Takes my breath away. Want to think about it.

 

  Jake, that's phenominal!

 

  Back in 2002 I produced my own rail plan, having some fun drawing lines on a map, and went out and walked 90% of it. I had the same concept - a NE SW diagonal across the UC main campus and medical campus. My plan only had two stops, each in the center of campus, but it was essentially the same concept. Extend the line in each direction, and you hit the subway and the CL&N right of way. It is a fairly straightforward alignment. The difficulty of course would be the tunnel stations. Building an elevator to match the rail capacity would be a challenge. I was never excited about the proposed Mt. Auburn tunnel.

 

    At first glance, a tunnel seems really expensive. Normally, in a flatter city, this is true. A cut and cover tunnel in an existing street disturbs a lot of utilities. A deep tunnel, however, does not. The lack of existing things to work around partly offsets the cost of removing rock inside the tunnel.

 

    To finish the story, I worked out some density, headway, and speed calculations and estimated that the system wouldn't pay, so it put a damper on my rail enthusiasm.

 

    You would like my downtown plan, though, as well as my airport connection. There were different than any other I have seen. All in fun, of course.

 

  Also it should be noted that the University of Cincinnati has for years considered some kind of tunnel to connect the two campuses. They probably had a shorter, pedestrian tunnel under MLK in mind. It just happens that your alignment overlays theirs.

 

    Drawing lines on a map is fun!

  Excerpts from Traffic Engineering, McSane and Roess, 1990:

 

    "At the beginning and end of every motorist's trip, he or she is a pedestrian. The driver and/or passenger walks to the vehicle, which is parked, drives to a destination, parks the vehicle again, and walks to the final destination.

 

  ...Parkers are willing to walk longer distances to their destination for trips of longer duration.

 

  ....Some interesting trends:

 

  1. As urban area size increases, parkers will tolerate longer walking distances to their ultimate destinations.

 

  2. As parking duration increases, parkers will tolerate longer walking distances to their ultimate destinations.

 

  3. Work-trip parkers will accomodate the longest walking distances, as they park for the longest durations as a group.

 

  4. Curb-parkers will not tolerate long walking distances.

 

  5. Under any circumstances, drivers expect to park reasonably close to their destinations. At most, 900-ft walks are tolerable for long-term parkers in large cities. Most motorists expect to park within 300 to 400 ft of their desired destination."

 

    John,

 

    Will transit users walk all the way from Jefferson to the center of campus or the western end of campus? I don't know. Some people will be willing to walk farther than others. Still, the closer to the destination, the better. I think that people will choose driving over transit based on walking distance alone. In the case of U.C., why take the transit and walk past all of those garages?

 

  I just worked out some grades, taking elevations and scaling distances from the USGS quad sheets. This is approximate:

 

  Subway at Central Parkway and Ravine Street elevation 530

 

  U.C main campus, center of campus elevation 750

 

  Distance 5000 feet

 

  Grade (750-530)/5000 = 0.044 or 4.4%

 

  Conclusions: A tunnel from the subway at Ravine Street to a station just below the surface at the center of the U.C. main campus for LRV or PCC cars is possible without deep elevator stations.

 

  The elevation at the center of the medical campus is about 770. The elevation of the CL&N near Jewish Hospital is about 750. Jake's concept will work without deep elevators, except for the Deaconess Hospital stop.

    "Since most of the people stopping at UC will be students, i think they will walk it no problem."

 

    Sure, and they will whine about how bad parking is the whole way.  :-D

 

    $10,000 a foot is pretty expensive. I said it would be possible to build a tunnel without a deep elevator. I didn't say it would be cheap!

don't build a tunnel, have streetcars for uptown and run the rail lines up gilbert like the plan calls for.

As a downtowner who goes to Clifton/UC a lot, the Gilbert route sure seems like a roundabout way to go a short distance.  I understand the grade issue and tunnel costs, but tunnel sure would be sweet.

a tunnel would be $100 million+ a stop.  streetcars are $24 million dollars a mile.  A streetcar line from government square to UC would be 4.25 miles or about $100 million, the grade up clifton ave would be a problem however. 

>Conclusions: A tunnel from the subway at Ravine Street to a station just below the surface at the center of the U.C. main campus for LRV or PCC cars is possible without deep elevator stations.

