October 17, 200816 yr ^ Expect a surprising event. To me, that would be funding for a SYSTEM. More than just Downtown <--> OTR <--> Connector <--> Uptown.
October 17, 200816 yr Is Cranley going to jump out of a cake? :laugh: That is pretty funny! I almost spit out my coffee laughing at that!
October 17, 200816 yr I'll be 100% honest. I have no idea what is going on anymore. I've been out of the inside loop regarding the streetcar for a few months now.
October 17, 200816 yr Can we have an indication as to what might or might not be announced in the near future?
October 17, 200816 yr yea, I dont like being teased. well, atleast not on message boards. :wink: Give us something. bah!
October 18, 200816 yr I can say something October 27. This leads me to wonder what event/decision is going down on the 27th? Thomas?
October 20, 200816 yr Author fun streetcar fact of the day: There is a 97% chance the streetcar's benefit to cost ratio will exceed 1:1 There is a 78% chance the streetcar's benefit to cost ratio will exceed 2:1 There is a 37% chance the streetcar's benefit to cost ratio will exceed 3:1 There is a 08% chance the streetcar's benefit to cost ratio will exceed 4:1 There is a 02% chance the streetcar's benefit to cost ratio will exceed 5:1
October 20, 200816 yr ^ This an amazing B/C for a transportation project. I mean, highways pass the test if the ratio is 1.10 to 1.00. This is the kind of return you'd get, maybe, from adding a third East/West runway at Heathrow Airport. It would have benefits not only for London O&D traffic but for air operations all around the world. The new Heathrow runway is long overdue, and there's a lot of pent-up demand for it. Sort of like the Cincinnati Streetcar.
October 21, 200816 yr Meanwhile, our new federally-funded third north-south runway opened just in time for Delta to cut back flights 25% or however much.
October 24, 200816 yr Tonight I missed seeing the pedestrian get hit and killed by a Southbank Shuttle bus at the corner of 6th & Vine by about 15 seconds (I had just walked across 6th at Race). My point is the public accepts cars and buses running over pedestrians as accidents but a death caused by a rail vehicle, especially a controversial one, and even when a teenager runs out in traffic as happened tonight, is always going to be seen as the fault of the train. They had all kinds of trouble in Houston with drivers getting hit by its at-grade light rail line.
October 24, 200816 yr ^ I can't recall the exact numbers, but I think out of the first hundred or so LRT/auto wrecks in Houston, only one of them was the fault of the train operator. My numbers could be a little off, but not by much.
October 24, 200816 yr ^ Similar experience in Salt Lake City: the first couple of light rail/car accidents were big news on TV, always ending in stating that the car was at fault, when a truck/car or car/car accident would get little notice. It seemed as the public came to love light rail the stories stopped.
October 24, 200816 yr You are correct. Look at the mass media on this. A rail accident or derailment makes front-page news. Involving passengers? You can run on multiple days about the tragedy. How often do we put on the front page automobile accidents? More people die in a day in an automobile than on railroads in a year in the United States. 41,059 a year die in an automobile (2007 figures, U.S. Govt. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, August 14, 2008). 128 a year die in an airplane. 791 a year in incidents that involve a fatality over 791,854,146 miles (2007 figures, Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis). Incidents in this case equals the sum of train accidents, highway-rail incidents and other incidents. 845 fatalities for 2007. Removing car-train/passenger-train incidents... 2,625 total accidents by rail for 2007. Breaking this down -- 5 deaths, 8 fatalities, 203 collisions, 1,893 derailments, 290 non-fatal conditions and 529 listed as "other." 39% were human error, 34% were track defects, 12% were equipment defects, 1.79 were signal defects and 12.75% were miscellaneous. Breaking it down: RPPM = Revenue per passenger mile ECPPM = Energy consumption per passenger mile D = Deaths per 100 million passenger miles Intercity buses: 12.9 cents (RPPM); 3,393 BTU (ECPPM); .05 deaths (D) Amtrak: 26.0 cents (RPPM); 2,100 BTU (ECPPM); .03 (D) Automobiles: N/A (RPPM); 3,458 BTU (ECPPM); 1.37 (D)
October 24, 200816 yr The head-on crash in September between a MetroLink passenger train and a freight train in Los Angeles that killed 25 people and injured 135 literally got weeks of coverage. Of course, there was controversy over whether or not the engineer was texting and not paying attention and missed a stop light signal.
