June 23, 20204 yr Six council members (a veto-proof supermajority) are on board with Seelbach's plan to restart streetcar service, plugging the budget hole using $1.5 million from the city's transit fund. The streetcar would also be fare-free under this plan. Voting in favor today: Kearney, Landsman, Seelbach, Sittenfeld, Young, Mann Abstaining: Sundermann, Pastor
June 23, 20204 yr 49 minutes ago, taestell said: Six council members (a veto-proof supermajority) are on board with Seelbach's plan to restart streetcar service, plugging the budget hole using $1.5 million from the city's transit fund. The streetcar would also be fare-free under this plan. Voting in favor today: Kearney, Landsman, Seelbach, Sittenfeld, Young, Mann Abstaining: Sundermann, Pastor I take this as a sign that the administrations conversations with the FTA went well. ? “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
June 23, 20204 yr Fare-free! What happy news! I bet this will have an extreme benefit of ridership once COVID-19 ends.
June 24, 20204 yr 5 hours ago, taestell said: plugging the budget hole using $1.5 million from the city's transit fund I thought I read in the Courier that SORTA had asked for that earnings tax money to go to them since it was theirs prior to the transit tax passing. Could cause a public fight and red meat for the local news and a lot of streetcar haters to suddenly become bus advocates for a hot second. Edited June 24, 20204 yr by 10albersa
June 24, 20204 yr If I understand correctly, this $1.5 million is coming out of the reserve that the city keeps in their transit fund to serve as a "buffer" between the earning tax income and the payments to SORTA. The city has successfully argued in recent years that this money is the city's, not SORTA's. I know SORTA would love to get their hands on this money to cover the gap between the earnings tax ending and the income tax beginning, but at the end of the day, the city can spend it on any transit-related expenses it wants.
June 24, 20204 yr I also wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief yet, this was just a committee vote today. There still needs to be a full council vote. There are still plenty of opportunities for shenanigans.
June 24, 20204 yr More on that... How one councilman would ensure streetcar isn’t a zombie in 2020 The Cincinnati Bell Connector would receive more-robust funding in the city’s coming fiscal year under a plan introduced by Councilman Chris Seelbach, dispensing with the mayor’s proposal for a “zombie streetcar” that would run on occasion with no passengers. Update: Council's budget committee approved Seelbach's plan on 6-0-2 party-line vote on Tuesday, with Republicans Jeff Pastor and Betsy Sundermann abstaining. Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman, an independent, is not a member of the committee. Assuming the same vote happens at council Wednesday, it would sustain any potential mayoral veto. Seelbach's plan would use $1.5 million from the city’s transit fund, which gets its money from the city’s expiring 0.3% transit earnings tax. It also would use $260,000 from FC Cincinnati ticket tax revenue, money the club is required to pay that was not already allocated in the budget, according to Seelbach’s office. The plan would use fewer resources that were eligible for general fund usage than ever before, according to Seelbach’s office, freeing up $2 million from parking fine and meter revenue normally earmarked for the streetcar to deal with the city's $73 million deficit.. "The last thing I want to be doing is debating the streetcar again," Seelbach said Tuesday. "Yet again, what's been put in our lap is another streetcar fight. More below: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/06/23/how-one-councilman-would-ensure-streetcar-isnt-a.html "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
June 24, 20204 yr Some characters out there on the internet are feigning outrage over the potential "theft" of SORTA's money for the streetcar. It's like...the Fed just printed $3 trillion and you're clutching pearls over a $1~ million line item in the country's 30th-largest city.
June 24, 20204 yr 8 hours ago, ColDayMan said: "The last thing I want to be doing is debating the streetcar again," Seelbach said Tuesday. "Yet again, what's been put in our lap is another streetcar fight. Amen to that.
