Yeah but we're nowhere near actual construction yet (for either project).  Much of the debate has been about where it will get built to, or even if it will get built at all.  Once they actually have the final engineering done and bring out the bulldozers, there's not much more room for rampant speculation. 

>I can't imagine what this thread size would be if work actually began

 

The Queen City Square and Banks threads were huge before any construction began, and updates have been minimal during construction.  The discussion of what looms in the city budget that might preclude construction of the streetcar is of greater value than any future contruction updates.  If you study big government projects that fail to get off the ground or are stopped mid-stride, it's because of this stuff, specifically the lack of an identified and legally protected revenue stream.  The interstate repairs and expansions are built and completed, every time, because there is a funding stream that can't be touched by other items.  The Cincinnati Subway died because what can be termed the operating budget was thrown out by the Ohio Supreme Court in 1918 but they broke ground anyway in 1920.  An operating lease was never put up for public vote again (for good reason), and 90 years later we have a still-unused subway tunnel. 

 

 

 

 

Yeah but we're nowhere near actual construction yet (for either project).  Much of the debate has been about where it will get built to, or even if it will get built at all.  Once they actually have the final engineering done and bring out the bulldozers, there's not much more room for rampant speculation. 

 

That may be the case, but that's not a reason to get snarky with the Admins and Mods. We *do* understand that topics will have "gray areas" and people will throw out speculations, etc. and we try our best to accommodate that so that forumers can openly discuss ideas, but ultimately our goal is to make topics/threads easily searchable, current and relevant. Not saying you're not allowed to question our methods, but please try to see it from our side as well :-)

Once the construction starts, discussion will probably move towards how the service will work. What will be the hours? Will there be special service on game days? How many cars will be linked? How many bikes will be able to go in each car? Will there be bike racks? Vertical or horizontal? What will the ticketing system be like? Will it be a flat rate, or will you pay more to go further?

 

This may all get old fast and slow the thread down, but there will be some stuff to talk about.

My question is this: from the streetcar, will Queen City Square appear taller than the flag pole on Carew Tower?

depends on the elevation of the street car.

sell Eden Park and buy tiaras and flagpoles for the streetcars  :wink:

sell Eden Park and buy tiaras and flagpoles for the streetcars :wink:

If you do that, someone might have to put a bigger streetcar on top of Carew Tower.

My question is this: from the streetcar, will Queen City Square appear taller than the flag pole on Carew Tower?

 

depends on the elevation of the street car.

 

sell Eden Park and buy tiaras and flagpoles for the streetcars :wink:

 

If you do that, someone might have to put a bigger streetcar on top of Carew Tower.

 

WEBCAMS!!!

 

You guys all read my mind.

 

Join Cincystreetcar.com at the Bockfest Parade

If you want to show your support for the Cincinnati Streetcar, come join your fellow streetcar supporters and march in the Bockfest Parade.  No advanced sign up or registration is required.

 

Just show up at Arnold’s this Friday (3/5/10) at 5:30pm wearing your streetcar t-shirt and enjoy a Moerlein Bock Beer.  The parade starts at 6pm and proceeds up Main St. to Bockfest Hall.  Hope to see you there.

 

Cincinnati Streetcar T-Shirts will be available for purchase at Arnold’s during Bockfest weekend.  The shirt are $15 with all of the proceeds being used to support streetcar advocacy efforts. If you are joining us in the Bockfest Parade, you can purchase a shirt before the event.

What is the status of the other funding apps? Is there any timeline of when any of them will be granted? At what point will we get in which the current construction timeline will have to be thrown out the window in lieu of a later date?

 

· Urban Circulator (Federal) – $25 million – This Grant Program is specifically for Streetcar type projects. The four streetcar projects that did receive money today are now not eligible for these funds. We believe this improves our positioning.

 

· TRAC Grant – Ohio (Transportation Review and Advisory Committee) – $50 million.

 

(Lifted from Milton Dohoney's press release.)

No, there is no timeline, not even in the government documents detailing the Urban Circulator grant program.  It simply says "early 2010."

