There was not going to be a line built parallel to I-71.  It was going to be built on the lightly used freight railroad that travels from Norwood through Blue Ash. 

. I liked most of Metro Moves however, would not have run the line along 71 as it is duplicative.

 

In what way?

The subway tunnels probably are the best way to market mass transit to the Cincinnatians who actually vote. Since you'd likely need a county sales tax to fund any major rail transit for the metro, you have to win over the hearts and minds of people in places like Colerain and Sharonville in addition to urbanites. People love the story of the subway, but they view it as the prime example of Cincinnati's inability to get things done. If marketed correctly, the notion of finally finishing the subway would bode well with enough people to get money to fund it, and even more. Even if the subway tunnels might not be the best route or most efficient use of dollars, using them is key, IMO.

There was not going to be a line built parallel to I-71.  It was going to be built on the lightly used freight railroad that travels from Norwood through Blue Ash. 

 

It has been so long since Metro moves some of the details became hazy. I always thought they wanted a line that ran along 71 to Kings Island. The Norwood to Blue Ash line made much more sense. They need to run the lines where there is not a highway there.

I ran into a mover & shaker tonight at the grocery store who indicated that "there have been conversations" that the streetcar isn't going to work as a big-time connection between downtown and UC and the downtown section, at least, should be a subway. 

 

I think the problem with any el cheapo future subway operation is if the trains surface and join the existing Main/Walnut tracks.  I'm worried that too much of the existing tracks will have to be rebuilt to create transit-only lanes and accommodate longer trains, although the one really big improvement that could be made without touching the downtown track is to elevate everything south of 4th St.  So the tracks would basically continue at the 4th St. level on new ramps south to Second St.  In your mind this seems like a small project, but in reality it's about 1,800 feet of elevated single-track that would look kind of like the Detroit People Mover.  Doing what I just described + an elevated station at The Banks would probably cost $30 million.   

 

There is a lot of developable land right off the Hopple St. and Mitchell Ave. I-75 interchanges so extension of the subway above grade to those points could spur pretty significant TOD's.  Northside does not have good highway access so it won't attract commercial or hotels but it's not hard to picture several Gantry-type developments going up in the area around Blue Rock St. and the Dooley Bypass. 

I agree that "finish the subway" could be a way of selling many suburbanites on transit. It also might sway some people to point out that the existing subway tunnels are worth a pretty good amount of money, so if we finish them, we would get a pretty good match from the federal government... although once you start talking about different funding sources, you lose a lot of people who can't understand that "the government" doesn't have one single big pot of money.

 

But ultimately what need to happen is that MetroMoves needs to be updated. We can't just look at using the subway for a short route from Downtown to Northside. We need a bigger plan that gets more people on board.

There was not going to be a line built parallel to I-71.  It was going to be built on the lightly used freight railroad that travels from Norwood through Blue Ash. 

 

It has been so long since Metro moves some of the details became hazy. I always thought they wanted a line that ran along 71 to Kings Island. The Norwood to Blue Ash line made much more sense. They need to run the lines where there is not a highway there.

 

Why? Doing so is SOP in many areas due to the R/W already existing and having extra space. Just because there are cars around doesn't mean there's no need for rail transit.

We need to shore up funding for the bus system before any of this happens.  No subway, no light rail, no air gondolas, no nothin'.  They're really not practical to propose if we don't have a transit agency that has enough money to run a bus system.  And, there is something to be said about the enormous amount that a "big picture" transit system would cost compared to purchasing and operating new buses, even if it does come from a different pot of money.

 

Also, I would totally be satisfied with a single light rail line to Xavier (via UC) if we could do that in the next 15 years.  Maybe one to Northside if we're lucky.  I think voters get really freaked out when they are asked for a few billion dollars to build lines all over the map.  I would be in favor of an incremental approach. Transit does better in dense areas anyway.

Metro Moves was going to do bus and rail at the same time.  The .3% city earnings tax was going to remain in place plus Metro was going to get .25% county sales tax, or about $30 million annually, toward increased bus service.  The other .25% of the .5% sales tax was going to fund capital and eventual operations of light rail. 

