If you go to Cinplify.com and click highest rated stories for the past year the results as of7/25

 

1. streetcar

2. streetcar

3. OTR

4. OTR

Hopefully instead of these things being read about, i hope they start to happen

Hopefully instead of these things being read about, i hope they start to happen

 

The more people are properly educated about the things going on in their community and how they work...the better.  All good work stems from somewhere...some require shear funding, others political support, others popular support.  In the streetcar case (and any public transit scenario) public support is ultimately needed to reassure the politicians that they aren't committing political suicide.  Funding for the streetcar is not as big as an issue as the mountain that is public perception.

 

Obviously we all want this to happen as soon as possible, and not just keep reading about it.  But as average/run of the mill citizens we only control so much.  We need to be educated and vocal in our stance on these issues.  This is simply one avenue for doing so.

 

    Here's a funny story.

 

    I drove to Gilbert Avenue today to check out the streetcar rails. There is some construction going on in the center of the street, and the streetcar rails are exposed. I parked, walked to the center, and stood on the tracks to take some photos.

 

    A guy who happened to be driving by stopped his car next to me and asked if they were bringing the streetcars back!

As funny as that is it's almost sad how little some one can care about their community. Evan crazier story. I was walking down to the reds game with some of my buddies when we got back in town from school, and they asked why they don't put bars and other things in between the stadiums. Talk about living under a rock. The enquirer just does a terrible job on development coverage in downtown it is rediculous. i wouldn't be supprized if they moved their building to West Chester. Might as well they like it enough. sorry for my rant i know hardly any of this was pertainent to the street car

If you go to Cinplify.com and click highest rated stories for the past year the results as of7/25

 

1. streetcar

2. streetcar

3. OTR

4. OTR

 

Domain referrals:

1. urbanohio.com

 

Only in Cincinnati can one make a form of mass transit a race issue.

 

That's definitely not true.  Racism/classism has played a huge role in the placement of subway lines around cities in the U.S.  Los Angeles would probably have a subway from downtown to Santa Monica if it wasn't for the objections and refusals of residents of Beverly Hills, Hancock Park, Westwood, etc.  Also, Georgetown would probably have a stop on the metro in D.C. had the residents not been so against opening their community to potential riff raff that might have easy access.

I found this image of the old streetcar bridge over Eden Park Drive:

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Georgetown would probably have a stop on the metro in D.C. had the residents not been so against opening their community to potential riff raff that might have easy access.

 

The Washington City Paper (which is/was like Cincinnati's City Beat but a whole lot better, with real investigative reporting) had a great article on the development of the Washington D.C. Metro system (this article was from the late '90's).  In short the Washington Metro came about in lieu of the highway system tearing through the capital as it did in so many U.S. cities.  If you take a look at the configuration, or live in Washington and try to use the damn thing to get around, you'll notice that it is pretty much built to bring commuters in from outside the city into downtown D.C., the area where the offices of the federal government are concentrated.  The folks who pushed for a subway in lieu of a interstate highway were a combination of preservationists and neighborhood activists.  The fact that Georgetown doesn't have a Metro stop had more to do with the desire to preserve the Eighteenth Century village character of the place than to "keep out riff-raff".  Obviously the high-end clothing stores and numerous bars on M Street currently draw the riff-raff in regardless.  There also may have been some legitimate routing issues that I'm not aware of.  Unless they built a tunnel that went west on M and then up Wisconsin, a subway tunnel simply paralleling the Potomac on the Maryland side isn't going to hit areas of dense population, even today.  I doubt whether it would have in the seventies.

 

Another interesting feature of the transportation history of Georgetown is that there is an elevated parkway that runs the entire length of the neighborhood, right into Washington Circle.  If the Whitehurst Parkway were in Cincinnati, we'd be complaining how it cut off the rest of the city from river, and how it was the cause of a myriad of troubles, whereas in Georgetown, the shadows it casts merely obscure the faces of the freshman using their fake ID's to drink at Chadwick's.  Also interesting to note is that the Whitehurst Parkway was built in the 30's when Georgetown was a run down area of DC and only just beginning to be refurbished.

I think I read once that due to the river a station under Georgetown was going to have to be ridiculously deep and expensive and there was more of a lack of an effort to build the line there than an effort to keep it away. 

