We need to get Mark Miller and Tom Luken out there

anywhere

actually a deserted island would be prefrable

 

Yeah, they'd see a thriving and growing urban neighborhood and take it as an affront to their notion of the American dream.

We need to get Mark Miller and Tom Luken out there

anywhere

actually a deserted island would be prefrable

 

Yeah, they'd see a thriving and growing urban neighborhood and take it as an affront to their notion of the American dream.

 

Not enough TGI O'Chilibees for their tastes.

We need to get Mark Miller and Tom Luken out there

 

I dunno. I try to take skeptics, but opponents have tended to be a real drag on these trips. You're never going to change their minds, and they just bum everyone out. We're going again in February-March, probably.

 

The overhead wire is a huge concern. In the event of a sewer collapse, there is a risk that excavation equipment used to repair the sewer will come in contact with the overhead wire. There is also the question of who will pay for repairs, which will undoubtedly be more expensive with a streetcar than without one.

 

Historically, excavation was done by hand with shovels. It's hard to find a contractor willing to dig by hand today, and probably not easy to find one willing to operate equipment under the wire.

 

 

Yeah this is not a problem, unless the operator is incompetent. I operate heavy equipment for a living and work under all kinds of overhead wires, at many different heights, on a daily basis. Also, the wires would be insulated to prevent accidents when working near them.

 

 

The overhead wire is a huge concern. In the event of a sewer collapse, there is a risk that excavation equipment used to repair the sewer will come in contact with the overhead wire. There is also the question of who will pay for repairs, which will undoubtedly be more expensive with a streetcar than without one.

 

Historically, excavation was done by hand with shovels. It's hard to find a contractor willing to dig by hand today, and probably not easy to find one willing to operate equipment under the wire.

 

 

Yeah this is not a problem, unless the operator is incompetent. I operate heavy equipment for a living and work under all kinds of overhead wires, at many different heights, on a daily basis. Also, the wires would be insulated to prevent accidents when working near them.

 

 

Agree, this is BS.  My father worked as an operator for years.  He laughed when I told him this.

We need to get Mark Miller and Tom Luken out there

 

I wouldn't want to spoil the beauty of the Pacific Northwest with their presence. Send them to Salt Lake City instead. (And be sure to "misplace" the ticket for the return trip.)

Eighth and State, it doesn't matter how long winded you make your post about the sewer conflict or how you try to rationalize it. What it comes down to is more dirty politics from the opposition.

 

These are not nonsense concerns. These are real issues. There's been a lot of controversy between the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County over the MSD ever since the MSD was formed in 1968. The streetcar is just adding to a longstanding grudge match.

 

If the City had simply come in with the cash and volunteered to pay for the required sewer work, I don't think there would even be an issue. Instead, the city came in with an attitude that MSD (and Water Works, for that matter) would pay for the required utility work. MSD is trying to protect its ratepayers, and so is water works.

 

As for the overhead wire, if you don't think it's an issue, talk to the appropriate people at Duke. People can and do get eletrocuted. I personally saw a man get electrocuted from a 20,000 volt overhead wire, and it's not pretty, so this is kind of a personal issue for me. That said, I am confident that some clever engineer can devise some way to reduce the risk.

 

Something that's missing in this discussion is the human factor. As I said before, there is a fear of the unknown. The streetcar proponents have a very hard job selling this project IN CINCINNATI because there is no recent experience with streetcars IN CINCINNATI, despite our fascinating history.

 

We have potential conflicts between the streetcar rails and existing fiber optic lines. This is something new, and there is no precedent for it. The technical solution obviously is to relocate the fiber optic lines, but who is going to pay for it, the City or the utility? That's a political, rather than technical question. Whatever happens in Portland does not apply here, because these issues are governed by state law, which varies between states.

 

Resolving of the political questions can be just as difficult, or more so, than the technical ones, and the political questions are what is causing trouble now.

 

 

Are you playing devil's advocate or do you really believe all that stuff you just said. It's nonsense. What if a sewer collapses and they have to do work under the wire. Good point! Yeah, we shouldn't build it. I'm gonna stop driving as well, cause what if an overhead powerline falls and lands on my truck like in that Andy Griffith episode?

