"What is the beef folks have w/them? Taxes?"

 

    Probably stadium syndrome and a general distrust of government. No one seems to oppose the streetcars specifically. 

The Conspiracy uncovered, at last:

 

http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/contents/comments/connect_the_dots_the_enquirer_the_freedom_center_3cdcs_otr_and_the_streetca/

 

write your own cincinnati beacon story with this easy formula

 

respected institution + alleged controversy - proof of that controversy + Michael Earl Patton's opinion = story

 

 

 

The discussion of the collection of fares has been quite interesting, and is obviously relevant to the thread topic.  Let's please not make a seperate thread for it.

 

What about using RFID from the get go either for daily passes or longer term passes?

 

The other key is that the transfer from the Metro to the streetcar should be relatively seemless.

 

One thing that the city may well consider is an all purpose "transit card" that one could put money on and would be good to deduct cash when you use it for the bus, streetcar, toll roads (perhaps in the future), city owned parking garages and parking meters (perhaps we could see if the city could get this debit card to be accepted at gas stations for gas purchases as well).  Aside from the convenience of having a one stop card for travel expenses in our increasingly cashless society, this would possibly go toward bringing people to the mindset that all transportation options have costs.

^ One thing you're going to want to consider is all the occasional users of the streetcar -- Reds and Bengals fans, CAC, Music Hall. They're probably not going to want to bother with using anything other than cash. If they're from other cities, I'm not sure how they could have a Cincinnati transit card even if they wanted to.

 

That's one type of passenger -- probably the most complicated one.

 

With respect to the regular users -- people who depend on it and might be willing to pay a pretty good sum each month to use it all the time -- they ought to get a perceived discount. The key, it seems to me, is to sort of emulate the car paradigm. I'm going to invest so much every month because this is mainly how I get around, but I'm going to pay a flat rate and be able to use it as much as I want. Sort of a high fixed cost, but low variable cost.

 

In terms of the math for this, say a frequent streetcar customer used it three times a day -- maybe even a hundred times a month. That might cost him or her $150 if you added up the sum of individually paid fares. But maybe he or she can buy a pass for somewhere between $55 per month -- the cost of a city-only bus pass -- and, say, $100 per month. Maybe it would be good on Metro buses too. I think that would start to get you in the range we'd need to be.

have the ticket machines at each stop and have the ticket time stamped from its printing and good for two hours.  if you also want a metro transfer, put in a quarter and one of those pops out as well.  also put one ticket machine on each car, so people can hop on and buy the ticket while in motion if they are cutting it close

streetcar is already having an effect on real estate:

 

MLS# 1097091 1126 Walnut St 4A Cincinnati, OH 45202

Great new urban condo conversion in urban core! Soaring ceilings, large windows, open floor plan. Great location near proposed street car. Parking available in lot or garage. Secure building. $1000 IKEA Card at Closing!!!

 

 

IMO, the fare taking method I most prefer is the system I saw used on the public transit systems in the Czech Republic. 

 

It is similar to the system discussed by Eighth and State previously in his experience in Germany.  You place fare machines at the stops, and in other places in the city.  You can pay cash, or you can scan a credit card/atm card (I didn't use this feature while I was in Czech since it carried hefty fees).  You get a printed ticket for whichever fare you pay.  You can also buy variable number of ride printed paper cards (similar to the Charlie cards in use in Boston).  When you get on the system, at each doorway there is a machine on the post where you either insert your printed ticket and it is stamped with the time you got on, or you you insert your paper magnetic card which has the number of fares, and the same thing happens (except it prints the amount of funds left and the timestamp).

 

The system is enforced using traffic police officers who will randomly do ticket checks on the cars.  It carries a hefty fine if your ticket is not validated (and cannot be validated on the spot when the officer checks (easy out if you don't quite know how the system works)).  The fine was on the order of 800 Czech crowns.  At the time the exchange rate was about 21 Crowns to the dollar.  You have to consider though, that Czech is cheaper than here in many ways (e.g., dinner and drinks for 20 ran me 1000 crowns, about $200, and a beer went for about 22 Crowns.).  So, that fine is HEFTY.

