Unfortunately, he's referring to the Boston subway as light rail and ignores the fact that they do in fact also have streetcars. oops.

 

Don't be a "transit snob"; when most folks think of light rail, they mean any rail transit that carries passengers and no freight.

 

Except he clearly excluded "trolleys" which presumably meant "streetcars".

People are confused by the term light rail.  It sounds weak and so should be pushed out of usage during public discussion.

 

I don't know what the fare is in Boston now, but it was $1 as recently as 10 years ago, unless you rode to the far southern stations on the red line, where you paid another token when you left the station, so it was $2.  I think all of that went by the wayside when they introduced the Charliecard. 

Unfortunately, he's referring to the Boston subway as light rail and ignores the fact that they do in fact also have streetcars. oops.

 

Don't be a "transit snob"; when most folks think of light rail, they mean any rail transit that carries passengers and no freight.

I don't think I'm being a transit snob by using precise language. People are sloppy with their references. Ex: People calling the Clifton Heights area where UC is just Clifton. Using the wrong words/terms makes them lose value and meaning. /rant

 

Also fare is $1.70 w/ a pre-paid Charliecard or $2 on board.

Unfortunately, he's referring to the Boston subway as light rail and ignores the fact that they do in fact also have streetcars. oops.

 

Don't be a "transit snob"; when most folks think of light rail, they mean any rail transit that carries passengers and no freight.

I don't think I'm being a transit snob by using precise language. People are sloppy with their references. Ex: People calling the Clifton Heights area where UC is just Clifton. Using the wrong words/terms makes them lose value and meaning. /rant

 

Also fare is $1.70 w/ a pre-paid Charliecard or $2 on board.

 

He probably doesn't have the slightest clue that:

 

* Modern streetcars are a form of light rail.

* Many light rail systems run in the street in downtowns, just like streetcars.

* Often, tracks can be used for both streetcars and light rail (unfortunately that will not be the case in Cincinnati).

Oh Skyloop, I had forgotten all about you- http://www.skyloop.org/life-with-the-loop.htm

>Using the wrong words/terms

 

Obstructionists use the wrong terms to confuse the public.  A naive repondant tries to clarify the errant termonology by which time a Tom Luken or Stephan Louis cuts them off and changes the subject 7 words into their clarification.  That's why light rail is such a bad term -- I remember hearing Bill Cunningham intentionally refer to 3C's as "light rail".  If another Metro Moves type plan is put on the ballot, a PR firm should be hired months in advance to determine exactly which terminology should be used during the campaign. 

 

 

 

Except he clearly excluded "trolleys" which presumably meant "streetcars".

 

We've gone through this before, but the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar will (most likely) not be a "trolley" because it will draw power using a pantograph and not a "trawler." So, technically, Mr. Daughterly is not opposed to the proposed Cincinnati streetcar, judging by his own language.

 

 

 

 

Except he clearly excluded "trolleys" which presumably meant "streetcars".

 

We've gone through this before, but the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar will (most likely) not be a "trolley" because it will draw power using a pantograph and not a "trawler." So, technically, Mr. Daughterly is not opposed to the proposed Cincinnati streetcar, judging by his own language.

 

Are you telling me he didn't have the streetcar in mind when he said trolley? I know it's wrong, that's why I put it in quotes. But the streetcar is what he meant, and everyone who knows anything about the rhetoric surrounding the project would know that.

 

If he didn't mean the streetcar, he might as well have said PRT or rocket ship, since no one is proposing those either.

>Using the wrong words/terms

 

Obstructionists use the wrong terms to confuse the public.  A naive repondant tries to clarify the errant termonology by which time a Tom Luken or Stephan Louis cuts them off and changes the subject 7 words into their clarification.  That's why light rail is such a bad term -- I remember hearing Bill Cunningham intentionally refer to 3C's as "light rail".  If another Metro Moves type plan is put on the ballot, a PR firm should be hired months in advance to determine exactly which terminology should be used during the campaign. 

