Perhaps I missed this, but where was Dunbar?

See if you had commuter rail up and running you wouldn't have to deal with this mess. It was also closed for a mudslide a couple of weeks ago.

 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/Columbia-Parkway-closed-due-to-high-water

It's an interesting selling point to use that the railroad doesn't see mudslides like Columbia Parkway does.  It's built on a hillside terrace more than cut into it, plus the rail bed has been there 100 years longer than Columbia Parkway has, so they've had that much more time to shore it up.  Plus there's the fact that the rail bed isn't nearly as wide as any highway, so much less cutting and filling that could destabilize the terrain is necessary.  Weather is such a big factor for transportation interruptions around here, much more so than in many cities. 

When it snows hard, the 'Nati's toast. One time it took my old roommate 5 hours to get from work in Blue Ash to home in Corryville when it suddenly snowed. And he was driving a Jeep. What I figured out to do since I had a 4x4 pickup with mudders was to pick the most treacherous road and just blitz it since people were too scared to use those routes. Another time I was on my way to Columbus and the Kenwood Cut looked like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, so I bolted onto Madison and took it to Kenwood Rd in Madisonville. People were to scared to go up that thing with all that snow that I was able to chug up it with ease even though I was pulling a trailer. Sorta like using that secret back way into Indian Hill on US50 and the railroad underpass at the border of Terrace Park and Milford. I rarely saw trucks like mine until I'd get out to Eastgate or Fairfield, so I had a secret weapon.

When it snows hard, the 'Nati's toast. One time it took my old roommate 5 hours to get from work in Blue Ash to home in Corryville when it suddenly snowed. And he was driving a Jeep. What I figured out to do since I had a 4x4 pickup with mudders was to pick the most treacherous road and just blitz it since people were too scared to use those routes. Another time I was on my way to Columbus and the Kenwood Cut looked like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, so I bolted onto Madison and took it to Kenwood Rd in Madisonville. People were to scared to go up that thing with all that snow that I was able to chug up it with ease even though I was pulling a trailer. Sorta like using that secret back way into Indian Hill on US50 and the railroad underpass at the border of Terrace Park and Milford. I rarely saw trucks like mine until I'd get out to Eastgate or Fairfield, so I had a secret weapon.

 

I used to do the same thing when I had a giant 4 wheel drive truck.  On what may have been the same night as your roommates 5 hour drive, I had to drive from my work in Fields Ertel back to University Heights.  After 3 hours waiting to get from 275 to Montgomery Road in Kenwood, I got off the highway and flew home via backroads. 

 

Now that I have a tiny rear wheel drive car, I just spin in circles on the highway like everyone else.

Don't give people any idea's. We need rail. lol

 

SORTA does in fact own significant portions (though there are some gaps) of the former CL&N right-of-way between Dana and Court Street, and they have passenger rights on the OASIS line from the boathouse to a place called "pig farm" near Reading. The trouble is that those two lines are not really conductive to light rail. The CL&N, for example, bypasses the U.C. area, and the OASIS line takes a long, circuitous route through the east end. 

If the Oasis commuter line is going to happen like they've been playing it up to be, it's going to be great seeing trains utilize the RTC. An exciting time to be a Cincinnatian - The Reds are good and just outside the stadium we're seeing the streetcar line and commuter rail come to life.

 

Didn't the funding get the ax along with all ODOT's other delays?

Yeah.  And the useful part of the CL&N line is from Norwood up through Blue Ash.  It actually used to continue north to Mason, then to its namesake Lebanon, but some subdivisions have been built over the ROW north of I-275.  They'd have to buy several dozen homes to use it again.

If the Oasis commuter line is going to happen like they've been playing it up to be, it's going to be great seeing trains utilize the RTC.

 

I recommend some due-diligence on the Oasis Line. Everyone I know who has taken a look at it has concluded it is a bad project of epic proportions -- amazingly expensive on both the capital and operating side with minimal service and hardly any ridership. I'm pretty sure that it if gets built, it will be the last rail project constructed here for a long time.

We're starting to get into the Eastern Corridor topic. But I concur with John. If you want to see a rail advocacy group come out against a rail proposal, by all means, continue pursuing commuter rail into downtown on the Oasis Line.