 

Somehow this modest and totally straightforward plan was completely mangled by its declared opponents and the idiots in the local media. 

^Modest and straightforward? Metro Moves was ~$2 billion and there were lines and stations all over the map.

 

 

Meanwhile in Seattle, they just passed a $53.8 billion plan to add 62 additional miles of light rail, add commuter rail stations, and BRT routes.

 

Incidentally I know about a half-dozen people that have moved from Cincinnati to Seattle, not because they had family there or had a specific job offer. Just because it's a great city.

 

So that's what happens when we don't invest in transit. We let other cities eat our lunch.

^Ohio's middle C can't keep natives due to the phenomenon.

There was not going to be a line built parallel to I-71.  It was going to be built on the lightly used freight railroad that travels from Norwood through Blue Ash. 

 

It has been so long since Metro moves some of the details became hazy. I always thought they wanted a line that ran along 71 to Kings Island. The Norwood to Blue Ash line made much more sense. They need to run the lines where there is not a highway there.

 

Why? Doing so is SOP in many areas due to the R/W already existing and having extra space. Just because there are cars around doesn't mean there's no need for rail transit.

 

But there are other RR ROW's in the central corridor that can be used too. The reason why you dont go down the highway is that it can spread out employment and population clusters. If rail and highway go down 71, everyone will choose to live or build offices along that route. If you have a rail alternative, people will be more apt to locate along those lines too, putting less stress on the infastructure in those areas. 

Meanwhile in Seattle, they just passed a $53.8 billion plan to add 62 additional miles of light rail, add commuter rail stations, and BRT routes.

 

Incidentally I know about a half-dozen people that have moved from Cincinnati to Seattle, not because they had family there or had a specific job offer. Just because it's a great city.

 

So that's what happens when we don't invest in transit. We let other cities eat our lunch.

 

I think people need to recognize the path dependency of investments like this. The Cincinnati of today is too resistant to change to embrace a plan like this. A Cincinnati with 10,000 more downtown/OTR residents would be a fundamentally different city. The west side of that city would be a completely different west side that may demand a light rail line to the Core. It's not a matter of getting here to there, it's a matter of what we become along the way, which would be quite different than today's Cincinnati. This other city may view light rail to be self evident.

 

We need to keep hitting singles for urbanism and begin growing our population to transform.

 

Right, and when you point that out to people locally who don't want to hear it, they tell you, "If you like it so much, then move to Seattle" — as somebody did to jmecklenborg[/member] recently on the Greater Cincinnati Politics FB group. Which has made me consider that option more and more seriously over the years...

1980 Cincinnati just wasn't as good as today's Cincinnati. Or 1917 Cincinnati, for that matter.

Moderator note: We have merged the Cincinnati Subway Tunnels and Beyond the Streetcar: The Future of Rail Transit in Cincinnati threads. There was a lot of similar discussions happening in both threads, and since the tunnels will likely be part of any future light rail plans, we decided to combine them.

^Modest and straightforward? Metro Moves was ~$2 billion and there were lines and stations all over the map.

 

 

 

The commuter lines were on the map but were not part of Metro Moves. 

 

The federal government matches localities dollar-for-dollar if they go through the federal process.  This adds 1-2 years to the pre-construction period and sometimes demands a more or less robust project, but doubles the buying power of local dollars.  Recently, New York City avoided the federal process and built the #7 extension with its own money.  This sped up the project and let them build it exactly how they wanted it.  But they did go through the FTA grant process for the Second Ave. subway and got $1 billion+. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that's what happens when we don't invest in transit. We let other cities eat our lunch.

 

You guys crack me up sometimes. I think there really is a rail transit cult out there. "If only we could build a system like New York or Seattle, we would be as big they are, and join the cool kids."

 

While it is my opinion that Cincinnati has too many motorways and would benefit from better transit, I don't think it's fair at all to compare Cincinnati to Seattle. The surface transportation system is only one aspect of a city, and it's not necessarily the most important one. A city needs an internal transportation system as well as a connection to the rest of the world. It needs a proper water supply and sanitation. It needs a functioning government that respects property rights. It needs a stable, healthy population.

