They can't run longer streetcars because of the a)stations b)maintenance facility. 

 

Parking would have to be reduced or eliminated for the streetcar staff in order to lay more storage track for longer streetcars.  Also, the maintenance building itself would have to be extended southward.  The existing turnaround loop would have to be rebuilt somewhere else.

 

 

 

 

 

I get that the stops are too short but if that wasn't an issue, you could run two streetcars out on the street, couple them, then uncouple them at the end of the day. It's not like they don't already have that feature built in.

 

You don't really need to run longer trains, just run them more frequently. Cut the time between trains and the crowds will spread out more. 

Running an extra train might be helpful too. Maybe people need to start petitioning city council to make signal priority a priority.

 

4 hours ago, JaceTheAce41 said:

Maybe people need to start petitioning city council to make signal priority a priority.

 

 

We have never turned on the signal jump at the top of Vine St. at McMillan that was built when Metro Plus appeared around 2012:

 

There is now just a funny lane where an surging car occasionally passes a car following the speed limit on the right. 

 

This is the whole problem with BRT - somebody will complain and the signal priority will be turned off at one intersection after another. 

 

 

 

 

On 3/30/2024 at 3:18 AM, DEPACincy said:

You don't really need to run longer trains, just run them more frequently. Cut the time between trains and the crowds will spread out more. 

Correct. 

On 3/30/2024 at 7:21 AM, JaceTheAce41 said:

Running an extra train might be helpful too. Maybe people need to start petitioning city council to make signal priority a priority.

 

I haven't updated this one in a little while because Milwaukee has inadvertently been reporting their streetcar miles instead of their streetcar hours to the FTA (they reported like 7000 hours of service last month) but we run considerably less service than the other Midwestern systems). 

As pointed out by @John Schneider, Cincinnati leads the nation for transit ridership as a percentage of pre-pandemic levels. 

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2024/04/02/downtown-vitality-index-comeback.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=ae&utm_content=CI&j=34903338&senddate=2024-04-02&empos=p3&fbclid=IwAR0h3qvGXAKTSE28eK14PSn0rv35WuLlG8dqdC1zycn2CnzNSOCutTSXdeA_aem_Aaj_-OqHgZaLI74kR6ZtsnZcxPdvHj8CSVqhO5sbBKXabDZdMcjch6Wt9CxXSE0orW4nV3uTHaA6hDSa0UvqVUNX v

[I accidentally posted this on the wrong thread, moved it over to where it should be]

 

I made this chart to test my hypothesis that Cincinnati had the shortest span of service of any modern streetcar system on Sundays. Turns out we don’t but we have the second-lowest total hours of service span. 

 

Fun facts-

 

Earliest Start Time is Tacoma 4:30am followed by Dallas 5:30am

Latest End Time is a four-way tie- Tucson, Tampa, DC and OKC 2am on Friday and Saturday

 

Earliest End time is also Tacoma at 630pm on Sundays 

 

Tucson, Tampa, KC, DC and OKC all have extended hours on Friday and Saturday nights (KC only goes until 1am)

 

Also weirdly Tucson has extended late-night hours on Thursdays, no one else does. 

Compared to 2019, ridership on the Cincinnati Streetcar has more than doubled, but the hours operated are down -6%.

 

If we restored those hours, we could have a longer service span on Sunday, more frequent peak weekday service, and later service on Friday and Saturday.

 

I wanted to see how the other modern systems stacked up 

 

Did a scatterplot and the r^2 was 0.0101 which I think is just about as low as that can possibly get. 

 

I hadn't seen anyone else show the email from the streetcar expansion forum with the routes ranked out ; with Downtown to Uptown along Reading number 1 the east/west walnut hills route second. I live on the Northern Kentucky side and while I love that idea I think realistically that's going to be very tough to work out politically and until Covington gets new leadership they won't be involved anyway which is a huge missed opportunity.

 

Personally I think the route up reading makes a ton of sense, and can be expanded upon once up the hill with the east/west route, or on the other end down Ezzard Charles to connect Union Terminal. So basically I would combine the red and purple line, sharing the 12/Central tracks with the current route and allowing access to the existing MOF. If the arena gets moved to WCET location and we start to get more frequent trains at Union Terminal I think this is the route. 

Riders per hour March 2024. Cincinnati Streetcar compared to Metro's local routes. 

6 hours ago, thomasbw said:

Riders per hour March 2024. Cincinnati Streetcar compared to Metro's local routes. 

 

I want to see this on the front page of the Enquirer and presented to the SORTA board and City Council.

The US has 13 modern streetcar systems that operated pre-pandemic. Three of those went fare free when restarting after the pandemic (and Tampa went fare-free shortly before and expanded service hours). Here's how ridership compares on our streetcar vs. the other three that went free and the eight (Tacoma didn't release data) that didn't. 

 

Detroit went free, but cut service by -40%

Tampa increased service by 21.5%

Tucson down -5.2%

Cincinnati down -3.4%

Other Cities Avg -1.3%

Oh man, this will ruin the bus theologians' day.