 

Construction of the expressways as much as transit lines spurred fear of the bad element slipping in and out of residential suburbs, however people don't take into account that most criminals primarily rob and eat their own.  There was also a lot of fear that the expressways were going to be the scene of planned and spontaneous drag racing by hot-rodders but I suppose they're as much the scene of trucker slow-downs. 

 

This website appeared around '97 or '98 and was the first road & transit website I ever saw, and it has a lot on construction of the Washington Metro and the various canceled interstates:

 

http://www.roadstothefuture.com/main.html

 

^ That's Scott Kozel's web-site, a frequent poster at http://groups.google.com/group/misc.transport.road/topics . It's a well thought out web-site, and he has a new site dedicated to highways within the beltway (linked within).

 

When did yours go online jmecklenborg? I recalled reading it years ago and it is a well constructed web-site!

^ That's Scott Kozel's web-site, a frequent poster at http://groups.google.com/group/misc.transport.road/topics . It's a well thought out web-site, and he has a new site dedicated to highways within the beltway (linked within).

 

 

Not a friend of rail transit.

My memories living in DC in the seventies are that the objections to a Georgetown station were as LincolnKennedy stated: fear that it might force too much development.  Those with that opinion liked to point out how Roslyn & Crystal City developed as an "I told you so."  Those with the opposite opinion would point out how the Eastern Market station didn't ruin Capitol Hill.  Would have been interesting to see how it would have turned out.

 

I was always disappointed that they dropped the Lincolnia line which would have run from the Pentagon out Columbia Pike then over to Lincolnia.

 

Oh, and by the way, I lot of DC (and most Gtown) residents would like to see the Whitehurst gone.  Maybe westside commuters like it?

Kozel is really not, and there are not as many articles or depth in the Metro or any of the other mass transit systems. He formerly worked for VDOT, IIRC.

>When did yours go online jmecklenborg? I recalled reading it years ago and it is a well constructed web-site!

 

I had to think about it for a minute.  It was fall of 99.  I started taking photos of the various construction projects around town in 98 like the Fort Washington Way reconstruction and they started piling up although a lot of them were black & white negatives that I still haven't scanned.  All of those color photos were scanned on a flatbed scanner and looked fine back then since everyone's computer monitors stunk compared to what's out there now and I think I saved them all at jpeg resolution 3.  I'm not looking forward to going back and scanning all those color negatives at some point.  It'll easily be a 50 to 100 hour chore. 

 

Scot Kozel's site really suffers from a lack of photographs, as do a lot of similar sites and certainly anything that started before digital photography.  Going around shooting slide or color negative film was and still is ridiculously expensive and then the time spent scanning it was another minute per shot.   

 

 

^ He has a lot of photographs for some projects, like the Springfield Interchange, but it's just buried in links. It's not very user friendly.

 

As for color negatives, unless you are doing prints, I would just suggest a simple and cheap plustek OpticFilm 7200. Cost me very little, but the built-in software sucked. Downloaded a free program and does slides and negatives fine.

http://davesrailpix.com/csr/csr.htm

 

This is a well done website of the history of Cincy's street cars.

Check out the link on the top "Another good site on the Cincinnati system is here" this guy has really done his homework

 

Awesome site!!  I didn't know we had THAT MUCH rail service back then.  Funny how things may come full circle. 

Does anyone know if Streetcars derails in ice? Cincinnati has had ALOT of ice storms the past few years.

I would assume that they don't. I go to West Virginia University and we have a rapid transit system and they keep the tracks heated to avoid issues like that.

Does anyone know if Streetcars derails in ice? Cincinnati has had ALOT of ice storms the past few years.

 

I'm pretty sure this has been covered already in this very thread...but if I remember correctly it was stated that most cold-climate cities have some sort of heaters installed on the tracks that prevent ice from forming.  Streetcars are typically more dependable in ice storms than virtually any other type of transit.  The main issue facing streetcar systems would be fallen leaves.  It is difficult to keep them off the track at all times (although sweepers can help) and they came become quite slippery in wet weather conditions.

In icy weather, they often run the cars all night to keep ice from building up on the overhead wire. In this climate, they would install switch warmers. That's the biggest problem - frozen switches. They would never derail in icey conditions, but the streetcar might have to drop sand on the tracks to start moving on a icy slope.

 

Look at it this way, Buffalo and Minneapolis both have light rail. Ditto Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. And Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto.

 

Not a problem.

^True, none of Cleveland's lines have problems in the snow. Rarely (Once every 7 years) a train will have a very minor derailing in rain. The two light rail lines were shut down briefly today in extremely heavy rain. The heavy rail line was open.