October 24, 200816 yr It's because so many people die in automobile accidents, so that's not news. You almost never hear about a train crash like that, so it gets covered. "Dog bites man" doesn't get coverage.
October 24, 200816 yr The sun was going down when this accident happened but I don't think the sun was in the driver's eyes. It happened right in front of Batsake's Hat Shop. It was quite an unsettling sight because the body was just a lump with the only recognizable feature being one arm that was bent unnaturally. I think there's a convention in town because there were a lot of well-dressed people walking around, so it's too bad a few of them took this memory home as a souvenir. But despite this I think being a pedestrian in downtown Cincinnati is exceptionally safe because of the narrow streets. People drive more slowly and with only two traffic lanes things are less chaotic than wider streets.
October 24, 200816 yr You are correct. Look at the mass media on this. A rail accident or derailment makes front-page news. Involving passengers? You can run on multiple days about the tragedy. How often do we put on the front page automobile accidents? Train derailments make the news because they're rare, and thus, new worthy. Its also an issue of practicality - you simply can't report every car accident in the country. That's why plane crashes draw so much attention too. I think its a bit unfair of you to paint the "mass media" as harboring some anti-rail bias based on news coverage of rail accidents. But those numbers are startling. Perhaps we could use the +$100,000,000 dollars for a starter rail line more wisely if we would direct it towards implementing roadway improvements that would cut down on car accidents, such as traffic circles, better lighting, or better snow/ice removal. That much money could go a long way towards infrastructure upgrades that could potentially save lives... because while rail may be safe, a small starter line isn't going to pull much traffic off the roads. And since a full-fledged network is decades and billions of dollars away, making our roads safer would be easier, cheaper, and arguably more important since it could literally save lives, which are obviously worth more than condos.
October 24, 200816 yr ^ It's seldom an "either/or" thing. We probably need to do both. But we are already making huge gains in driving safety. If 1960's/1970's auto fatalities were adjusted for population growth, we would today have a lot more than 41,000 of them each year. And remember, the streetcar meets a different need -- that of people who wish to live in dense city neighborhoods and travel less.
October 25, 200816 yr I would feel much safer riding in a streetcar than riding in a bus. At least you are on a fixed track which lowers the chances that the driver will go off the road, not to mention the slower speeds they travel.
October 25, 200816 yr I don't think there's been a fatality on a modern streetcar since they were introduced in the U.S. in 2001.
October 25, 200816 yr I do think there's something to be announced Monday that I'm looking forward to hearing.
October 26, 200816 yr I do think there's something to be announced Monday that I'm looking forward to hearing. In Cincinnati or on a national scale? Can anyone elaborate at all?
October 26, 200816 yr ^There will be an announcement related to Cincinnati's streetcar efforts made on Monday.
October 26, 200816 yr ^There will be an announcement related to Cincinnati's streetcar efforts made on Monday. As in tomorrow? Is there a council meeting or is this a report between the interested parties?
October 26, 200816 yr Let's hope they announce they have the lion share - if not all - of the financing lined up.
October 26, 200816 yr ^There will be an announcement related to Cincinnati's streetcar efforts made on Monday. As in tomorrow? Is there a council meeting or is this a report between the interested parties? You'll find out tomorrow.
October 26, 200816 yr ^There will be an announcement related to Cincinnati's streetcar efforts made on Monday. As in tomorrow? Is there a council meeting or is this a report between the interested parties? You'll find out tomorrow. Damn it, Randy.
October 27, 200816 yr I can say something October 27. Isn't today the 27th? Here I am, 5:22, hangin on the edge of my seat and I got nothin yet! I am going back to the development threads...
October 27, 200816 yr just come back tomorrow. go ride a bike or watch a movie or something. Good advice for everybody. Sometimes things don't work out as well as planned.
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