January 18, 20178 yr 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.info I sincerely doubt the streetcars are having problems calculating an accurate GPS position. (What you described is pretty much how navigations systems process GPS data in general though, even in cars.) I think all the problems are in whatever wireless communication system they are using to transmit the data back to whatever "home base" is. www.cincinnatiideas.com
January 18, 20178 yr A streetcar-only pass could be coming soon The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority is looking into how it can sell a monthly pass that would allow Cincinnati Bell Connector streetcar users unlimited rides. Such a pass has been in demand since the streetcar opened in September, Councilman Kevin Flynn said at Wednesday’s meeting of the City Council’s transportation committee. SORTA currently offers an all-you-can-ride bus and streetcar pass for $70 a month for riders within the city of Cincinnati. More below: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/01/18/a-streetcar-only-pass-could-be-coming-soon.html "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 18, 20178 yr Seelbach threatens to fire Trapeze: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/18/seelbach-threatens-fire-streetcar-sign-company/96733392/
January 18, 20178 yr 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.info I sincerely doubt the streetcars are having problems calculating an accurate GPS position. (What you described is pretty much how navigations systems process GPS data in general though, even in cars.) I think all the problems are in whatever wireless communication system they are using to transmit the data back to whatever "home base" is. The streetcars transmit their location back to Metro's servers via a radio signal. That's not the issue. I am getting my information from a very source and the problem is exactly what I described above.
January 18, 20178 yr 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.info I sincerely doubt the streetcars are having problems calculating an accurate GPS position. (What you described is pretty much how navigations systems process GPS data in general though, even in cars.) I think all the problems are in whatever wireless communication system they are using to transmit the data back to whatever "home base" is. The streetcars transmit their location back to Metro's servers via a radio signal. That's not the issue. I am getting my information from a very source and the problem is exactly what I described above. That's shocking then. I worked on testing navigation systems 10 years ago and that part was down pat within the first few months of development of the product we were working on. Sometimes it would get its position confused with a parallel frontage road or some strange circumstance but it would quickly correct itself. Are they trying to reinvent the wheel here? I wonder if CAF could have licensed the tech from someone who's already done it. That's terrible performance to have the icon drop out for minutes at a time. www.cincinnatiideas.com
January 18, 20178 yr The Strava heat map below shows what happens to GPS tracking around high rises. It's not terrible here, but the Chicago Loop or much of Midtown and Lower Manhattan are GPS disasters. It illustrates why this wouldn't be an issue in most (any?) European cities. What do they do in Japan? I'm not sure what's up with the bus tracker beyond that. I tried it a couple times to see a streetcar from the office when it would cross Central Parkway. I saw them disappear from the map only to reappear later several blocks away. In one case one jumped several blocks, and another time one never showed when the map said it should be there. So I don't know.
January 18, 20178 yr The streetcars transmit their location back to Metro's servers via a radio signal.
January 19, 20178 yr What do they do in Japan? Most Japanese cities really aren't all that tall, so I'm sure that helps. Does any transit in Japan even use GPS tracking? They're required by law to keep timetables and all of the rail and bus operators are so punctual/frequent that I don't think tracking would even be necessary over there. “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
January 19, 20178 yr The NY subway has very accurate arrival times and is subterranean and cannot rely on GPS. What do the subway systems use?
January 19, 20178 yr The NY subway has very accurate arrival times and is subterranean and cannot rely on GPS. What do the subway systems use? They are hard-wired. From what I heard that was the plan for Cincinnati (conduit in the concrete base of the track) but it was dropped under budget pressure.
January 19, 20178 yr What do they do in Japan? Most Japanese cities really aren't all that tall, so I'm sure that helps. Does any transit in Japan even use GPS tracking? They're required by law to keep timetables and all of the rail and bus operators are so punctual/frequent that I don't think tracking would even be necessary over there. It's important to keep in mind that real time tracking is critical since our headways are every 12-15 minutes... but they're not so critical when it's more frequent. In Portland I don't think I've generally waited more than 5 minutes for a streetcar due to the fact that two routes share the same tracks, and generally either route will get me where I need to go in the main part of the city. On the Denver transit mall, the buses have 1 minutes headways... there's literally no need for real time arrival signs.