 

A city doesn't necessarily have to be the biggest city to be successful, but it needs to have infrastructure that is sized appropriately. Someone pointed out that New York City has a subway ridership of 6 million per day. In turn, New York City has an economy that will support that kind of infrastructure.

 

Globally, Seattle is well connected to Southeast Asia, which holds about half of the world's population. Did you know that Seattle is the closest large American city to Tokyo? (It's closer to Tokyo than LA is. Measure it on a globe if you don't believe it.) Seattle has access to deep sea shipping, and thrives on global trade. Cincinnati simply can't compete globally with Seattle.

 

 

I love Cincinnati, and I wish the best for it. Like I said, I think Cincinnati has too many motorways and could benefit from more transit. But Cincinnati is far from the coast, and will never have access to deep sea shipping. Our population is limited by the economy, which is barely growing. That doesn't mean we can't dream, but gee, our infrastructure has to be sized appropriately.

 

What I like about the Cincinnati Streetcar is that is was a project that was small enough to be buildable - and yet it was so controversial that it barely got built.

Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Minneapolis, etc. are all booming inland cities.  All of them have built and are building larger light rail systems. 

Portland's a much better comparison of people leaving to go somewhere because its a desirable city. River city, similar metro population. No large companies that are pulling people in in droves.

Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Minneapolis, etc. are all booming inland cities.  All of them have built and are building larger light rail systems. 

 

Taking it a step further, Cincinnati would be "right-sizing" itself with "peer" metropolitan areas of St. Louis, Cleveland, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo adding LRT.

Even though Cincinnati's economy is barely growing, the region is undergoing demographic shifts in preference. Urban walkable is in and suburbs are beginning to choose to stay on the same path or to urbanize (See Blue Ash Summit Park Development). Developing a better transportation system that shifts people away from single occupancy automobiles makes sense from a continued growth standpoint.

 

The other thing is that while Cincinnati lacks a big port, it is still the center of several powerful corporations like P&G and Macy's who need to continue to attract high quality talent to the region. What is one way to do that? By building a city you can recruit to. And good transit is part of that equation.

^ ... and honestly, Minneapolis doesn't feel that much larger than Cincy when you get used to living there. There is a totally different mindset when it comes to rail transit though.

The main problem with the subway is that it and where it leads to does not hit the main secondary area of the city, UC + the hospitals.  But its strength is that it travels under and leads to some of the lowest-value neighborhoods in the city. 

 

Specifically, the subway's route is a who's who of low-value neighborhoods:

 

1. Liberty St. in the West End -- Sam Adams hogs a lot of the best land at this station.  Completion of the subway might motivate Sam Adams to move elsewhere in the city.

2. Brighton -- not a lot of development opportunities here, but nevertheless undervalued

3. Camp Washington -- Hopple St. could easily be turned into something like Rookwood or the Kenwood Collection

4. Northside -- no office opportunity but plenty of sites south of Blue Rock St. for Gantry-type developments

5. Spring Grove Village -- a wildly undervalued neighborhood with great highway access and many large development sites at the Mitchell Ave. interchange.  Again, could be something like Rookwood. 

 

 

 

So that's what happens when we don't invest in transit. We let other cities eat our lunch.

 

You guys crack me up sometimes. I think there really is a rail transit cult out there. "If only we could build a system like New York or Seattle, we would be as big they are, and join the cool kids."

 

I don't think you get the bigger picture. It's not just about rail transit... I'm not saying "all we need to do is build light rail and we'll be awesome!"

 

But when you build rail transit and high quality bus systems, you get the kind of urban environment that the "cool kids" want to live in. You get dense, walkable neighborhoods. You replace parking lots with new housing and businesses. You attract people with creative ideas for opening new businesses and the people with money to spend to support them. This is why GE chose The Banks over Oakley or Mason...because they understood that if they want to attract creative young people, they had to choose a walkable urban area with transit (they explicitly said so).

