Right, there's a Western Europe with significantly fewer cars per capita, subway systems in cities much smaller than Cincinnati, and small urban expressways commonly sunk in tunnels to reduce their impact.  Then there's this other Western Europe, which only Sherman has visited, filled with Houstons and Dallases.   

 

Cincinnati will never be bold as you wish for it to be. If the people were more progressive, took more risks, it would not be Cincinnati. It's in the region's DNA. Part of what makes it what it is.

Right, there's a Western Europe with significantly fewer cars per capita, subway systems in cities much smaller than Cincinnati, and small urban expressways commonly sunk in tunnels to reduce their impact.  Then there's this other Western Europe, which only Sherman has visited, filled with Houstons and Dallases.   

 

It's not inherent in the DNA.  It's just that progressively-minded people like me leave [for western Europe].

 

Don't be a dick, Jake.

 

I've traveled throughout Italy, France and Spain, both via rail and highway, and noted many innovative cut-and-cover tunnels and trenches that cut through neighborhoods. They may have less instances of trenches or elevated highways that snake through neighborhoods like the I-93 elevated route through Boston (before it was demolished), but the exist.

 

e.g. Paris, France

Don't continue to be a dick, Jake.

 

Quote of the Day!!!!

 

Or maybe this one!

 

... and the area that 75 demolished would be a thriving historic neighborhood.

 

It wasn't a thriving neighborhood before it was demolished.  It was a slum.  Worse than anything you could even imagine here in Cincinnati.

DanB,

 

So was the tenement area of NYC known as Mulberry Bend. It was a prime example of slum living. Today it is a thriving community.

 

Point: Just because some area was a slum 70 years ago does not mean it would be a slum today.

Well, Queensgate and OTR were both regulated to essentially tenement style housing by the 1950s. Both had become increasingly poorer. If Queensgate remained today, with what remained after Interstate 75, I wonder what condition it would be in today. Interstate 75 did not cause Queensgate to completely disappear, but the city's implementation of it's comprehensive plan for a new Queensgate is what caused the most destruction.

No no, I'm saying Metro Moves is a big plan to get people excited, but each component is technically a different "project" to be implemented as demand and funds dictate.  It's the kind of regional planning the Cincinnati area needs more of.  Even if few parts of it actually get done (like Burnham's Chicago plan), it provides a framework for the projects that are built, so they aren't done in isolation or without broader forethought.

 

This area needs to work on regional thinking before we can work on region planning.  Metro Moves was voted down by the county, not by Cincinnati.  We have 2 bus systems that, for the most part, stop an arbitrary boundary called the state line, despite the fact that "Cincinnati" spills over several miles into KY.  There is a ton of anti-urban sentiment in this region, piled on top of the ridiculously overblown "OH vs NKY" attitude that exists on both sides of the river, further dividing the area. 

 

I had high hopes when Metro Moves was proposed, not because it was perfect, but because it was a bold plan.  When it went down, I began to favor small steps like a single streetcar loop, since those are more managable and are completely contained within a single city.  That way, the city can take steps toward a rail system without having the outlying suburbs destroy the plan before it gets off the ground. 

 

Personally, I think Cincy should move forward with the streetcar as proposed and work closely with Newport and Covington to expand it across the river, since both of those cities have indicated support for extensions into KY.  Once that's under construction, we can start thinking about regional, like light rail.  At least at that point we'll have some momentum.

Just because implementing the Metro Moves plan all at once was voted down by the county doesn't mean the plan is worthless and should be thrown away.  In it there were plans for several different light rail/subway lines, commuter rail, a streetcar loop, and increased bus service.  All of these things are pretty doable on their own and would be easier for the public to swallow.  That doesn't mean all the work that went into putting it together should just be ignored.  In fact, when gas prices get back to the $4 mark and hold there for a little while, you could simply dust off the proposal and have the county vote on it again.  I'll bet it would pass under those circumstances. 

Don't be a dick, Jake.

 

I've traveled throughout Italy, France and Spain, both via rail and highway, and noted many innovative cut-and-cover tunnels and trenches that cut through neighborhoods. They may have less instances of trenches or elevated highways that snake through neighborhoods like the I-93 elevated route through Boston (before it was demolished), but the exist.