 

Deep stations in the bedrock are necessary if a tunnel is to be bored beneath the foundations of buildings, and especially in the case of science buildings and hospitals where delicate things are happeneing, vibration from shallow tunnels is a major risk.  It would be a disaster if a billion dollar tunnel were completed and then due to vibration trains were limited to a crawl until new facilities could be built outside the vibration area.  Also cut-and-cover in the uptown area would be very difficult in the undulating terrain.  MLK Drive is obviously quite hilly, Burnett Ave. is probably hillier than it seems and vibration would be a major risk there. 

 

I think also in the case of a big-time project like this, where large institutions who pay no property tax are going to benefit tremendously, they could be reasonably asked to contribute out of their capital funds, at the very least against parking garages they won't have to build in the future.  I think too this could reduce what I call "institutional creep", the way these institutions keep slowly eating up their surroundings, usually for parking.  $20 million each from UC, Xavier, UC Hospital, and smaller ammounts from others would help with a local match.     

 

> The elevation at the center of the medical campus is about 770. The elevation of the CL&N near Jewish Hospital is about 750. Jake's concept will work without deep elevators, except for the Deaconess Hospital stop.

 

Really the Mt. Auburn Tunnel could accomplish all of this sans the Deaconess stop, assuming it were extended in a northeasterly direction to Reading Rd. like I drew.  The Deaconess stop gives UC two stations and service at a congested spot.  The Reading Rd. stop opens up that area to massive redevelopment, student housing for both universities, etc.  A station at Burnett & Erkenbrecher along with the Reading Rd. stop would transform Avondale, the price of those shabby homes would shoot through the roof.   

 

Would you think we would have light rail or even a subway by the year 2020.

Here I drew a variation on the Mt. Auburn Tunnel alignment, with grade separation all the way to Xavier but with no tunneling directly under the hospital complex.  I think there is some chance for the the line to come above ground at the corner of MLK & Eden, then head back underground as MLK rises toward Burnett.  There is a website with a map where you simply click on any spot on the globe and it tells you the elevation, I saw it one time but didn't bookmark it, if anyone knows of it pass it along. 

 

Total length of this alignment is 18,000ft.  A train averaging 35mph travels 3,000ft. per minute so including 20 seconds for each station total transit time of this tunnel is roughly 7 minutes. With no station in between UC and OTR, trains could probably hit 50mph so that 7,500ft. stretch would go by quite quickly, smoking current bus travel times.  Actual time to Fountain Square on a street-running alignment is highly variable, in a tunnel it would be another 3 to 4 minutes. 

 

This drawing ignores a station at Christ Hospital under Auburn Ave. and in orange shows a station at University Plaza, about 1,600ft. from a station under Sigma Sigma Commons (end of University Ave.).  Given the cost of these stations, it might be too close. 

 

Jmeck;

If the Burnett stop was behind the hospitals, closer to the VA, then it might be alot better for getting to the zoo.

 

The tunnel exit in OTR would be right by Rothenberg Elementary, which the schools just announced they were going to completely rehab to make it the only OTR enighborhood school.

>If the Burnett stop was behind the hospitals, closer to the VA, then it might be alot better for getting to the zoo.

 

I don't think the zoo should be much of a priorty for two reasons.  It is not a particularly high employer (300?), and my guess is that 2,000-3,000 visit the zoo on a typical weekend day, when traffic is much reduced.  If 10% took the train, it would only be 200-300.  From Burnett Ave it is 2500ft. to the zoo's entrance at Vine, it is 1500 to Dury Ave., if the zoo were to open a new pedestrian entrance there.   

 

>The tunnel exit in OTR would be right by Rothenberg Elementary, which the schools just announced they were going to completely rehab to make it the only OTR enighborhood school.

 

I am going by what was studied from around 1997 through 2002 as a starting point.  This alignment took advantage of the former Mt. Auburn incline site.  In the 1916 the Central Parkway subway was planned to run under Walnut St. downtown (in fact turnouts exist under Central Parkway), really it seems it could run under Vine, Walnut, or Main to equal effect.  Which street it runs under in OTR is equally irrelevent since any tunnel can switch over easily at Central Parkway although it would likely be dictated somewhat by need for construction staging.  Whichever street, the logical station locations are 5th St., CP, and Liberty, if a fourth station is thrown in things spacing becomes a bit more arbitrary (for example, proximity of surface lots to act as staging areas during construction).   