June 24, 20204 yr It is probably a good idea to email your council members and tell them you support reopening the streetcar. I would focus your efforts on the 6 council members that voted "yes" yesterday and ask them to continue supporting the plan to reopen. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
June 24, 20204 yr 5 hours ago, jmecklenborg said: Some characters out there on the internet are feigning outrage over the potential "theft" of SORTA's money for the streetcar. It's like...the Fed just printed $3 trillion and you're clutching pearls over a $1~ million line item in the country's 30th-largest city. Now people are complaining that the streetcar will be free but you'll have to pay to ride the bus. Yawn.
June 24, 20204 yr Lots of cities have free urban circulators but charge for transit routes that travel longer distance. Columbus has a free CBus circulator but other COTA routes cost money. I don't see anyone complaining about that or making it into a social justice issue. The amount of confusion that the TVMs and app cause riders is not worth the small amount of money collected in fare revenue.
June 24, 20204 yr 20 minutes ago, taestell said: Lots of cities have free urban circulators but charge for transit routes that travel longer distance. Columbus has a free CBus circulator but other COTA routes cost money. I don't see anyone complaining about that or making it into a social justice issue. The amount of confusion that the TVMs and app cause riders is not worth the small amount of money collected in fare revenue. Denver has free buses that act as circulators on the otherwise traffic free 16th Street Mall. The streetcar functions similarly to these circulators and the CBUS Circulator you mentioned. I've used the CBUS Circulator, and appreciate that it's free to use. As a visitor, it gets me to utilize methods other than a car to get across town. This isn't that difficult. After streetcar operating expenses are covered, any leftover money should go to SORTA. This isn't a ton of money.
June 24, 20204 yr I'm in Denver now and again for work on a project I have out there and make heavy use of their urban circulator buses. Very useful. When I was back in Cincy for Blink last year we used the Streetcar at least 4 times a day. Being $2 wasn't an issue for us, but being free and not having to think about it or deal with those crap ticketing machines will be a big plus when we return (hopefully) later this summer.
June 24, 20204 yr 23 minutes ago, GCrites80s said: Bob in Mason doesn't know any of that. Unfortunately it is Cam Hardy pushing this line.
June 24, 20204 yr 1 hour ago, taestell said: Lots of cities have free urban circulators but charge for transit routes that travel longer distance. Columbus has a free CBus circulator but other COTA routes cost money. I don't see anyone complaining about that or making it into a social justice issue. The amount of confusion that the TVMs and app cause riders is not worth the small amount of money collected in fare revenue. Even closer to your home, Dayton's The Flyer circulator bus has been free since... "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
June 24, 20204 yr 17 hours ago, 10albersa said: I thought I read in the Courier that SORTA had asked for that earnings tax money to go to them since it was theirs prior to the transit tax passing. Could cause a public fight and red meat for the local news and a lot of streetcar haters to suddenly become bus advocates for a hot second. Just a bit more information about the city's "transit fund" which has suddenly become a hot topic. Since the original transit earnings tax passed in 1973, the city has collected that revenue and it has gone into the city's transit fund. This is the city's money to spend on transit-related purposes and doesn't automatically pass through to SORTA. The city appropriates money to SORTA annually, which is typically the amount collected by the earnings tax, save for a few million dollars that the city retains in the fund as a buffer between incomes and expenditures. However, the city can use (and has used) this for other transit-related purposes besides SORTA. For example, the city has argued in the past that it could use this money to rebuild roads that bus routes use, install new traffic signals along those roads, etc., and SORTA has agreed with the city on this point. In the 1990s, when the city created the Holly Jolly Downtown Trolley, which was, ahem, a free urban circulator that SORTA didn't like, there was some discussion about paying for that directly out of the city's transit fund, before SORTA finally agreed to fund it out of their budget. SORTA assumed that once the earnings tax ended, the city would empty out the transit fund and write them a big check with the remaining balance to cover the gap before their sales tax revenue started coming in. But the city is not obligated to do so, and they have now proposed using some of those funds for the other transit system that it is responsible for funding. (The original 1973 ballot issue does not have any language that says it must go to buses and can't go towards rail, unlike Metro's new sales tax, which explicitly prohibits those funds from being spent on the streetcar.) TLDR: This has devolved into a silly bus-vs-rail fight. The city runs a transit system (the Cincinnati Streetcar) and is allowed to use its own transit funding to pay for running that transit system.