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn't matter. Rail opponents will use whatever language can be most negatively grafted onto the project, and the media will pick up on it. I agree that "light rail" is an awful term. "Streetcar" actually tests pretty well in focus groups, which is why the opponents call it a trolley. Sooner or later, this too shall pass.

Are you telling me he didn't have the streetcar in mind when he said trolley?

 

I don't know what he had in mind, but it is interesting that he seems to be in favor of "light rail" but not "trollies." I think it's important that he makes a distinction, and says that one is good and one is bad. I would be interested to know why he thinks "trollies" are bad. It could be for a reason that will surprise us all. 

All streetcars are light rail.

Historically, streetcar and trolley were used interchangeably.  Generally the term streetcar was used more in the south while trolley was more northern.  It's a generalization, but I'd say that anyone from Cincinnati on south who calls a streetcar a trolley is using it as a derogatory term, but that may not be the case for people from New England.

Historically, streetcar and trolley were used interchangeably.

 

There was a distinction between horse cars, cable cars, and trolley cars while all three technologies were in existence. Eventually, two of those three became obsolete, leaving only trolley cars.

 

Well, whilst y'all are arguing semantics, you are missing the point the PDoc is arguing in favor of fixed rail transit for Cincy, mainly due to his positive experiences in other cities...

Few cites *don't* have rail links to their stadium/arena complexes.  Pittsburgh's north shore connector tunnel opens this Sunday:

 

 

 

 

^Not exactly. He favors "light rail," but not "trollies." Both are fixed rail transit. In his mind, there must be some distinction, and this distinction is important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you telling me he didn't have the streetcar in mind when he said trolley?

 

I don't know what he had in mind, but it is interesting that he seems to be in favor of "light rail" but not "trollies." I think it's important that he makes a distinction, and says that one is good and one is bad. I would be interested to know why he thinks "trollies" are bad. It could be for a reason that will surprise us all.

 

Yes. You are always for exploring the water with the oar. Except when it involves using it to pull in the same direction. It's not always closed minded to do so. Sometimes it just gets the job done.

Omg.

 

Clearly he means, he supports light rail/heavy rail intra-metro systems in the vein of:

 

Boston

DC

San Fran

NYC

Chicago

 

And is opposed to URBAN CIRCULATORS.

 

Moving on now...

Where was Daugherty and so many other Cincinnatians with sub-90 IQ's when MetroMoves was scheduled for the ballot?  My blood pressure rises significantly when I hear some caveman complaining that Cinti doesn't have LRT and that the Streetcar is a bad idea b/c Phase I isn't extensive.

Gas was 1.80 during metro moves and no one (regular people) saw that changing.

 

That's just one reason though of course...

^You can't forget that we were just coming off of raising taxes to build two stadiums + other things, I don't think asking for a tax raise again sat well with people.

 

In the event that we see another Metro Moves that engages the entire county, I'd have faith in CFP. They ran great campaign for the streetcar, multiply them at the county level and I could see them getting the message out.

 

Few cites *don't* have rail links to their stadium/arena complexes.  Pittsburgh's north shore connector tunnel opens this Sunday:

 

Originally, I wanted to go catch a Pens game against the Ducks in Pitt and check out that new line and until now I completely forgot I had put that in my calendar. Crap. Did they get new/upgraded rolling stock for the extension? Pittsburgh's T is one of my favorite transit lines.

^You can't forget that we were just coming off of raising taxes to build two stadiums + other things, I don't think asking for a tax raise again sat well with people.

 

In the event that we see another Metro Moves that engages the entire county, I'd have faith in CFP. They ran great campaign for the streetcar, multiply them at the county level and I could see them getting the message out.