 

Here's the Register. Knock yourself out:

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-29245.pdf

 

PDF page 4, bottom right corner, the paragraph above the bold text. I don't even remember how many of these infernal things I had to read when consulting for Sacramento's LRT. You'd think government documents would be more...colorful.

 

Actually, no you wouldn't.

This is more related to rail generally than streetcars:

 

Widen Roads or Add Rail?

 

http://cincystreetcar.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/widen-roads-or-add-rail/

Brad, I think one item you'd want to add to this table is:

 

"More affordable local transportation"

 

Because it is so car-dependent, Cincinnati has one of the highest percentage of disposable income of any city in the country that is spent on local transportation. I mean, we're right up there with Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio -- the sprawlburgs.

 

I'm sort of amused by libertarians' take on this. Ordinarily, they would applaud competition as a means of keeping costs in line. With trnasportation, they seem quite intent on preserving the highway economy's monopoly.

I would have put a red arrow downward on the highway side regarding foreign oil dependency.

 

I would love to see a research piece done on how much more U.S. wealth gets shipped overseas to buy more oil when we add each new lane-lane mile of road/highway as a result of the induced demand. So the answer would be something like: "On average, and at a per-barrel oil price of $80, for every new lane-mile of road we add in the U.S., the induced demand for driving that results sends another $500,000 of U.S. wealth overseas." That would be a helpful stat to know.

That's the key stat I've been in search of.  I do have the stats from the 1910's when there was a daily public transportation ridership of over 300,000 in a city of 400,000.  This meant maybe 100,000 rode the streetcar to work and another 50,000 rode it for errands each day. The rest of the population walked to work or to do their errands.

 

In the 1910's the nickel fare, spent twice daily for a total of 10 cents, constituted about 10% of the average worker's pay.  Since half of the population simply walked everywhere, it's reasonable to assume that total percentage of income spent on routine city transportation was somewhere between 5-8% of the average person's income.   

 

Even driving a paid-off car, the cost of automobile ownership and commuting to work and all errands is certainly much higher than 10%, perhaps close to 50% in the case of someone with a $25,000/year income who buys a new car or truck, and there are a lot of those people out there.  Add to that that most families own two or more cars, and it's easy to see why America's personal finances are such a wreck. 

 

I would have put a red arrow downward on the highway side regarding foreign oil dependency.

 

I would love to see a research piece done on how much more U.S. wealth gets shipped overseas to buy more oil when we add each new lane-lane mile of road/highway as a result of the induced demand.

 

I thought about that, but I wasn't sure how the increased gas usage from more sprawl netted out against the decrease in wasted gas usage from people sitting in traffic jams, so I was conservative on that one.

 

The same with induced demand.  Long term the widened road will fill up to its new capacity and the unwidened road with transit removing some if its vehicles will fill back up to its capacity as well so I left that out as well because it was a wash.

 

 

^

 

I think the cost of local transportation now averages about 15% nationwide. Cities like Cincinnati are pushing 20%. There have been some recent studies confirming what Brad says - for people earning less than $30,000, the percentage is really up there, near 50% I recall. Seems almost unbelievable, but I've seen the figure a couple of times.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology has done a lot of research on this.

 

See page 10 for data on Cincinnati (short version: on average, 32 percent of household income in Cincinnati is spent on transportation, 24 percent on housing) and how it compares with other cities...

 

http://www.cnt.org/repository/heavy_load_10_06.pdf

 

  The two items in the chart that I do not agree with are that rail transit reduces dependence on foreign oil and reduces pollution.

 

    I think the assumption is that rail transit reduces the need for cars and therefore reduce the need for petroleum. Well, on a personal level, it does reduce the need for cars for people who live near the line. However, in the big picture, it will not reduce the need for cars. The petroleum resources and emissions will just shift somewhere else along with automobile use. 

 

    In my humble opinion, rail transit supporters should stress the fact that rail transit leads to a more comfortable life.

I agree as well. Pulling cars off the road is like scooping water out of the ocean. It doesn't leave a hole in the water anymore than diverting trips to transit leaves a hole in traffic. Induced demand fills the hole in traffic right back up again. The availability of road capacity, especially at a discounted price, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, if we actually charged road users the full value of using the roads, then we might actually getting around to reducing traffic.