 

e.g. Paris, France

 

Sherman, Western Europe is the bastion of all that is great and marvelous in this world.  Never speak ill of it.

 

/sarcasm

Did anyone catch John Schneider's interview on WLW last night?  I was hoping to listen in, but I missed it...

Just because implementing the Metro Moves plan all at once was voted down by the county doesn't mean the plan is worthless and should be thrown away.  In it there were plans for several different light rail/subway lines, commuter rail, a streetcar loop, and increased bus service.  All of these things are pretty doable on their own and would be easier for the public to swallow.  That doesn't mean all the work that went into putting it together should just be ignored.  In fact, when gas prices get back to the $4 mark and hold there for a little while, you could simply dust off the proposal and have the county vote on it again.  I'll bet it would pass under those circumstances. 

 

The plan had its flaws, but would certainly have been better than what we have now (i.e., limited bus service only).  I wouldn't be opposed to seeing parts of that plan implemented, but for a lot of that, you'd need to get buy-in from the county beyond the city's borders, and I just don't see that happening right now.  The city needs a couple of really huge "wins" to turn around attitudes in the region which range from "Cincinnati is totally incompetent" to "I'm going to get shot if I venture into downtown after 5 PM".  Those could be the Banks, the casino, a new tallest tower (QCSII), and the streetcar, assuming that they all go according to plan.  Until the perception of the city changes, don't expect to get any help or even cooperation from the county on transit.

 

Realistically though, what we have on the table right now is a streetcar plan.  Maybe it's not perfect, but it has merit and is a step in the direction of a more comprehensive transit system.  It's time to focus on what's actually possible, rather than discard it in favor of plans that are already gone and unlikely to resurface.  I hope that we'll have a new light rail plan in the near future (last year Bortz hinted at a reuse of the subway tunnels for this), but in the mean time, I'm supporting the viable plan that is already in motion.

I wonder if the Casino would contribute to it if a route goes it's way.

Counterpoint: You can't compare urban development in most other American cities to New York City. Apples and Oranges.

 

The factors that make attractive neighborhoods in NYC are no different than they are anywhere else; it's just a matter of scale. For example, many parts of Chicago's North Side and Northwest Side were in very rough shape 30 years ago, and now they're yuppie playgrounds. For a more local example, just look at what's happening in OTR.

 

Does this mean the West End would have a Starbucks and American Apparel store on every corner if the neighborhood were still intact? Not necessarily, but it doesn't necessarily mean the West End would be a burned-out ghetto, either.

OTR hasn't really turned around to the extent that it's a good comparison.  However, Mt. Adams used to be a rather poor (working class at best) neighborhood for most of its existence.  Until fairly recently it was plagued by air pollution drifting up from the Deer Creek Valley steel mills, railroad yards, slaughter houses, tanneries, and other industries along Eggleston and lower Gilbert Avenues. 

The West End would be easier to revive than Over-the-Rhine because the building were smaller.  They hired a "photographer" to photograph every building before they bulldozed the whole place, and it tended to look like Newport, with smaller row houses.  However, the photographer was untrained and most of the photos are crooked and none of them are well composed.  The character of the photos certainly fits the city's dismissive attitude toward the buildings. 

 

I wonder if OTR would never have gotten to be in such rough shape if the West End hadn't been demolished. If the West End were still intact, the drug/gang/criminal element wouldn't have been concentrated into such a small area, and there may have been more opportunities for blue-collar families to take root and keep the neighborhood relatively healthy. But then, it's all speculation at this point...

Dan B: I said in a perfect world, not the real world

 

Sherman: Don't argue just for the sake of being argumentative

 

 

I-75 will be aligned to the west through Queensgate when that is rebuilt as part of the supplemental Brent Spence Bridge project.

 

As for FWW, there were plans in the late 1960s and up until 1971, for Interstate 471 to cut through Covington and Newport's riverfront to Interstate 75.