 

Few cites *don't* have rail links to their stadium/arena complexes.  Pittsburgh's north shore connector tunnel opens this Sunday:

 

Originally, I wanted to go catch a Pens game against the Ducks in Pitt and check out that new line and until now I completely forgot I had put that in my calendar. Crap. Did they get new/upgraded rolling stock for the extension? Pittsburgh's T is one of my favorite transit lines.

 

I actually felt the Streetcar's possibilities were poorly illustrated by the City.  Dohoney and Mallory did a bad job of explaining that Phase I and II were just the beginning of a multi-faceted, metropolitan transit network.  That was an opportunity to invite the County into the conversation on what two LRT routes would need funding after Phase II dollars are secured.  The Mayor's office kept it streetcar all the way, and I think it made the ride a little rougher than it needed to be.

 

Raising taxes is one of those issues that needs to be explained in terms of real dollars per single person and per family of four.  If folks actually knew how much it would personally cost them to build MetroMoves, a 2:1 ballot result would have never happened.

MetroMoves would have costs an average Hamilton County family $67 per year in additional tax.

Crap. Did they get new/upgraded rolling stock for the extension? Pittsburgh's T is one of my favorite transit lines.

 

There will be no new/rehabbed equipment.

 

I'm surprised no one posted this. If they did, I missed it. And I'm surprised they're holding it at the Duke Energy Center -- I thought they'd have to hold it at least eight feet away! [ba-da-bump!]

 

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Cincinnati Streetcar Project sets outreach meeting

Written by Douglas John Bowen

 

The City of Cincinnati Streetcar Project seeks businesses interested in working on the construction of the city's streetcar project to attend a meeting in which they will learn how to become registered as a "Disadvantaged Business Enterprise" (DBE).

 

The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 22, at 6:00 p.m. at the Duke Energy Convention Center in the city's downtown. The event will "provide an update to contractors and other interested parties of the participation of small, disadvantaged, minority-, and women-owned business enterprises, and minority and female workers on the project, outline the upcoming schedule, and encourage DBE certification." Attendees will have the opportunity for discussion with members of the project team.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/passenger/light-rail/cincinnati-streetcar-project-sets-outreach-meeting.html?channel=

>Dohoney and Mallory did a bad job of explaining that Phase I and II were just the beginning of a multi-faceted,

 

No, the media is at fault.  If we're 5 years into this, and the media has run hundreds of stories on the project, and the public still doesn't know the facts, how can the mayor or "city" be blamed? 

Well, whilst y'all are arguing semantics, you are missing the point the PDoc is arguing in favor of fixed rail transit for Cincy, mainly due to his positive experiences in other cities...

 

Don't forget, many rail opponents will never admit to being anti-rail, they will only say they're "opposed to the current plan", or that "now's not the right time". I'm sure that a lot of the people who say "I don't support the streetcar but I'd support light rail" would not necessarily vote in favor of a light rail plan if they felt it didn't benefit them directly enough. That's why cities usually have to plan an entire light rail network before proposing a tax increase, in order to get support from all of the neighborhoods that lines will eventually reach.

Where was Daugherty and so many other Cincinnatians with sub-90 IQ's when MetroMoves was scheduled for the ballot?  My blood pressure rises significantly when I hear some caveman complaining that Cinti doesn't have LRT and that the Streetcar is a bad idea b/c Phase I isn't extensive.

 

There's also an immediate gratification issue to consider. Most people see an extensive rail system as an asset, but view any individual line or extension as unnecessary or "useless", and don't want to wait 20 years for multiple lines to come online.  The trouble is, you can't really build a whole system all at once.  Basically, everyone wants chicago's or new york's rail system, but few have the patience to actually make it happen.  That said, metro moves was a huge missed opportunity.

>Dohoney and Mallory did a bad job of explaining that Phase I and II were just the beginning of a multi-faceted,

 

No, the media is at fault.  If we're 5 years into this, and the media has run hundreds of stories on the project, and the public still doesn't know the facts, how can the mayor or "city" be blamed? 