 

The Zoo ridership could be a surprise. When LRT was extended to the Dallas Zoo in 1996 and to the Portland Zoo is 1998, attendance boomed so much that each of them turned their main entrances around to be opposite the LRT stations. It' skind of charming to see all the school kids going on the train to the Portland Zoo. Some days, half of a train can be filled with zoo-bound passengers, and they tend to ride at off-peak times.

 

The Cincinnati Zoo is landlocked and a large portion of its sixty or so acres are devoted to parking, and so it could be a way of letting them expand without acquiring more land.

 

Having said that, I agree that the Zoo is far from being the most important destination in Uptown.

That big white spot on the aerial photo above (At Vine and Erckenbrecker) is a huge parking lot where a tallish modern building was recently demolished.  It is now parking for the VA and the zoo.  I know that this was intersection once a much used street car stop for visits to the zoo from the basin.  In recent years this entrance was unused by the zoo as they focused on the car entry on the east side off Drury, but now with the overflow lot, people to enter at Vine once again. 

 

After thinking about it, I would have to agree that the zoo stop is not the most important.  One thing I have noticed when visiting the zoo is how many license plates are from Kentucky, Indiana and distant counties. 

>The Zoo ridership could be a surprise. When LRT was extended to the Dallas Zoo in 1996 and to the Portland Zoo is 1998, attendance boomed so much that each of them turned their main entrances around to be opposite the LRT stations. It' skind of charming to see all the school kids going on the train to the Portland Zoo. Some days, half of a train can be filled with zoo-bound passengers, and they tend to ride at off-peak times.

 

Running to the zoo would deflect the line from MLK and potential for serving the much more densely populated Corryville neighborhood.  There was a proposed alternate routing floated in 2001 or so that headed down Vine to the zoo, then back to MLK via Erkenbrecher and I think Eden Ave., adding 4,000 or so slow street-running feet to the line.   

 

>The Cincinnati Zoo is landlocked and a large portion of its sixty or so acres are devoted to parking, and so it could be a way of letting them expand without acquiring more land.

 

That is their plan, they're moving all parking to the property west of Vine St. so that exhibit space can take over some of their current parking areas. 

 

This drawing compares distances of the studied MLK to CL&N route in cyan to the various ones I drew in previous diagrams.  I was surprised to find that the the cyan route was almost exactly the same distance as the bored tunnel route drawn in red, 12,000ft. (the CL&N route is a nearly perfect diagonal between MLK and Xavier). The orange route is approximately 2,000ft. longer than either the bored tunnel or the CL&N route and would necessarily require a tunnel between Reading and Victory Parkway so as to avoid street running on what are now narrow residential streets.       

 

Here are my estimates for the various travel times between an Eden Ave. station and Xavier University.  Speeds are 2,000ft./min street running (no red lights due to synchronization), 3,000ft./min CL&N ROW and tunnels, 30 seconds per station.   

 

Cyan, all surface running: 4.5 minutes or 5 minutes with additional station at Reading Rd.   

Orange, mostly surface: 9 minutes

Red, all tunnel: 5 minutes

 

Obviously these are only ballpark figures and I'm sure the tunnel routing would beat the CL&N route in real operation.  With elimination of the Burnet Ave. station, the tunnel route could briefly reach 50mph and probably make the trip in 3.5 minutes.  However, the entire point of this proposed routing into Avondale is to encorage redevelopment of the area, and with tens of thousands of people traveling beneath it daily and frequent train headways it would certainly happen.       

 

 

do you have a schedule further out ?

airfares with less than a weeks notice are insanely high.

500 v 1400 bucks

 

 

The important thing to look at in this article is the public investment multiplier. 

 

10 to 1 in Little rock

28.5 to 1 in Portland (based on a 80 million dollar project)

18 to 1 in Tampa.

 

The numbers in Portland are actually much better now. They're quoting from a study that's at least a year old.

 

Also it seems like almost every streetcar line is about 2.5 miles.

