A casino to Union Terminal line doesn't seem all that useful and it's hard to see how that would work with the current system well. A "branch" to UT that operates as a second line makes some sense (Banks to UT and Banks to Findlay would be two lines that share track downtown).

 

Or, even better would be an extension west to UT and one South to Paul Brown Stadium Area. So there would be two lines: Banks to UT and 3rd St. to Findlay (clockwise loop). Transfers would be possible at stations around Washington Park. 

 

Allows both sides of downtown to be served, makes future extensions to Covington easy. You could extend north from Findlay Market or even north on Main/Walnut to Vine (so there would be a 3rd line from Banks to Uptown that doesn't snake around. )

 

 

24 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

 

I don't know if we're representative, but when I was a kid we'd park up near Court Street or across the river in Newport and walk to the game. My dad refused to pay for the more expensive parking. I'd probably do the same if I didn't live in the city. Plus, it's nice because the walk or streetcar ride is actually fun and adds to the experience. 

It's also the type of fan who is worried about 'getting out of there before the traffic'. If you see fans leaving a game with a few minutes left to beat the rush, the alternative is to park away from the congestion. Getting out from the big riverfront garages right after a game can take a long long time, but if you park in Covington or up on 9th street you may spend 10 minutes walking but you get moving immediately once you get to the car. 

 

Plus as DEPACincy points out, walking across the Roebling or up Vine street downtown after a win is a very fun collective experience, now if we could get our Cincinnati sports to win more often...

29 minutes ago, greenville2 said:

A casino to Union Terminal line doesn't seem all that useful and it's hard to see how that would work with the current system well. A "branch" to UT that operates as a second line makes some sense (Banks to UT and Banks to Findlay would be two lines that share track downtown).

 

Or, even better would be an extension west to UT and one South to Paul Brown Stadium Area. So there would be two lines: Banks to UT and 3rd St. to Findlay (clockwise loop). Transfers would be possible at stations around Washington Park. 

 

Allows both sides of downtown to be served, makes future extensions to Covington easy. You could extend north from Findlay Market or even north on Main/Walnut to Vine (so there would be a 3rd line from Banks to Uptown that doesn't snake around. )

 

 

The Casino line would be beneficial if you can convince the Casino of the benefit and to pay the bulk of the construction costs. It could create a transfer station at Washington Park or Kroger or some other place. It would also open up more of Pendleton to Street Car usage and maybe additional development on the lots near the Courthouse. I agree that it is not as beneficial as the UT and FCC stadium spur 

An East/West Line from Union Terminal to the Casino would be pretty useless by itself, but could easily be extended down E Court and up Gilbert to get you to the new ballet site, the art museum, hotels/office and eventually up to Walnut Hills at Gilbert/McMillan. This line in conjunction with the original extended North/South route up to UC/Zoo would give a good cruciform layout covering much of the dense urban center and connecting all of our major museums and tourist locations. The zoo, museum center, art museum, contemporary art museum, freedom center, casino, stadiums etc. 

 

17 minutes ago, ucgrady said:

An East/West Line from Union Terminal to the Casino would be pretty useless by itself, but could easily be extended down E Court and up Gilbert to get you to the new ballet site, the art museum, hotels/office and eventually up to Walnut Hills at Gilbert/McMillan. This line in conjunction with the original extended North/South route up to UC/Zoo would give a good cruciform layout covering much of the dense urban center and connecting all of our major museums and tourist locations. The zoo, museum center, art museum, contemporary art museum, freedom center, casino, stadiums etc. 

Going up the Gilbert Hill would be expensive, like the Vine connector. Plus would the ballet site really bring people there, I thought it was just a practice facility. Going to the Baldwin building is a bit intriguing because it connects that area with downtown which would be a benefit and could spur more development there. Plus with the art stairs right there, it now connects the art museum (although many people would probably not prefer to take the stairs).