 

People that have lived in Cincinnati their whole lives and don't get to our peer cities very often have trouble understanding this. "Who cares whether we have a train?"

 

Honestly, I can't believe that anyone who reads and posts on this forum regularly doesn't understand these concepts.

I wouldn't say Cincinnati would necessarily be Boston exactly with the subway, but it would be a lot closer to it.  We all know Cincy already has a ton going for it with the dense, Victorian housing in OTR and its tight, narrow-street-ed downtown.  But Cincinnati as a walkable, dense city would be even greater; Central Parkway, where the subway tubes are/would have been developed, is empty in many parts, especially around Music Hall... Quite obviously this area, and others near subway stops, would be dense with housing and development ... like, say, Boston.  The streetcar is nice and a nice start, but its impact pales to what the subway would have had/could still have on the city.

That's what transit opponents so often ignore, the compounding effect over time. If we build light rail now it will cause a certain amount of growth in certain areas. But if we actually would have finished the subway, we would have had 100 years where growth would have been focused more on the urban core. Our region might have an extra 1 million people in it today.

Thought experiment:

 

Have two E/W subway lines (HRT/LRT tech TBD) that converge in the existing tube. On the west side, one line might terminate at a P&R station in the Dent area and travel in via Cheviot, Westwood, and Price Hill. The other would might terminate in Hamilton and travel in via Fairfield, Greenhills, College Hill and Northside. On the east side, a line (perhaps the Hamilton line) would terminate in Anderson Twp (where there would be P&R stations) and come in via Lunken Airport, Columbia-Tusculum, and Walnut Hills, down Gilbert/Reading. The other line might terminate in Milford, and come in via Terrace Park, Mariemont, and Oakley, and join the other line in Walnut Hills/Evanston area.

 

With a major junction at Vine/Central Pkwy (with a large transfer station from Walnut to Race) have a N/S route under Vine, heading north to UC or the Zoo, where it splits. One line would then head to Mason/Kings Island via Xavier, Norwood, Kenwood, and Montgomery, eventually running along 71 to Mason. The other branch would terminate in West Chester via Reading/Lockland, Evandale/Sharonville, and Tricounty.  South of Central parkway could be a terminal station at the banks with expansion allowances across the river. On the KY side, it would go to Florence on one side, with an airport/Burlington Spur. The other branch would head toward Alexandria via AA Hwy through Highland Heights and Cold Spring. The line would split almost immediately across the river in Covington so the one branch could turn east and hit Newport, with a station near Monmouth St. downtown.

^Sounds great. There's a nice symmetry to it. However, we can't even get Hamilton County outside of the city limits to pay for the bus service it's receiving, so it's definitely a thought experiment.

^We don't have any politician with the balls to pull the strings out from underneath the suburbs and propose building apartments/condos in empty spaces within the City of Cincy around BRT Lines unless the county pays into the system

^We don't have any politician with the balls to pull the strings out from underneath the suburbs and propose building apartments/condos in empty spaces within the City of Cincy around BRT Lines unless the county pays into the system

 

This is where the rubber meets the road. This sounds like a good proposal and maybe justified from the point of view of one government dealing with another, but the actual effect it would have on people's lives would be devastating, and that's why in reality it's a non-starter.

^Sure, but if someone crafty in the city could figure out a way to incentivize some new development that is comparable to riders of transit in the suburbs onto city land, and at least make the proposal "or else", then I don't necessarily agree it is a non-starter.  It's a way for the city to say to the suburbs "put up or we will take your population and tax base".

 

That said, I have to admit I don't know how all it works with how many people working in the city from the suburbs using bus transit to work and how much they effectively put into the earnings tax and how much the "cost" is to transport the riders.

^What I meant was, there are plenty of lower income working people residing in both the City and the suburbs that would lose thier jobs because they wouldn't be able to get to them if you were to cut off all bus service at the city limits. It would create chaos in their lives that they might not be able to recover from.

No I understand completely what you are saying. I'm saying that it is possible for them to not lose their jobs if they move, either city to burn or burn to city. The jobs in the burns won't have any workers so they would have to move to the city, too! 

