Wow, Simpson is crushing them so far

 

Yeah and Richardson isn't thaaaat far from Cranley.

Bus Courier probably skews towards Simpson given that they are positioned as an alternative to the Enquirer...

Doesn't Yvette Simpson's significant other work for the Business Courier as a political cartoonist?

Yes he does. Let's keep any further discussion in the 2017 Mayoral Race thread, though.

Streetcar ridership soars on Saturday; falters other days

 

Tentative December ridership numbers for the Cincinnati streetcar show the 3.2-mile loop is most popular on Saturdays, but struggles to fill its cars on other days, according to documentation from the streetcar's operator.

 

Overall last month, ridership was 40 percent below what was projected. Roughly 53,000 people rode the Cincinnati Bell Connector. Projections called for 88,018 riders.

 

Saturday ridership beat projections by nearly 68 percent, carrying roughly 14,000 people around downtown. Sundays were off by 29 percent.

 

Cont

It's shocking that people aren't going out more when it's 12 degrees outside. ::eyeroll::

I am looking forward to similar coverage from them regarding user numbers when the new MLK interchange opens. Will MLK ramp numbers dive after 3 months of being open? Will it make its maintenance budget for its 40 year life span? Lets get the Greater Cincinnati Politics armchair QB's to look into it!

JYP, you know that the MLK interchange will just be a fad! Hipsters will drive on it for a few months then get bored and go back to the Taft interchange!

  ^ I'm waiting until northbound traffic exiting I-71 to MLK can't climb the slope of an exit on icy days. Have a look -- you'll see what I mean

Streetcar ridership soars on Saturday; falters other days

 

Tentative December ridership numbers for the Cincinnati streetcar show the 3.2-mile loop is most popular on Saturdays, but struggles to fill its cars on other days, according to documentation from the streetcar's operator.

 

Overall last month, ridership was 40 percent below what was projected. Roughly 53,000 people rode the Cincinnati Bell Connector. Projections called for 88,018 riders.

 

Saturday ridership beat projections by nearly 68 percent, carrying roughly 14,000 people around downtown. Sundays were off by 29 percent.

 

Cont

 

Anybody recall what November's ridership was?

^49,920

I'm not clicking the link because I don't want to give the Enquirer a hit. But how in the world can they say that "Projections called for 88,018 riders" in December? As far as I know, no ridership projections were made for specific months. We estimated how many people would ride on weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and over the course of the year we will likely be pretty close to those numbers. Obviously we are going to be above average in warm months and below average in cold months. To say that the planners of the streetcar claimed we would have 88k riders in December is nonsense.

So more people rode in Dec. than Nov? I'm not surprised yet still disappointed the Enquirer omitted this fact.

So more people rode in Dec. than Nov? I'm not surprised yet still disappointed the Enquirer omitted this fact.

 

The Enquirer changed the link on its front page to "Streetcar ridership soars 1 day; down overall".  Not one day each week or simply "Streetcar ridership remains strongest on weekends", but phrased it as awkwardly and clickbaitedly as possible. 

 

Nor was their any acknowledgement that major holidays fell on two December weekends and caused lower-than-average weekend ridership.  Or that Monday and Tuesday ridership immediately after Christmas, Dec 26 and 27, were very high.  And that the daytime high on that Monday was a record 71F and the next day was in the high 50s or 60s. 

 

Nor is there any acknowledgement that while the tracks can't physically change, the real-time arrival boards still aren't working, there is no signal prioritization given to the streetcars, and Cranley has ordered the majority of the streetcars to sit unused in the car barn the majority of the time.

 

 

 

 

In April and May when the weekly streetcar ridership numbers are once again above expectations, the Enquirer will focus on how Mondays and Tuesday are below expectations and it's only weekend ridership that's keeping it afloat. You can't win.