June 24, 20204 yr On 6/23/2020 at 4:34 PM, taestell said: Six council members (a veto-proof supermajority) are on board with Seelbach's plan to restart streetcar service, plugging the budget hole using $1.5 million from the city's transit fund. The streetcar would also be fare-free under this plan. Voting in favor today: Kearney, Landsman, Seelbach, Sittenfeld, Young, Mann Abstaining: Sundermann, Pastor The six council members listed above plus Jeff Pastor voted in favor of Seelbach’s plan to restart streetcar service. Despite this 7-2 approval from City Council, Cranley still vetoed the decision. Council apparently has to wait until the next City Council meeting in August to overturn his veto. So the “zombie streetcar” will remain running for the entire month of July. In case you were wondering how pathetic John Cranley is.
June 25, 20204 yr 25 minutes ago, taestell said: The six council members listed above plus Jeff Pastor voted in favor of Seelbach’s plan to restart streetcar service. Despite this 7-2 approval from City Council, Cranley still vetoed the decision. Council apparently has to wait until the next City Council meeting in August to overturn his veto. So the “zombie streetcar” will remain running for the entire month of July. In case you were wondering how pathetic John Cranley is. Boo. How frustrating.
June 25, 20204 yr 3 hours ago, taestell said: The six council members listed above plus Jeff Pastor voted in favor of Seelbach’s plan to restart streetcar service. Despite this 7-2 approval from City Council, Cranley still vetoed the decision. Council apparently has to wait until the next City Council meeting in August to overturn his veto. So the “zombie streetcar” will remain running for the entire month of July. In case you were wondering how pathetic John Cranley is. Kearney provides the best reasoning (Pastor too but I especially liked Kearney's) when she essentially says, "paraphrasing" (I was against it and thought it a bad idea at first, but we built it so we are better off using it and making it work). We built the damn thing, lets use it. Besides the intangible benefits it creates, it may actually become something that produces revenue. If after 30 years it is a never used tool, then get rid of it. In the meantime, lets make it work.
June 25, 20204 yr 10 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said: it may actually become something that produces revenue If we attribute a certain % of increased development along the line to the Streetcar itself, once those tax rebates we offer roll off the books, I'd consider those properties' tax revenue as attributable to the streetcar. Of course, that also means the VTICA would be decreasing as those properties' tax rebates expire as well, so it may just always be revenue neutral, which is perfectly fine given the intangible benefits. This is our best medium-term chance to get this thing up to UC. If the numbers are good in 2021 with it being free, a new mayor and council will be in office in 2022. If Biden wins in 2020, I imagine he would give the FTA decent money to be allocated for non-car improvements, giving us a window to win money in 2023-2025 and build it by 2030.
June 25, 20204 yr 51 minutes ago, 10albersa said: If we attribute a certain % of increased development along the line to the Streetcar itself, once those tax rebates we offer roll off the books, I'd consider those properties' tax revenue as attributable to the streetcar. Of course, that also means the VTICA would be decreasing as those properties' tax rebates expire as well, so it may just always be revenue neutral, which is perfectly fine given the intangible benefits. This is our best medium-term chance to get this thing up to UC. If the numbers are good in 2021 with it being free, a new mayor and council will be in office in 2022. If Biden wins in 2020, I imagine he would give the FTA decent money to be allocated for non-car improvements, giving us a window to win money in 2023-2025 and build it by 2030. The Taste of Belgium owner said it best when he pleaded for the city to live up to their obligation. Business owners have located along the route because of the streetcar. They rely on it to bring customers. And this is also a good time to point out that a huge number of comments that OKI received on the 2050 plan were along the lines of "improve the streetcar" "make it more frequent" "extend it to Clifton and NKY" and so on. There were not very many people who wanted to abandon the streetcar but there were a ton who wanted to make it better!