 

Also, the same system was used throughout the buses, the electric trolleys, etc.  The same could be done here.  It does have the downside that it has a minor learning curve, but once you get it, you are golden.  Further, folks from other countries already use this type of a system, so their learning curve should be even lower.

 

I do believe that in some places, the date stamp on your validated ticket was good for a period of time.  This would allow for the "there and back" type of lunch trips.  We always ran over our time, but it would have been nice for quicker runs.

 

    All of these fare collecting ideas have a cost. Even automatic ticket machines cost money to install, and then are subject to vandalism and theft, and they also take up valuable street space.

 

    Gee, this fare collecting thing is only one part of the streetcar, and it's already getting complicated. According to the city council motions, the financing has to be in place before construction, and we on this board can't even figure out how to collect fares! (We are pretending that we are in charge, of course.)

 

    Isn't there ANY way to collect operating funds besides fares? Dedicate parking meter funds to the streetcar? Gasoline taxes? Property taxes? A couple million dollars per year is pretty small compared to the city budget. Seriously, the fare collection is a major drawback. What if you had to pay everytime you started up your car?

 

  I still say make every effort to make it free.

Making it "free" to the rider is an idea worthy of discussion, but I don't personally think that would fly.  No matter what the final method of payment will be, it needs to be integrated with the bus systems (yes, I mean Tank as well as Metro). 

One thing that the city may well consider is an all purpose "transit card" that one could put money on and would be good to deduct cash when you use it for the bus, streetcar, toll roads (perhaps in the future), city owned parking garages and parking meters (perhaps we could see if the city could get this debit card to be accepted at gas stations for gas purchases as well).  Aside from the convenience of having a one stop card for travel expenses in our increasingly cashless society, this would possibly go toward bringing people to the mindset that all transportation options have costs.

 

I love that idea.  If they go this route, they should try to hammer out an agreement with TANK as well, so that it is a truly regional solution.  /EDIT: nice to see that CincyInDC is with me on that one!

 

Isn't there ANY way to collect operating funds besides fares? Dedicate parking meter funds to the streetcar? Gasoline taxes? Property taxes?

 

Well, if they go with transit cards, that money would be due upfront.  If they parked all of it in a bank account of some sort, the interest that accrues could be fed right back into the system.  This would offer a significant advantage for pre-paid fares over on-the-spot fares, as the city would get more than $1 out of each $1 fare.

 

I agree with John that it would be nice to give these types of users a break on the fare, but I'd happily pay the same rate in advance, just so that I could hop on and off of streetcars and buses quickly without thinking about whether I have enough cash.  And if I'm with three friends, I could just swipe my card 4 times and we're off.  No worrying about the one person who inevitably doesn't have change.

 

 

DC Metro (http://wmata.com) has a comprehensive loadable smartcard, and while it's not perfect, I think it works pretty well.  DC doesn't have their streetcars yet (they're still in Pilsen, Czech Republic right now since there are no rails here just yet), and it remains to be seen how the upcoming streetcar system will integrate with our SmarTrip cards (if at all).  DC's situation is similar to Cincinnati's in that the city is footing the bill for streetcars (vs. the local transit agency), so keep an eye on DC for ideas.

 

 

^Actually I hate having to swipe the cards twice.  It's even worse in Paris where the metro cards are little paper tickets like beer tickets you'd get at the county fair. 

^only have to swipe them twice in the subway.  Buses get 1 zap, as would streetcars, I assume. 

 

 

  "No matter what the final method of payment will be, it needs to be integrated with the bus systems"

 

    The more complicated it is, the less likely it will be built!

 

    And remember, the financing has to be in place from the start.

^ This doesn't mean we can't work toward a system that could be worked into the bus system in the future.  They key is choosing a viable technology that can be rolled out in additional systems as it becomes possible.  The key thing is that it has to be easy to use, and provide a solid stream of ticket revenues.  I love free, but I don't think that is even faintly politically possible.  Free times for certain events, sure, but overall free I just don't see happening.

I actually think free is a bad idea, since in the winter I could see the streetcar becoming mobile homeless shelters.