Here is the December 2016 printout. Again I ask why this thing is running on Thanksgiving and Christmas, surely the two lowest ridership days of the year, and we're probably paying the drivers and staff 2X:

 

The strongest ridership week was the last week of the month -- which was exceptionally warm (it was 71F on Monday Dec 26) and many people entertained relatives from out-of-town.  So in two ways it was kind of like...the summer.  I think the one surprise that I think we can now say is a pattern is the low ridership during Bengals home games.  The Bengals played at Paul Brown on Dec 4 and Dec 18 and while each game might have technically sold out I'm sure that there were plenty of empty seats at both.  The Bengals played their last game Jan 1, so it'll be interesting to see if there was higher ridership that day because so many people had Monday Jan 2 off of work.  But let there be no mistake that the streetcar's Banks stop is very far from Paul Brown Stadium...approximately 1,800 feet.  Or about 1,600 feet farther than that station is from Great American Ballpark. 

 

Way back in 2006 the streetcar was first proposed to travel the full length of Race and Elm.  The way it was instead built with its shift to Walnut and Main was the right choice because there are about 65 more events at Great American Ballpark each year than Paul Brown Stadium. 

 

 

I still think they got to get the signal timing down with the real time arrival too.  That will make a huge difference.  I went Christmas shopping downtown and caught the connector at a good time after parking on 3rd street, went up to OTR, but then when I was trying to come down, it was saying 5 mins... kept saying 5 mins... nothing.  Then I started walking back to my car from Washington Park on the southbound route, the time was going up every station I passed, just kept walking and never once did a streetcar pass me, all the way until I got back to my car on third street.  When I was in it, it was packed full, I think it was that Dec. 10 date.

 

I am hoping they have most of these issues ironed out once the Reds season starts because that will be a whole other demographic downtown.  Hopefully they are more competitive this year too.

 

Lastly, I think it was the business courier published developments downtown, I think it looked like around 1500 new residential units in downtown and OTR will open up this year, which if they lease like they have been, will put a lot more people on the street along the route helping things out.

Several of the real time arrival screens are testing now. If you have any issues with the arrival times being off, text 513-478-3163 to report the issue. Add the number to your phone contacts now so that you can easily text it later.

 

In order to fix the GPS tracking issues, they have installed a secondary system in all of the streetcars that takes over when the GPS signal is lost (which happens in parts of downtown where skyscrapers block the signal). I know there are some people on this forum skeptical and upset that this hasn't been fixed yet. So I just wanted to let everybody knows, they are taking the tracking issue very seriously and working hard to correct it, it was not a simple fix.

Several of the real time arrival screens are testing now. If you have any issues with the arrival times being off, text 513-478-3163 to report the issue. Add the number to your phone contacts now so that you can easily text it later.

 

In order to fix the GPS tracking issues, they have installed a secondary system in all of the streetcars that takes over when the GPS signal is lost (which happens in parts of downtown where skyscrapers block the signal). I know there are some people on this forum skeptical and upset that this hasn't been fixed yet. So I just wanted to let everybody knows, they are taking the tracking issue very seriously and working hard to correct it, it was not a simple fix.

 

Travis, are they displaying the text number up on the reader board where the real-time arrival readouts appear?

They have added signs to the stops with that phone number but it's not displayed on the LED board itself.

I think the one surprise that I think we can now say is a pattern is the low ridership during Bengals home games.

 

I think part of this is also just the tailgate atmosphere and tradition that surrounds football. People might go out and make a night of it at bars and restaurants when they attend other events downtown, but many football fans want to just park, grill food and drink until the game starts.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Jan. 11, 2017

 

 

 

CINCINNATI BELL CONNECTOR TESTING REAL-TIME INFO SCREENS

 

Screens to be tested at all 18 stations to improve customer’s experience

 

 

 

CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Bell Connector team will be conducting tests on the real-time information screens located at each of the 18 streetcar platforms in an effort to correct technical difficulties the screens have been experiencing.

 

The real-time screens are being tested to improve customer’s experience by providing accurate next vehicle arrival information for riders waiting at streetcar platforms.