Was any body else under the impression that Tarbell was going to try to get the streetcar project really started before his term ran out. Maybe I'm just fabricating that in my head.

Jim will be missed big time, he was one of OTR's first pioneers and has saved many buildings from the wrecking ball.  I'm glad Roxanne Qualls is on board now, she is pro-transit and a big supporter of cincinnati's public stairways, unlike leslie ghiz who goes out of her way to close stairways down so public transportation users don't trek thru her $$$$ Rich friends neighborhood. Glad to have Roxy on board!

Qualls will be a better council member in nearly every respect than Tarbell. Major upgrade. The difference is mainly respect and leadership.

 

She's not the mascot that Tarbell is, but I'd bet she'll be better at forming alliances and getting votes.

^Qualls is a quality politician, as Cramer says.  Much more solid than Tarbell, despite his charms.  I'm not quite sure what her motivation is in taking this spot, though clearly Charter wants to hold onto this seat.  Qualls will be a strong supporter of the streetcar.  The real interesting thing will be to see who Mallory chooses to be vice-mayor.  Tarbell was a nice choice because he was not a potential rival.

I saw a book about the Cincinnati stairs at a friend's house. Qualls wrote the forward. Here's an inexact quote: "It always amused me that people thought the stairs increased crime. As if people were carrying TVs, VCRs and bicycles up 300 yards of stairs."

If you have too much time on your hands at 5:00a Saturday morning, Channel 12 is repeating a half-hour interview show on the Cincinnati Streetcar. I didn't think it was anything special, but the host of the show did, and apparently they've had a number of requests to re-air the segment. It includes some very good video of the Portland Streetcar.

 

Also, you may be able to stream this and the prior segment on-line. The name of the show is "Make Peace With Nature."

 

I saw a book about the Cincinnati stairs at a friend's house. Qualls wrote the forward. Here's an inexact quote: "It always amused me that people thought the stairs increased crime. As if people were carrying TVs, VCRs and bicycles up 300 yards of stairs."

LOL

If you have too much time on your hands at 5:00a Saturday morning, Channel 12 is repeating a half-hour interview show on the Cincinnati Streetcar. I didn't think it was anything special, but the host of the show did, and apparently they've had a number of requests to re-air the segment. It includes some very good video of the Portland Streetcar.

 

Also, you may be able to stream this and the prior segment on-line. The name of the show is "Make Peace With Nature."

 

 

I recorded this and watched it yesterday. You did a fine job explaining the differences between the old and modern streetcars. And really great footage of the Portland system.

 

Kind of odd host though. At one point, he asked about other cities, then when you answered about Kansas City, he said, "but we don't live in Kansas City!"

 

It's local news...what do you expect.  :laugh:

Dear Cincinnatian,

 

Early this fall, Cincinnati's city manager will report to city council with respect to how the first phase of a streetcar system could be financed, built and operated in Downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine. The consultants studying the project concluded last May that the downtown streetcar project would return benefits to our community well in excess of its cost. If approved by City Council this fall, construction could begin in a year, and the line connecting The Banks with Findlay Market could be operating by 2010.

 

To enable Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky residents to understand how rail transit might work here, the Alliance for Regional Transit has been leading trips to Portland, Oregon for several years. Portland has the nation's only modern streetcar and one of the nation's best light rail systems. Over 300 of your neighbors have gone to Portland with us, and sometimes we've been joined by residents of other cities. Ask around -- you undoubtedly know a colleague or neighbor who taken the time to do this, probably several people. And someone has suggested that you participate in our next tour of Portland on Friday, September 28th.

 

I have reserved rooms between September 26th and September 30th at The Paramount Hotel -- here: http://www.portlandparamount.com/about/index.html The Paramount will charge you $139 per night for a standard room to $154 for a suite, and they won't charge for a second person in the room. The hotel will hold these reservations at this rate until September 7th.

 

In addition, the Alliance charges $100 per person for the tour including your lunch on Friday, Friday evening dinner and tickets for the Portland Aerial Tram.

 

We need all of your time between Noon and 10:00p on Friday, September 28th. Other than that, you're on your own. Most people will arrive on the evening of Thursday, September 27th and leave on Saturday or Sunday, but you could spend less than a day in Portland and complete the entire streetcar tour. Don't book any flight that arrives in Portland later than 10:45a on Friday.