 

Eighth and State logic is why it takes so long for anything to get done in this town.

 

 

You underestimate the difficulty of this project. Around 1995, the City of Cincinnati department of Traffic and Engineering announced that the top priortiy transportation project was replacement of the Waldvogel Viaduct. It has still not been replaced. What's the hangup? The project involves a lot of people from different departments in city government, state government, and railroads, all with their own agendas. Sometimes one single person can hold up a project, and the only way to work around it is wait for that person to retire or die. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but that's the way it is. In the case of the Waldvogel Viaduct, the city had completed construction drawings only to have them rejected by ODOT, and the city had to start over from the beginning. This stuff happens.

 

The streetcar project could very well take 10 years. Taking 2007 as the starting point, 10 years puts the opening date in 2017. To put that in perspective, there are other infrastructure projects in Cincinnati in the works right now that are scheduled for opening in 2017. This is actually normal for a project of this magnitude.

 

That all said, it is not fair to blame COAST, WLW, or the Enquirer for all the opposition. Conflict is normal in large construction projects. Sometimes the conflict get resolved and the project gets built, and sometimes it doesn't. If you think I'm making this up, go out and try to get a building permit for something. You might be amazed at how hard it is, and how something that seems so simple or so silly can become such an issue.

 

Somehow we've been able to build hundreds of rail projects in other American cities without these nonsense concerns.

 

It's easier to build projects in cities with growing economies that are flush with cash than in cities with depressed or stagnant economies that struggle with budget problems. It all comes down to money.

^  I doubt it's the money. Some people would be opposed to rail in Cincinnati even it it were free. It fails to comport with their view of how the world should be and their place in it. Think about it.

^ Exactly. If it were actually about money, COAST would be screaming bloody murder over the $4B Brent Spence Bridge / I-75 rebuild, the Red Bank / I-74 project, and countless other needless and wasteful highway projects. Just look at their tweets and other utterings; it's all about hatred and contempt for "those people" who live in the city and want decent public transit. It's a culture war, with a strong undercurrent of racism.

 

I'm increasingly convinced that what COAST and Smitherman really want is segregation, because that gives each of them exactly what they want: COAST gets their lilly-white suburbs with manicured lawns unspoiled by dark-skinned people moving out of the city, and Smitherman gets his ghetto of poor minorities on whose behalf he can supposedly crusade. Their ideal city is Detroit: a dying, dysfunctional urban core led by corrupt demagogues like Smitherman, surrounded by a ring of wealthy, almost exclusively-white Republican suburbs. Anything with the potential of upsetting that model will send them into a panic.

 

Nobody goes into a blind rage over a dry fiscal debate, but watch what happens when a black family tries to move to an all-white neighborhood, or when some white urban pioneers start moving into an inner-city neighborhood. In their minds, the streetcar will only accelerate the migration of poor blacks into the outlying neighborhoods and suburbs, and of wealthier whites into Over-the-Rhine. And that's what they're fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent. They know they can't come right out and say they want Cincinnati to remain segregated, so we get a countless litany of bullsh!t straw-man arguments about sewers, overhead lines, fire station brownouts, banana peels on the rails, or whatever else they can throw at the project, no matter how easily debunked.

 

Our local media is happy to play along, of course, because they have a vested interest in the status quo (just look at how much of their advertising, both in print and on TV, comes from suburban homebuilders and automotive-related businesses), and because each manufactured controversy generates more ratings and page views, and hence, higher advertising rates.

^Dare the Enquirer to print that!  Well put!

Eighth and State, it doesn't matter how long winded you make your post about the sewer conflict or how you try to rationalize it. What it comes down to is more dirty politics from the opposition.

 

These are not nonsense concerns. These are real issues. There's been a lot of controversy between the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County over the MSD ever since the MSD was formed in 1968. The streetcar is just adding to a longstanding grudge match.

 

If the City had simply come in with the cash and volunteered to pay for the required sewer work, I don't think there would even be an issue. Instead, the city came in with an attitude that MSD (and Water Works, for that matter) would pay for the required utility work. MSD is trying to protect its ratepayers, and so is water works.