 

During the testing period, the screens may be disabled periodically and inaccuracies are possible. Testing will begin at streetcar stations 5th & Walnut, 2nd & Main and 4th & Main and is expected to last for two weeks, pending successful implementation of updates by the Trapeze software.

 

Your help is needed! If you detect issues or inaccuracies with the real-time screens during this time, please let us know by sending a text alert to 513-478-3163 with the location, time and information displayed on the screen. Note: Text only, no calls please or reply to texts.

 

About The Cincinnati Bell Connector

 

Recently renamed the Cincinnati Bell Connector, the streetcar is intended to expand transportation options, stimulate development, and enhance livability by connecting downtown, the riverfront and Over-the-Rhine. It is owned and funded by the City of Cincinnati, managed by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority, and operated by Transdev.

 

 

#    #    #

Will this be posted at each station too?

Is there any way to see the times without being at a station, either on the web or an app?  I tried Cincy EZRide and it's a complete disaster of an interface.  You try to plan a trip, and zooming keeps shifting the start and end points, so you have to enter them manually, but it also tries to autocomplete addresses from all over the country.  I tried to get it to find me a route from Main and Central Parkway to Findlay Market, and it didn't even acknowledge the streetcar as an option.  It went from a couple bus routes to walking the entire way.  I just want to know about when the next streetcar is coming so I can leave the office in time to catch it, rather than walk to the stop to find that I just missed one, and that the next one is 20 minutes away. 

If you are a computer, open http://bustracker.go-metro.com/ and select both Route 100s. You'll then be able to see the streetcars live on the map, Uber-style.

 

For your phone, download the app called Transit. It will show the nearest bus and streetcar stops to your current location and how long it will take to arrive.

Found this to be interesting for you all...

 

Conservative radio host reluctantly rides streetcar, has change of heart

 

Former city council member Laurie Quinlivan and WLWT host Bill Cunningham spent part of late Thursday afternoon riding around town

http://www.wlwt.com/article/john-london-late-pkg-nrv496fz/8594137

^Of course they used Thanksgiving as an example of "Thursday Ridership".  I mean, come on. 

Yeah but Jake I think that misses the point by a mile. Seriously, that video was pretty amazing. John London got Cunningham to say, on camera, that he wants people in Mason to come down and ride the streetcar.

I'm glad that Bill Cunningham said some good things about it, and it'll probably result in some more suburbanites giving it a chance, but this is nothing more than a ratings ploy by Cunningham. Every couple of years he says something nice about the city and gets tons of attention for it. In 2012, he praised the progress in OTR and got covered by all the local blogs. This time he even got covered on TV news... for riding the streetcar.

I view it as a very good thing.  And, he will come down from time to time and keep witnessing the transformation going on and he will talk about it on the radio, so that's all good press.

The streetcar now has the voice of Nick Lachey. He also lists the stops as their sponsor name and location, which makes it very long: "the next stop is the Cincinnati cyclone station at the banks"

Yeah but Jake I think that misses the point by a mile. Seriously, that video was pretty amazing. John London got Cunningham to say, on camera, that he wants people in Mason to come down and ride the streetcar.

 

I listened to Cunningham today.  Right back to bashing the streetcar.  Smitherman said that since UC is the city's biggest employer, the streetcar should have started at UC and "then come down the hill".  Complaining that streetcar is taking funding away from snow removal, police, etc.  Smearing "progressives" for not understanding how money works...Simpson and Richardson will wreak havoc. 

Haha, how does that many any sense? How would a streetcar that circulates people around UC be any better, cheaper, or a more appropriate "first phase" than a streetcar that circulates people around Downtown/OTR?

Haha, how does that many any sense? How would a streetcar that circulates people around UC be any better, cheaper, or a more appropriate "first phase" than a streetcar that circulates people around Downtown/OTR?