 

Also if we don't pick a good system that is forward looking, then the roll out to a larger system (phases 2-100) could get even more expensive and thus leave with just a small system downtown that doesn't accomplish all that much for the region.

Interesting fact in the paper today

 

1902- Cincinnati streetcars carried 94.2 million passangers

 

(1900 census put the city's population at about 325k)

I actually think free is a bad idea, since in the winter I could see the streetcar becoming mobile homeless shelters.

 

I agree. We're not New York City, so not only does the streetcar need to be marketed towards all facets of society but we'll need to strictly enforce appropriate conduct and keep the homeless from loitering on the streetcar. I was talking to my friend from the Czech Republic - I was very curious to hear his opinion on mass transit, particularly our buses. He described it as dirty and disgusting. I never thought of our bus system as being 'that bad' but we certainly do have people who feel that way. To ensure the success of the streetcar, the first step I think is to make sure people are on it for the right reason and not to loiter. Perhaps free fares would serve as a good marketing tool specific hours of the day, though not peak hours, to get people on board who otherwise wouldn't have considered that mode of transportation. Then when they realize what a comfortable, clean ride it is, they will become long term customers who will increase ridership which is always a good thing. If the ride is free from a point A to point B and the policy is strictly enforced I don't think homeless loitering would be much of an issue though. People of all income levels tend to love the idea of anything free. We all love getting a good deal.

Interesting fact in the paper today

 

1902- Cincinnati streetcars carried 94.2 million passangers

 

(1900 census put the city's population at about 325k)

 

Interesting. That's about the same as Cleveland's at the time. In 1900, the city's population was 382,000, and its streetcar ridership was 73 million. By 1903, ridership exceeded 100 million and by 1910, streetcar ridership exploded to 229 million (city population was 560,000).

 

BTW, Cleveland transit's peak ridership year was 1946, with 493 million rides. Today it's 60 million annual riders....sigh.

Unfortunately, if you go back to the coverage of transit in the 45-50 period, you quickly realize why it declined rapidly. The combination of war and Depression had left cities with overused systems that barely served the physical plant of the city. They were not pleasant to use. Unfortunately, instead of really investing in getting the systems ready for the modern age, they lost out to cars and suburbanization. Arrgh . . .

not only was it overuse, but also deffered maintainance

 

    There's another very subtle but important reason why the Cincinnati streetcars went out of business, and that was government price fixing.

 

    On one hand, the City set a minimum wage for motormen, or streetcar drivers.

 

    At the same time, the City set maximum ticket prices.

 

    The City literally made the streetcars unprofitable. Documentation from the 1930's says that the streetcars were OVERCROWDED. The companies were prohibited from raising ticket prices, and had no money for increasing capacity. The travelling public responded by buying automobiles, which for the most part are not regulated. The streetcar companies were eventually bought by the city and became Queen City Metro, which today carries 10% of the traffic of the predecessor streetcar companies.

 

    Streetcars enjoyed a resurgence during WWII out of necessity as gasoline was rationed. They put some of their retired equipment back in service. This made the decline from 1945 to 1950 look even more dramatic.

It was also a major political issue. Like running for President on the platform of suspending the gas tax, politicians used to run on keeping the price of a streetcar ride low. Cincinnati's bosses used cheap streetcar rides as a major vote-getter. This is the problem with government ownership of transportation. The system becomes a government jobs program which contrasts with interests that just want an affordable effective transit system.

 

Unfortunately, automobiles offered a way out.

I saw this a long time ago on engadget.com, but something reminded me of it over the weekend.  It's an alarm clock that is sold in Tokyo.  Instead of setting a time for it to go off, you set it for the train you want to catch on the Yamanote line.  The trains have GPS, and the alarm clock has a radio receiver that keeps it up to date with where the train is in real time:

 

 

 

I don't think that an item like this would do well in Cincinnati (it is designed for the gadget capital of the world, after all), but I thought that it might be cool to have a webpage that does something similar.  That way, you could access the streetcar's real-time location from a blackberry or an iPhone while you're on the go, allowing you to make a judgement call on whether you really have time to get that newspaper or coffee without missing the train.  Eventually, buses could be integrated into such a webpage as well.

http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/publicMap.shtml?a=portsc

 

 

 

The Nextbus rollout in DC was a monumental failure.  It was unable to reliably account for traffic problems and bus bunching/passing. 