 

BS. The sewers need to be upgraded, and that is MSD's responsibility. The facvt is that Cincinnati offered to pay $3 Million of those costs, but was told in no uncertain terms to drop dead by the County Commissioners. So be it, MSD can now pay all of the costs involved themselves.

 

 

Eighth and State, it doesn't matter how long winded you make your post about the sewer conflict or how you try to rationalize it. What it comes down to is more dirty politics from the opposition.

 

 

That all said, it is not fair to blame COAST, WLW, or the Enquirer for all the opposition. Conflict is normal in large construction projects. Sometimes the conflict get resolved and the project gets built, and sometimes it doesn't. If you think I'm making this up, go out and try to get a building permit for something. You might be amazed at how hard it is, and how something that seems so simple or so silly can become such an issue. 

 

More BS. The Enquirer & 700 WLW are primarily responsible for fanning the anti-streetcar flames amongst the suburbanites. They do so because controversy is good for their business models, it sells newspapers, yields more hits on their websites and drives their ratings upwards.

 

As for the overhead wires, they don't seem to be an issue in other cities, so I call 'Concern Troll' on your comments regarding them.

 

 

 

^ You know, they have these newfangled things called electrical disconnects that allow them to de-energize sections of the line if needed. But most of the time they would just install sleeves over the wires like linemen do when they work on transformers and insulators now. How is it different from the uninsulated primary feeds that exist in OTR today? The fire department seems to manage around all that mess of wiring under stress, in wet conditions, and often with visibility obscured.

And then there's this: two of the seven vehicles they are looking at are the wireless type. So I guess that if one of those vehicles is selected, we can stop fretting about the overhead and revert to bitching about the sewers again, right?

And then there's this: two of the seven vehicles they are looking at are the wireless type. So I guess that if one of those vehicles is selected, we can stop fretting about the overhead and revert to bitching about the sewers again, right?

 

 

>You underestimate the difficulty of this project.

 

You keep going back to long resolved non-issues and nobody is backing you up because you are wrong.  Now you're strutting around because your beloved sewers are the non-crisis of the moment.  At least two years ago you were acting as if this dinky streetcar project is on par with the Three Gorges Dam or the Burj Dubai.  You're still doing it and you're still wrong. 

 

 

>Around 1995, the City of Cincinnati department of Traffic and Engineering announced that the top priortiy transportation project was replacement of the Waldvogel Viaduct. It has still not been replaced.

 

From today:

 

 

 

 

Did you know this viaduct replacement project is well underway or not?  Saying "it has still not been replaced" comes across as weasel-wording and that kind of language along with coming back over and over again to dead subtopics is ticking off a lot of people who frequent this website. 

 

The Enquirer & 700 WLW are primarily responsible for fanning the anti-streetcar flames amongst the suburbanites."

I'll give you that.

 

As for the overhead wires, they don't seem to be an issue in other cities.

They are an issue to the MSD and Water Works. I'm just reporting the news.

 

 

 

^ You know, they have these newfangled things called electrical disconnects that allow them to de-energize sections of the line if needed. But most of the time they would just install sleeves over the wires like linemen do when they work on transformers and insulators now. How is it different from the uninsulated primary feeds that exist in OTR today? The fire department seems to manage around all that mess of wiring under stress, in wet conditions, and often with visibility obscured.

I know that and you know that, but MSD and Water Works crews don't know that.

 

The difference is that firefighters have specific training for working around electric wires. Other city crews do not. It's probably fear of the unknown more than anything. We are working with human nature here.

 

And then there's this: two of the seven vehicles they are looking at are the wireless type. So I guess that if one of those vehicles is selected, we can stop fretting about the overhead...

This is what conflict resolution is all about. If you can't solve a problem, then work around it.

 

At least two years ago you were acting as if this dinky streetcar project is on par with the Three Gorges Dam or the Burj Dubai. 

 

No no no, not even close.

Three Gorges Dam: $22.5 billion

Burj Dubai: $20 billion (entire development)

Cincinnati Streetcar: ~$100 million

 

...Ticking off a lot of people who frequent this website. 