June 25, 20204 yr OKI has "streetcar extension to Newport" listed in their long-term plan, but long term plans could change (for better or worse) if/when we get different leadership in Cincinnati, Newport, and OKI. The current CEO of OKI, like many other Cincinnati politicians and civic leaders, made the trip out to the Pacific Northwest and fell in love with the well-run rail transportation systems in Seattle, Portland, and Tacoma, but did a complete 180 and became anti-streetcar when he saw that it became the political punching bag here. OKI diverted federeal CMAQ funds that were supposed to go towards the streetcar to other pet projects like traffic signal replacement. If we get a Cincinnati mayor who doesn't irrationally hate the streetcar, a pro-expansion Newport mayor, and OKI leadership that likes transit, that extension could be studied, funded, and built very quickly, probably with mostly federal funds.
June 25, 20204 yr 1 hour ago, 10albersa said: build it by 2030. This is simultaneously very optimistic and depressingly far away...
June 25, 20204 yr On 6/16/2020 at 11:06 PM, ColDayMan said: Mayor to Emilio Estevez: ‘Give the bus a try’ The Mayor has adopted "give the bus a try" as his slogan, and it now tweeting this at individual citizens who are criticizing his decision to veto the streetcar plan. He also has his Vice Mayor out there spreading the "Why do white yuppies get a free streetcar while hard-working black Cincinnatians have to pay to ride the bus???" talking point. ?
June 25, 20204 yr So Cranley and Smitherman are going to spend the next month trying to convince Pastor to change his vote, right? Their grandstanding at the meeting, and the above mentioned tweeting, was/is pathetic.
June 25, 20204 yr 35 minutes ago, Cincy513 said: So Cranley and Smitherman are going to spend the next month trying to convince Pastor to change his vote, right? Their grandstanding at the meeting, and the above mentioned tweeting, was/is pathetic. You only need 6 votes to override a veto, I believe. When the streetcar was restarted after the "pause" in 2013, Murray, Smitherman, and Winburn voted against it, making it a 6-3 vote. The vote to restart the streetcar the other day was 7-2. Only Sundermann and Smitherman voted against it.
June 25, 20204 yr Correct. Even if Cranley convinces one of the 7 to flip-flop, only 6 votes are needed to override his veto in August. Based on Pastor's strong statement, I don't think he's going to change his vote.
June 25, 20204 yr I replied to a Jason Williams non-sensical tweet by saying: So you propose to spend $45 million dollars to scrap it where you could use that same amount to run it fare free for 10 years and make it a huge success by making small improvements. BTW the more riders there are with fare free and making it more successful will drive down the costs by increasing the ad revenue... Any replies.. Nada.. Maybe I will get some though! Edited June 25, 20204 yr by IAGuy39
June 25, 20204 yr 52 minutes ago, taestell said: Correct. Even if Cranley convinces one of the 7 to flip-flop, only 6 votes are needed to override his veto in August. Based on Pastor's strong statement, I don't think he's going to change his vote. I was really confused but does the Mayor get like one veto on an ordinance or how did he veto that? I thought 6 was veto proof?
June 25, 20204 yr 1 hour ago, IAGuy39 said: I was really confused but does the Mayor get like one veto on an ordinance or how did he veto that? I thought 6 was veto proof? The Mayor can veto any ordinance that passes, no matter how many City Council members voted for that ordinance. They have to wait until the next City Council meeting to vote to override the veto. So when people say "veto-proof" what they really mean is "it would be stupid for the Mayor to veto this, knowing that 6+ City Council members support it and they're just going to override his veto" — and yet, that is what happened.