 

The only reason i suggested the Casino line is if the Casino pays for it. Then you get a ton of other potential connectivity going E-W with connections in Pendleton and to your point now the Eden park area. 

1 hour ago, Dev said:

 

It's going to cost more to charge a fare than we would make in fare revenue. This is just grandstanding. 

1 hour ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Going up the Gilbert Hill would be expensive, like the Vine connector. Plus would the ballet site really bring people there, I thought it was just a practice facility. Going to the Baldwin building is a bit intriguing because it connects that area with downtown which would be a benefit and could spur more development there. Plus with the art stairs right there, it now connects the art museum (although many people would probably not prefer to take the stairs).

 

The only reason i suggested the Casino line is if the Casino pays for it. Then you get a ton of other potential connectivity going E-W with connections in Pendleton and to your point now the Eden park area. 

It could make some sense to extend such an east-west line up Reading, use the abandoned railroad bridge and terminate at Eden Park. Would get the new Ballet and ArtClimb to the Art Museum connected. But then again at that point, why not just go all the way to Walnut Hills?

12 minutes ago, JYP said:

It could make some sense to extend such an east-west line up Reading, use the abandoned railroad bridge and terminate at Eden Park. Would get the new Ballet and ArtClimb to the Art Museum connected. But then again at that point, why not just go all the way to Walnut Hills?

 

I like this idea. Still some railroad ROW that you could use and connect all the way up I-71 to Xavier. This might make more sense than climbing up Vine St. Just climb up the I-71 corridor and have a line that spurs off to UC and the zoo at MLK.

Re-starting and charging a fare is a bad idea

Never missing an opportunity to divide when he could unite.

 

 

Most cities in the country have a free circulator of some sort! Shut up, moron. 

Cranley's right, it isn't fair. Let's make the buses free as well.

2 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Most cities in the country have a free circulator of some sort! Shut up, moron. 

That's absolutely correct-

Don't forget Miami (people mover), Miami Beach (decorated bus), Denver (bus), Atlanta (bus), and Tampa (streetcar). 

2 hours ago, 10albersa said:

Cranley's right, it isn't fair. Let's make the buses free as well.

 

Now that the bus sales tax passed and the relationship between SORTA and the city has ended, the city has nothing to do with setting Metro's bus fares. So it's really none of Cranley's business and his comment is pure grandstanding. If SORTA wanted to make the buses free, it's a decision that would be made by the SORTA board and vetted with the Hamilton County residents who now fund the system.

3 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Don't forget Miami (people mover), Miami Beach (decorated bus), Denver (bus), Atlanta (bus), and Tampa (streetcar). 

Certainly not meant to be a comprehensive list. I was looking at similar sized and nearby cities. 

Somehow I never noticed this on the City's website. About what you would expect. The Banks, Fountain Square, Washington Park and Findlay are the main attractions. Very strong showing from Rhinegeist.  The

 

The disparity between the north and south streets for boarding and alightings (wtf is that word) is pretty cool. Way more people getting on southbound in OTR and getting off northbound. Then the reverse is true in Downtown.

On 8/26/2020 at 11:54 AM, jmecklenborg said:

I expect that whatever they do will be phrased in such a way as to sew confusion.  

 

Cranley has vetoed free fares. Council won't have the opportunity to override until tomorrow's council meeting. Streetcar service reopens tomorrow morning, meaning that the streetcar will "technically" require fares tomorrow morning and will become free-to-ride in the middle of the day, assuming the council supermajority votes again to override Cranley's veto.

 

Cranley put forward an alternate proposal, suggesting that streetcar fares be collected and be given to the police department. Council voted against this idea, and Cranley accused Council of "defunding the police."

 

Jesus Christ, what a clown.

14 minutes ago, taestell said:

Cranley put forward an alternate proposal, suggesting that streetcar fares be collected and be given to the police department. Council voted against this idea, and Cranley accused Council of "defunding the police."

 

And for his next trick, Cranley will extract $50 million from the city pension fund and then run for mayor to fix the pension fund.  Oh wait, he already did that.  