 

Sorry. No harm intended.  :oops:  Thanks for running out and taking those photos. I knew the Waldvogel Viaduct project was underway, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. Work on relocating the railroad was started years ago.

 

 

This is an important article:

 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2011/12/how-tea-party-upending-urban-planning/718/

 

 

An excerpt:

 

It may not be time to panic. In some cases there are very few vocal activists leading the charge, but the Tea Party has been so well publicized, and their tactics are often so sophisticated, that their powers of intimidation appear outsized. This is also in part a case of everything old being new again. Property rights activists have always been well organized, and were energized by the Kelo Supreme Court case affirming the use of eminent domain. The sprawl lobby – the fanciful label from my first book, This Land – circles the wagons for corporate home-builders, road-builders and even the lawn-care industry invested in far-flung conventional suburban development. The anti-smart growth American Dream Coalition dovetails with the Tea Party view, giving some familiar contrarian voices new visibility. Wendell Cox and Ron Utt co-authored a grave warning against “radical environmentalists,” driven by, yes, the UN’s Agenda 21, in a recent fact-contorting essay for the Heritage Foundation.

 

In related news, here's a photo of Metro's new Glenway Crossing Transit Center I took today:

 

And the abandoned strip mall which it serves:

 

 

This is the Finney/Smitherman/Kasich dreamworld. 

 

 

 

 

 

Just to be clear, this is one reason why people are so excited about the overhead wire. This is an example of equipment used for regular maintenance of sewers. There is a solution: get a smaller truck.

 

Eighth and State, it often seems you're an apologist for ignorance. The solution to ignorant points of view is not to submit to them or to treat them equally to informed points of view. I understand that in some sense a democracy is all about treating the stupid and the smart equally. But that doesn't mean fighting ignorance is not the noble thing to do.

 

Maybe instead of working so hard to let us know what those ignorant points of view are, why they are, or suggesting how to accommodate them (e.g. "This is what conflict resolution is all about. If you can't solve a problem, then work around it."), you could make suggestions for correcting them.

 

Sure it's not solvable in every instance, but accommodating ignorance should absolutely be the last resort. Your knee-jerk appeal to unsolvability is unproductive and defeatist.

Eighth and State, it often seems you're an apologist for ignorance. The solution to ignorant points of view is not to submit to them or to treat them equally to informed points of view. I understand that in some sense a democracy is all about treating the stupid and the smart equally. But that doesn't mean fighting ignorance is not the noble thing to do.

 

Maybe instead of working so hard to let us know what those ignorant points of view are, why they are, or suggesting how to accommodate them (e.g. "This is what conflict resolution is all about. If you can't solve a problem, then work around it."), you could make suggestions for correcting them.

 

Sure it's not solvable in every instance, but accommodating ignorance should absolutely be the last resort. Your knee-jerk appeal to unsolvability is unproductive and defeatist.

 

8th & State is playing the part of concern troll again.

Isn't there a simultaneous discussion going on here talking about the millions of dollars that are going to be spent to move the manholes?  In the light of that how does that shit sucking truck present a problem?

Alright. No need to resort to personal insults.

 

However, just because some engineers think it might make their job a little bit more difficult, is not a reason that would slow this down in any way. If a dozen other cities with sewers can access a manhole near a streetcar line I'm sure we'll be fine.

I appreciate Eigtgth and State's questions.  He seems sincere and he's polite in response.  I've learned a lot from his questions and your guys answers to his questions.  I don't think he's a troll at all.

 

The questions he poses may or may not be legitimate to the guys who know a ton(most of the people on this site) but to people like me who don't know a whole lot, they seem like interesting questions and the responses solidify my belief.  Its refreshing to hear questions relayed in logical quotes without the words 'trolley' 'trolley folley', 'crime train', 'choo choo', 'boondoggle', 'sacreligious', 'Marxist', 'Socialist', 'Communist', 'streetcar to nowhere', 'bum transporation', or all of those words combined.  Now the new catch phrase for them is 'Detroit'.  It really is amazing how quickly they parrot each others talking points

 

Eihgthg and State helps me realize how bats*it some of these hardcore blowhards are. 