If the Oasis commuter line is going to happen like they've been playing it up to be, it's going to be great seeing trains utilize the RTC.

 

I recommend some due-diligence on the Oasis Line. Everyone I know who has taken a look at it has concluded it is a bad project of epic proportions -- amazingly expensive on both the capital and operating side with minimal service and hardly any ridership. I'm pretty sure that it if gets built, it will be the last rail project constructed here for a long time.

 

Well there goes my dream of taking the streetcar from my house to the RTC, transferring to the Oasis and arriving at my girlfriend’s home in Columbia Tusculum.  I guess I’ll get used to the traffic on Columbia Parkway.

^ Or we can all get behind the Wasson Line to UC to downtown.

^ Or we can all get behind the Wasson Line to UC to downtown.

 

Yep. That line has TREMENDOUS ridership potential!

Well there goes my dream of taking the streetcar from my house to the RTC, transferring to the Oasis and arriving at my girlfriends home in Columbia Tusculum.  I guess Ill get used to the traffic on Columbia Parkway.

 

On the bright side, since rail projects take years to be planned and built, you'd likely be married/broken up/moved to different neighborhoods by the time it started operating anyway.

How does the Wasson line serve UC?  Montgomery Road is as far west as it goes, and with the rest of the CL&N route pretty well chopped up, the most logical way to connect the Wasson line to downtown would be streetcar/light rail tracks on Montgomery and Gilbert (or perhaps a Montgomery-Woodburn-Taft/McMillan-Gilbert routing).  That doesn't get anywhere near UC without a significant detour.  I'm not trying to be contrary here, I just want to know what the expectations are.

By way of Mt. Auburn Tunnel: http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/mtauburn-tunnel.html

Jeffery, the MetroMoves plan was going to see the Wasson Line join the Montgomery/Gilbert line and access Uptown with a streetar line.  The "I-71 Light Rail" was going to travel through Uptown on the surface and reach downtown via the Mt. Auburn Tunnel.  That plan didn't include the Wasson line because it was a preliniary study.

By way of Mt. Auburn Tunnel: http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/mtauburn-tunnel.html

 

i don't know much about it, but no tunnel exists today right?  that sounds awfully expensive and cost prohibitive to build a tunnel through Mt. Auburn.

^ If it served only one alignment, i.e. the Eastern Corridor Wasson Line, that would probably be true. But if the I-75 and I-71 lines were also routed through the tunnel to UC and Xavier and then splitting up there, the cost would effectively drop by about two-thirds.

 

With rush-hour trains running every two or three minutes between the CBD and Xavier, we would begin to have a different kind of of city, rapidly redensifying along that corridor.

They went so far as to do test borings to estimate the cost.  They had photos posted on oki's website of the rock back in 1998 but I'm sure those photos are long gone.

 

The tunnel actually made a ton of sense from an operations standpoint, as it permitted high speed while totally avoiding wear on trains associated with climbing steep hills.  Also, there's really no other way to get rail to Mt. Auburn (which has significant redevelopment potential) other than a tunnel with a deep station. 

^Are tunnels really that expensive?  It seems like with the operations considerations you outlined and the bypassing of ROW issues, they'd actually be worth considering more often than we actually do.

All earth-moving is expensive. The numbers I've seen is that earth-moving costs upwards of $50 per cubic yard -- more with tunneling because of constructing tunneling casings, drainage, emergency systems, etc.

The reason for the expense is that the tunnel boring machines are mostly imported from Germany and use German crews.  So you're stuck paying about 40-50 Germans to live in the US for two years, with a $100/day per diem above their salaries.   

 

Then the tunnels themselves are lined with reinforced concrete -- potentially miles of it.  So the volume of building material is much larger than most would imagine.  Add to that the high cost of deep stations, and the conversation begins at $100 million per mile.  Seattle saved something like $200 million by merely excluding a station from their current light rail tunnel extension.   

^Wow, that is pricey!

 

The reason for the expense is that the tunnel boring machines are mostly imported from Germany and use German crews.  So you're stuck paying about 40-50 Germans to live in the US for two years, with a $100/day per diem above their salaries.   

 

Sounds like a market that an American company should look into.