 

Adding rail transit does increase overall travel capacity, and it does so without increasing dependency on foreign or causing pollution as much as a corresponding increase in roadway capacity would.

 

  I kept carful records of my driving costs for a while and it turned out to be 12% of my nominal pay for fuel, maintenance, repairs, license, and insurance. I didn't count the cost of the car.

 

  If I considered after-tax income, it turned out to be 17% of take home pay.

 

 

There has been some empirical research on how much you can save if your community reconfigures itself toward modern transit. I havent read it in a couple of years, but the link below gets you to a study by Joe Cortright, an economist in Portland.

 

The Portland region, which is almost identical in size to Cincinnati, gets, I recall, a $2 billion dividend from its investments in transit. People sit in traffic less, they drive fewer miles, they use less fuel, and their cars last longer than if they hadn't made these investments.

 

By the way, Cortright has been a frequent speaker on our many trips out to Portland (28 trips, 384 visits so far). We'll be going again on May 28th. Air fares from Cincinnati are now well under $300 and the four-star hotel we stay has given us a $109 rate. Write me at [email protected] if you'd like to go, and I'll send an invitation by the end of next week.

 

You can't really explain to skeptics what's going on there unless you see it for yourself.

 

Here's Cortright's article:

 

http://www.impresaconsulting.com/?q=node/42

Oh, and on CUT's not being right downtown, who cares? Cincinnati's airport isn't downtown either, and it seems to do OK. Well, did anyway.

Again, maybe half of union stations are within walking distance of their city's downtowns.  Whatever logistical problem the distance of CUT from downtown causes, or similarly distant stations (such as Detroit), is overwhelmed by the cultural force that is compelling people to want daily rail to return.  Along with the departure of downtown department stores, I think the closure of the big rail stations left a big hole in the collective conscious of cities. 

 

If anything, I think the excitement of reactivating Union Terminal is the only thing getting many people in this area excited about the 3C's service.  I think this all illustrates just how important design is -- in this example a building, by virtue of its remarkable design, has so deeply embedded itself in the collective conscious of a city that people are going to great lengths to "make it work" as part of this plan.  And look at how the efforts of local politicians to get the fourth main built is not being attacked in the way the streetcar has.  No matter how much better the Riverfront Transit Center might be from an operations standpoint, it will never capture the public's imagination in this way.     

 

Fun Fact, the population density of the neighborhoods served by the first phase of the line is 8,527 persons per square mile. 

How dense is sprawlsville?

^

Some opponents claim that rail can only work with population densities in excess of 50,000 people per square mile. Which is basically Manhattan below 57th Street. Can't possibly work anywhere else.

50,000 people per square mile

 

Or Over-the-Rhine 100 years ago. 

^

More like 25,000.

Well, OTR is anywhere from .47 to .54 square miles depending on whether or not you include the Pendleton area east of Sycamore Street, with a maximum population around 45,000 people in 1900.  If that total included the West End (say east of Dalton Street and north of Court Street) that's 1.4 square miles for 32,000 people per square mile. 

 

Going back to 1860 when the incorporated area of the city was 7.15 square miles, the population was 161,000, yielding a density of 22,500 people per square mile for the entire city.  The borders at that time were Mill Creek on the west, McMillan Street on the north, and the Ohio River on the east and south.  The lowlands along Mill Creek were still sparsely populated, as were the hilltops in Walnut Hills, Mt. Auburn, and Mt. Adams, so even then OTR and the West end were pushing much higher densities. 

The area where the Laurel Homes and Lincoln Court public housing reached an astounding 71,000 per sq mile because most other areas of the city had a mix of commercial and industrial that reduced actual residents.  The current population density of Manhattan is right at 70,000 per sq mile. 

 

 

There should be some good news tomorrow (not funding related).

^

Some opponents claim that rail can only work with population densities in excess of 50,000 people per square mile. Which is basically Manhattan below 57th Street. Can't possibly work anywhere else.