 

I think this latest sewer 'controversy' is just another attempt to delay construction and fight the project. There's really not much they can do now and their gameplan is to stall as long as possible (preferably until the next elections) or, as Jake pointed out earlier, have this thing halfway built and stall like the subways.

 

After this sewer stuff goes away, there will be a new problem.  After that problem, there will be another.  It will always be something.  Those in charge of the project cannot get caught up in this junk. 

 

I realize there's very little middle ground in the court of public opinion.  By now everyone in the area has taken a stand on it one way or another.  There will be very little changing of positions.  So at this point, its up to officials to get this running as soon as possible so we can finally end these nonsense arguments and start working on it extending to Uptown and creating a more regional system(which most in the area want now)

 

KJP said it awhile back:

 

The enemy of the good is the perfect

 

Lets get this streetcar or as COAST calls it 'Communist socialist Marxist sacreligious trolley folly to nowhere crime train choo choo boondoggle that will turn us into the next Detroit or Little Moscow and crumble the United States of America, our solar system, and possibly the universe' built

He seems sincere and he's polite in response.  I've learned a lot from his questions and your guys answers to his questions.  I don't think he's a troll at all.

 

Thanks for that.

 

 

It's sad that some moderators have turned to character attack and personal insults. Get over it. It's an open forum, where both supporters and opponents of the project should be able to speak freely in reason, and where anyone can raise questions as they see fit. Nothing in Eighth and States questions are trolling attempts.

However, just because some engineers think it might make their job a little bit more difficult, is not a reason that would slow this down in any way. If a dozen other cities with sewers can access a manhole near a streetcar line I'm sure we'll be fine.

 

Somewhat off the current thread...

 

I think pro-streetcar/rail supporters need to play the "such-and-such city has rail" card more often. Nothing would win support for light rail more than pointing out that Pittsburgh has successful light rail... we don't want to lose to Pittsburgh, do we? In all seriousness, Cincinnati tends to have some sort of second-rate complex where we view modern city improvements as stuff for New York, Chicago, LA.... but we're just little old Cincinnati, we can't compete.

However, just because some engineers think it might make their job a little bit more difficult, is not a reason that would slow this down in any way. If a dozen other cities with sewers can access a manhole near a streetcar line I'm sure we'll be fine.

 

Somewhat off the current thread...

 

I think pro-streetcar/rail supporters need to play the "such-and-such city has rail" card more often. Nothing would win support for light rail more than pointing out that Pittsburgh has successful light rail... we don't want to lose to Pittsburgh, do we? In all seriousness, Cincinnati tends to have some sort of second-rate complex where we view modern city improvements as stuff for New York, Chicago, LA.... but we're just little old Cincinnati, we can't compete.

 

This is annoying to me as well. 

 

"We're not Portland.  It won't work here"

 

"It's not Europe.  It won't work here."

 

"It just won't work here"

 

"Pipe dream.  Its good for other cities but not us"

 

So annoying.  I hear it all the time.  I think this area has a very negative image of itself compared to other cities I've been too. You see it everywhere.  Anything that fails, people laugh.  Anything succeeding, people don't ride the wave and they expect it to fail.  You see it in every aspect of this area.  From sports to politics to media.  Everything has a negative connotation to it.  The area seems to like that self fulfilling prophecy. 

 

I was at the bengals game against the Bills.  As Dalton was driving late, I heard people go "Here comes an interception" or "We're gonna lose".  Its incredible.  I believe this same mentality applies to the streetcar

 

It always puzzles me how someone can immediately turn good or great news into a worst case scenario. 

 

"We are the new Detroit" would be a prime example

That same kind of negative mentality was rampant here in Columbus until the late '90s. "We're a Cowtown" "No bands come here" "We're Minor League" etc. All it took for that attitude to subside substantially was a few projects: Polaris Amphitheater, The Arena District and Easton. Sure, Easton is suburban in feel and Polaris already closed as a result of it's "high-real-estate-price sprawl" location, but they gave us the can-do spirit to begin reinvigorating our core. It only takes one or two major achievements to change the attitude of a populace, and Cincinnati won't have to start with a blank slate like we had to in 1990.