 

While the media has "covered" the streetcar issue hundreds of times, they have yet to show they truly understand the issue. The Enquirer and WLWT repeatedly show images of old trollies instead of modern streetcars. Their "investigation" has never gone farther than "proponents say it would benefit the city, but opponents say it would be a boondoggle." How hard would it be to send a reporter to visit one of the three U.S. cities that currently has a modern streetcar and report on the planning, financing, construction, and success of those systems?

If you remember the dark days of 2007-2010, the media kept running footage of historic streetcars.  Dahoney and others sent the TV stations footage of Portland's streetcars, but they still didn't consistently run it.  It took physically bringing a modern streetcar here on the back of a flatbed truck before the news channels had their own footage to run, and have since run it repeatedly. 

 

Back when Norm McDonald hosted Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, he kept running the same stock photos of Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson to make fun of media laziness. 

 

 

How hard would it be to send a reporter to visit one of the three U.S. cities that currently has a modern streetcar and report on the planning, financing, construction, and success of those systems?

 

Very difficult. During the 3C fight, no media would go to other states to see what they are doing. Even the Associated Press, an international media operation which had a Columbus-based reporter who was interested in going to other states, was denied it by his editor because they "didn't have the budget" for it. They do send reporters all over the world, so the real reason is it wasn't a priority for them to spend any money on it. Sounds like its the same deal with the Cincy Streetcar. In this void of information, the opposition can fill it up with lies and the public will believe it.

 

Sadly, we have to do the media's work for them, or at least make it easier for them. Go out an collect video footage, do interviews with business leaders, bipartisan politicians and people of all ages, and provide data with sources cited. Best bet -- have a university, a library or some other outfit that is considered by the media as unbiased and the footage is considered in the public domain.

^ Media will seldom give rail a fair shake. They have too much invested in the highway economy. Think about it.

MetroMoves would have costs an average Hamilton County family $67 per year in additional tax.

 

$1.40 a month per person sounds like a convincing argument for regional transit to me.

>Dohoney and Mallory did a bad job of explaining that Phase I and II were just the beginning of a multi-faceted,

 

No, the media is at fault.  If we're 5 years into this, and the media has run hundreds of stories on the project, and the public still doesn't know the facts, how can the mayor or "city" be blamed? 

 

The local media isn't going to change.  We could blame the media for the stadium deal despite the realities of who negotiated it for what personal benefit.  It's a problem when I don't hear arguments critical to the venture uttered by the mouthpieces of the project, people I'll actually take seriously.  Dohoney and Mallory knew out front that the local boys would fight them tooth and nail because Cincinnati's failures sells newspapers.

MetroMoves would have costs an average Hamilton County family $67 per year in additional tax.

 

$1.40 a month per person sounds like a convincing argument for regional transit to me.

 

This is either an incredibly sarcastic or incredibly foolish statement.

How hard would it be to send a reporter to visit one of the three U.S. cities that currently has a modern streetcar and report on the planning, financing, construction, and success of those systems?

 

Very difficult. During the 3C fight, no media would go to other states to see what they are doing. Even the Associated Press, an international media operation which had a Columbus-based reporter who was interested in going to other states, was denied it by his editor because they "didn't have the budget" for it. They do send reporters all over the world, so the real reason is it wasn't a priority for them to spend any money on it. Sounds like its the same deal with the Cincy Streetcar. In this void of information, the opposition can fill it up with lies and the public will believe it.

 

I'm starting to notice that Ohio is a very isolated place politically. There's not much information that we take from the successes of other states -- we gotta do everything "our" way. I think it's a mindset left over from the '50s and '60s when Ohio was the center of the world and didn't have to care what other states did. When I was in D.C., people from Virginia and Maryland were always asking each other how things were handled in each others states.

^agreed.