 

It's my point that the city allowed the county to get away with it and they haven't ever cleaned it up. It would take an extra smart and creative and ballsy team of leaders to:

 

Figure out a way to make a plan to get jobs, people and housing inside the city limits since the county doesn't pay for the transit.

 

Pull out the numbers from the plan, then tell the county, if you don't pay up, this is what will happen.

 

Then the people and jobs would follow, the city would be better off and the people would be better off overall.

 

And this whole mess is the fault of the city for letting the county get away with this crap for so long, and for the county not stepping up to the plate.

^I just don't think you could do that in a practical way, without real citizens getting burned. Even if this was a planned economy like the USSR or something. The city is an organic thing that can't be messed with on a large scale like that without huge, unforeseen, and mostly negative consequences, like when they did urban renewal in the 50's and 60's.

^Modest and straightforward? Metro Moves was ~$2 billion and there were lines and stations all over the map.

Good point. Makes me think how funny it is lots of people think we need a new bridge for 2 billion, but feel the same 2 billion used for train lines all over the county and improved bus service is too expensive.

^^thebillshark[/member] I agree with you that it wouldn't be easy on any scale and could have a lot of consequences. I think my example would be the absolute most extreme.

 

Maybe something the city should do more or less is get one main line BRT route, maybe reading road from Roselawn / Bond Hill, to downtown, and encourage TIF redevelopment in certain areas around those stops. Then slowly we can encourage suburban residents to move into the city thus allowing less bus users in the suburbs and slowly decrease amount spent.

^^thebillshark[/member] I agree with you that it wouldn't be easy on any scale and could have a lot of consequences. I think my example would be the absolute most extreme.

 

Maybe something the city should do more or less is get one main line BRT route, maybe reading road from Roselawn / Bond Hill, to downtown, and encourage TIF redevelopment in certain areas around those stops. Then slowly we can encourage suburban residents to move into the city thus allowing less bus users in the suburbs and slowly decrease amount spent.

 

I agree with that. Jobs closer in are more efficiently served by transit. To serve the farther out jobs with transit takes a lot more resources.

^Modest and straightforward? Metro Moves was ~$2 billion and there were lines and stations all over the map.

Good point. Makes me think how funny it is lots of people think we need a new bridge for 2 billion, but feel the same 2 billion used for train lines all over the county and improved bus service is too expensive.

 

The whole dilemma is that bridge or any highway funds aren't local funds and are not planned locally to respond to local needs.  Haven't been since the 1950s.  Cincinnatians have not voted on anything road-related since 1956.  Cincinnati and the State of Ohio coordinated to build the Millcreek Expressway in the early 1950s and planned the Third Street Distributor (Fort Washington Way).  That project got off the ground before the interstate highway act passed and so the City of Cincinnati still holds the title and theoretically could charge a toll. 

 

Meanwhile, at least half of the capital funds and *all* of the operation funds for a transit system must come from local sources.  Cincinnati should get a credit from ODOT for keeping cars off of the interstates with a bus system, but it doesn't, nor does anywhere else.  In New York, some of the bridge and tunnel tolls *do* go to the MTA and commuter rail.  That was only possible because all of them predate the interstate highway system and are managed by the port authority. 

 

 

Oh yeah I always forget that its different money.

 

When a politician is offered "free" money from the federal government to build a highway, but he has to raise taxes to build rail transit, which one do you think he is going to build?

 

Every once in a while on this board I hear something like "Traffic engineers just don't get it." Traffic engineers are smart people, and they get it. But there are few opportunities to build anything but highways. It's not about urban principles at all; it's all about money.

 

When a politician is offered "free" money from the federal government to build a highway, but he has to raise taxes to build rail transit, which one do you think he is going to build?