John,

 

As a fan of Reds baseball, I have personally seen in St. Louis the impact light rail has on fan attendance at sporting events (see www.metrostlouis.org).  Do you think you could receive financial backing from Reds owner Bob Castellini?  LRT will only help attendance at Great American Ball Park, not to mention Paul Brown Stadium and access to The Banks (Castellini's other pet project).

 

----

 

I like this proposed map --> http://www.pro-transit.com/pdf/regionalrailplan.pdf <--, which is a combination of downtown streetcars and light rail/commuter lines extending to the suburbs.

 

I will keep an eye on this project, as it is one of the deciding factors in my moving back to Cincinnati.  I currently commute via St. Louis Metro.  I save money and grief over gas prices, road construction and crazy drivers.

I've heard that Bill DeWitt, a Cincinnatian who is the general partner of the Cardinals, has said that the team believes that the LRT service to the St. Louis ballpark is an integral part of the baseball experience for a lot of Cardinal fans. Castellini was, of course, a partner in the Cardinals before he bought the Reds. Maybe he feels the same way.

 

(Tell me, is the ballpark station better than what they used to have at the old Busch Stadium? The old one was pretty grim.)

I've heard that Bill DeWitt, a Cincinnatian who is the general partner of the Cardinals, has said that the team believes that the LRT service to the St. Louis ballpark is an integral part of the baseball experience for a lot of Cardinal fans. Castellini was, of course, a partner in the Cardinals before he bought the Reds. Maybe he feels the same way.

 

(Tell me, is the ballpark station better than what they used to have at the old Busch Stadium? The old one was pretty grim.)

 

John, the ballpark station is in the same place as it was for the old Busch.  They only renovated the pedestrian ramp connecting the street to the platform on the side facing the stadium.  The condition of the ballpark station is not grim in my opinion, it is just ALWAYS CROWDED, which is what I hope will be a nice problem to have at Great American Ball Park someday soon.  Once you climb the stairs from the ballpark station, the red brick stadium is right there staring back at you.  Definitely the way to take a family to the game when ticket prices are expensive enough and parking is at least $10.  With the advent of the new ballpark, the next phase is a line of retail and condos surrounding the stadium called Ballpark Village.  Can you say instant revenue?  Yes, I hope Castellini catches this same vision for Cincinnati, for the Reds and for the Riverfront economy.

 

St. Louis Metro added a second line in Fall 2006 that reaches out more to the western suburbs and overlaps with the first line, thus doubling the frequency of train arrivals for the downtown, major commuter stops.

 

John, how would you classify the train STL Metro uses?  Definitely not streetcar, but since it runs on it's own track and is electric would you say it's Light Rail?  What is Heavy Rail?

 

 

"John, how would you classify the train STL Metro uses?  Definitely not streetcar, but since it runs on it's own track and is electric would you say it's Light Rail?  What is Heavy Rail?"

 

It uses Light Rail vehicles but has the "Heavy Rail" characteristic of running in a grade-separated configuration along much of the alignment west of the Mississippi - running through the tunnel under downtown and in a fairly deep cut along much of the way west of there. I'd expect true urban "Heavy Rail" to use longer trains -- say six or more vehicles -- and travel faster speeds.

 

I think the inductry needs to figure out a different name other than Light Rail. There's nothing "light" about 100-ton trains, and somehow the name makes the mode seem like something other than serious transportation. Opponents love to call it "Lite Rail." The Sierra Club here often uses the term "passenger trains" which is pretty descriptive.

 

Words are very powerful no doubt, though replacing a 2 syllable term with a whopping 4 syllable one might not catch on. "Passenger train" or "passenger rail" is accurate, though.

Do you guys think Cincy will ever get light-rail or a subways system?

Do you guys think Cincy will ever get light-rail or a subways system?

 

Yes. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I think LRT from downtown to uptown and through Hyde Park is very feasible.

