6 minutes ago, 10albersa said:

The other side of the equation is that the R team doesn't have the presidential primary to vote in March 17th, I think SORTA was probably banking on that when they chose this as the date to put it on the ballot. But now, Biden has fully run away with the nomination and D turnout may be lower than initially anticipated.

 

Yeah, it's crazy how we had to wait years and years for the *perfect* spring election.   Now with Biden the likely runaway nominee, plus the virus, fewer people will vote next week than would have otherwise.  I don't know what that means for the result, but if it happens to pass it will be thanks to an incredibly small number of people.  

 

There is of course nothing stopping SORTA from lobbing it on the fall ballot should it not pass.  They could have put it on the spring and fall ballots for the past 20 years and eventually it would have by chance passed. 

 

 

 

If this fails, our only hope is ODOT taking the advice of its constituents and actually bumping up transit funding (per the results of their survey).

16 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

I'm not sure where the yard signs are coming from.  Was there an event?

 

There's a form you can fill out on the Move Forward Hamco website to get one. You an pick them up at their office on Gilbert or, I believe, they are making deliveries as well. I grabbed a few for my neighbors as well. We have a lot of them in our few blocks.

Just heard a Dusty Rhodes ad for Issue 7 on the radio.  It was all about being "good for taxpayers" and building the Western Hills Viaduct and Columbia Parkway.  Did not say anything about increasing bus service, only "realigning routes".  

 

 

In case you are curious: yes, there was someone holding a "No on 7" sign outside the Board of Elections over the weekend (in addition to wearing a KAG hat and a Trump sticker). I'm not 100% sure it's her, but this woman does look a bit like Barbara Holwadel, the woman who wrote the op-ed that was published by the Enquirer and other outlets. So the No on 7 movement may not be very big.

TANK is reducing service for all routes except for the 2X, eliminating fares, and only allowing back door boardings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

 

Metro will be suspending fares starting March 29 and will be moving to a reduced (Saturday) schedule Monday through Friday. They said on social media that "customers are asked to board and exit through the rear door" but I don't know for sure if front door boarding will be allowed -- personally I think that all-door boarding makes the most sense to maximize social distancing, rather than forcing all boardings/departures through the single back door.

6 hours ago, taestell said:

Metro will be suspending fares starting March 29 and will be moving to a reduced (Saturday) schedule Monday through Friday. They said on social media that "customers are asked to board and exit through the rear door" but I don't know for sure if front door boarding will be allowed -- personally I think that all-door boarding makes the most sense to maximize social distancing, rather than forcing all boardings/departures through the single back door.

Based on my interpretation of the meeting, I'm not sure they wanted to mandate rear boarding because it could lead to worse social distancing while queuing if there's a large enough group waiting. Doubt it'll be an issue, and they removed the front door-only buses from service - is that just the hybrid ones? 

 

https://www.go-metro.com/uploads/Board Packet (3-20) Special Meeting.pdf 

 

^ The drop in ridership (p. 6) is genuinely sad considering that Jan and Feb were up 8.7% YTD over budgeted expectations. Express ridership was down 82% and local down 43% last week and likely to be worse this week. Brutal. 

 

I do hope these board meetings remain more accessible like this (i.e. publicly streamed, ideally recorded) with Metro's move to the new office. Obviously Coronavirus is a mess for everyone, but it's hard not to wonder why this meeting couldn't have been held last week. Today's meeting only had 8/13 members present (2 in-person). 

 

Edit to add: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/noncms/cmgr/memo/index.cfm?action=public.viewpdf&name=40761.pdf 

This FYI memo was interesting to me about fares and who has the right to change them. 

Edited March 25, 20205 yr by shawk

It is unclear to me what this means:

 

 

Looks like they're going to start charging fares again. ?

 

 

It's unclear what ultra-low turnout for the primary will mean for Issue 7.  No telling who has voted and who will sometime in the next few weeks.  

 

Meanwhile, I've heard the usual right wing suspects going crazy over the tax increase on talk radio.  

Free transit rides shelved

 

The city of Cincinnati has asked Metro to discontinue fare-less bus rides because it believes the buses are being used to coordinate illegal social gatherings downtown, Mayor John Cranley said Monday.