 

Smitherman has been familiarizing himself with pro-urban terminology because he's turning the concepts like "walkability" back around at progressives.  He said Downtown was already perfectly walkable -- "...but these progressives want a platform to ride around on since they don't want to walk".  I'm paraphrasing but he's doing what anti-Agenda 21 talk radio has been doing for the past 15 years -- making sure that their audience hears terminology and is introduced to progressive-born terminology from them first.  Their crowd has a pavlovian response to bike paths and stuff like that because Glen Beck, etc., warned them about them 5-10-15 years ago. 

 

 

Even though Glenn Beck claims to be a changed man, he still has this page on his website warning people to oppose concepts like smart growth, safe routes to schools, open space, and traffic calming! Oooh, scary!

Haha, how does that many any sense? How would a streetcar that circulates people around UC be any better, cheaper, or a more appropriate "first phase" than a streetcar that circulates people around Downtown/OTR?

 

Smitherman has been familiarizing himself with pro-urban terminology because he's turning the concepts like "walkability" back around at progressives.  He said Downtown was already perfectly walkable -- "...but these progressives want a platform to ride around on since they don't want to walk".  I'm paraphrasing but he's doing what anti-Agenda 21 talk radio has been doing for the past 15 years -- making sure that their audience hears terminology and is introduced to progressive-born terminology from them first.  Their crowd has a pavlovian response to bike paths and stuff like that because Glen Beck, etc., warned them about them 5-10-15 years ago. 

 

 

 

This is why I told my friends in Chicago that if they wanted to confront Trump supporters don't use the memetic progressive catch phrases, the right has been trained how to brainlessly counteract everyone of them.  Explain the underlying concept not the buzz term.

When will real-time arrival information be displayed at streetcar stops?

 

The contractor in charge of getting real-time arrival information to the 18 Cincinnati Bell Connector streetcar stops throughout downtown does not know when all of them will be fully operational, drawing the ire of Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority board members on Tuesday.

 

Only three of the signs are operational, crippling the system’s ability to tell riders when the streetcar will arrive and making it useless for anyone trying to use it to get to an appointment.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/01/17/when-will-real-time-arrival-information-be.html

"making it useless for anyone trying to use it to get to an appointment"

 

Just a wee bit hyperbolic...

^ nah, I don't think so. Such statements reflect more than the state at the moment; they reflect the caustic effects that a lack of accurate real time arrival info has had on people using this mode during the business day.

 

I've had many people tell me that the uncertainty of when the cars will arrive has made them stop even thinking of using the streetcar for getting around M-F. Personally I use it, but I'm employed at my own small business and so can have more flexibility. So anecdotally, what is said in the article seems accurate to me.

 

Also, I'm very encouraged that the SORTA board clearly recognizes the seriousness of the problem, and is actively pushing the vendor for fixes. That only happens when things are clearly recognized and accepted as being problems.

If you are a computer, open http://bustracker.go-metro.com/ and select both Route 100s. You'll then be able to see the streetcars live on the map, Uber-style.

 

For your phone, download the app called Transit. It will show the nearest bus and streetcar stops to your current location and how long it will take to arrive.

FYI the bus tracker is currently the only way to accurately know the streetcar locations (and estimate, for yourself, their arrival time). The transit app will be really nice, but it's currently not being fed accurate real-time arrival info driven by the GPS signal data. You can see that for yourself by pulling up the bus tracker site as well as asking transit to plot a streetcar route. There is no correspondence.

 

Personally I find it really frustrating to have transit app tell me to "leave now!" for my 1-minute walk to the stop, when the next streetcar is on the other end of town. While that doesn't make any sense at all, it does make sense that transit couldn't actually have real-time arrival information on the streetcar, while they are currently working to fix the real-time arrival screens at the stops. I mean, if you could have accurate arrivals on transit, then you'd of course have solved the problem of arrival information at the stops.

There's a streetcar tracker app some rogue do-gooder created for the Google Play Store (not sure if it's on iphone or not). It's simply called "Cincinnati Streetcar Tracker" and it uses the metro bus tracker website, but makes it look good on mobile and automatically chooses the streetcar as the routes you want to look at.