West End to Uptown route. 

 

-click to enlarge

-Would combine elements of 3 of the top 4 routes of the recent CTSD survey.

-operate as separate route from the downtown route.  

- uses rebuilt Brighton Approach bridge over Central Parkway (bridge would have to be built to support streetcar weight, also this would be a steep grade if possible at all) 

-uses McMillan to get up the hill

-anything after Auburn Ave. could be separated into a Phase 2 if necessary

-connects Findlay Market (existing economic hub), West End (catalyze historic rehabs and small scale developments,) south UC campus (existing economic hub), and Innovation District (catalyze large scale developments and form a better connection to UC campus) 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 20241 yr by thebillshark

I understand that there's a desire to not 'duplicate' BRT on Vine St., but here's what BRT on Vine St. is going to look like vs current conditions. 

 

 

BRT is going to consist of a single, non-exclusive curb-running bus lane that will be used by local traffic for right turns. That's it. 

3 minutes ago, thomasbw said:

I understand that there's a desire to not 'duplicate' BRT on Vine St., but here's what BRT on Vine St. is going to look like vs current conditions. 

 

 

BRT is going to consist of a single, non-exclusive curb-running bus lane that will be used by local traffic for right turns. That's it. 

 

 

How much are we spending on this Bus "Rapid" Transit?

22 minutes ago, Miami-Erie said:

 

 

How much are we spending on this Bus "Rapid" Transit?

$300 million. 

 

Everything red or pink on this map is just a painted curb lane.

 

The brown is "do nothing" 

 

Of the 5 dark blue sections, one already exists (Riverfront Transit Center) and one will have zero benefit (going down the hill to Cincinnati State) The other three are sections are very useful, especially the one on Jefferson. The light blue section will be interesting and likely involve the removal of a tree-lined median. 

 

Somehow this will take 4-5 years and cost $300 million. 

 

 

just add bus bumpouts for a few million and don't do the rest of this. It's a waste of money IMO.

9 minutes ago, ryanlammi said:

just add bus bumpouts for a few million and don't do the rest of this. It's a waste of money IMO.

I think you do a strong trunk in Downtown/Uptown, combined with real signal priority and limited stop service and you can get 85% of the benefits at 15% of the costs. 

We're going to half-ass BRT and (as much as I'd like streetcar expansion) possibly expand the streetcar when we need real rapid/semi-rapid transit in the city. The half-ass BRT is going to take 5 years for some reason and any streetcar expansion is going to once again be met with a ballot initiative by COAST and will take 10 years to get built. Let's just try MetroMoves again otherwise we'll be sitting here in 10 years talking about the same thing.

 

Again, I want better transit and streetcar expansion but these are bandaids.

23 hours ago, thomasbw said:

$300 million. 

 

Everything red or pink on this map is just a painted curb lane.

 

The brown is "do nothing" 

 

Of the 5 dark blue sections, one already exists (Riverfront Transit Center) and one will have zero benefit (going down the hill to Cincinnati State) The other three are sections are very useful, especially the one on Jefferson. The light blue section will be interesting and likely involve the removal of a tree-lined median. 

 

Somehow this will take 4-5 years and cost $300 million. 

 

 

 

 

Where's the investigative journalism in this town? I hate to see us finally get a dedicated funding stream for transit and then we blow it all on SORTA/METRO waste and an ineffective BRT that does more to hurt transit than to help it. Ugh.

Cincinnati aims to boost parking revenue, with more going to the streetcar for now

By Chris Wetterich – Staff reporter and columnist, Cincinnati Business Courier

May 29, 2024

 

The city of Cincinnati plans to add four new enforcement officers for fiscal year 2025 in a bid to boost lagging parking revenue, and the city will significantly increase the amount of meter funds going to fill a major gap in the Cincinnati Connector streetcar budget.

 

Mayor Aftab Pureval and City Manager Sheryl Long’s budget moves $750,000 of parking revenue to the $6.2 million streetcar spending plan. The city’s budget for FY2025 begins July 1 and City Council must pass it by June 30.

 

“I’m really proud that we continue to break ridership numbers,” Pureval told reporters when he unveiled the budget May 24. “We are confident we will be able to sustainably support the streetcar going forward.”

 

MORE

Another Record for the Cincinnati Streetcar!

 

*Highest ridership May of all time

*Second-highest ridership month of all time

*New records in 28 of the past 31 months

 

I'm very happy that the City of Cincinnati finally realized that when the Streetcar sets records, you should tell the media. 

Thank you for all you do, @thomasbw!

2 hours ago, Miami-Erie said:

Thank you for all you do, @thomasbw!

The hardest part was learning how to do the little black outline on the white letters. Really does help with readability. 

During the planning phase, wasn't the most optimistic ridership projection something like 3,600 riders/day? (I could be wrong, that just seems to be a number that's stuck in my mind.) We are now blowing past that estimate regularly.