>I think this area has a very negative image of itself compared

 

 

The negativity was started by the players who concocted Cincinnati's bulldozing in the early postwar years.  Few people have read more old Cincinnati newspapers than I have, and hit piece after hit piece started appearing in the late 1940s.  They used phrases like "staid old Cincinnati" and published all kinds of articles about what competing cities were doing and how far behind we were.  They also vilified the very character of the city, complaining endlessly about the narrow downtown streets to argue for any sort of road project anywhere. 

On 550 this morning, their 2 minutes of hate was drawn out to 30 minutes of hating the Freedom Center, and the host Jerry Thomas suggesting that the "trolley money" should pay to keep the Freedom Center open since Mallory has a "pot of gold".  Then all sorts of callers calling in to cast suspicion on the Freedom Center, including one who said that when they were building it circa 2003 the Freedom Center staff worked in office space in the Enquirer's building and that they "never looked busy" and "weren't friendly".     

 

 

On 550 this morning, their 2 minutes of hate was drawn out to 30 minutes of hating the Freedom Center, and the host Jerry Thomas suggesting that the "trolley money" should pay to keep the Freedom Center open since Mallory has a "pot of gold".  Then all sorts of callers calling in to cast suspicion on the Freedom Center, including one who said that when they were building it circa 2003 the Freedom Center staff worked in office space in the Enquirer's building and that they "never looked busy" and "weren't friendly".   

 

That's why I don't listen to anything on thre AM dial, and avoid talk radio like the plague; my head would have exploded listening to that bullsh!t.

 

 

 

I keep the car radio tuned to WMKV or WGUC. It helps keeps me in a better mood.

>I think this area has a very negative image of itself compared

 

 

The negativity was started by the players who concocted Cincinnati's bulldozing in the early postwar years.  Few people have read more old Cincinnati newspapers than I have, and hit piece after hit piece started appearing in the late 1940s.  They used phrases like "staid old Cincinnati" and published all kinds of articles about what competing cities were doing and how far behind we were.  They also vilified the very character of the city, complaining endlessly about the narrow downtown streets to argue for any sort of road project anywhere. 

 

I too have read old texts about Cincinnati and old editions of the Post/Enquirer, and even as far back as the 1880s you can read people complaining that the city wasn´t moving fast enough.  By 1920 Cincinnati already had a remarkable reputation for corruption, filth and a lack of vision, of course partially explaining how the Subway project went in the tank.

The business community still very much acting to protect downtown as the region's business center through the 1920s, which is is why there was considerable dispute over the specific routing of the subway, and especially what was built in place of the canal between Plum and Broadway.  The eventual construction of the interurban terminal at Race under Central Parkway was a two-pronged move -- first, it at least temporarily blocked construction of the huge underground passenger rail station that would have been fed by the subway, as built, and a tunnel under Mt. Adams.  This station was opposed because it was thought that it would cause all of downtown to shift north to Central Parkway, AND because it wouldn't have been quite large enough to handle all of the city's passenger trains, meaning we would have had a relatively small union station with about 6-8 tracks (Union Terminal had 16), and at least 1 or 2 of the railroads couldn't reach this location and would have kept operating their small stations.  Meanwhile, the ideal location of the interurban terminal under 5th between Vine and Main (under Fountain Square and Government Square) would have consumed 25% of the entire 1916 bond issue but would have still left Central Parkway open to construction of the underground passenger railroad station. 

 

The loop itself was intended to depopulate the basin neighborhoods -- turning walkers and streetcar riders into rapid transit commuters from new low-density suburbs in the central part of the county.  But by the late 1920s subways in other cities built for that purpose weren't having that effect -- in NYC Manhattan kept getting denser.  Then when the expressways were built starting in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was thought that they would ease travel to downtowns.  Instead they had the complete opposite effect -- they opened up thousands of acres of land to auto-centric development with free parking within 10 years. 

 

So in short, to some extent people thought that rapid transit lines would spread out people and expressways would keep them focused on downtown, but in reality they each had the total opposite effect.  Same thing with the streetcars -- they thought paving over the tracks and switching to buses would "save" the city, when again it had the opposite effect. 