 

When it comes to streetcars, I would hope that the frequency is high enough that one would never worry about when the next one arrives unless it's fairly late. 

but the dc subway manages to have the next time arrivals. 

UC has GPS on its shuttles so you can see on your UCMobile phone exactly where the bus is in real time. Or you can wait 10 minutes and the shuttle will just show up!

crazy.

The Bearcat Transportation System (BTS) is very well run since the implementation of that dedicated student fee for transit.  They were able to greatly improve the system AND use that money to leverage a deal with Metro for the free rides anytime, anywhere.

The Bearcat Transportation System (BTS)

 

LOL!

I'm not sure why that's funny.

Jokes are never funny if you have to explain them

^Who made a joke?

I'm not sure why that's funny.

 

Probably because its called the BEARCAT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM and is apparently so common it has become an acronym which is usually the result of so many people refering to it as such, that people feel inclined to turn it into an acronym. I think I just rendered the joke unfunny by elaborating.

So the use of acronyms is now funny...I need to get out more.  I just tend to find it easier to say BTS instead of Bearcat Transportation System.  From time to time I refer to Metro as The 'Tro.  Not really any shorter...it just is cool to say.  :wink2:

carbon Foot print via Cooltown Studios

 

 

Carbon footprint per passenger mile

 

For those of you wondering what the carbon impact is between walking, riding and driving, the folks at the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability research center, provides an answer with clarity.

 

Some insights from the graph:

 

- You can't get much greener than a walkable community.

- It's easy to see why SUVs get such a bad rap, though a solo hybrid is no better than a 3-person SUV carpool.

- It's easy to see why hybrids get such good press, though that's only when it's compared to other cars with the same number of passengers.

- The best way to calculate carbon impact per car passenger is to divide the carbon impact for a solo driver by the number of passengers.

- A 4-person carpool is greener than transit only if everyone else is 4-person carpooling as well. In other words, an infrastructure that allows a 4-person carpool is going to attract ten times as many solo drivers.

- You can't get much greener than a walkable community. Worth repeating. Even more worth executing.

.1% maybe have a 3 person suv carpool

 

remember:public transit= less lvmt overall

The carbon footprint ppm is interesting so far as it goes, but it only deals with mobility, not access and structure types. Generally people who lived in walkable neighborhoods simply don't travel as much, so even if they do travel by car, they travel so (relatively) little, that their overall carbon footprint is much lower than the suburban model. I know someone who lives in OTR who hasn't moved his car since New Year's Day. His carbon footprint ppm certainly less than someone who drives a very efficient car and lives in Mason and works downtown.

 

Plus people who live in downtowns and neighborhood business districts inherently occupy less space, live in dwellings with fewer exterior walls and windows, don't have as much grass to cut or as many swimming pools to heat. They have less asphalt paving on their property, if any.

 

This is why, when you look at carbon loads in cities like NYC or SF compared to The American Dream Cities like Atlanta and Houston, the dense cities have much less of a total carbon footprint per capita.

 

    ^---- If I may add to that, the chart above shows the carbon footprint in pounds per passenger-mile. One can reduce his carbon footprint in two ways:

 

1. Reduce pounds per mile (Switch from an SUV to a Prius)

2. Reduce miles. (Move closer to work)

 

 

 

   

Which is the whole point of CoolTownStudios.com,

 

walkable, walkable, walkable

May 7th Pulse

 

 

Streetcar debate informs public

 

By Guest Columnist  Brad Thomas

On Monday, April 28, the Blue Chip Young Republican hosted a debate in Norwood over the Cincinnati streetcar approved by City Council earlier this month. The debate pitted Councilman Chris Monzel, who voted for the streetcar conceptually but against the funding, against Councilman Chris Bortz, the leading advocate for the streetcar on council.