January 19, 20178 yr What do they do in Japan? Most Japanese cities really aren't all that tall, so I'm sure that helps. Does any transit in Japan even use GPS tracking? They're required by law to keep timetables and all of the rail and bus operators are so punctual/frequent that I don't think tracking would even be necessary over there. They have digital boards showing arrivals times of the next several on every station and are extremely punctual. If delayed a red alert goes off that they are delayed and it notes for how long. Frequency is generally very high. 10 mins is the most I've waited.
January 19, 20178 yr What do they do in Japan? Most Japanese cities really aren't all that tall, so I'm sure that helps. Does any transit in Japan even use GPS tracking? They're required by law to keep timetables and all of the rail and bus operators are so punctual/frequent that I don't think tracking would even be necessary over there. It's important to keep in mind that real time tracking is critical since our headways are every 12-15 minutes... but they're not so critical when it's more frequent. In Portland I don't think I've generally waited more than 5 minutes for a streetcar due to the fact that two routes share the same tracks, and generally either route will get me where I need to go in the main part of the city. On the Denver transit mall, the buses have 1 minutes headways... there's literally no need for real time arrival signs. In Portland there are various spots where the streetcars can be seen far in the distance. By total chance there really isn't a spot where you can see our streetcars coming for more than about three blocks. For example, it is surprising how close they have to get to the Rhinegeist station before an impatient crowd can clearly distinguish them from the more numerous metro buses that travel north on Elm. I think part of the Portland Streetcar's initial success can be attributed to the simple fact that their gradually sloping downtown had the effect of attracting ridership since approaching streetcars could be seen five minutes before they could be boarded.
January 20, 20178 yr Bus-tracker is definitely not working right. It looks like it works because you can see the vehicles moving from place to place, stopping at stations and intersections, etc., but I just saw a streetcar waiting to turn from Central Parkway to Walnut, while Bus-tracker showed it up at Race and 14th (assuming that was even the right vehicle). It took probably 5 minutes for the symbol to reach Central and Walnut, at which point the streetcar was probably down at Government Square.
January 20, 20178 yr Bus-tracker is definitely not working right. It looks like it works because you can see the vehicles moving from place to place, stopping at stations and intersections, etc., but I just saw a streetcar waiting to turn from Central Parkway to Walnut, while Bus-tracker showed it up at Race and 14th (assuming that was even the right vehicle). It took probably 5 minutes for the symbol to reach Central and Walnut, at which point the streetcar was probably down at Government Square. That's disappointing. I thought it was OK based on only the liberty and elm stop by my house. On the plus side (since having things make sense is always a plus), at least this can explain why we can't have accurate tracking displays using the same source dataset at bustracker.
January 20, 20178 yr Later on I saw another streetcar that was tracked pretty much correctly. Maybe the uplink is working better on some cars versus others?
January 21, 20178 yr They're sending out a fourth streetcar today to handle the crush loads from the women's march. Watch the critics dismiss the ridership spike from this particular event.
January 21, 20178 yr "People only ride it during special events," say the critics, ignoring the fact that there is some sort of "special" event every single weekend from spring to fall.
January 21, 20178 yr Service was suspended, and then operating only on the downtown loop because of protesters blocking tracks near Washington Park. This is the second time in just 4 months that protests have blocked tracks and impacted streetcar operations.
January 21, 20178 yr Cincinnati PD was completely unprepared for the size of crowd that showed up to the rally today. Sources told me that they expected 500 people and somewhere between 10k and 13k showed up. Two streetcar were blocked on Elm Street for nearly an hour due to crowds spilling out of the park, so service was only operating in the CBD. They are finally getting service back to normal now.
January 23, 20178 yr A new City Council candidate, Jeff Pastor, has an idea: Privatize the streetcar by selling it to a company. Pastor points to overseas privatized rail services and argues the private sector could get the job done better. I told him that may not be possible because federal grants paid for $45 million of the $148 million project and that the city agreed to certain operating parameters with the Federal Transit Administration when it built the project. Umm, yeah, the reason that privatized rail services can exist in other countries is because the companies that develop the rail lines also develop the land around the rail lines. That would be like if 3CDC built the streetcar and used their real estate profits to subsidize streetcar operations. But that's now that happened. Privatizing the streetcar by itself does not make and sense, because no form of transportation (from highways to airports to buses) makes a profit and every form of transportation requires a subsidy from something else.