 

Metro plans to begin charging fares again by the end of this week, said Darryl Haley, the CEO of the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority, Metro’s parent agency.

 

“We want to make sure buses are there for the people who need them,” Cranley said. “It was clear many people took advantage of the free buses to come down and gather illegally.”

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/04/06/free-transit-rides-shelved.html

On 4/6/2020 at 5:18 PM, jmecklenborg said:

It's unclear what ultra-low turnout for the primary will mean for Issue 7.  No telling who has voted and who will sometime in the next few weeks.  

 

Meanwhile, I've heard the usual right wing suspects going crazy over the tax increase on talk radio.  

 

Perhaps a silver lining is that if the vote fails, the extraordinary circumstances will make it easier to reintroduce another ballot issue soon. Depending on how local elections go, that could mean a more ambitious proposal for the redo. 

2 hours ago, carnevalem said:

 

Perhaps a silver lining is that if the vote fails, the extraordinary circumstances will make it easier to reintroduce another ballot issue soon. Depending on how local elections go, that could mean a more ambitious proposal for the redo. 

 

They can just keep lobbing the thing on one primary and general election after another until it passes.  We could have had this 30+ years ago but they were defeated in 1979 and 1980 and then just gave up until 2002, when the trolls came out of the woodwork to mount a full-court press. 

SORTA eliminates free fares after meeting derailed by sex-talking hacker

 

The board members who run the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority reversed a fare-free policy on Metro’s buses Friday.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/04/10/sorta-eliminates-free-fares-after-meeting-derailed.html

On 4/6/2020 at 5:18 PM, jmecklenborg said:

It's unclear what ultra-low turnout for the primary will mean for Issue 7.  No telling who has voted and who will sometime in the next few weeks.  

 

Meanwhile, I've heard the usual right wing suspects going crazy over the tax increase on talk radio.  

 

Early voting usually favors Democrats so I think it'll probably pass. When I early voted a few days before election day it was very clear that the crowd skewed heavily liberal based on the literature they were taking and discussions in line. 

It's unclear what the impact of Bernie dropping out of the race will be. Most people who were planning to vote absentee have probably already requested their ballots by now, but for the people planning to vote in-person on Election Day, they might be less likely to show up now.

SORTA and CPD are unable to provide evidence that any attendees of the Liberty Shell Party got there via bus -- which is the justification they used for eliminating free fares.

 

 

It looks like the SORTA ballot issue barely squeaked by... are the results final?

Currently up by 625 votes out of 131,261 total votes.

 

They still have to look at provisional ballots from my understanding. And perhaps some ballots that were put in the mail Monday evening but haven't been delivered to the BOE yet.

 

So I wouldn't quite claim victory yet for the sales tax.

There are 14,000 "missing" absentee ballots that were issued but have not been received back. They must be postmarked by 4/27 and received by 5/9 to be valid. Most would probably be received by today or tomorrow at the latest if they were dropped in a mailbox in Hamilton County. So I would estimate that we will more-or-less know the result by tonight.

 

There are also 4,300 provisional ballots.

 

Edit: No additional results will be announced until May 9 at the earliest.

46 minutes ago, taestell said:

There are 14,000 "missing" absentee ballots that were issues but have not been received back. They must be postmarked by 4/27 and received by 5/9 to be valid. Most would probably be received by today or tomorrow at the latest if they were dropped in a mailbox in Hamilton County. So I would estimate that we will more-or-less know the result by tonight.

 

There are also 4,300 provisional ballots.

 

Edit: No additional results will be announced until May 9 at the earliest.

Hoping for the best, but it doesn't looking promising for Issue 7. 

I would guess that the late ballots lean "No on 7" but with Yes having a 625 vote lead, it could really go either way. It's unfortunate that we won't have any more information until the end of next week.

Maybe we'll have the final results some time this week...?

My understanding was that no results will be released until May 19th? 

I thought we were supposed to receive an updated count on either May 8 or May 9. This is the first I'm seeing May 19th. 

I heard there were 500 or so ballots that the BOE had questions on and was waiting for the Secretary of State to make a decision on whether those ballots could be counted or not.