 

In a well-attended and respectful debate, the councilmen both laid out their cases about the streetcar. Monzel's basic argument was that the city needed to spend these resources elsewhere on making our neighborhoods clean and safe. He also questioned the ridership figures, believing that the streetcar would not be able to generate the riders that the feasibility study, which drew its ridership estimates from OKI data, estimated would ride the streetcar. Monzel pointed out that other cities in are region, such as West Chester, were successful even without streetcars.

 

Bortz called the streetcar a risk the city can't afford not to take, and he laid out his vision for a dense, walkable city that attracts new residents. He talked about the streetcar's power to transform Over-the-Rhine and indicated that now was the time for the city to be bold.

 

Despite the fact that the majority of the questions the audience asked were skeptical of the streetcar, Bortz did a good job of educating the crowd about the streetcar plan.

 

While Monzel's intentions are in the right place, his plan for the city lacks the vision of Bortz's. Since 1950, Cincinnati has lost 171,746

residents, despite the best efforts of every City Council that has served in the past half-century to make the city safe, clean and appealing. The neighborhoods of this city were built around the more than 250 miles of streetcar lines that connected downtown to the business districts of Price Hill, Hyde Park and Clifton. Dismantling that system cut off this connectivity, reduced access and made it difficult to move around the city. The persistent parking problems in all of the neighborhood business districts are the legacy of the demise of the Cincinnati Street Railway Company.

 

The city needs to be bold now and reconstruct our streetcar system. Monzel called our river, our great local arts, and the industries of cities in the uptown area the three greatest comparative advantages Cincinnati has. The first streetcar line will connect our river, our major arts institutions, and the industries and companies of downtown and uptown which generate the new jobs for Cincinnati in the 21st century.

 

Tying together our greatest assets will be a way to leverage our comparative advantages to compete more effectively not only in the region, but also in the country, and globally as well. The economies of this new century are based on attracting the best and brightest talent. By creating the dense, safe, walkable neighborhoods that so many young people want to live in, the streetcar will help Cincinnati and the region remain competitive.

 

After Phase One of the streetcar connects our two largest employment centers, our stadiums, our great arts institutions and the largest university in the region, it can be expanded to reconnect the neighborhood to the core. The economic feasibility study evaluating the streetcar indicates an expected benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.7 to 1 and a greater that 95 percent chance that the benefit-to-cost ratio will exceed 1 to 1. Clearly, this a small risk that promises great reward for the entire City of Cincinnati.

 

Brad Thomas is the founder of www.cincystreetcar.com.

 

Great article, BT!

Monzel called our river, our great local arts, and the industries of cities in the uptown area the three greatest comparative advantages Cincinnati has. The first streetcar line will connect our river, our major arts institutions, and the industries and companies of downtown and uptown which generate the new jobs for Cincinnati in the 21st century.

 

Tying together our greatest assets will be a way to leverage our comparative advantages to compete more effectively not only in the region, but also in the country, and globally as well. The economies of this new century are based on attracting the best and brightest talent. By creating the dense, safe, walkable neighborhoods that so many young people want to live in, the streetcar will help Cincinnati and the region remain competitive.

 

Just as a preface, I asked both council members what they thought Cincinnati biggest assets were and how we could leverage those assets to compete against comparable cities.  I mentioned how we shouldn't be competing with places like West Chester, Indy, and Cbus as their unique assets are different from ours.  So instead of trying to keep up with what they do best...we should do what we do best.

Anyone read Bruno Latour's Aramis or the Love of Technology?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Packet switching works well for moving data -- why not use it for moving humans? In a nutshell, the French Aramis transit project proposed packet switching as a solution to human transport problems (though, so far as I can tell, neither the author nor any reviews I have yet read have made this connection).

With all the brouhaha about moving bytes around on the information superhighways, moving people around real cities has become less glamorous -- after all, the current mythology is that telecommuting will render the automobile obsolete, right? With the prevailing American tendency to think in terms of technological manifest destiny, stories about superior technologies failing miserably are usually glossed over in an obsession with teleology (history is an inevitable march toward greater perfection).