1 hour ago, taestell said:

Cranley put forward an alternate proposal, suggesting that streetcar fares be collected and be given to the police department. Council voted against this idea, and Cranley accused Council of "defunding the police."

 

Wow, just...wow. 

After another acidic debate, Cincinnati City Council votes to make streetcar fare free; Cranley vetoes 

 

Cincinnati City Council voted 7-2 Tuesday for an ordinance to make the Cincinnati Bell Connector fare free for riders, with Mayor John Cranley issuing a veto shortly thereafter.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/09/01/after-another.html

 

This guy gets it- 

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2020/09/03/opinion-restarting-streetcar-help-our-city/5702396002/

Very high ridership over the first free weekend. Tons of people using it to get to/from Findlay Market and Rhinegeist. Cranley's worst nightmare.

Overall Ridership was down compared to last Labor Day, but if you look at per service hour (as the service hours were scaled back considerable, especially on Sunday/Monday) you have higher ridership per hour some days. 

 

If you look at straight numbers, our ridership was down 44% compared with last Labor Day (which had two free Reds games that weekend, take the two Reds games out and we were down 27%)

 

Compared to other cities, Kansas City's streetcar ridership is down 81.4% Milwaukee -78.7%, Portland -66.7%, Tuscon -63.2%, Tampa -59.2%

 

It was unfortunate that the system shut down at 6pm on Sunday. We saw a family with kids waiting at a stop around 6:30, and had to inform that it had already shut down for the day. The concept of "holiday hours" should be different for the streetcar than for buses — usually Downtown and OTR are even more busy on holidays and hours should be the same if not longer than normal weekends.

I wish the ticket machines didn't say "this machine is out of service" but instead said "The streetcar is free!". There is a small laminated sign on the canopy that tells you it's free September-October, but they need to advertise that it's free a bit better because if you don't pay attention to local city politics I'm not sure anyone knows that it is. 

Exactly the sort of common sense thing we'd be doing if the city administration wanted the streetcar to succeed. We also still have "paid fare zone" signs posted at the entrance to every streetcar stop, even though there is no longer a fare.

Beating a dead horse here, but this is, dollar for dollar, the single easiest, fastest and most impactful change the City of Cincinnati could make if they were trying to actually improve streetcar operations. 

 

 

 

We now have two weeks of Streetcar Ridership data. Overall it's down -54% compared to last September, but the streetcar is operating fewer hours. If you adjust for that, we're only down -38%. If you remove free Reds Ridership we're only down -28%. Compared to the other two operating modern midwest streetcar systems, we're doing better. Free fares have probably increased ridership 75% over what it would have been. Will be interesting to see 

 

Next weekend the data are going to be wildly different. 2019 had Oktoberfest and free Reds games against the Mets on the third weekend of September. 2020 has shrug emoji and a pandemic. 

Went to catch a streetcar last night near the Aronoff...

 

...sign said 27 minutes, app didn't have any vehicles on tracking (which you have to know just how to use a third party app in order to track it), so I just walked to the Riverfront. 

 

At The Banks, the "transit" app still wouldn't track it, but that was because it won't let you see the "other line" based on where you're located (a problem since the streetcar launched). 

 

EDIT: Train was super clean. 

 

 

Edited September 17, 20204 yr by Gordon Bombay

3rd Monday of 2019- 44 riders per service hour. 3rd Monday of 2020- 42 riders per service hour.  

 

Overall ridership is still way down because of no Reds, no Oktoberfest, no shows at the Aronoff, etc.  but baseline ridership is recovering and growing.

 

For most recent Monday ridership per hour. KC is down -69% and Cincy is down -4.5%. (KC's numbers are August, most recent available, both are adjusted for shorter service days). 

 

We still need to fix the light timing and sequencing if we really want to increase ridership. Not only does that speed up the system, it reduces headways. 

