Eigth and State

What's the latest news on the streetcar? It seemed to have so much interest and then disappeared from the discussion.

^----- Too bad the house was razed. That would be something to see.

Ink, Thanks so much for all the hard work. Even after visiting all those places and taking all the photos, you still took the time to post them! Thanks so much. I really enjoyed them all. I started on an 88 county album back in 1999. I quit after about 6 courthouses. Of course, that was before UrbanOhio, and before digital cameras were common. I was trying to make pleasure stops during business trips, but it was too much. It takes a dedicated effort to do the task. Congratulations on a job well done.

You can follow the I-75 south all the way to the gulf coast of Florida. Maybe that has something to do with it. Cincinnati and southwest Ohio was always tied economically to the South. There's a Skyline Chili in Fort Myers, Florida. How about that?

Realistically, the airport and most of the related businesses around it are going to be severely limited by the decreased petroleum supply. I would expect traffic from Ohio to the airport to decline substantially.

Why are fire trucks white? To make them more visible at night. Some jurisdictions still use red, and you might find a yellow one. Glendale paints their fire trucks BLACK. Why? because they want to be different. Getting jurisdictions to work together is a tough sell.

Whatever the configuration, it will be challenging to make a wide bridge look appealing. They want about 6 lanes in each direction, and the river is only about 1500 feet wide. All of the other bridges in the photos upthread have an aspect ratio that is a lot narrower. I still don't think it's going to be built, though.

"The project, which is not expected to start for another decade, could cost as much as $3 billion." Given peak oil and the associated financial problems, I think it's fairly safe to assume that the Brent Spence will never be replaced. Various people are pretending that it will be replaced, though. A few years ago, weren't they calling for a new bridge by 2012?

^----"Consumers are either abandoning their beloved SUVs for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles or turning in droves to alternative forms of transport." True, but they are also foregoing excess travel, that is, driving fewer miles.

Oh dear. The ad banner on the peak oil forum is advertising water as fuel.

Tehran?

Well, Jimmy Carter took the energy situation seriously, and advocated that the United States stop importing oil, and that Americans wear sweaters in the winter. What happened? He lost 49 states in the next election.

Sidewalks or the lack therof don't necessarily make a place walkable or unwalkable. Are people walking, or not?

"We don't want alternative transportation enough for it to happen." A major issue it that is takes a lot of energy to run the A/C and heat. Heat is a by-product of the internal combustion engine, so it's relatively simple to put a blower on it and send some of that heat to the passenger compartment. Electric cars don't have that by-product. Want heat and A/C at an affordable price? Buy a conventional car. Electric cars have been around since cars were first developed. It is said that Henry Ford's wife drove an electric car, and liked it better than her husband's product.

I'd like to add a point that hasn't been brought up yet. There is a lot of discussion about race segregation and income segregation, but not much about age segregations. A typical new subdivision is occupied mostly by younger families, with children in early school ages. It seems that couples get married and have kids either in an apartment, or a "starter home," and when the oldest kid is about to enter school, they move to a new house in a new subdivision in good school district. The reasons normally cited are: 1. Good schools 2. Private yard 3. Close to family Often, the new family will take a 30 year mortgage, and eventually the kids will grow up and move out, and the parents will pay off the mortgage and live the rest of their lives in the same house. The result of this is that subdivisions are segragated by age. A subdivision with 30 lots built in 2000 will have 100 kids in grade school; one built in 1990 will have 100 kids in high school; one built in 1980 will have some college kids; one built in 1970 will have hardly any kids, but by this time the GRANDKIDS will be showing up. As houses turn over to other families, the age distribution becomes more mixed, but the subdivision will NEVER have as many kids as it did when it was new. In addition to this effect, the birth rates have been dropping all along. In 1950, a family with 5 kids was common; now, 5 kids is considered large. Only one in four houses has any kids at all. So, if you are a young parent and want your children to have other kids to play with, your best bet is to move to a new subdivision. If you don't believe it, go look at a new subdivision. They are 10 times as active as older ones.

^---- Wall Street overreacts to everything. The fact that news came out is enough to send prices up or down.

I just got a call from a political telemarketer advocating eliminating the Ohio sales tax on gasoline.

For all the Bush-bashing, our president had two good quotes about oil: "We are addicted to oil," and "We use too much oil, and oil supplies are dwindling. That is why the price of oil is so high."

Another issue with a deep tunnel station is capacity of the elevators. Waiting for an elevator car can also add time to the commute.

From the Fuel Prices thread: "There is a long history of very smart, intelligent people making all sorts of apocalyptic predictions about population and resource availability..." This is true, and Paul Elrich, author of "The Population Bomb" was one of them. The key is "apocalyptic predictions," or an impending catastrophe. Indeed, some in the peak oil camp are looking at a Mad Max scenario. However, not all are. It is important to realize that we are looking at a long term trend. Just a few years ago it was predicted that if gasoline rose to $3.00 a gallon, all kinds of trouble would occur. At this point it's $4.00 a gallon, and while there is a lot of whining, there hasn't been any mass starvation, riots, etc., at least in Ohio. We are so affluent that we have a lot of room to fall back, and people have made adjustments. "Times change, and we change with them." - William Henry Harrison

Functionally, I think Liberty Street acts as a distributor for automobiles travelling north or south on I-71, I-75, Reading Road or Central Parkway to reach the north-south streets. Since Liberty goes from "nowhere to nowhere," there is little through traffic, and it has little pedestrian traffic.

This previous thread has a discussion of Liberty Street and density in Over-the-Rhine. http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,10555.0.html

I would be interested to see traffic counts. Liberty Street seems to be underused. Also, a lot of metro bus routes cross Liberty, and every stop light adds some time to the bus route.

Aparantly Norfolk Southern would like to abandon a portion of existing railroad in the Norwood area. I think this portion is part of the "belt line" and was considered for light rail at one point, but it's not part of the I-71 corridor. "NOTICE OF INTENT TO ABANDON RAIL SERVICE Norfolk Southern Railway Company (NSR) gives notice that on or about July 16, 2008, it intends to file with the Surface Transportation Board (STB), Washington, DC 20423, a notice of exemption under 49 U.S.C. 10502 from the prior approval requirements of 49 U.S.C. 10903, permitting NSR's abandonment of a 1.10-mile line of railroad between milepost CT 2.50 (Cincinnati) and milepost CT 3.60 (Norwood), which traverses through United States Postal Service ZIP Codes 45207 and 45212, in Hamilton County, Ohio."

"Is all the ROW that blue line is shown to run on still available?" No. The railroad actually offered the right-of-way to the City of Cincinnati around 1994; the city did not purchase it. Instead, the railroad sold off pieces to the highest bidder. The right-of-way was 300 feet wide in some places, so it was a lot of valuable property. Bits and pieces of the right-of-way remain, and can be traced on maps, but large pieces of it have been obliterated by new development.