^ The investigation of the rock and soils for the Mt. Auburn Tunnel were virtually perfect for tunnel construction. The cost in 2001 was about $10,000 per lineal foot. Late in the game, there was interest in daylighting part of the tunnel as it passed west of Christ Hospital.

 

Living in Gin knows the most about this today.

Westinghouse, Pullman, General Electric, etc. were lobbyists in the 1960's for Washington Metro-type systems for all American cities.  With the exception of GE, all of the passenger train companies went out of business with the demise of passenger rail in the US.

 

That's part of the reason why passenger rail is in such a bad position here -- there are no domestic companies lobbying for it.  Then, government funding for systems inevitably means money leaving the country for Siemens, Bombardier, etc.  New York City subway cars are manufactured in Kansas, I think, but all of these light rail trains and streetcars are built overseas.  Even commuter rail trains are often built overseas. 

NYC's newer subway trains are mostly assembled in upstate New York due to "Buy American" clauses in the contract, but the component parts come from all over the world. I think the whole notion of something being entirely built within one country is fairly obsolete now, at least when it comes to anything that involves complicated technology. The companies that manufacture the NYC subway's newest trains are Kawasaki (Japanese), Alstom (French), Siemens (German), and Bombardier (Canadian). And it's not unusual for a Kawasaki train to have a Siemens propulsion system, or some other similar combo.

 

ETA: I think companies like Pullman and Westinghouse were either already dead or at least already getting out of the passenger rail business by the time systems like the Washington Metro came along. Metro's first generation of railcars were manufactured by Rohr (which left the transit market soon afterwards and now concentrates on aerospace), and Breda (an Italian company that was nationalized and liquidated, with its transit segment now known as AnsaldoBreda). The newer railcars for Metro are by Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki.

There are many types of metals that aren't made in the States. There's a lot of race car parts that are made here but can't be sold as "Made in the USA" in some states because the metal isn't available from U.S. suppliers any more.

So why all of the off-topic discussions of tunnels, etc? From what I have seen the Eastern Corridor project is not even close to any forward movement. The major reason is there is no funding. They don't even have funds to extend the evaluation and planning stage beyond its current time-frame, and there is absolutely zero available to start any kind of construction.

 

The only people who keep publicizing this are the ones involved in the planning process, because without it they have no jobs. Face it, this project is about as dead as Ford Motor Co. coming back to Batavia.

^Doesn't seem like many people here would have a problem with that as it doesn't even seem like the rail supporters like this project.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120216/BIZ/302160168/Hardy-transit-hardy-economy?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

 

 

Did anyone see this Article on Cincinnati.com? It was only on the front page for a few hours. Thoughts?

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120216/BIZ/302160168/Hardy-transit-hardy-economy?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

 

 

Did anyone see this Article on Cincinnati.com? It was only on the front page for a few hours. Thoughts?

 

About what I would expect out of the OKI regional council. They must remain optimistic about all of the proposed projects in the area otherwise people wonder what value they are. But the Big Monkey which sticks out is the Brent Spence Bridge. It is going to cost so much there will be little money for anything else.

It's so bizarre to me that light rail in this corridor is the first priority for the region. Connecting downtown and the airport should be the first priority, with the northern suburbs coming next.

 

kjbrill is right that the bridgedoggle will eat up the majority of capital transportation dollars for years to come. A sweetheart stimulus package for Liberty Town Square-type developments in exurban NKY. You'd think those in Butler and Warren counties (esp. West Chester, Liberty Twp., and Mason) would be most opposed to both the Eastern Corridor and B$B projects, as their primary function will be to make it easier for developers that would build in those areas to build in Clermont or NKY counties instead.

A regional sales tax can fund these projects. 14 billion is financed in King County(Seattle) by sales tax to get their transportation projects done and we are afraid of 2-3 billion. What a joke.

I think people feel so burned by the stadiums that a transit tax is a tough sell, despite the fact they are completely different. I suppose we could take a card out of the coast playbook and just put it on the ballot every year until it goes our way.

 

Going to the airport presents yet another difficulty, due to the airport being located across state lines. OKI needs to get all the dual state stuff sorted out. Until Metro and TANK combine, I will hold little faith that an airport connector is imminent. If I had any influence on OKI, combining regional bus services under one umbrella would be high on this list of priorities. It should be a bipartisan issue, reducing inefficiency of duplicate services and improving transit options in one fell swoop. Of course, the competing interests are not so much Republican-Democrat as Ohio-Kentucky.