January 23, 20178 yr Umm, yeah, the reason that privatized rail services can exist in other countries is because the companies that develop the rail lines also develop the land around the rail lines. That would be like if 3CDC built the streetcar and used their real estate profits to subsidize streetcar operations. But that's now that happened. Privatizing the streetcar by itself does not make and sense, because no form of transportation (from highways to airports to buses) makes a profit and every form of transportation requires a subsidy from something else. Kind of a shame we can't really do this stateside any more, seeing as this was the m.o. for so many traction companies back in the day, most notably with Shaker Heights. And of course it's also how the US got most of its pre-1955 amusement parks built! :-D “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
January 23, 20178 yr ^There is all kinds of profit in the transportation industry. There are profitable companies but they could not exist without various other subsidizes from federal, state, and local governments. Airlines might make a profit but they rely on governments to make the up-front investment for billions of dollars worth of airports.
January 23, 20178 yr The dilemma is that the public deeply resented transit companies back when they were profitable, and often for good reason. In the 40s and 50s the executives of the Cincinnati Transit Company colluded with the company itself to introduce volatility into the stock. It's easy to buy low and sell high when you are in control of a stock's price.
January 24, 20178 yr Airlines would probably build their own airports if the government didn't build them. Then, the users would pay through higher ticket prices instead of taxes. Obviously, there is a lot of debate about the proper role of government in the economy, and our government today constructs a lot of infrastructure. I don't think it's fair to say that the airlines and other transportation companies wouldn't exist at all without government subsidies, though.
January 24, 20178 yr Considering how many airlines went bankrupt without having to pay for the airports (or air traffic control), it seems that air travel would revert to a more elite activity and shift much of the market back to rail. That's probably as it should be, but the market for transportation has been so distorted by subsidies, regulations, favoritism, and propaganda that it's difficult to know what's really the true "normal" anymore.
January 24, 20178 yr I didn't say that airlines wouldn't exist without subsidies. They would exist, but be very expensive and only used by elites for long distance travel, as jjakucyk[/member] said. Much like if government did not build "free" roads, we would still have a variety of toll roads operated by for-profit companies, but it would be a small fraction of the number of highways that exist today. Ironically, if we didn't subsidize roads and air travel, there would be much more demand for all types of rail transportation (and buses).
January 24, 20178 yr The airlines and Greyhound often overbook flights and buses. That keeps them profitable but it's not something people would tolerate from a publicly-owned airline or inter-city bus service.
January 27, 20178 yr SORTA reports 5,990 streetcar rides last Saturday, Jan 21. So warm weather + event = summer ridership figure.
January 27, 20178 yr ^ Right, and that was during a somewhat disastrous day when the streetcars were partially blocked due to people from the rally spilling into the streets, resulting in the OTR loop being temporarily shut down. I think we can expect a lot of Saturdays with 4,000+ riders in the spring and summer.
January 27, 20178 yr I'd venture a guess we'll see Saturdays between 5,000 - 10,000 all summer long. I can't imagine with all the events that are happening every weekend and the amount of things to do along the streetcar that draw large crowds when the weather is nice that we'll have any trouble keeping ridership up.
January 30, 20178 yr Took my second streetcar ride last night from Ftn Square to the Banks. Would have walked but the group wanted to ride the streetcar. If it were not for the wait, it would not have been bad. For that short of a distance, I would probably walk it 90% of the time and it would be quicker. That said, the ride was nice, and if I were going up to Rhinegeist or Findlay Market, would definitely ride it again.
January 30, 20178 yr Now if we can just get a functional mobile version of bustracker.go-metro.com it'd be great. Even if they'd just make the website mobile-friendly. As it is, it's so unresponsive to taps/clicks, zooming, and scrolling that it's borderline non-functional on a mobile device. None of the mobile apps seem to have the simple route map with real-time location of the cars, they just want to make guesses on what route you want to take, which direction you're going (plan your trip...I don't want to plan a trip, I just want to see where the vehicles are so I know when to walk out the door), and present minute-by-minute estimates of when the next car is coming. I guess that's fine for a lot of people, but the real-time map is my preference.