1 hour ago, ryanlammi said:

I thought we were supposed to receive an updated count on either May 8 or May 9. This is the first I'm seeing May 19th. 

 

I think the Enquirer article this morning said we'd get the results Thursday.

We will have the final results on Thursday. Hamilton County BOE has announced that there are 3,322 valid ballots that will be included in the final total that were not included in the preliminary totals released two weeks ago. They have not given any indication of how those 3,322 ballots break down (whether they are Republican, Democrat, or issue-only ballots). Considering that Issue 7 is only ahead by 625 votes, I think it's too early for anyone to be declaring victory. Alicia Reece is probably safe though.

 

 

 

Wow that was razor thin on the bus levy. 

 

Happy that Reece won over Pillich.

Thank goodness that passed. Hopefully this will be a step in the right direction.

Congratulations guys!  I'm happy for you.

 

I have some concern about the timing of this though, the economy is going to tank and I have a feeling that improvements are going to be delayed because of that.

5 minutes ago, neilworms said:

I have some concern about the timing of this though, the economy is going to tank and I have a feeling that improvements are going to be delayed because of that.

 

Absolutely. Metro is going to be digging itself out of a financial hole for the next 2-3 years due to Covid-19. Maybe around 2024-2025 we will start to see some meaningful improvements in bus service. I'm still extremely skeptical that we will actually see any of the BRT that Metro has promised. The best thing we can hope for is that under the next president, we will see a massive investment in public transportation (like the TIGER grants under Obama), and Metro can use some of this money to get a big federal match.

39 minutes ago, taestell said:

 

Absolutely. Metro is going to be digging itself out of a financial hole for the next 2-3 years due to Covid-19. Maybe around 2024-2025 we will start to see some meaningful improvements in bus service. I'm still extremely skeptical that we will actually see any of the BRT that Metro has promised. The best thing we can hope for is that under the next president, we will see a massive investment in public transportation (like the TIGER grants under Obama), and Metro can use some of this money to get a big federal match.

 

I won't go too off topic, but if Biden does win in 2020, he's the most visible active proponent of Amtrak, and I'd imagine in pursuit of buffing up that network as well as other state corridors, there will be an expansion of the TIGER grant program to go with it.  Same with CMAQ funding.

7 minutes ago, 10albersa said:

 

I won't go too off topic, but if Biden does win in 2020, he's the most visible active proponent of Amtrak, and I'd imagine in pursuit of buffing up that network as well as other state corridors, there will be an expansion of the TIGER grant program to go with it.  Same with CMAQ funding.

 

Even if a Biden presidency occurs and even if that administration is overwhelmingly pro public transit, what gives anyone the confidence that SORTA, this city, or this county is going to do anything meaningful? 

 

These people still call Metro Plus "BRT." 

12 minutes ago, 10albersa said:

 

I won't go too off topic, but if Biden does win in 2020, he's the most visible active proponent of Amtrak, and I'd imagine in pursuit of buffing up that network as well as other state corridors, there will be an expansion of the TIGER grant program to go with it.  Same with CMAQ funding.

 

This type of stuff will largely depend on the makeup of Congress after the election as well. If the Senate flips, it will be easier to fund and create these programs. If not, expect any initiative to be vastly watered down or completely obstructed.

 

5 minutes ago, Gordon Bombay said:

 

Even if a Biden presidency occurs and even if that administration is overwhelmingly pro public transit, what gives anyone the confidence that SORTA, this city, or this county is going to do anything meaningful? 

 

These people still call Metro Plus "BRT." 

 

Right. The direction this takes will largely be up to a new SORTA board and political influences. The devil is in the details regarding the infrastructure improvements which have to be proposed by Metro and approved by the County's branch of the Transportation Improvement Board.

 

I expect the Western Hills Viaduct to be largely funded from the infrastructure portion of this tax. Depending on what comes in, those funds could be tied up by this project for years to fund the bond payments for the project. On the transit side, look for more cross-town and county routes, probably triaged "Saturday +" service until the pandemic is over.

 

In either a second Trump administration or Biden Administration the Federal DOT has Small Start grants that Metro will now be able to qualify for to do incremental infrastructure improvements for some level of "better bus." I'd love to see true BRT but the best we could see in the next 5 years is something that is between Metro Plus and Indy's Red Line.