 

I think this is mostly just Randall O'Toole and his compatriots.

Uptown Consortium to Endorse Streetcar

Today the Board of Directors of the Uptown Consortium and the Neighborhoods of Uptown (NOU) will formally announce their endorsement of the Cincinnati Streetcar project at a press conference.

 

The groups cite the streetcar project’s dedication to the development and revitalization of Uptown communities as the impetus behind their endorsement. Both the Uptown Consortium and NOU recognize the importance the Cincinnati streetcar could play in connecting Cincinnati landmarks with the neighborhoods – Avondale, Clifton, Clifton Heights, Corryville, Fairview, Mt. Auburn and University Heights – collectively known as Uptown. Uptown is home to some of the city’s largest employers, including the University of Cincinnati, Tri-Health, Health Alliance, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, making it an ideal location for further economic development.

 

Details:

 

March 12, 2pm

 

TriHealth, Inc.

 

619 Oak Street, 7th Floor

 

Cincinnati, OH 45206

An interesting article from the Washington Post, talking about LA moving forward on rail transit.  This I thought was the essential part:

 

"L.A. voters are as tax-averse as anyone, and the initiative that a whopping 68 percent of them supported followed the model for successful Golden State ballot measures: It left little to the discretion of elected officials. It stipulated where the rail lines would begin and end, which bus lines would be added, which roads would be widened."

 

I understand that this isn't always optimal, but it might be an idea for future additions to the system- spelling out exactly what we are building and where it is going.

 

Full text: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/09/AR2010030903066.html

 

    Cincinnati's stadium syndrome is affecting rail this way. The stadium fund was a blank check; for a while it wasn't even certain that the footbal stadium would go downtown at all. Confusion over the baseball park resulted in a second vote about the Broadway Commons site. A good plan would take some of the uncertainty out of any rail initiative.

 

 

Uptown Consortium to Endorse Streetcar

Today the Board of Directors of the Uptown Consortium and the Neighborhoods of Uptown (NOU) will formally announce their endorsement of the Cincinnati Streetcar project at a press conference.

 

The groups cite the streetcar project’s dedication to the development and revitalization of Uptown communities as the impetus behind their endorsement. Both the Uptown Consortium and NOU recognize the importance the Cincinnati streetcar could play in connecting Cincinnati landmarks with the neighborhoods – Avondale, Clifton, Clifton Heights, Corryville, Fairview, Mt. Auburn and University Heights – collectively known as Uptown. Uptown is home to some of the city’s largest employers, including the University of Cincinnati, Tri-Health, Health Alliance, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, making it an ideal location for further economic development.

 

Details:

 

March 12, 2pm

 

TriHealth, Inc.

 

619 Oak Street, 7th Floor

 

Cincinnati, OH 45206

Good news!

 

  Cincinnati's stadium syndrome is affecting rail this way. The stadium fund was a blank check; for a while it wasn't even certain that the footbal stadium would go downtown at all. Confusion over the baseball park resulted in a second vote about the Broadway Commons site. A good plan would take some of the uncertainty out of any rail initiative.

 

 

Immediately after MetroMoves lost in 2002, we polled and conducted focus groups to capture the mood of the voters. Without getting into the gory details, about which I'm sworn to secrecy, I can tell you that the county's mismanagement of the Paul Brown Stadium project was a major factor in the defeat of MetroMoves.

 

 

 

If you study any municipal project of any decent size anywhere, anytime, it always becomes something different than was originally planned and always gets funded in a somewhat different way.  The only way to avoid this is to do very small, simple projects which take no more than two years to design and build.  But great cities aren't built on small, simple projects.  They take on huge projects and see them to completion despite numerous setbacks, typically due to the work of a small number of very dedicated people. 

 

The Cincinnati Southern Railroad is a perfect example.  When we approved bonds in 1869, they didn't know if they were going to build the thing to Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville, or even Atlanta.  They didn't know if they were going to buy the existing Kentucky Central to Lexington or not.  They didn't get an enabling act from the Kentucky Legislature for several years, and the constitutionality of what Cincinnati was doing was challenged several times.