January 30, 20178 yr We just had a truck driver from our company skip a stop downtown because he claimed the streetcar removed the loading zone. He's not back yet but I found the block on google earth and showed his boss that the loading zone does in fact still exist. Anyway, I'm sure he's on the CB spreading the news to everyone that the streetcar removed all of the loading zones.
February 2, 20178 yr In the 19th minute of this podcast, 3CDC's Steven Leeper cites "elimination of certain public transportation options" as a reason for a Pittsburgh neighborhood's decline...but then makes no mention whatsoever of Cincinnati's streetcar project in his 20-minute description of Over-the-Rhine's comeback: http://uli.org/podcast/leading-voices-uli-steve-leeper/?utm_source=mm&utm_medium=button&utm_content=jan31&utm_campaign=leadingvoices
February 5, 20178 yr I heard that the majority are turned back on now. Not the one at race and liberty, at least. The one I just took said 20 minutes when the car arrived.
February 6, 20178 yr Now if we can just get a functional mobile version of bustracker.go-metro.com it'd be great. Even if they'd just make the website mobile-friendly. As it is, it's so unresponsive to taps/clicks, zooming, and scrolling that it's borderline non-functional on a mobile device. None of the mobile apps seem to have the simple route map with real-time location of the cars, they just want to make guesses on what route you want to take, which direction you're going (plan your trip...I don't want to plan a trip, I just want to see where the vehicles are so I know when to walk out the door), and present minute-by-minute estimates of when the next car is coming. I guess that's fine for a lot of people, but the real-time map is my preference. Not sure how well its working, but Transit app will show you the route and approximate where the train is based on realtime info.
February 6, 20178 yr ^ Yes but you still have to pick a stop, and then it only shows the cars that have already passed (maybe because it breaks the line at Henry Street?). There is an overall route map that shows all the stops, but no vehicles.
February 6, 20178 yr Yeah, even UC's little shuttle buses have real-time tracking along the route that shows where each bus is. Hopefully they can figure something out. “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
February 6, 20178 yr ^I don't think there's a thread about the U.C. shuttle buses, but since it was mentioned, the system carries 500,000 rides per year.
February 9, 20178 yr I've been hearing anecdotally, and witnessing with my own eyes, that business is up at Findlay Market since the streetcar opened. Now, WCPO is reporting that some businesses are up 30%. This is the impact of the streetcar that is hard to quantify and the people who hate the streetcar will never believe it. But ridership numbers alone do not tell the full story. The way that the streetcar "pays for itself" isn't through fares. It's through more visitors to the city spending money along the route, and more people choosing to live near the route, spending less money on gas and more at local businesses.
February 9, 20178 yr ^ I work downtown and see it as a huge plus. I have taken the streetcar several times to Findlay Market for either shopping or lunch, and make the round trip from 4th St. in less than an hour. Being near the top of the loop makes it easy to pick up a streetcar back on either side of the market. It's great to be able to handle some of these errands during the day instead of wasting time and fighting traffic after work.
February 9, 20178 yr The way that the streetcar "pays for itself" isn't through fares. It's through more visitors to the city spending money along the route, and more people choosing to live near the route, spending less money on gas and more at local businesses. It's a misunderstanding a lot of people have about any government service. Many think government's job is to do things that aren't profitable, but if that's the case then it means the government eventually goes bankrupt. Things like the streetcar, roads, water/sewer systems, education, healthcare, etc., are services which have a positive but indirect return on investment. Water and sewer systems, for instance, help to ensure that people don't get sick and/or die. People who aren't sick or dead can keep working and pay more taxes to fund those systems. Education is the best example, because a smarter populace gets better jobs, makes more money, and supports more other jobs that all lead to a net increase in taxes to pay for the school system. Tracking or accounting for all that is hard, and it's certainly apparent that we're spending way more than we're getting back on road/highway expansions and military conquests, but it's only becoming clear because they're so far out of whack. Nevertheless, the point is that such government services are not supposed to pay back directly, but they are supposed to pay back indirectly.
February 9, 20178 yr ^ Yeah, that's the problem with the "common sense" crowd who think the government should "run like a business" and anything that doesn't make a profit should be shut down.
February 9, 20178 yr ^Those people think they know a lot about business but actually know very little.
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