 

I highly recommend it as it shows the real time locations of the cars as accurately as Metro knows them and works better than the Transit app right now.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lobotrock.cincystreetcarmapper&hl=en

There's a streetcar tracker app some rogue do-gooder created for the Google Play Store (not sure if it's on iphone or not). It's simply called "Cincinnati Streetcar Tracker" and it uses the metro bus tracker website, but makes it look good on mobile and automatically chooses the streetcar as the routes you want to look at.

 

I highly recommend it as it shows the real time locations of the cars as accurately as Metro knows them and works better than the Transit app right now.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lobotrock.cincystreetcarmapper&hl=en

 

Can anyone on here confirm the legitimacy of this app for safety reasons?

 

That's him announcing he made it (back in September).

 

In a reply to that tweet he provided a link to his code so someone could make an Apple/iphone version, but I know nothing about that kind of stuff.

 

FWIW I downloaded it without any concern for security and it works well.

 

Here are the permissions it asks for from your phone:

view network connections

full network access

There's a streetcar tracker app some rogue do-gooder created for the Google Play Store (not sure if it's on iphone or not).

Not.  :-(

 

A great idea, though. And straightforward - would think that this would be very much within SORTAs ability to do and support internally or through existing contracts. I'd imagine that a nice simple mobile app like that would be very useful for bus riders, too.

SORTA mentioned that they're going to have the tracking information added to the Cincy EZRide (ticket) app once the tracking data is accurate.

There's a streetcar tracker app some rogue do-gooder created for the Google Play Store (not sure if it's on iphone or not). It's simply called "Cincinnati Streetcar Tracker" and it uses the metro bus tracker website, but makes it look good on mobile and automatically chooses the streetcar as the routes you want to look at.

 

I highly recommend it as it shows the real time locations of the cars as accurately as Metro knows them and works better than the Transit app right now.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lobotrock.cincystreetcarmapper&hl=en

 

Can anyone on here confirm the legitimacy of this app for safety reasons?

 

It wouldn't be on the store if it was unsafe.  Google doesn't check its software as thoroughly as apple does but they do make sure to keep out viruses and what not.

SORTA mentioned that they're going to have the tracking information added to the Cincy EZRide (ticket) app once the tracking data is accurate.

Interesting thing is that the GPS data is already accurate. Distinct from the "real-time arrival" data, which would seem to be a function of the GPS data but would also need to account dynamically for vehicle speed, anticipated conditions, etc.

 

So I think the point is that a value added app would consist of simply the existing (accurate) GPS bustracker data on a map, optimized for mobile. Which is what the "do-gooder" did.

I will say that the GPS data is not always accurate. If a streetcar shows up on this map, I've seen that it is always accurate, but they often disappear entirely from the map. But it's way better than having nothing. And really all I want. Arrival times at the stops is fine, but I want to know when I should leave my house to catch the streetcar.

^ interesting to know. I agree that's pretty much what I want to know too, although I clearly see the use for arrivals at the stops for visitors etc.

 

I guess the GPS drops are part of what they are trying to fix, as mentioned by taestell[/member]. If it drops out for a short while but then comes back, I can account for that when visualizing on a map, but I can see how that could create a few problems for an arrival time calculation.

Anyone who has used a standalone GPS knows that it can sometimes be a block or two off in dense urban areas. So let's say the streetcar's GPS indicates that it's at 4th & Sycamore. The new system is smart enough to know that obviously the streetcar is not at 4th & Sycamore since there are no tracks on Sycamore. So it will use the last accurate GPS point combined with the distance travelled since then. If the last accurate data point was at 3rd & Main (where the signal was clear due to lack of tall buildings) but the streetcar has travelled 750 feet since then, the system can calculate that it's now on Main between 4th and 5th streets. As soon the streetcar gets another accurate GPS data point, it will switch back to using GPS instead of the secondary system.