July 8, 20204 yr How crazy of an idea is it to put a cement berm to create a physically separated lane for the streetcar? Obviously it should have been designed with a separated lane to begin with but this is the only way I can think of trying to add that after the fact. It can't be done everywhere, like where it would block bus stops or where it is running in the center of the road, but it could increase efficiency since it would reduce conflicts with other traffic. It would also cut off a lot of street parking but that's the point of having a downtown circulator. The lost parking spaces could be converted into parklets and patio spaces for the existing retail.
July 8, 20204 yr Author 2 hours ago, Dev said: How crazy of an idea is it to put a cement berm to create a physically separated lane for the streetcar? Obviously it should have been designed with a separated lane to begin with but this is the only way I can think of trying to add that after the fact. It can't be done everywhere, like where it would block bus stops or where it is running in the center of the road, but it could increase efficiency since it would reduce conflicts with other traffic. It would also cut off a lot of street parking but that's the point of having a downtown circulator. The lost parking spaces could be converted into parklets and patio spaces for the existing retail. Turning two lanes of Walnut into bus/streetcar only would be great. You really don't need dedicated lanes for any of the Over-the-Rhine sections. Some light timing changes at 12th and Vine and Race at Green and Elder would be helpful.
July 8, 20204 yr 2 hours ago, Dev said: How crazy of an idea is it to put a cement berm to create a physically separated lane for the streetcar? Obviously it should have been designed with a separated lane to begin with but this is the only way I can think of trying to add that after the fact. It can't be done everywhere, like where it would block bus stops or where it is running in the center of the road, but it could increase efficiency since it would reduce conflicts with other traffic. It would also cut off a lot of street parking but that's the point of having a downtown circulator. The lost parking spaces could be converted into parklets and patio spaces for the existing retail. THe whole point of the Streetcar was that it runs on the streets along with regular traffic. It was not the idea to separate it with a dedicated lane or berm. Otherwise, you would have just built light rail.
July 8, 20204 yr 24 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said: THe whole point of the Streetcar was that it runs on the streets along with regular traffic. It was not the idea to separate it with a dedicated lane or berm. Otherwise, you would have just built light rail. That absolutely was not the whole point of the streetcar. It is a characteristic of OUR streetcar, but not the point. Philly streetcars run in dedicated lanes, and even a tunnel through downtown. Ours is built the way it is because of failed political leadership. Signal priority and dedicated lanes along portions of the route would absolutely be an improvement over the status quo.
July 8, 20204 yr Just now, DEPACincy said: That absolutely was not the whole point of the streetcar. It is a characteristic of OUR streetcar, but not the point. Philly streetcars run in dedicated lanes, and even a tunnel through downtown. Ours is built the way it is because of failed political leadership. Signal priority and dedicated lanes along portions of the route would absolutely be an improvement over the status quo. I dont disagree with you on the signal priority. I am not for the dedicated lanes. Otherwise, they should have done light rail.
July 8, 20204 yr I mean... it is light rail. Didn't we have that discussion, like, a decade ago? “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
July 8, 20204 yr Streetcars can have dedicated lanes/right-of-way just like light rail can have street running, there's nothing mutually exclusive about them. Besides, the streetcar already has dedicated lanes across Ft. Washington Way, 2nd Street, Henry, and Race between Findlay and Elder. The more the better.
July 8, 20204 yr It could be set up like here in Salt Lake where our "light rail" runs down the middle of the street through most of downtown while our "streetcar" runs on a dedicated/recycled railroad right of way along its entire path. Seriously though, since the Cincy Streetcar tracks are built to light rail standards, one could imagine a sensible administration pushing for a light rail system like we have in SLC with the trains running on dedicated ROW outside of the urban core and using the already existing ROW for the downtown sections. It would probably require some double-tracking and/or making transit-only streets.