I-75 will be aligned to the west through Queensgate when that is rebuilt as part of the supplemental Brent Spence Bridge project.

 

I'm pretty sure they axed that plan in favor of keeping the bridge in its current location, due to the higher "impacts" of a western routing.  Heaven forbid a few industrial warehouses and brownfields would be affected.

It's not factually accurate if we're talking about building expressways through prewar neighborhoods to directly serve central business districts.  There are no I-75's through the West End and no Fort Washington Ways.  There are no expressways that define the edge of central business districts, as happened in Cincinnati and many other American cities.

 

There are no big-time expressways that run through central Paris, which measures 6x5 miles.  Meanwhile, there is no place in Central Paris more than 1/4 mile from a subway station.  Preserving old areas and making them economically viable through high quality public transportation creates a city people want to live in and want to visit for fun.  Nobody travels from Europe just to see Houston or Dallas. 

 

 

 

Well, at this point it is a supplemental span, with the interstates diverging in Kentucky. The bridge design doesn't affect the routing at this stage.

 

Routes that diverge through Queensgate:

ALT A, B

 

Routes that diverge near downtown, but slightly further out by about 300 feet:

ALT C, D, E, F, G

There are only 3 glaring problems with the interstates through downtown...

 

-I-75 swings too close to downtown. It should've gone through on the west side of Longworth Hall or perhaps even crossed Mill Creek north of CUT and crossed the river on the west side of the creek.

 

-I-71/471 cuts off Mount Adams/Eden Park from downtown.

 

-FWW should have been either been a tunnel or built on the KY side.

 

 

I realize you're talking about downtown, but there are problems on the KY side too:

 

1) The ramps on 75/471 dump unsafely into their respective areas because the ramps were placed too closely to the river. 

 

2) Construction of I-75 gutted Covington, eliminating several neighborhoods and ruining several more.

 

As for putting FWW through the KY riverfront, I honestly don't think it should have been built at all.  71 shouldn't have been combined with 75 through NKY.  If it had been separate, there would be little need for FWW and 471 wouldn't exist in its current form.  But we're getting WAY off topic now...

 

  FWW in Cincinnati was originally called the Thrid Street Distributor. As the name implies, it's purpose was to distribute traffic from the interstates to downtown streets. It was not intended as a major regional connector, but that's what it became. The designers who rebuilt Fort Washinton Way realized it's function and made changes accordingly.

 

    Pre-interstate planning basicly allowed for radial routes out of downtown. No one ever imagined that drivers would commute from Florence to West Chester.

 

   

 

 

 

  I was only in Europe for a short time but this is what I observed:

 

  1. Europe has more developed rail system than we do.

  2. Europe has a less developed highway system than we do.

  3. All the bad things about American cities also exist in Europe. However, the scale is larger in America. For example, we have suburban supermarkets with big parking lots, and so does Europe, but our parking lots are bigger than those in Europe.

 

 

They have a very well developed highway system in most of Europe, it just doesn't ram through their inner cities.  The example Sherman gave earlier is Paris' Boulevard Périphérique.  Though it is a highway, not really a boulevard, it encircles the city on the site of their old fortification walls.  Only one highway penetrates inside, and it does so along the Seine in a manner not unlike Wacker Drive in Chicago.  They simply didn't demolish huge swaths of city neighborhoods for urban highways in Europe.  Most of them peter out as they head in towards the city center, being collected by ring roads and/or distributing the traffic onto existing main arteries. 

 

Had Cincinnati's highways been done in a similar manner, we'd probably have an inner ring road that's no farther out than the Norwood Lateral, roughly encircling the city limits.  This would handle any through traffic, perhaps along with another outer belt (though not as far out as I-275 is now).  I-75 would likely dump onto Central Parkway in Northside, I-71 would empty onto Montgomery and perhaps Madison in Evanston and Hyde Park.  I-471 wouldn't exist at all, and traffic from Northern Kentucky would be taken by Dixie Highway and Alexandria Pike. 

