wanted to get my money's worth from each picture. I took maybe 50 photos per year. Now, I have a little digital camera that holds 10,000 digital images. I took over 2000 photos on one trip. I only printed a handful of those photos. Technology has changed the way we use cameras. In 1970, someone claimed that we were "running out of silver." We didn't have a catastrophe. But we did have a quiet revolution in photography. Film cameras are still available, but who uses a Polaroid instant camera anymore? What DIDN'T happen was discovery of major new sources of silver.

"Yes, but as in the past, technology can find new ways to extract the oil, and possibly discover new fields." "New Fields" is the key here. Petroleum was known since ancient times, as it sometimes seeps out of the ground, but only since the 1800's have speculators actually gone out drilling for it. In the crudest way, a speculator will construct a drill rig and drill a hole in a random place and see if there is any oil there. Many holes are dry, but if it produces a lot of oil, then the speculator can become rich. Technology can increase the odds off success by developing better drilling equipment and by guessing better at where the oil is. Most of our knowledge of geology was driven in search of natural resources, especially petroleum. We are no longer drilling at random; there are all kinds of ways to ascertain what is underground. But in the end, the choice to drill is still just a guess. The annoying thing about drilling is that once you find a field and develop it, the petroleum becomes depleted. To maintain production, you have to start drilling somewhere else. Indeed, that is what has happened. Drilling began in both the United States and Europe at about the same time. Oil companies were formed to raise capital and drill for oil. As production was depleted in well after well, new ones were drilled everywhere. Ohio was once the oil capital of the world, and Ohio owes a lot of her prosperity to oil, as well as natural gas and coal. People even talked about the end of oil long ago, in the 1920's. Effectively, Ohio's oil industry peaked long ago. But when the Ohio oil companies moved on, they discovered oil in Texas and Oklahoma, which became the new oil capital. Yet those fields began to be depleted as well, and the companies moved on to Alaska, the Middle East, South America, and, in effect, the rest of the world. Large discoveries were made in Alaska, the North Sea, the Middle East, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Small discoveries were made almost everywhere. The entire world has been prospected, with perhaps the exception of the poles. New fields continue to be discovered, but a large no really big discoveries have been made in a long time. Think of it as a game of Battleship. Since the large ships are bigger, they are usually discovered first. The little ships may survive until the end of the game. But of course you can't discover a ship if it isn't there. In the game of Battleship, the number of ships at the beginning of the game is known, but what if it wasn't? You can continue to drop bombs until every location on the board has been checked, but you will experience diminishing returns. Today there have been so many holes drilled in the earth that we can be confident that we will NOT find a new Saudi Arabia. Now, the normal everyday person does not study geology. He does not follow the oil industry. He simply buys his gasoline at the station, like his father did and his grandfather before him. Gasoline seems no different than any other product. But, it IS different, because it is non-renewable. A farm can produce grain for many, many years, but a well can produce petroleum only once. The rate at which a well can produce depends on many factors, but all wells are depleted eventually. The sum production of thousands of individual wells is what we call the global oil production, and the point at which the sum production of all the wells is at the maximum is what we call peak oil. Data on oil production is not easy to come by, and there are debates on the real numbers, not to mention the projections. However, there is a general agreement that peak oil has been reached, or is about to be reached. There are at least ten books on the subject if you are interested. In short, New Technology has ALREADY discovered almost all of the oil that there is to be discovered. New Technology is already accounted for in oil production projections.

"Historically people have been able to live in climates such as the Midwest's much better than they did in the desert, regardless of the energy available to them." I read that a member of one of the pioneer families in the Cincinnati area lived in an unheated house until he was over 30. It may not be comfortable, but it is possible, and people did it. People in those days would go for months without bathing, I imagine, because it was too cold to take a bath in the winter. Again, hard to imagine today, but that was life then.

"A big factor you are forgetting about is drinking water." Populations are limited by the most precious resource, not the most abundant one. The eastern half of the United States- both north and south - is blessed with abundant water supplies by world standards.