July 9, 20204 yr 19 hours ago, JaceTheAce41 said: Seriously though, since the Cincy Streetcar tracks are built to light rail standards, one could imagine a sensible administration pushing for a light rail system like we have in SLC with the trains running on dedicated ROW outside of the urban core and using the already existing ROW for the downtown sections. It would probably require some double-tracking and/or making transit-only streets. Is the only place where this is currently feasible is eastbound Central Parkway? It seems like the current track is not located to have convenient overlapping routes.
July 9, 20204 yr You could easily add more transit-only lanes along the streetcar route that would benefit both streetcars and buses. Walnut is the obvious example and would massively help buses heading to Government Square, although a queue jump would be needed at some point (probably at 8th & Walnut) to allow buses to get from the right side of the street to the left so that they can turn left into Government Square. You could not add a concrete curb to most of the streetcar route because there is still a parking lane that cars need to access. However, I noticed that the city is currently repaving the middle lane of Race Street near Findlay Market in concrete. This would have been the perfect opportunity to add a concrete curb separating the streetcar lane from the rest of the street, instead of the white plastic bollards that are there now, but the city did not do so. Just another item added to the list of missed opportunities to make the system better.
July 15, 20204 yr You can now buy streetcar tickets in the Uber app! Except that the streetcar isn't running right now. And when it reopens, it'll probably be free to ride. So, nevermind. (SORTA and TANK tickets are also available in the Uber app now.)
July 21, 20204 yr On 6/24/2020 at 4:05 PM, taestell said: Just a bit more information about the city's "transit fund" which has suddenly become a hot topic. Since the original transit earnings tax passed in 1973, the city has collected that revenue and it has gone into the city's transit fund. This is the city's money to spend on transit-related purposes and doesn't automatically pass through to SORTA. The city appropriates money to SORTA annually, which is typically the amount collected by the earnings tax, save for a few million dollars that the city retains in the fund as a buffer between incomes and expenditures. However, the city can use (and has used) this for other transit-related purposes besides SORTA. For example, the city has argued in the past that it could use this money to rebuild roads that bus routes use, install new traffic signals along those roads, etc., and SORTA has agreed with the city on this point. In the 1990s, when the city created the Holly Jolly Downtown Trolley, which was, ahem, a free urban circulator that SORTA didn't like, there was some discussion about paying for that directly out of the city's transit fund, before SORTA finally agreed to fund it out of their budget. SORTA assumed that once the earnings tax ended, the city would empty out the transit fund and write them a big check with the remaining balance to cover the gap before their sales tax revenue started coming in. But the city is not obligated to do so, and they have now proposed using some of those funds for the other transit system that it is responsible for funding. (The original 1973 ballot issue does not have any language that says it must go to buses and can't go towards rail, unlike Metro's new sales tax, which explicitly prohibits those funds from being spent on the streetcar.) TLDR: This has devolved into a silly bus-vs-rail fight. The city runs a transit system (the Cincinnati Streetcar) and is allowed to use its own transit funding to pay for running that transit system. Metro just got enough money from the CARES act to cover a large chunk of its COVID-related losses. Hopefully this puts an end to the "but, but, Metro needs the money in the Transit Fund!" arguments.
July 21, 20204 yr 14 minutes ago, taestell said: Hopefully this puts an end to the "but, but, Metro needs the money in the Transit Fund!" arguments. So I was just watching this meeting and at the very end, Kreg Keesee deliberately says something along the lines of "this is one-time money, we still need every dollar from our traditional funding sources." Couldn't be more obvious that Cranley texted him.
July 21, 20204 yr A source inside City Hall told me that he believes SORTA is not going to fight City Council's usage of the Transit Fund money for the streetcar. SORTA put out one statement saying "we oppose the use of this money for the streetcar" but they do not intend to fight it beyond that. It would be really dumb for SORTA to pick a fight with the City over this, given that the two organizations will have to work closely together on projects like the proposed BRT routes.
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