 

But they got it built and it went a long way toward keeping Cincinnati from slipping into irrelevance as St. Louis and Chicago passed it in size. 

 

 

 

 

  Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. I always thought that we could go ahead and build a line that is less than perfect, or study the issue for ten years and design a perfect system that is unaffordable.

 

    The Brent Spence Bridge project is getting nowhere because it expanded to the point of being unnaffordable. They have been studying that project for 15 years.

Almost everything in the municipal realm is "studied" for at least five years, if not more than 10.  It took 50 years to get Central Parkway built.   

^Not challenging the accuracy of your statement, but using a Cincinnati project (Central Parkway) as an example for how long things take is not very convincing.  Cincinnati is notoriously slow when it comes to just about everything.

If course, many projects that get done quickly are usually done under the umbrella of corruption, cronyism, etc., many times to disastrous results.  Still, there is something to be said for having a fully developed plan to present to the public.

>Cincinnati is notoriously slow when it comes to just about everything.

 

Nobody has researched and proven this idea, and it shouldn't be allowed to run wild.  Where are these magical cities where everything falls into place year after year, decade after decade?  Big projects take at least five years to execute, and often much longer. 

 

These delays are often caused because different levels of government have to interact.  For example, Central Parkway was delayed *by the State of Ohio*, which did not relinquish the canal until 1911, 30 years after we first requested it to be transfered.  Presently The Banks involves a combination of the City and County, and County Commissioners get elected by being anti-city.  The Brent Spence Bridge project involved the Federal government, two states, and two cities, etc., etc., etc.

 

Every city in the country who wants to build something has to deal with multiple levels of government.  Every municipality experiences delays in their projects because of this. 

 

^Another reason why the Streetcar is such a great project.  Comparatively fewer entities are in on the action.

I agree with Jake. Having been involved in a lot of these projects, and considering the difficult times we're living in, the Cincinnati Streetcar is moving along OK. I think Portland took about ten years to get its streetcar up and running from the time it was first proposed. We'll do it in five or six.

 

 

"We'll do it in five or six."

 

From page one of this thread:

"John Schneider December 08, 2006

That's correct. HDR Inc., an international transportation engineering firm based in Omaha, has commenced a study of a downtown Cincinnati streetcar."

 

Well, we've been studying this streetcar for over 3 years already.

>Cincinnati is notoriously slow when it comes to just about everything.

 

Nobody has researched and proven this idea, and it shouldn't be allowed to run wild. Where are these magical cities where everything falls into place year after year, decade after decade? Big projects take at least five years to execute, and often much longer.

 

These delays are often caused because different levels of government have to interact. For example, Central Parkway was delayed *by the State of Ohio*, which did not relinquish the canal until 1911, 30 years after we first requested it to be transfered. Presently The Banks involves a combination of the City and County, and County Commissioners get elected by being anti-city. The Brent Spence Bridge project involved the Federal government, two states, and two cities, etc., etc., etc.

 

Every city in the country who wants to build something has to deal with multiple levels of government. Every municipality experiences delays in their projects because of this.  

 

 

We are the biggest city in the country to have a pre WWII building as our tallest (until QCS), the subway never became a reality after starting construction, the Banks has taken forever to start construction, etc. 

 

It is true that delays happen in all cities, but it's not just that projects take a long time in Cincinnati, it's that ideas also take forever to get to Cincinnati. Baltimore has had the inner harbor done for years, LA completed their mega downtown project ala the Banks called LA Live last year after being proposed not too long ago.  Virtually every major city besides Cincinnati has some sort of rail transit. So even if the average time to complete projects isn't slower in Cincinnati then elsewhere (which I think it is), by the time we do get around to completeing projects, theyre often old news in the national scheme of things.

 

  Oh come on.

 

  First paid professional fire department

  First professional baseball team

  Longest bridge in the world for 20 years

  Tallest skyscraper in the world excluding New York City

  First water works with activated carbon filtration

 

  Cincinnati is NOT behind the curve in everything.

 

  Cincinnati DOES tend to be conservative. I think this is because manufacturing is a prominent part of the economy, and manufacturing is conservative in nature.