I've heard that the city has installed the necessary equipment to "hold green" at the key intersections identified during the traffic study, but hasn't actually turned it on yet. Do you know if that's true?

12 hours ago, taestell said:

I've heard that the city has installed the necessary equipment to "hold green" at the key intersections identified during the traffic study, but hasn't actually turned it on yet. Do you know if that's true?

I've been told Elm/Liberty, Race/Liberty and 12th/Vine have hold green installed and operating, but I haven't seen them in action yet. 

 

Race/Green has been reprogrammed so the streetcar never gets the red light there. If you're on a streetcar and it gets stopped there, let me know. 

 

• There are four more hold green locations that haven't been installed.
• There are three mid-block lights that are easy fixes
• There are three other streetcar specific signals that could be optimized
• Traffic on Court street after the re-design might be reduced to the point where those lights could just become stop signs for court street traffic and nothing for Main/Walnut

Make all those changes and you could have 10 minute headways with three cars running.  

 

Making progress- 

 

Good crowd on Saturday:

 

 

Steady progress

I've been looking at Covid graphs so much I expect exponential growth that slowly tapers to a flattened curve... I've taken it a couple times to Findlay market this week and it's been pretty popular at lunch time considering how many workers still aren't downtown. 

On 10/1/2020 at 12:41 PM, thomasbw said:

Steady progress

Still growing on weekdays. I believe unrelated protests shut down the system right at the busiest time on Saturday as Friday ridership was higher than Saturday.  

 

The station at 12th and Main got run into by car and destroyed the guardrails but canopy wasn't touched. It's amazing to me how often people run into these. 

 

That's a great channel, it's frustrating how bad the US is at urban planning. 

So, the streetcar is officially "Fare Free throughout September & October" -- Is City Council going to address that sometime in the next week or is there going to be a lot of unnecessary confusion on November 1?

Apparently they are discussing the permanent elimination of fares at a committee meeting on Tuesday, October 27 (presumably then sending it to full council on Wednesday) which is required by federal law.

 

I fully expect Cranley to pull some more shenanigans though. We'll see

2 minutes ago, ryanlammi said:

I fully expect Cranley to pull some more shenanigans though. We'll see

So he will veto, it will have fares in November, and then be fare-free permanently after that.   I would be astounded if anything other than that happened next week.

Yesterday was the first day since re-opening that the Cincinnati Bell Connector had more riders per hour than the comparable day in 2019. Ridership was 12% higher per hour for the last Monday in October comparing 2019 vs 2020 (overall ridership yesterday was down -11% compared to 19 but there were fewer service hours)

 

Keep in mind Metro's local routes are down 50% and express routes are down 80%

 

 

https://www.wcpo.com/news/transportation-development/public-transit/cincinnati-city-council-will-hear-public-comment-on-making-the-streetcar-fare-free-for-good

 

According to WCPO, the streetcar will be free permanently. The free rides were supposed to end on Saturday, but apparently the permanent funding was found. I'm shocked that Cranley isn't throwing a fit about it.

31 minutes ago, OliverHazardPerry said:

https://www.wcpo.com/news/transportation-development/public-transit/cincinnati-city-council-will-hear-public-comment-on-making-the-streetcar-fare-free-for-good

 

According to WCPO, the streetcar will be free permanently. The free rides were supposed to end on Saturday, but apparently the permanent funding was found. I'm shocked that Cranley isn't throwing a fit about it.

Pop the champagne, we did it, and 2 years earlier than expected too!

17 hours ago, thomasbw said:

Yesterday was the first day since re-opening that the Cincinnati Bell Connector had more riders per hour than the comparable day in 2019. Ridership was 12% higher per hour for the last Monday in October comparing 2019 vs 2020 (overall ridership yesterday was down -11% compared to 19 but there were fewer service hours)

 

Keep in mind Metro's local routes are down 50% and express routes are down 80%

 

 

On Tuesday 10/27 ridership was up 14% per hour and down -9% compared to 2019