Here are a pair of photos of Martin Luther King Drive between Vine St. and Highland Ave., these photographs were taken approximately 1,800ft. apart.  Light rail planning from 1998 studied a surface running route across the chaotic Vine/Jefferson intersection and on the surface through this dip.  It appears as though the line could be built on the suface to the north of MLK, through several parking lots, half of a small apartment complex that would have to be demolished, and directly adjacent to the Vontz Center.  This alignment would remove the line from MLK but still interfere with five side streets between Vine and Reading.  Obviously, serious speed and safety problems could be alleviated by running the line entirely underground or possibly surfacing for roughly 800ft. and crossing Eden Ave. on a bridge.  This bridge would also allow an underground station beneath Highland/Burnett to be built at a much higher elevation, reducing cost.  If this bridge was built in the MLK median, it would require for the street to be widened slightly, if built along the north edge of the street the south half of the apartment complex would still have to be demolished.    

   

 

Nice as the rail bridge could be, I suspect property owners along MLK wouldn't want it. Which makes me think MLK is a streetcar street that connects with light rail in a major transit center at Reading or Gilbert. Unless we're prepared to do a lot of tunneling between downtown and Xavier, I think LRT leaves the CBD on a wide street with a shallow grade. Not many choices. Gilbert is interesting. Lots of room. Lots of sites north of Taft Road.

 

There's interest in a total reconfiguraton of I-71 access into a new gateway boulvard along the east edge of Uptown; this could open up a lot of room and make LRT on Reading Road work extremely well.

 

is that public housing accross the street from stetson square?  (first image)  I have never noticed those buildings before

In response to the question about the rail line bridge... I was walking through University Pavilion (aka One Stop) on UC's campus. On the level with the Welcome Center, there is a scale model of UC's east and west campuses. This model shows the finalized and competed master plan that INCLUDES this rail line as well as a routing of MLK underground and a rail line connects to some sort of tunnel at Vine Street toward DT.

 

So, I am guessing if UC has anything to do with it (and they have huge lobbying power) the rail line will probably be there.

 

If anyone is ever on UC's Campus, check out this model, it is really cool!

Speaking of Norwood, I have some pics of the CL&N ROW...unfortunately the stretch between Xavier and Montgomery Rd. looks unusable.  It was obviously sold off sometime around 1985, explaining why the ROW never jumped out at me before.  However, I don't think street running between Dana and Surrey Square on Montgomery would be particularly troublesome, unlike the MLK stretch I showed in my previous post. 

 

These photos are ordered south to north:

 

ROW in foreground, new houses built in ROW on other side of the street.  These houses oddly face each other, not the street, and have almost no yards.   

 

House built in ROW.

 

I don't know why they chose to angle this house diagonally to the street, as is it's in line with the ROW pretty much exactly.

 

 

 

 

Standing on ROW, looking northeast across Mongtomery Rd. toward Surrey Square shopping center. 

 

East of Montgomery looking in line with ROW, GM plant was located where strip mall is visible in distance.

 

And here is a still-active part of the CL&N adjacent to Blue Ash Rd. in Silverton.  I'm working on photographing most of this line, I'll post more when this thread turns another page. 

 

What's obvious while walking the active and abandoned parts of the ROW is that the entire line was formerly double-tracked and so there is plenty of space for a double-track light rail line, maybe even three tracks where the line is still active because all of the spurs appear to veer to the west of the line.  There would be a dedicated freight track to the west of the two light rail tracks.  I was told by a guy taking a smoke break behind a restaurant facing the tracks that the line is still used daily by trains of up to 20 cars.   

 

 

Yeah those trakes are used to ship products from Blue Ash to a small switching yard in Norword, then taken to the east or to the HUGE shipping yard in queensgate.

I don't think this has been posted before, but I thought it was interesting.  Not that it tells us anything we didn't know, but I hadn't seen this particular comparison made before:

 

http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_sf-cin-lrt-hwy-photoessay_2006-09a.htm

 

The site also has other things related to light rail issues across the country, including Cincinnati.

^--- That was a stunning pair of photos but to be fair transit is not the only issue. Cincinnati's riverfront was in decline long before the interstates were built, due to the decline of riverboat traffic and due to flood hazards.

 

 

I was thinking the same thing at first, but then I focused more on the eastern and western edges where there is no excuse.

^^^ I only just before seeing this noticed just how thick those highways are on either side of Cincinnati. Basically what I get is that city + rail = world-class city, while city + highways = not a world-class city.

