JYP

The article states that the apartment leasing is faster than expected which is encouraging but 50 done out of 180 with a completion in Fall 2017 which could very well be the end of the year is far slower than a snails pace.

Make Martini's Great Again!

When Their Shifts End, Uber Drivers Set Up Camp in Parking Lots Across the U.S. When it’s too pricey and tiring to go home, some drivers find alternative spots to sleep. by Eric Newcomer and Olivia Zaleski January 23, 2017, 5:00 AM EST In the 1970s, the Safeway grocery store in San Francisco’s gleaming Marina neighborhood, known as the Social Safeway, was a cornerstone of the pre-Tinder dating scene. Armistead Maupin made it famous in his 1978 book, Tales of the City, calling it “the hottest spot in town” to meet people. For years afterward, locals called it the “Singles Safeway” or the “Dateway.” Forty years later, German Tugas, a 42-year-old Uber driver, got to know it for another reason: Its parking lot was a safe spot to sleep in his car. Tugas drives over 70 hours a week in San Francisco, where the work is steadier and fares are higher than in his hometown, Sacramento. So every Monday morning, Tugas leaves at 4 a.m., says goodbye to his wife and four daughters, drives 90 miles to the city, and lugs around passengers until he earns $300 or gets too tired to keep going. (Most days he nets $230 after expenses like gas.) Then, he and at least a half dozen other Uber drivers gathered in the Social Safeway parking lot to sleep in their cars before another long day of driving.

There are ways to build roundabouts to slow traffic and reduce its negative effects on pedestrians. A roundabout like this does not do that.

I'm interested to get some opinions on the phenomenon the article below is referencing to the new toll bridge in Louisville. Toll proponents argue that these divergent trips to free local bridges would go down over time and that remains to be seen with the Lincoln bridge however the BSB situation is very different. According to proponents approximately 4% of the nations GDP utilizes the corridor and the way 275 is located it makes it impractical for it to be an effective truck bypass. If a P3 tolled BSB is built we'll see a higher utilization of all the local bridges and I-471. Also the proposed configuration with a southbound exit to the CB bridge would make it easier for southbound drivers to bypass the bridge. All this seems like a massive waste of over a billion dollars and sets up another defaulting toll project for everyone to be upset about for years. Louisville’s experiment in transportation economics By Joe Cortright 19.1.2017 As we pointed out yesterday, there’s some initial visual evidence–from peak hour traffic cameras–suggesting that Louisville’s decision to toll its downtown freeway bridges but leave a parallel four-lane bridge un-tolled has produced a significant diversion of traffic away from the freeway. Perhaps without knowing it, Louisville has embarked on an interesting and useful economic experiment. One of the big questions in transportation economics is what value people attach to travel time savings: How much is it worth to me to shave five or ten minutes off my daily commute? There are a lot of theoretical arguments about the value, but there’s nothing quite like an actual experiment which gives people real world choices and observes the results. And that’s just what Louisville has done. If you’re traveling across the Ohio River between Jeffersonville, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, you have a couple of choices: you can pay between $1-$4 and drive across the shiny new multi-lane I-65 bridges on the freeway, or you can use the old US 31 route, and take the 1930s-era Second Street Bridge for free.

What's pretty weird is that in fragmented metro areas with many small cities some of the hipster relocation is motivated by cheap liquor licenses in an "island" blue collar city. This is how Inman Square in Sommerville, MA became hipsterized but not Cambridge. This almost happened in Elmwood Place back in the mid-2000s. There was a brief period of time when it looked like Dirty Jack's might motivate imitators on the Vine St. strip. Then it reverted completely back to what it was. My only experience with Elmwood Place was when my band played at Dirty Jacks around 2007. It was a charmingly peculiar backwater and apparently still is.

It feels very open but less open than when 5th and Race was a parking lot. There are some very dramatic views of the Carew Tower.

^ State law limits liquor license availability by population. As places grow they get more licenses, as they shrink they do not lose licenses but they cannot get anymore. So after Cincinnati's population began declining in 1950, licenses became an expensive commodity. If you TRAX a license, which is to purchase one from somewhere else it is a significant cost and detriment to opening a new establishment. If you wanted to open a new bar prior to the Entertainment District legislation, you had to wait for an existing bar to close. Now a city can designate an area of town as an ED and based on its size that area can have X amount of liquor licenses that stay in the district.

They have betrayed us!!!

Its basically a Park and Ride loading station at the end of the #4 and #51 bus routes.

When the Terrace Plaza Hotel closed in 2008 downtown lost 350 hotel rooms. Also Garfield Hotel just closed last year so we lost 153 units there. The current hotel building boom started with the conversion of the old Phelps building into the Residence Inn but really began taking off with the 21c. At that point there were about 2500 rooms downtown including the loss of Terrace Plaza's 350 rooms. Then toss in the Garfield closing. So since 2008 we only net gained a about 500 hotel rooms. Not bad.