Cincinnati is very much isolated politically. From my experience, Columbus is just the opposite being much younger and having half it's population from somewhere else. This can work for and against a place. Cincinnatians may be uninterested in outside ways, but they are at least committed to working to make Cincinnati as they think it should be. Columbusers are far, far more open to outside ideas, but not particularly committed to working to implement them in columbus. Many I know in Columbus have no expectation they'll still be there in five years, while most I know in Cincinnati cannot conceive of ever leaving. It's like two sides of the same coin as far as urbanist development is concerned. Its takes committment and openness to make it work.

The difference is that the business community in Columbus never framed urban Columbus as a boogeyman.  Meanwhile,  there was a well-coordinated midcentury effort in Cincinnati by business leaders to get government money to tear the city down and force the movement of the population to developable farm land that they owned. The echoes from that fear campaign still define Cincinnati's civic discourse. 

 

I think that cincinnati's exceptional concentration of locally headquartered businesses is an example of its indifference to outsiders and their ideas. Many columbusers have started businesses too. They just didn't choose to do it in columbus. I'd argue that columbusers look outside in the first place because columbus had less of a business community and an urban center to work with. Many of the big employers and land owners in columbus are not beholden to columbus residents. State govn't, OSU, Chase and other important organizations there are headquartered or controlled by those in or from elsewhere. Even if nationwide and cardinal health had attempted to do what was done in Cincinnati, fewer who were there then would still be around to remember it or care now. The collective memory of the past that seems to almost overwhelm cincinnati seems almost absent in columbus. Is it better to attempt to live in the past like many cincinnatians, or have no shared past at all, like columbusers, when trying to build for the future with things like streetcars.

That's definitely true. There aren't many people up here in Seabus that you run into on a daily basis that can talk about things that went on in town even in the '90s. Unless you're talking to someone you went to high school with.

I think Ohio as a whole is fusty and parochial, with a strong conservative streak thrown in for good measure. If it didn't happen here, it's not worth doing. That's a generalization of course, since some areas are more progressive than others, especially NE Ohio, but these are dragged down by their myopic bretheren in the rest of the state. Media here reflects that and is largely owned by people with an especially conservative outlook. The Wolfe family, owners of the Columbus Dispatch are notoriously crusty and are a big reason why we don't have intercity or light rail in  Ohio's capital city. Too bad.

I've never seen anyone suggest that North East Ohio is more progressive than the rest of Ohio. What makes you think this? Does this mean that progressiveness isn't necessarily as good for business as we have been led to believe?

MetroMoves would have costs an average Hamilton County family $67 per year in additional tax.

 

$1.40 a month per person sounds like a convincing argument for regional transit to me.

 

This is either an incredibly sarcastic or incredibly foolish statement.

 

The tax would start around $2.79 monthly per co-head of household, more for single persons.  Politically it makes sense to include non-taxpayers to that figure for impact in your campaign. 

I've never seen anyone suggest that North East Ohio is more progressive than the rest of Ohio. What makes you think this? Does this mean that progressiveness isn't necessarily as good for business as we have been led to believe?

 

Wait, seriously?

 

^ Do not feed.

Soo.....

 

Back to the streetcar!

 

I noticed the water main replacement has nearly reached 15th!

What's pretty cool is when talking to out-of-towners about the city getting a streetcar they generally react positively to it. Lends to the growing perception that Cincy is becoming a progressive place!

^Along those lines, I overheard a very wonky and well respected NYC councilperson talking up the Cincy streetcar between sessions at an event in NYC several weeks ago.  As far as I know, neither he nor the few people he was talking to had any direct connection to Cincy, so I don't think he was just blowing smoke.

Cincinnati's streetcar project is much admired and discussed among national rail advocates. They have long thought the design of the route was pretty amazing in terms of the variety of uses it will serve.

Cincinnati's streetcar project is much admired and discussed among national rail advocates. They have long thought the design of the route was pretty amazing in terms of the variety of uses it will serve.

 

It really is remarkable. The trip from the riverfront to Findlay Market will show off an amazing array of Cincinnati's power and potential.