Nice of Cranley to mention the improved bus service in between gushing about the Western Hills Viaduct, repair of "all major roads" (whatever that means), and the lower city earnings tax -- which are the real reasons that the business community wanted this thing to pass -- and before going on to praise transit opponent Tom Luken.

38 minutes ago, Gordon Bombay said:

 

These people still call Metro Plus "BRT." 

 

Not true. Even when they rolled it out they called it a "pre-BRT" demonstration project. They never said it was BRT as far as I can remember.

1 minute ago, taestell said:

Nice of Cranley to mention the improved bus service in between gushing about the Western Hills Viaduct, repair of "all major roads" (whatever that means), and the lower city earnings tax -- which are the real reasons that the business community wanted this thing to pass -- and before going on to praise transit opponent Tom Luken.

 

 

There are actually lots of people in the business community who see the value in improved transit. The leadership at Kroger and P&G know it is necessary to attract top young talent. And there are folks like George Vincent who you wouldn't expect to be pro-transit but very much are. No doubt they are also happy about the lower earnings tax too. 

 

I'm actually surprised that the lower earnings tax wasn't a bigger part of the marketing for this. I talked to lots of folks in the city who didn't know that they would actually be getting a tax cut if this passed, even though they just voted on Issue 22. You have to spell these things out for people. Most are not paying attention. Issue 7 did poorly in a lot of burbs where lots of people are paying the earnings tax. It should've killed in those areas.

Compare the amount of press coverage for Issue 7

 

$2,500,000,000 in bus funding

$1,250,000,000 in tax cuts

$750,000,000 in road funding

 

to the streetcar 

 

$150,000,000 capital

$100,000,000 operational (25 years)

Republicans don't compare numbers -- they just repeat them out loud by themselves.

54 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

 

Not true. Even when they rolled it out they called it a "pre-BRT" demonstration project. They never said it was BRT as far as I can remember.

 

Its been my experience that during multiple community meetings I've attended (both pre and during levy) that it has been referred to as "BRT." While not exclusively used by all officials, I've heard some public folks refer to it (and the 3X because it can kind of use the highway side lanes) as "BRT Lite:" I would argue that both of those lines don't even meet the criteria to even have the BRT term near them. If anything, they're simply express routes or in Metro Plus' case: a frequent regular line. It's certainly not fast or "rapid." 

My point is, many of the people involved with this whole thing are ignorant (either willfully or by circumstance) of even modest improvements being done in other cities. While I'm happy to see some improvement, I'm very skeptical of what will actually emerge. As @JYP said—the devils is in the details, but when it comes to politicians (and aspiring politicians) and business folks who have demonstrated a clear lack of understanding when it comes to transit (in addition to bungling the streetcar for several years now), I have no real confidence. 

Even if everything in this levy happens: we may finally have transit on the level of.... Indianapolis? And that's if BRT is built properly. 

Metro plus isn't a frequent regular line, it's limited-stop frequent service.  Unfortunately due to its detour through Uptown OTR though, it's no faster than the route 4 buses between Government Square and Kenwood.  Nevertheless, frequent limited-stop service is more like rapid transit than express service, which skips over inner locations to run a more "regular" route farther out. 

In the world we have, there aren't going to be a lot of transit experts, which includes our politicians who may be calling it BRT-lite, or people like me who are only recently getting interested in transit. Regular people like my dad are going to tune out or have their eyes roll back into their head if they hear the acronym BRT, but he'll sure as hell complain about if it's not effective. 

 

We know that DOTE, SORTA, and our city politicians are not exactly progressive. So I think it'd be helpful if there are more people in the room advocating for or explaining the details everyone here seems to agree are crucial. I'm personally not an urban planner, Metro employee, or transit expert, so it'd be nice to know what to focus on or to know what to look for if it can help advocacy. 

 

No offense meant to those who are frustrated or skeptical, but I guess I'd rather see if there can be a renewed focus on what can be done in the short term now that this has passed that can make the long-term more possible. The defeatism makes lurkers like me want to tune out rather than engage or learn more. Maybe this isn't enough, but now it's done, and we have every member of council on record (other than Sundermann) as supporting improvements to the bus system and 70%+ of city voters agreeing. 