 

Of course, this would be unthinkable today, but so many roads into downtown wouldn't be necessary with the streetcar system remaining in place and expanded as necessary.  The commuter railroads we used to have to places like Terrace Park, Milford, Deer Park, Blue Ash, Glendale, Sharonville, Madeira and Loveland would further reduce the need for more highway miles.  Unfortunately, big road and highway projects did supersede all else, and now we have to deal with the consequences.  None of these projects helped the inner city, so now that we know a little better, we can get back to building streetcar lines to help what few of our urban neighborhoods are left. 

In many German cities (and Italian cities to a lesser extent), the historic presence of city walls have profoundly shaped urban development. Most cities that had city walls have removed them and replaced them with circle roads. In Germany, when you get near town if you want to see something historic (rather than their version of suburbs), look for signs that say Zentrum or Altstadt. Italy had roughly similar patterns. I would add that Stuttgart is literally moving mountains to get higher speed roads into the urban core. I would also add that many European cities have destroyed neighborhoods for transit, but it wasn't roads it was railroads. Since the RR stations are nearly always at the core of the city (Cologne might be the most extreme, but the rule is generally the same), there were once neighborhoods where those trains come in, especially the major stations with 4-8+ inbound lines. Venice was probably the most extreme version of massive transit destruction to squeeze folks into the train station.

 

Life is about trade offs. Cincinnati destroyed neighborhoods for both rail and highways (and probably a few homes were torn down for the canal even). It is part of the dynamism of urban life.

 

Streetcars are probably the most friendly form of mass transit to the built environment - even more than the diesel buses which place destructive pollution mere yards from historic buildings.

 

  On the other hand, Europe didn't have places like the West End either.

 

  We can't change what happened in the past. People at the time thought it would be a good idea to ram highways through American inner cities. Comparisons between the United States and Europe are interesting, but they don't change the fact that in 2010 we have one landscape, and Europe has another. The best we can do is start with what we have and make it better.

 

    The trouble with new rail in Cincinnati is that the scale of any new system is so small that connections will be limited; on the other hand, a large comprehensive rail plan is too big to be workable. As an analogy, imagine that there were no telephones, and you were advocating construction of a telephone system. The value of a telephone is increased because everyone has one; if you were the only one with a telephone, it would be worthless. Our present telephone system took over a hundred years to develop. Cell phones could only become established because they were preceded by land lines.

 

    Europe can build new rail because they already have existing rail. We really don't have a starting point. The only thing we have are some pre-war neighborhoods, but the major parts of our economy have moved to the suburbs long ago.  What if I want to go to Walmart to buy a new TV? There are no Wal-marts in Over-the-Rhine. In fact, there is very little reason for me to go to Over-the-Rhine. Even when the streetcars were still operating, city dwellers were driving to the suburbs for their shopping.

 

   

I looked recently at original documentation of registered motor vehicles in Cincinnati in the 1920's, when record keeping began.  The number of cars went from something like 38,000 in 1920 to over 100,000 by 1925. This bankrupted all of the interurbans (except College Hill) almost instantly.  While the interurbans had gone bankrupt several times prior, investors pulled out of the interurban industry and shifted their energies and capital to the auto industry.   

 

The main reason why urban highways didn't happen before the Interstate Highway Act was because there was no way to collect revenue from them.  Ramps would obviously be spaced too closely to allow toll collection at each of them.  By setting up the highway trust fund, the need to collect tolls was eliminated and the bulldozing could begin. 

 

Central Parkway and the other parkways were hugely expensive.  Central Parkway cost $3,000,000, as much as the subway beneath, but there was no way to collect revenue from it.  Columbia Parkway cost even more (I don't know the exact figure), but was built by the WPA in the late 1930's.

 

I'd argue that Columbia Parkway, more than anything, really killed mass transit in Cincinnati and ushered in the highway era.  It still stands as one of America's greatest urban roads, but because it was one of the first, people were no doubt suckered into thinking the future would be full of countless Columbia Parkways. 

 

 

 

 

 

I'd argue that Columbia Parkway, more than anything, really killed mass transit in Cincinnati and ushered in the highway era.