 

In contrast, this book describes an extraordinarily well-designed and highly superior semi-personal robotic transit system developed by the French government -- and then squashed by the French government. It is written in a style that only a Gallic scientist could conceive (for example, in a passage about project complexity, Latour writes: ...The monkey is readily identified as a creature of desire...). Because of such stylistic excrescences, I personally I found this book somewhat difficult to read at times, but I recommend it very highly to anyone interested in the history of technology, cross-cultural studies, telecommunications -- or the burgeoning application of packet switching principles to mass transit

It really is an excellent book and Latour is one of the leading sociologists of this (or any?) generation. I was introduced to it as an exercise in rhetoric and technical communication. Aramis (the train system) fails because no one want to say "I want this to happen" yet the project continues to use money and resources causing those working on the project to hate it. Cincinnati reminds me of this text w/the failed light rail in the past and now the streetcars.

OK, applying packet switching to human transportation - ludicrous to the max.  We could accomplish such a system at say (just to venture a guess) 1,000,000 x the US defense budget (and I say this as an engineer who was deeply involved in developing monitoring and maintenance alert systems for vast packet (and other) switching systems)

 

Pie in the sky?  Sure, its efficient (except the fact that packet switching allows for some collision of packet data - there is no "resend human").  I guess if its just talking about applying some learnings about traffic efficiency to human transportation, sure, its already being used to understand highway traffic phenomena (apparently spontaneous slowdowns, etc.).  However, as a "highly superior semi-personal robotic transit system" *cough*, of little help to transit engineers today.

Bring streetcars back to Cincinnati streets by October 2008!

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,16065.msg283272.html#msg283272

 

Anybody interested???

OK, applying packet switching to human transportation - ludicrous to the max.  We could accomplish such a system at say (just to venture a guess) 1,000,000 x the US defense budget (and I say this as an engineer who was deeply involved in developing monitoring and maintenance alert systems for vast packet (and other) switching systems)

 

Pie in the sky?  Sure, its efficient (except the fact that packet switching allows for some collision of packet data - there is no "resend human").  I guess if its just talking about applying some learnings about traffic efficiency to human transportation, sure, its already being used to understand highway traffic phenomena (apparently spontaneous slowdowns, etc.).  However, as a "highly superior semi-personal robotic transit system" *cough*, of little help to transit engineers today.

 

I haven't read the book, but I got the impression that it is intended as a social commentary on the pitfalls of implementing ambitious, massive projects, and that the technology that made up "Aramis" was secondary, not intended to be feasible or realistic necessarily; it could have just as easily been a fusion powerplant that never came to fruition or any other future technology that seems out of reach but isn't far fetched enough to be beyond the grasp of the average reader's imagination.  Anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong Marado, but I think that the focus of the book is probably on the dangers of bureaucracy, not suggesting the introduction of packet switching into mass transit.

A letter to the editor of city beat:

 

Streetcars Getting a Free Ride?

I'd like to point out some interesting information I recently came across concerning the proposed Cincinnati streetcar ("The Bold and the Confident," issue of April 30). Looking at the Portland streetcar Web site (www.trimet.org) I found the cost of riding the streetcar in their downtown district is exactly zero.

 

From what I can see from the Web site map, it seems to map closely in total coverage to the proposed Cincinnati coverage of the downtown/Over-the-Rhine line, not including the new Uptown/hospital section. And let's be honest, this was the line that all the cost/revenue comparisons were originally derived from.

 

I keep seeing all the pro/con arguments being put forth by the various constituencies, but I've never heard of this fare information. Surely the "pro" side must have known of this based on all of their tours/ conversations with the Portland people, which they so loudly trumpeted, and have hid it from the Cincinnati public. If they didn't know this, how can anyone trust their projected revenue numbers?

 

The streetcar people keep sliming every naysayer they come across, but I truly believe the naysayers are just trying to get them to deal in reality, not a field of dreams where if you build it they will come. Yes, I've moved to Covington, but somewhere down the line my tax dollars will also be spent on this fiasco and the more I see this project develop from a fiscal standpoint I truly believe it's being developed in virtual reality.

 

Has anyone asked who owns all the empty buildings along the proposed streetcar route in Over-the-Rhine and stands to benefit? I drive this route multiple times a week on my way to Findlay Market, and I know the answer. Maybe a newspaper, say CityBeat, might want to investigate and report on this situation.

 

-- Patrick Garland, Covington