 

Downtown property after WWII was controlled by at most 10 players, meaning they were able to work in concert to keep competitors out of the real estate scene, dictate how the highways would be built, etc.

 

Chris Finney was, for the 150th time this year, on 700 WLW this morning whining about the Freedom Center and the Streetcar.  Said the annual streetcar operating expenses will be...$10 million.  The only way that could be achieved is if the streetcar were entirely free, the line required millions in maintenance every year, and each driver and shop worker were paid $300,000+. 

 

Meanwhile, the struggle to draw connections between the Freedom Center and the streetcar continues:

 

 

Museum should be a city priority 12/20/11 at 8:25am by Letters Editor  |  0 Comments

 

Thank you for the Sunday Forum on the Freedom Center, and the insightful story “Scratching to stay open” (Dec. 18). Although there have been some “missteps” by the center’s management in the first several years, no one can dispute the overall value of the center to the citizens of Cincinnati and really all of America. The story cites the need for approximately $1 1/2 million to keep the center operating, and the efforts of John Pepper and others to raise these funds. One must wonder why anyone would donate this needed money when the City of Cincinnati is spending more than $50 million on the folly of a “tolley car”?

 

Albert Brauer II

Loveland

 

I think the most important comment Jake has made recently was something on the order of:

 

        Once again, in this Enquirer story COAST and the NAACP constitute the entire opposition.

 

 

Trying to link the Freedom Center's financial woes to the streetcar is an attempt at trying to create division among the city's minorities. So, the way the anti-rail crazies see things, it's better to have poorer minorities with no job opportunities spun-off from the streetcar, than have a Freedom Center they can visit anytime they want.

Shelter designs released

 

http://cincinnati-oh.gov/noncms/projects/streetcar/docs/news_shelter.cfm

Not bad. My worst fear was that they'd select some faux-historicist "ye olde trolley" shelter, but I'm pleasantly surprised.

I like it.  It's clean and simple.  It's obviously a transit shelter , so it's easily spotted from a distance, but it doesn't detract from its surroundings.  I'm really looking forward to more announcements like this.

I like it.  It's clean and simple.  It's obviously a transit shelter , so it's easily spotted from a distance, but it doesn't detract from its surroundings.  I'm really looking forward to more announcements like this.

 

Ditto. Nice design!

I'm guessing the next big announcement will be the selection of the vehicles. Between that and the shelters, we'll soon have a good idea of what this system will look like to the public.

I'm hoping they go with the Skoda type cars that Portland has (the one that visited last year):

 

I just hope that they don't go with a particular type instead of the best choice because they're backed up at the factory with other orders. Thanks to COAST and the two years of delays they caused we're at the back of the line instead of the front.

The shelter looks great!

 

Speaking of the cars, where will the storage/maintenance building be? Will it be a new building or a reused industrial building in OTR?

^^ How many varieties are they choosing from?  I really like the Skoda cars and thought that they (or something nearly identical) were the only real contenders.

^^ How many varieties are they choosing from?  I really like the Skoda cars and thought that they (or something nearly identical) were the only real contenders.

 

John said on the previous page they are looking at 7 different types, 2 of which require no overhead wire.

I saw that, but there were no specific models listed, so I assumed at the time that they were all fairly similar to the Skoda cars.  Jmeck's statement "I'm hoping they go with the Skoda type cars" made me think that there is something fairly different within consideration.

Is Skoda  the most popular/efficient?  What does Tacoma/Seattle have?

 

What are the other popular types around?  There's some pretty cool options

 

 

 

 

 

My money is on a modified Siemens S70 but that is sheer conjuncture and solely my own opinion.

I'm guessing the most likely contenders would include Skoda (or the Skoda design built by United Streetcar), Siemens, Bombardier, Breda, Alstom, and Kinki-Shayro. Maybe Kawasaki as well, but I think they tend to be more focused on heavy rail vehicles.

pdx

 

Seattle (not the bike rack)

 

Tacoma (the paint job on those makes Tacoma really easy to pick out)