 

Maybe not in the whole city, but you're definitely right.  I've heard a few historians say that Columbia Parkway is what killed Peeble's Corner.  The streetcar lines to East Walnut Hills, Evanston, Hyde Park, Oakley, Mt. Lookout, Madisonville, Fairfax, and Mariemont all passed through Peeble's Corner, and the loss of traffic (especially people making transfers there) started the big decline in that area's commercial corridor. 

 

  Not only did automobiles compete for passengers, but automobiles also competed for space in city streets. Streetcars didn't have a chance in a world of automobiles.

 

  This is another aspect to the Over-the-Rhine loop. There is room on the streets for streetcars NOW. If all of the promised development happens, there will be a lot more automobiles on the streets in Over-the-Rhine.

The streetcar lines as they were originally built were not well-suited to being mixed with much automobile traffic.  The rails were in the middle of the street in most cases (the main exception in Cincinnati was Erie Avenue, where they were in the right lane next to parked cars).  In the middle was the best place because there were the fewest conflicts with parked carriages, slow vehicles, pedestrians, or problems with drainage.  Concrete platforms gave people a place to stand that was out of the mud, but as horse and buggy traffic was replaced by cars and trucks, these platforms became more like death zones.  They were very narrow, and getting swiped by a car mirror or wayward truck became more and more common.  They started building massive barriers on the end facing oncoming traffic, and while this helped prevent pedestrian injuries, it no doubt irritated the motorists who hit them.  Of course, as traffic increased, there was a push to get rid of the tracks and those pesky platforms to add more usable lanes to the road.  If only they understood just how futile an effort that would be. 

 

You can see some of what I'm talking about at this awesome photo of Woodward Avenue in Detroit from 1942.  The streetcars look positively tiny, but keep in mind Woodward Avenue is absolutely enormous at some 9 lanes wide (3 lanes each way plus parking on both sides plus a center turn lane now).  Incidentally, I love the almost complete lack of any lane striping.  http://www.shorpy.com/Woodward-Avenue-Detroit-1942?size=_original 

 

  In Cincinnati, city planners advocated getting rid of streetcars to make more room for automobiles as early as the 1920's. By the time of the interstate highways, buses were considered a temporary necessity until everyone had a car.

 

  Imagine if you could talk to one of those planners today and tell him that in 2010 there are still 30,000 people riding the bus everyday!

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean Europe didn't have many neighborhoods like the West End. Explain if you would.

 

I think all the big parkways built in the interwar period are some of the nicer roads to drive in the city - Victory(should be Bloody Run), Columbia, Central are perfectly pleasant.

 

We've gotta start somewhere. The benefit of starting in the basin is that everyone already hates/loves DT, whereas any kind of light rail is going to end with the East/West/Central split showing up and that will just get ugly.

>it no doubt irritated the motorists who hit them.

 

Yeah I've heard about this numerous times.  Why people were hitting these things all the time is unclear (were they just drunk? I'm serious when I say that).  What is clear is that public sentiment was completely in the wrong by blaming the problem on streetcars themselves, which obviously predated the 1920's automobile surge by a generation. 

 

Thee streetcar platforms were clearly in the way of creating left-turn lanes, but also the effort to claim the entirety of city streets for cars predates the expressways.  Today that point struck me on the head as I drove beneath I-75 on Liberty St. around 5pm.  Traffic was completely stopped on I-75, but I had Liberty St. nearly to myself. 

 

The incredible congestion of downtown Cincinnati in the prewar era can't be denied as is proven through statistics and by photographs. Unfortunately, the city undertook a planned depopulation starting the the 1930's, then wondered why downtown retail died, and now the combined death of downtown retail plus the population decline are pointed to as a failure of "the city", meaning both city politicians ("government") and the physicality of the city.  How downtown retail could be taken for granted while physically displacing nearly 100,000 people -- one quarter of the city's population -- is unclear. 

 

Tonight there were hundreds of people inside and lined up outside the Contemporary Arts Center.  This is about the most people you will see in the downtown area these days for a non-sports event.  Before WWII, these kinds of crowds could be seen on many downtown street corners every weekend night at theaters.  None of this city's old people seem to be able to recognize that their abandonment of the streetcar system led directly to downtown's inability to compete with new suburbs and a decades-long, often taxpayer-financed parking garage building effort. 