^^^ I only just before seeing this noticed just how thick those highways are on either side of Cincinnati. Basically what I get is that city + rail = world-class city, while city + highways = not a world-class city.

 

 

Over the years, but no so much lately, I've heard several people speculate that the walling-off caused by I-71 and I-75 is what has kept downtown Cincinnati intact, kept the core tight with walkable distances between destinations rather than allowing it to sprawl. This sentiment especially applies to the old Fort Washington Way, which downtown planners in the Fifties felt would insulate the core of downtown from the unseemly aspects of our waterfront. Keep in mind the perspective of planners then, still mindful of the Cincinnati flood and its devastating effects on the southern fringe of downtown and the loss of viable businesses there. I've heard that this mindset even carried over to the design of the 1960's Fountain Square, which was laid out as defensible space with perimeter walls at a time when urban riots -- not the kind we experienced in 2001 but ones where lots of people died -- were sweeping the nation in the Sixties.

 

Some pretty awful things were done to downtown Cincinnati in that period, things we're just now beginning to overcome as those assets have wasted away and have had to be replaced.

 

 

    "I've heard several people speculate that the walling-off caused by I-71 and I-75 is what has kept downtown Cincinnati intact, kept the core tight with walkable distances between destinations..."

 

    I agree with that, and furthermore, it was deliberately planned that way. See the 1948 Metropolitan Master Plan. The highways also allowed people to drive right to the heart of downtown Cincinnati. Compare to Columbus, etc.

 

    In the same way that development has grown up around highway interchanges, development has grown up around the ramps downtown. Note that in Blue Ash, Sharonville, Fairfield, etc., skyscrapers with parking garages have grown around the highway interchanges.

 

 

   

 

 

 

   

I don't think this has been posted before, but I thought it was interesting.  Not that it tells us anything we didn't know, but I hadn't seen this particular comparison made before:

 

http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_sf-cin-lrt-hwy-photoessay_2006-09a.htm

 

The site also has other things related to light rail issues across the country, including Cincinnati.

Honestly, comparing development patterns in SF to Cincy is misleading, IMHO. SF, being a tourist and a destination place for residents, and other assets all contribute to its urban form, most notably is geography as a peninsula, (and yes that includes transit). To say that there are no downtown freeways is untrue.  The Bay Bridge, among others brings cars right into and out of  downtown. There is no direct high speed route from the North, but the 101 is freeway in Marin County to Doyle Drive, close enoguh to Financial District. The inent of the web page is obvious, that Cincy could have been SF if only we had rail.

A better comparison would be to Cleveland, another rust belt city, but with rail.

 

  In the same way that development has grown up around highway interchanges, development has grown up around the ramps downtown. Note that in Blue Ash, Sharonville, Fairfield, etc., skyscrapers with parking garages have grown around the highway interchanges.

 

I see very little development around the ramps in downtown Cincinnati.  The majority of the buildings that are near ramps predate the interstate system.  Those that were torn down generally remain as parking lots.  As for Blue Ash, Sharonville, etc, yes, it's development but it's nothing but autocentric office parks.  Freeway interchanges/off-ramps encourage one type of development, whereas transit stations encourage another.

 

Honestly, comparing development patterns in SF to Cincy is misleading, IMHO. SF, being a tourist and a destination place for residents, and other assets all contribute to its urban form, most notably is geography as a peninsula, (and yes that includes transit). To say that there are no downtown freeways is untrue.  The Bay Bridge, among others brings cars right into and out of  downtown. There is no direct high speed route from the North, but the 101 is freeway in Marin County to Doyle Drive, close enoguh to Financial District. The inent of the web page is obvious, that Cincy could have been SF if only we had rail.

A better comparison would be to Cleveland, another rust belt city, but with rail.

 

I agree with a lot of what you've said.  There are a million factors that make both SF and Cincy what they are today.  However, the difference in policy and attitudes between the cities is striking, IMO.

 

- The construction of the BART system has had huge impact on development since the 60's (both for the city and its suburbs). 

- Similar mistakes were made in SF with elevated freeways and off-ramps.  Several of these have been removed (some with help from mother nature) and new development is happening in the space they used to occupy.