No easy fix.  People that would vote against a transportation issue will be setting the metro up to fail. By the time gas is $6, $7 $8+ etc  it would already be too late. The price of ANY rail would be ASTRONOMICAL by then. And the only metro's with real will be the only viable ones to live. Well unless you like to shell out $150 for  fillup, along with $7 for  milk and $5 for a loaf bread.

Going to the airport presents yet another difficulty, due to the airport being located across state lines. OKI needs to get all the dual state stuff sorted out. Until Metro and TANK combine, I will hold little faith that an airport connector is imminent. If I had any influence on OKI, combining regional bus services under one umbrella would be high on this list of priorities. It should be a bipartisan issue, reducing inefficiency of duplicate services and improving transit options in one fell swoop. Of course, the competing interests are not so much Republican-Democrat as Ohio-Kentucky.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.

From All Aboard Ohio's SW Ohio Director: If you cannot attend Wasson Line hearing at 12noon, please send a note asking to preserve line as Rail Corridor.  It can be as simple as asking just that - doesn't need to be elaborate.  You're help is appreciated.  Here are City Council's emails:

 

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Email Sent.

 

"Dear Council Members,

 

I am unable to attend today's Wasson Line corridor meeting a noon, but wanted to send a note urging you to preserve the corridor for future light rail or commuter transit. Due to the value of this corridor through a densely populated sector of the city, this line is worth more for its potential for commuter rail than as a bike trail.

 

Thank you for your time."

Short e-mails work best! Good job!

I've sent a short email as well. Unfortunately, I have a work meeting til noon and won't be able to get to city hall in time.

With housing at just about historic lows. Isn't this the best time to buy right of ways? What do these people do every day? Secure funding!!!

If capital and operating funding is found, this type of vehicle might be perfect for the Eastern Corridor and other potential routes in Ohio....

 

6/5/2012 11:30:00 AM   

 

FRA issues alternative-design vehicle waiver to Denton County Transportation Authority

 

Yesterday, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) announced it approved the Denton County Transportation Authority’s (DCTA) request to operate Stadler GTW vehicles concurrent with traditional, federally compliant equipment. The waiver means that for the first time, lightweight low-floor vehicles will be permitted to operate in rail corridors concurrently with traditional vehicles, helping to expand commuter-rail options for U.S. transportation authorities, DCTA officials said in a prepared statement.

 

In 2009, the FRA’s Rail Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) prepared a set of technical criteria and procedures for evaluating passenger train-sets built to alternative designs that enable lighter, more fuel-efficient rail vehicles equipped with a crash energy management system to commingle with traditional equipment. The DCTA/Stadler U.S. Inc. alternative design waiver is the first comprehensive submittal that follows the RSAC Engineering Task Force procedures for Tier I equipment, DCTA officials said.

 

The waiver request “demonstrates that the enhanced crashworthiness and passenger protection systems inherent to DCTA’s new rail vehicles meet the latest and most stringent safety standards in the U.S.,” they said.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/FRA-issues-alternativedesign-vehicle-waiver-to-Denton-County-Transportation-Authority--31230

 

 

They can be operated as diesel-electric (as they do in Austin, TX) or pure electrics (as they do in Europe)....

 

 

^Would this vehicle be appropriate for passenger rail such as the proposed 3-C line, or just commuter rail?

That's kind of funny seeing this sleek new train on some rickety old wood pile trestle. 

^Would this vehicle be appropriate for passenger rail such as the proposed 3-C line, or just commuter rail?

 

Probably just commuter rail.

 

That's kind of funny seeing this sleek new train on some rickety old wood pile trestle. 

 

Part of the reason why I used that image -- to show that you don't need some special infrastructure to accommodate the train.

Is this a new web page?

 

http://easterncorridor.org/oasis-commyerraill

No- It's been around for maybe a year

On this topic, anyone going tomorrow?

 

PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT MEETINGS - OASIS RAIL TRANSIT

 

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

LeBlond Recreation Center

2335 Riverside Drive

Cincinnati, OH 45202

6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Q&A Session: 7 p.m.