 

 

It took efforts much larger than building subway systems to block urban expressway construction.  One had 90% federal funding while the other had 0% from 1956 through 1970.  The cities that have since gotten the big post-1970 grants for transit have all been those that passed local matching taxes, with the exception of Baltimore, which has no local transit tax as its bus and rail local match are paid by Maryland.  That situation came into being because the suburban counties surrounding the District of Columbia could not raise enough for a local match to extend the DC Metro Subway into out of the district.  In exchange for the state paying the local share for the DC suburbs, they also paid for Baltimore. 

 

The situation in the United States from a transportation and lending standpoint was so heavily tilted in favor of the suburbs and against cities for 50 years that most people don't believe it when it's explained to them. 

 

The common tactic to block transit is to force the public to vote on everything. Even Issue 9 in 2009 wasn't about "killing the streetcar" per se, it was forcing an additional vote so citizens would have to approve the project, even though no taxes were being raised to build it. Of course we never have to vote on highway projects so no road or bridge ever faces real scrutiny.

 

Washington State Republicans are trying to take this to the next level right now by making the general public directly elect the Sound Transit board members. This would surely result in some anti-transit, anti-tax types being elected to the board. Those members might try to gum up the works and water down any future transit expansion proposal, even before it goes to the voters for yet another vote.

The common tactic to block transit is to force the public to vote on everything. Even Issue 9 in 2009 wasn't about "killing the streetcar" per se, it was forcing an additional vote so citizens would have to approve the project, even though no taxes were being raised to build it. Of course we never have to vote on highway projects so no road or bridge ever faces real scrutiny.

 

Washington State Republicans are trying to take this to the next level right now by making the general public directly elect the Sound Transit board members. This would surely result in some anti-transit, anti-tax types being elected to the board. Those members might try to gum up the works and water down any future transit expansion proposal, even before it goes to the voters for yet another vote.

 

Good points. In Cleveland this has historically been the case. But even when the voters overwhelmingly voted for a subway in the 1950s and for RTA with the promise of rail expansion in the 1970s, local public officials like Tim Hagan and Joe Calabrese have scuttled rail expansion plans. The idea is that rail is always somehow an uneeded expense based on questionable (to officials) positive impact whereas freeways and similar highways, like the Opportunity Corridor, are presumed positive....so they shove freeways down the publics' throat and bill them.

We can't turn back the clock to 1950 and do it over. So, where do we go from here? In my humble opinion, there is a place for both highways and rail transit; I think of them as two parts of the same system. However, Cincinnati has too many highways and not enough rail transit. The basic problem with new rail transit in Cincinnati is that we already have too many highways, which compete for passengers, space, and funding. It makes little sense today to build new transit to the suburbs.

 

A growing city, like Denver, Phoenix, or some of those other cities mentioned before can afford to build new transit for new development. It's much harder in Cincinnati because there is very little growth; new development in the suburbs is mostly replacing older development in the core, which is emptying out.

 

Cincinnati does, in fact, have a decent bus system, which is actually a continuation of the historic streetcar system. Queen City Metro today carries about one-tenth the riders that the historic streetcars carried in 1930. The municipal population is down from a peak of 500,000 in 1955 to 300,000 today (round numbers). As the population of the core declined, bus ridership has declined. Queen City Metro is projecting a budget crisis in 2018 if a new source of funding isn't found. I think about this when I see empty seats on the bus. Sometimes I am the only rider - in the afternoon rush at that! Is it good business to build more capacity in the form of rail transit in this environment?

 

Remember, internal transportation is just one of the things that cities need to thrive. Another one is a water supply. The City of Cincinnati, which controls the Cincinnati Water Works, continues to expand the water system. We are now pumping water from the Ohio River all the way to Mason, Ohio, which, by the way, cannot pump water fast enough from it's own wells. Cincinnati also pumps water to Florence, Kentucky! So, on one hand Cincinnati built the streetcar, ostensibly to attract redevelopment to the core, but on the other hand, Cincinnati is subsidizing new development in the far suburbs. The real world is chaos and doesn't make any sense at all.

 

So, GE opened an office at The Banks. Over-the-Rhine is looking up. I get it. That's great. But the first-ring suburbs are taking a beating as families move to Mason, and ODOT is spending hundreds of millions expanding highways between Mason and Florence. THAT's the big picture.