- The 101 is the only highway that cuts through the city and, tangibly, the financial district and surrounding neighborhoods are connected much more seamlessly than they are here.

 

^And actually BART was the first postwar multi-county rapid transit system, construction began with ZERO federal funding.  Federal funding arrived when Washington's Metro got underway and there has since been federal funding available for local rail transit projects.  Both had initial construction phases funded by counties that wouldn't be served for upwards of ten years and in fact an attempt to stop construction of Metro around 1981 was ended by counties that had been paying in but hadn't as yet received service.  Marin County dropped out of Bart early on, btw, I don't know if they were planning rail for the Golden Gate Bridge or if another major tunnel was planned. 

 

 

I know the Golden Gate bridge is there, but tourist-wise what else? I can't think of anything besides bustling, interesting neighborhoods and those are due in large part to good transit which makes them accessible to locals & tourists. Cities as big as Cincinnati or Columbus need much more than buses. The only all-bus cities I've lived in which work are Santander & Granada in Spain. Santander is 34 km2 & Granada is 88 km2 compared with Cincinnati's 300,000+ people in 202 km2 (San Francisco is 122 km2 with a population over 700,000, that's twice as many people in almost half of Cincinnati). Both, despite their size being more akin to Dayton's, make our cities look like ghost towns. I don't think it's an unfair comparison, I think that the policies of low-density sprawl having preference over urban areas resulted not only in lower quality urban areas but destruction of certain parts of said areas which means that prospects for tourism were greatly reduced. It's no coincidence that our cities don't regularly appear in any top 10 list of must-see American cities and that we face more problems than other cities whether it be economic or social.

On a completely unrelated note, I was looking at the construction drawings of the old subway yesterday and on the Brighton Station drawings, "Colerain Ave" was spelled "Colrain".  An error on the part of who did the drawing or was it spelled differently?  Interesting I thought.

On a completely unrelated note, I was looking at the construction drawings of the old subway yesterday and on the Brighton Station drawings, "Colerain Ave" was spelled "Colrain".  An error on the part of who did the drawing or was it spelled differently?  Interesting I thought.

 

I think Colerain is spelled differently on the township's sign too, near Toys-r-Us and hhgregg on Colerain Ave.

Wasting some time following MARTA's routes in Atlanta on Google Earth, I was shocked to see just how sparsely populated its environs are, despite the enormous growth of the metro area since its construction.  This reflects the system's poor design, the huge simultaneous investments in roads and highways, and zoning that is preventing these areas from becoming greater housing and business centers.  Here I picked out areas roughly 4.5 miles from Five Points station on each of MARTA's four branches in order to compare areas of similar distance from Fountain Square.   

 

 

 

 

 

Now compare Norwood, 4.5 miles from Fountain Square:

 

And Northside, also 4.5 miles:

 

Now Deer Park, about 8 or 9 miles out:

 

Also MARTA's inability to cheaply expand reflects the restrictions of heavy rail design -- the lines must be completely grade separated and stations must be 600ft. long.  Light Rail has much more flexibility because grade crossing, short sections of in-street running, and stations are typically much smaller and aren't even staffed (much more like a bus stop).  Some aspects of MARTA's construction are first-rate, like the 4 mile subway under Peachtree St., but had they gone with shorter light rail vehicles they could have built more lines by now. 

Thanks for the visual comparisons of density...that does look to be good news for a Cincinnati system (the great density)!

jmecklenborg, it's amazing the commotion your thread stirred up at SSP. lol ... One thing I would have placed in the thread over there was that there is an economic study be conducted as we speak that should be completed sometime in April.

^I briefly mentioned it in my post that Cincy is very close to moving forward with a streetcar project.

I drive those guys nuts on SSP because I know the southern cities pretty well, better than Detroit or Cleveland for example.  A couple of those guys from the south are some of the most outrageous people I've seen on the internet. 

^Well my thread on SSP has been shut down after 700 hits in about 20 hours.  Whoever polices that place considered it a "versus" thread, and considering my poor personal history with zero tolerance policies (and my brother's who was expelled from high school for stealing one tater tot), that was it.  Maybe I should write him back and send him running for the dictionary by describing my use of versus and the typical internet board of that word as false cognates. 

 

Well, I got to see it before it was shut down, great thread.