To take this back even further, a lot of the anger from the RR strikes of 1877 came from the fact that many major RRs ran their lines through the middle of streets and hit and killed people in rather disturbing ways in rather large numbers.

"I'm not sure what you mean Europe didn't have many neighborhoods like the West End. Explain if you would."

 

Most European cites are very old compared to American cites. London was founded as a Roman outpost camp, and that may not have even been the beginning of human habitation. By the time that Columbus landed in America, London was already old.

 

The settlers landed in Cincinnati in 1788, and by 1840 Cincinnati was the fastest-growing city in the United States, and by 1860 the sixth-largest measured by population. The population of Cincinnat doubled in about 10 years.

 

The best land in the Cincinnati basin - the area around Fountain Square - developed first, and then the city spread in all directions. The West End and Queensgate area wasn't the best building site, because it was swampy.

 

Yet, development pressure was so great that the poor land was all developed, and the development was not high quality. The buildings were made of wood, crowded, and had little if any sanitation. It was home mostly to immigrants, who moved on to better housing as soon as they could afford it.

 

The suburban movement started way back in the 1890's, depending on how you define suburban. By the 1930's, automobile use was entering the intermediate stages, people were moving into suburban houses on the periphery, and the property values of the Queensgate area was dropping.

 

By the 1940's, most of the buildings in the Queensgate area  - now wooden buildings 100 years old - were dilapidated. Planners concluded that the best treatment would be wholesale demolition and a fresh start. So, that's what they did. Since Cincinnati lacked industrial space at the time, most of Queensgate became a planned industrial park, as we would call it today.

 

By contrast, few European cities grew so quickly, and had such a concentration of dilapidated buildings. Europe had exhausted her wood supply long ago, and had built substantial buildings of brick and stone. Furthermore, most European cities had been renewed one building at a time over the course of centuries.

 

Finally, many European suffered bombing in WWII and didn't have to choose a place to tear down when everything changed due to the automobile. There was enough rebuilding to do as a result of the war.

 

So, conditions in Cincinnati in the 1940's were such that America was building highways, and at the same time we had this big failed neighborhood that needed to be addressed. Planners did what they thought was right at the time.

 

The South Bronx was another place with similar problems, as was the Cincinnati riverfront, the Buffalo riverfront, an old area of Boston, and many other places.

 

To my knowledge, there were no areas like this in Europe, at least to that scale. If you know of one, please share. 

^

Not much about the streetcar during the casino charette today at the Art Academy. Seemed to be overly focused on how and where to accommodate the parking demand. Ironic, that.

 

Most European cites are very old compared to American cites. London was founded as a Roman outpost camp, and that may not have even been the beginning of human habitation. By the time that Columbus landed in America, London was already old....

 

 

True, but the Roman outpost measured just one square mile. And the city didn't start growing beyond the walled city until just before Columbus set sail for America. By the early 1500s, London's population was still just 50,000. It grew to more than 200,000 by 1600 and 700,000 by 1700. Today it's more than 8 million in the city and 12 million in the metro (which extends outward only about 25 miles from the center!). This growth spurt also happened to many of Europe's other key commercial centers that benefitted greatly from their newfound global colonialism.

 

If you travel around London, Paris, Manchester, Lyon, Brussels, etc. so much of their built environment dates from the 1700s to 1900s with most of it from the 1800s. Very little of the old core remains intact in most of Europe's key cities aside from notable attractions. Indeed, the older parts of American East Coast cities remind me of their "parents" in Europe.

 

America avoiding two world wars being fought on their home turf kept our economy intact. I'm often reminded of this in listening to my mother who lived in Europe starting in 1945 who told of horror stories of survival years after the war was over. Europe lacked the wealth to buy cars, and it also wasn't even close to America's standing as the world's largest oil producer from the 1860s to the 1960s which allowed us to build these highways and suburbs. That plus Americans' learned hyper-individualism is another factor in our destruction of cities and transit systems.

 

How did we get on this subject anyway??