I thought they have already proposed their long term plan? Build a new large concourse closeby the terminal that would eliminate the need for the people mover. Raze current concourse A and Concourse B. Yeah that's what I'm talking about. I hadn't heard they made a decision to raze both concourses and build a new terminal though.

With the facilities they have they are unlikely to reclaim the frequency of flights and gates they had prior to Delta's consolidation in the late 2000's. Remember then they had 3 terminals and Terminal 3 had 3 concourses compared to today's one terminal with 2 concourses. However I think the proper measure is whether the airport has "right-sized" from the consolidation into one terminal which I think it has. The next step after constructing the rental car facility will be how to expand Concourse A and what to do with Concourse B.

So more people rode in Dec. than Nov? I'm not surprised yet still disappointed the Enquirer omitted this fact.

I am looking forward to similar coverage from them regarding user numbers when the new MLK interchange opens. Will MLK ramp numbers dive after 3 months of being open? Will it make its maintenance budget for its 40 year life span? Lets get the Greater Cincinnati Politics armchair QB's to look into it!

FCVG

You are tearing me apart Lisa!

I used the streetcar several times over the weekend and had no problems overall. Part of this however is having access to better real-time arrival tracking. While not reactivated at the stations yet, the tracking has become more reliable, but is useful only if you know how to find it. The Transit App is useful most of the time when trying to track streetcar positions. In the event they are not displayed there I have been using the BusTracker on Metro's website: http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay Its really cumbersome to navigate on a mobile device because you have to scroll all the way down the list to get to the streetcar (100) without accidentally activating some other bus route. Additionally, I've been buying streetcar passes on the CincyEZRide app in bulk and just activating them when I catch a streetcar. It saves on the hassle and frustration of the TVM's. Also the app Bus Detective is completely worthless for the streetcar because it somehow confuses the streetcar stops for a TANK bus route. I think once the real-time screens are reactivated it will be more useful however its really frustrating to hear supporters, visitors and others in the neighborhood being discouraged because of its unreliability. These are problems that can turn people off from a transit option for a long time. We were promised 12-15 minute headways and we are getting 20-30 instead. Real-time arrival and TVM problems aside, this is the core issue with the system to date.

And AV Uber's are coming to San Francisco: Uber Expands Its Self-Driving Car Service to San Francisco By MIKE ISAAC DEC. 14, 2016 SAN FRANCISCO — Uber has always had a special relationship with this city. The ride-hailing company was founded and headquartered here. In its early days, one of the towns where Uber grew fastest was its hometown. On Wednesday, Uber again highlighted its special relationship with San Francisco. The company has started offering its self-driving car service to passengers here, making it the second place in the world where Uber offers autonomous vehicles for public use.

When I first saw them I was reminded of the Forest Fair Mall.

I've been hearing the same thing. Are you spreading these rumors in the real world too!?

I remember walking around downtown on a workday in 2007 and people literally disappeared at 5pm. It was bizarre. Does that still happen? Sure, but the pedestrian count is improving. Not "bustling urban center" yet, but not "ghost town abandoned" either.

I'd argue that highways are irrelevant at 3am because no one is using them at that time! Lets roll them up! Just over 13,000 residents in downtown and OTR must be your definition of few. Okay... Sure. And it was going to get extended until the $$ was pulled by Kasich meddling with the TRAC board. I wouldn't call out two crowds and say its one niche crowd. We were getting tourists before the streetcar opened. Now that it is open, their reach is extended. Its the easiest way to hit many of the attractions in downtown. Sure, currently the population directly along the route is not maximized however that will change in a couple of years as the Model development at Findlay, 8th and Sycamore and others come online. This is a 40 year investment. It doesn't make sense to give up in year 0.3. Sure, and this may change with GE opening in the development. The Banks has yet to "mature" into something other than an entertainment district. Yeah sure there are people like that. You'd really have to go to Vine street and then want to go to something else on the line. Eat dinner at Senate, take in a show at the Aronoff. Most people try to combine trips and once a car is in the garage thats a sunk cost. Budget minded people are not going to park in the garage, eat, then drive their car to another garage to pay again. See above. I wouldn't go that far. Its useful when it is timely. This is why we need the signal study and retiming. So what do you suggest we do about it? We spent about $150 million to build it and countless years studying it and advocating for it. Its our responsibility, as a city to figure out ways to make this work. Instead we are still squabbling over whether its a failure or not. Get over it. It's here to stay, lets make it work. If you want it to expand to UC, then you have to help make the "pointless" loop work better.

I initially thought the same but we are seeing a trend of companies locating leadership talent base in the core and leaving the call centers and other lower tier functions in the suburbs. It really comes down to what type of jobs they are aiming to create and if there are enough higher paying positions to warrant a move to a new office tower in downtown. My guess is that its very unlikely. They will probably get another site at Linden Point or maybe expand to the second Oakley Station office site. Probably not happening. Paycor moved from their Queensgate location to Norwood because their employees asked for free parking in a surface lot. It's pretty unlikely that they're going to pull a 180 and move back to an urban location.

Just heard it was approved.