 

Realistically, what can be done on the city end to make Metro more effective ASAP (let's say 1-2 years)? Does a south-bound transit-only lane on Walnut still make sense? I know the city is still waiting on the (overdue) DOTE report on the Reading bus-only corridor. 

46 minutes ago, shawk said:

 

We know that DOTE, SORTA, and our city politicians are not exactly progressive.

 

DOTE leadership is stuck in the stone age. 

 

But lots of folks at SORTA are very progressive and knowledgeable. However, the environment they operate in makes their jobs almost impossible. SORTA has been held back by a lack of funding, thanks to local, regional, and state politicians, for years. Once consumer spending returns and this money starts flowing in, everyone is going to be beyond impressed with how well SORTA performs. 

8 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

 

DOTE leadership is stuck in the stone age. 

 

But lots of folks at SORTA are very progressive and knowledgeable. However, the environment they operate in makes their jobs almost impossible. SORTA has been held back by a lack of funding, thanks to local, regional, and state politicians, for years. Once consumer spending returns and this money starts flowing in, everyone is going to be beyond impressed with how well SORTA performs. 

Yeah I apologize - I was referring to the board appointees rather than employees. But I definitely hope you're right and I personally am excited about it. 

Edited May 14, 20205 yr by shawk

1 hour ago, shawk said:

In the world we have, there aren't going to be a lot of transit experts, which includes our politicians who may be calling it BRT-lite, or people like me who are only recently getting interested in transit. Regular people like my dad are going to tune out or have their eyes roll back into their head if they hear the acronym BRT, but he'll sure as hell complain about if it's not effective. 

 

We know that DOTE, SORTA, and our city politicians are not exactly progressive. So I think it'd be helpful if there are more people in the room advocating for or explaining the details everyone here seems to agree are crucial. I'm personally not an urban planner, Metro employee, or transit expert, so it'd be nice to know what to focus on or to know what to look for if it can help advocacy. 

 

No offense meant to those who are frustrated or skeptical, but I guess I'd rather see if there can be a renewed focus on what can be done in the short term now that this has passed that can make the long-term more possible. The defeatism makes lurkers like me want to tune out rather than engage or learn more. Maybe this isn't enough, but now it's done, and we have every member of council on record (other than Sundermann) as supporting improvements to the bus system and 70%+ of city voters agreeing. 

 

Realistically, what can be done on the city end to make Metro more effective ASAP (let's say 1-2 years)? Does a south-bound transit-only lane on Walnut still make sense? I know the city is still waiting on the (overdue) DOTE report on the Reading bus-only corridor. 

 

A lot of transit supporters and progressives were flushed out of the city after 2013. Exhaustion from the attempted streetcar cancellation plus new leadership ran opposed to transit in general. Lots of people who genuinely believed in the city and wanted it to change just got tired of banging their heads against the wall and left. 

 

Metro leadership between 2014-2018 was meh at best. That fuels a lot of the defeatism from long-time posters here. As someone who's been around for a while, I think there is reason to be (cautiously) optimistic again. Current leadership is termed out next year, its an opportunity to make good urban policy and transportation something everyone can get behind. 

As everyone suspected as Reinventing Metro was evolving, they aren't mentioning BRT anymore, but are acting like they will be doing the other improvements even given the economy right now.

 

Quote

In the coming months, Metro will begin rolling out the Reinventing Metro plan which will provide much needed improvements and expansions, including: 

More crosstown routes

More frequent service

24-hour service on several routes

Expanded weekend service

Earlier and later service on several routes

Circulator routes,

Extension of Express routes

New service to emerging job centers

And an overall expansion of its service area.

 

During this multi-year rollout Metro will continue to engage the community to ensure their evolving needs are met.

 

Here's the BRT map from the re-inventing metro page- https://reinventingmetro.com/index.php?page=bus-rapid-transit

 

I thought if you're actually going to spend some money on true BRT, what if you made Vine street into basically a dedicated busway and had it used by multiple routes. You'd essentially have service every 5 minutes