 

  Transportation is life, and the topic of Cincinnati Streetcars always drifts into sprawl, automobiles, history, density, and so on.

 

  What happened in the Queensgate area is that we had a slum to be cleared, an abundance of automobiles, and highway funding at the same time. To my knowledge there were no similar circumstances in Europe. European cities went through growth spurts under different conditions in different eras. European cities DO have neighborhoods that were devastated by highways, but not to the scale or extent that American cities do. 

 

    Cheers. Carry on.

Eighth and State gave a great explanation for some of the reasons why the West End took the downturn it did.  I would like to make one correction though.  The buildings in the West End were not mostly wood, the vast majority were in fact made of brick.  They were smaller than in Over-the-Rhine, generally no more than 3 stories with an attic of sorts, much like the neighborhoods in Newport, as Jake mentioned.  A lot of them did have wood additions on the back, but the bulk were brick.  Here's a Sanborn map from about 1900 of the area around Linn and Ezzard Charles (Laurel at the time).  Red is brick, yellow is wood, and blue is stone.

 

 

It's true though that most didn't have indoor bathrooms, running water, or central heat, and the roads were narrow.  Did the buildings in Over-the-Rhine have those facilities at the time though?  Is this even really that big a deal?  I'm not sure, and I think it was more of an excuse to clear out the place than anything.

 

This mindset is one of the big things that separates the US from Europe.  The hyper-individualism KJP mentions breeds a culture of mobility that instead of fixing problems in a neighborhood, we simply move away from them or tear them down and "try again."  Electric streetcars were the first means for any significant number of people to leave the crowded inner cities for "greener pastures" in the suburbs.  The car suburbs of today are built on the same principle, only at a much different scale.  In much of Europe though, there doesn't seem to be this desire to escape, partly because there wasn't anywhere else to go.  They try to fix the problems in their neighborhoods and cities instead of moving away from them.

 

One problem here is that the streetcar systems were in horrible shape after the war due to government imposed fare freezes and massive use due to 24-hour factory operations and rubber and gasoline rationing.  Many European cities rebuilt their worn out or destroyed public transit systems after WWII, along with the neighborhoods, while here in the US we decided to get rid of them and build something new and different.  There was a huge pent-up demand for new and interesting buildings and infrastructure, since so little had been built throughout the Depression.  They could've pushed to improve sanitation in the West End by retrofitting modern bathrooms and kitchens into old buildings, replacing the most dilapidated ones, and fixing up the rest.  Unfortunately this wasn't "cool" because they couldn't build some new whiz-bang projects, there wouldn't be enough room for parking, and they'd have to keep the multitude of streetcar lines in the neighborhood.  So now we have housing projects, highways, and industrial parks.  Had planners of the 1920s through the 1950s gotten their way, Over-the-Rhine and the whole basin would be industrial and office use.  Fortunately that didn't all happen, but they got a good way into it.  Europeans didn't try to retool their cities for new uses because they kept them nice enough that people didn't want to flee for the suburbs in the first place.  Having meaningful public transportation is one important way of achieving that. 

Kenyon-Barr and the Bottoms which were further south than the West End proper were more of the wood construction. The other issue is that the quality of life in the basin was horrid until the very end of its life. The amount of air and water pollution would have seriously degraded the quality and length of life. We can romanticize the built environment but there were reasons why slum clearance was seen as a progressive response to the problems of the city - Europe was just as bad if not worse - read about Manchester or the Ruhr Valley cities or Limoges or Turin between the mid-19C and mid-20C. It is great that the Basin is getting better, but if you look it still has some of the worst pollution problems in the region - a lot of that is the natural geography, bad air just gets trapped down there. The Mill Creek has basically been an open sewer for 200 years. And I'd guess that nearly all of the basin has some level of dangerous chemicals in the land, water, or air. Cincinnati was too big a chemical industries center for too long.

^

Not much about the streetcar during the casino charette today at the Art Academy. Seemed to be overly focused on how and where to accommodate the parking demand. Ironic, that.