 

 

Did the streetcar advance the cause for true Cincinnati rapid transit or hamper it?

Did the streetcar advance the cause for true Cincinnati rapid transit or hamper it?

 

I would say the jury's still out. All the current issues we are still experiencing with the streetcar would be easily fixable with suppportive leadership. But the needs of the bus system are taking center stage now.

We can't turn back the clock to 1950 and do it over. So, where do we go from here? In my humble opinion, there is a place for both highways and rail transit; I think of them as two parts of the same system. However, Cincinnati has too many highways and not enough rail transit. The basic problem with new rail transit in Cincinnati is that we already have too many highways, which compete for passengers, space, and funding. It makes little sense today to build new transit to the suburbs.

 

A growing city, like Denver, Phoenix, or some of those other cities mentioned before can afford to build new transit for new development. It's much harder in Cincinnati because there is very little growth; new development in the suburbs is mostly replacing older development in the core, which is emptying out.

 

Cincinnati does, in fact, have a decent bus system, which is actually a continuation of the historic streetcar system. Queen City Metro today carries about one-tenth the riders that the historic streetcars carried in 1930. The municipal population is down from a peak of 500,000 in 1955 to 300,000 today (round numbers). As the population of the core declined, bus ridership has declined. Queen City Metro is projecting a budget crisis in 2018 if a new source of funding isn't found. I think about this when I see empty seats on the bus. Sometimes I am the only rider - in the afternoon rush at that! Is it good business to build more capacity in the form of rail transit in this environment?

 

Remember, internal transportation is just one of the things that cities need to thrive. Another one is a water supply. The City of Cincinnati, which controls the Cincinnati Water Works, continues to expand the water system. We are now pumping water from the Ohio River all the way to Mason, Ohio, which, by the way, cannot pump water fast enough from it's own wells. Cincinnati also pumps water to Florence, Kentucky! So, on one hand Cincinnati built the streetcar, ostensibly to attract redevelopment to the core, but on the other hand, Cincinnati is subsidizing new development in the far suburbs. The real world is chaos and doesn't make any sense at all.

 

So, GE opened an office at The Banks. Over-the-Rhine is looking up. I get it. That's great. But the first-ring suburbs are taking a beating as families move to Mason, and ODOT is spending hundreds of millions expanding highways between Mason and Florence. THAT's the big picture.

 

 

 

This narrative is outdated in my opinion. Inner-ring 'burb property values have stopped declining and they are not hurting for residents for the most part. Mason, West Chester and Florence fill with non-natives.

 

Sorry I don't have a map for the entire county right now, but here's a recent property value map given to me by a realtor. This map shows that some areas of the suburbs are increasing in value, some are declining, and some are stable.

 

 

This map shows that Northside is improving, while North College Hill and Mt. Healthy are declining in property values. Anecdotally, I know that there is a bit of new construction in Northside, consisting of both some urban redevelopment such as the American Can, but also some suburban-style single-family stuff like that around Colerain and Virginia. I don't know of any significant new construction in Mt. Healthy or Brentwood. I know that Springfield Township can't pass a road levy, and is considering using property assessment taxes to repave the roads! It is notable, though, that North College Hill and Mt. Healthy have some of the better bus service, the classic 17, which is the successor to the historic streetcars.

 

The area labeled "Northgate" surrounds Northgate Mall, at the intersection of Colerain Avenue and Springdale Road. Northgate Mall itself is about 1/3 empty, which is a sad situation. The area around the mall, though, has seen a lot of new construction.  There is token bus service to Northgate Mall, but the surrounding area is all auto-oriented and unwalkable.

 

Monfort Heights, long considered a stable area, is just barely increasing in value. It is low-density, auto-oriented, mostly single-family suburban on large lots.

 

Of all of the places in this map, the best candidate for rail transit is the corridor from Northside to Mt. Healthy, as this is the most dense and walkable. Yet the Metro Moves plan proposed rail along the I-74 corridor to Monfort Heights, the least dense area on the whole map!