 

Lots of people who've been to Portland several times before have remarked that they had never viewed the city from the perspective of these tours. You'll come to understand how Portland is able to attract new residents and businesses by offering car-competitive alternatives like the streetcar. It's a pretty good story, but it's not perfect, and we'll show you those things too.

 

Delta's well-timed nonstop flights were $539 this morning, but I've seen fares on United and Northwest in the $250 range.

 

On September 28th, the weather will be perfect.

 

If you are interested, please write back right away, and I'll send you more information.

 

Thanks,

 

John Schneider

513-579-1300

 

help beta test the new streetcar website.

 

www.cincystreetcar.com

 

remember it is only a beta.  email all concerns to [email protected]

Forgive me if this has been asked before. Will the Streetcar like buses have a get off point where everybody must exit? I have heard some cities have had problems where homeless would stay on the streetcars  all day. 

my guess is they would do random patrolling and ask for peoples tickets.  atleast this is what they do in amsterdam.  You can technically ride for free on their trams/streetcars (and I did) but if you get caught on there without one by random patrols, its a hefty fine. 

CincyStreetcar.... not a bad looking website.  Simple and easy to navigate.  You might want to add some video capabilities to it, so viewers can see some streetcars in action and see they interact with traffic and pedestrians.

The evidence in favor of building a streetcar system is absolutely overwhelming, so why aren't they building it already?

^----- Because nobody has a spare hundred million dollars laying around.

Wait.... let me check my underground vault.......

 

 

....

 

 

 

 

....

 

 

Nope. Sorry. No hundred million dollars there

Wait.... let me check my underground vault.......

 

 

....

 

 

 

 

....

 

 

Nope. Sorry. No hundred million dollars there

 

there is always that 5 ton safe in the germania building that hasn't been opened for 75 years, maybe it has buckets of diamonds.

hmmmm.... I have some buddies there right now doing the parking for Oktoberfest.... maybe we could plan something....

The evidence in favor of building a streetcar system is absolutely overwhelming, so why aren't they building it already?

 

I don't think it has anything to do with money right now...rather it is just going through the typical political process that is required of any project.  Especially one of this magnitude.  Whether you like it or not, there are reasons governments have set up the bureaucracy they have.  It is ultimately there to protect the citizens from something getting slipped in under the rug that is not desirable.  This project is pretty black and white and appears to have no opposition.  I would expect that you could anticipate build-out of this at the more aggressive timetables.

The evidence in favor of building a streetcar system is absolutely overwhelming, so why aren't they building it already?

 

I don't think it has anything to do with money right now...rather it is just going through the typical political process that is required of any project.  Especially one of this magnitude.  Whether you like it or not, there are reasons governments have set up the bureaucracy they have.  It is ultimately there to protect the citizens from something getting slipped in under the rug that is not desirable.  This project is pretty black and white and appears to have no opposition.  I would expect that you could anticipate build-out of this at the more aggressive timetables.

 

The streetcar will be back at Cincinnati City Council in a presentation by the City Manager to the Economic Development Committee on October 9th.

I would expect that you could anticipate build-out of this at the more aggressive timetables.

 

I hope you're right about that.  I spend a lot of time in Portland on business, and their streetcar is just fantastic.  It's distressing how little coverage this project has gotten from the local media thus far.

 

 

The streetcar will be back at Cincinnati City Council in a presentation by the City Manager to the Economic Development Committee on October 9th.

 

That's great news.  I'll be anxiously anticipating the results of that presentation.

It's distressing how little coverage this project has gotten from the local media thus far.

 

Very much so

It's distressing how little coverage this project has gotten from the local media thus far.

 

Very much so

 

I'm reminded of the truism that when something is really happening in Cincinnati -- as opposed to mere wishful thinking -- that the media seldom has a clue. I'd be optimistic in believing that a lot is probably going on behind the scenes.

It's distressing how little coverage this project has gotten from the local media thus far.

 

Very much so

 

Well without any real news to report on the project, what is the media supposed to say?

help beta test the new streetcar website.

 

www.cincystreetcar.com

 

remember it is only a beta.  email all concerns to [email protected]

 

Under the route section there needs to be a route map for the entire proposed system.  Currently there is just a map for the OTR portion.

The City of Cincinnati will be holding public hearings on the downtown streetcar on September 20th and Sepember 27th in downtown and Over-the-Rhine. More later.