 

The developer needed 4000 spots right? I think the consensus was that in 2 years the casino will be built, and rail transit won't.  Even if he streetcar gets the funds and is nearing completion then, it would be spurring development and probably actually increase the need for parking, as people visiting from the suburbs still have to drive downtown and park somewhere along the line, right?  I know some of the groups I was in talked about shuttle buses and other things so people could park down at the Banks, etc.

If scarce parking was such a big issue, I'd never travel to Chicago or New York.  It is really hard to park there, yet somehow people manage.  I guess that's because it's worth it to pay $25-$40 just to stuff my car somewhere for the day.

 

If we have something worth visiting, then parking prices will go up and we'll figure out a way to solve that problem by transit, by a real valet and taxi industry, or by building more parking.  But I'm tired of people having to "plan" parking for every new person who is going to come into downtown. 

^Not much about the streetcar during the casino charette today at the Art Academy. Seemed to be overly focused on how and where to accommodate the parking demand. Ironic, that.

 

Streetcar was not discussed much, but when it was, the developers definitely responded positively.  They definitley talk like they want lots of synergy between the casino and all the other destinations downtown.

They will have a parking facility similar to those you see in other cities with single casinos; an attached parking garage. 

I don't have a problem with a big parking garage on that site, as long as it backs up to Gilbert Avenue and I-71, as that block will never be used for commercial storefronts, anyway. My main concern are the areas that front Eggleston, Broadway, and Reading Road, as the design of the casino will make or break that part of downtown.

Everyone at the charette had similar ideas, putting the parking against Gilbert and tucked into the side of the hill, so the buildings sit atop it and abut Reading as it comes down from the 71/471 interchange.  There is a pretty significant topography change from that intersection to Broadway.

 

They need 4000 spots because the site currently provides about 2000 during the day.  The parking for the casino would double as parking for workers elsewhere downtown during the day, is what I understood.  Everyone who currently parks on Broadway Commons would still park there, plus the day crowd at the casino.

 

My point with regards to the streetcar is that it may provide transportation to the casino for a few hundred people, but thousands are still going to be driving in on weekend nights from however far away.  I don't forsee the streetcar lowering the parking needs at all.  It would, however, help with integrating it into the community.  People would be more inclined to park in the casino and hop on the streetcar to other establishments.

Is there time table for distribution of the non-TIGER funds the City has applied for to fund the streetcar?

 

I believe I read summer...

^

The casino.

 

The main advantage of bringing rail through Broadway Commons is that it's the first and hardest mile of a route that goes up Gilbert to eastern Cincinnati and potentially all of Uptown. Ironic that BC was once a rail yard.

 

The casino problably wants to be served by regional light rail and have 30-40% of Metro's routes feed into it, saving the buses from (and from causing) downtown congestion. Workers will use it as much as the gamblers will.

 

Dunno how it gets into downtown. Main/Walnut streetcar pair + Central Parkway built to LRT specs - might be too much? Eggleston to Transit Center -- fast but a change of trains at Second Street? Broadway to Fourth with a lot of the cars removed? That would get some people going for sure. But, for starters, close the Fourth Street access to I-75 North and open the Third Street accesss to same. It will be fine.

 

I'd start to follow this closely. Dan Gilbert, who's part of the crew that's building the (mostly) privately-financed light rail line on Detroit's Woodward Avenue -- it's that Dan Gilbert who has the rights to build the casinio here. His group got funding as part of last week's TIGER grants. I'm guessing he gets it.

 

We'll get 3C rail. Oil is back to $80. If gas spikes higher, would you -- say if you were a State rep or senator in the summer of 2010 -- would you be nervous if you had earlier cast a vote against giving Ohioans transportation choices?

 

Remember that in November 2008, all ten out of ten urban, regional and statewide rail issues on the ballot nationally were approved, some with super-majorities.

 

I-75 reconstruction through Cincinnati starts this fall. I'm wondering whether 40 MPH on rail between Cincinnati and Dayton will be looking pretty good then. Just asking.

They are talking $3.00+ for a gallon of gas this spring. With another up cycle, rail will become more enticing. If we could get any momentum in local/state tax revenue that would help a ton as well.