The feasibility study's ridership projections were pretty terrible; I did a thread on it here.

 

4 hours ago, taestell said:

During the planning phase, wasn't the most optimistic ridership projection something like 3,600 riders/day? (I could be wrong, that just seems to be a number that's stuck in my mind.) We are now blowing past that estimate regularly.

I always remember 3,000 per day in the original projections. I think the economists goosed them up to get more Federal funds. But the truth is, no one ever used ridership numbers to justify the streetcar investment. In fact, I doubt more than a few dozen people in the entire city even had any idea of what a good level of ridership would be. It was always and forever about reinvestment and repopulation, and the opponents conveniently ignore that. Or they will claim it never achieved these economic objectives while simultaneously claiming that the streetcar is responsible for the gentrification and displacement in downtown and OTR. The truth is, projecting transit ridership is real black box stuff and should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Have you noticed no one ever tries to justify highway investments based on ridership.

Edited June 5, 20241 yr by John Schneider

They never even bothered to make projections for the MLK interchange and for the Brent Spence Bridge they keep making projections and they are consistently wrong. 

NFL Draft probably added 30-40k riders for Detroit's streetcar in April 

 

Can I just say again how annoying it is that there hasn't been a clear official name of the streetcar system for, what, a few years now? There was never an official announcement that it was no longer called the "Cincinnati Bell Connector". The city's website interchangeably refers to it as "the Connector" and "the Streetcar". If you're talking about the system outside of a local context, what's the full name of the system, "The Connector"? "Cincinnati Connector"? It's unnecessarily confusing and the city just needs to officially rebrand it back to "Cincinnati Streetcar" -- and perhaps at the same time relaunch it with updated wraps and service improvements.

We were using it a couple weekends ago with family in town and my kids call it the trolly (I blame Daniel Tiger), my in-laws kept calling it the tram (I blame them living in San Diego), I call it the streetcar and my wife calls it the Connector. Communication was an issue and it would be nice to have an official Official name. 

From the City of Covington's website- "The City is also exploring improved bus, streetcar, and water taxi services."

 

https://www.covingtonky.gov/news/2024/06/25/covington-sites-163mm-vote-of-confidence

I'm assuming the Roebling Bridge couldn't handle the weight of a streetcar and any crossing on the Covington side would need to use the Clay-Wade Bailey Bridge? That could also give a potential streetcar and easy route up main street.

1 hour ago, JaceTheAce41 said:

I'm assuming the Roebling Bridge couldn't handle the weight of a streetcar and any crossing on the Covington side would need to use the Clay-Wade Bailey Bridge? That could also give a potential streetcar and easy route up main street.

The Roebling Bridge is restricted from use by heavy vehicles. At 70,000 pounds empty, there's no way the streetcar could use it. Plus, I think there would be challenges from preservationists on the installation of overhead wires. On using the Clay Wade Bailey, I'm sure that has to wait until the Brent Spence companion bridge is complete because Kentucky has always viewed the CWB as a reliever to the BSB in case of emergencies or repairs. They raised this objection during light rail planning in the late-1990's. With the construction disruption, I don't see them changing their minds -- so, using it for a streetcar path is off the board for most of the next ten years. One thing we need to be thinking about is the possibility of using the existing BSB when through-traffic is shifted to the new bridge and the BSB is converted into a gateway into Cincinnati and Covington. There will be tremendous surplus capacity on this bridge after the conversion which could provide a streetcar path to Covington or a less-likely LRT route to CVG. Need to keep an eye on this, try to claim the lower deck for rail, buses and bikes.

Hey Cincy Streetcar fans - my friends in the Southwest chapter of AAO have organized a tour of the streetcar maintenance facility this Saturday at 11am. If you’re interested, please register:

 

https://www.allaboardohio.org/event-details/cincinnati-streetcar-facility-tour

 

 

Another record-setting month for the Cincinnati Streetcar

 

Highest-ever June Ridership

2nd highest average daily ridership

3rd highest ridership month all-time

 

I don't have the Metro numbers yet, but almost certainly the #1 route locally as well. 

I'm just curious why Cincy isn't serious about building a proper light rail system. The city is similar in feel to Pittsburgh which has built a light rail and unlike PGH Cincy's urban fabric is more seamless as it doesn't have 2 rivers cutting through the city limits (Covington isn't part of the city, but I think it should be connected by rail in the future anyway).

4 hours ago, Philly215jawns said:

I'm just curious why Cincy isn't serious about building a proper light rail system.

Skim through the past 600 pages from over the years and you’ll see just how difficult it was even to get the streetcar built (which is STILL not operated to its full potential). METRO/SORTA has also made a pivot to building BRT* the last decade in favor of light rail and fully separated from the streetcar in a strategic, political move (not that they operated it well in the first place). 

 

*a watered-down milquetoast version 

Following up on my post from a few weeks ago.

 

This line could be built in stages: Stage 1 from Findlay Market to Auburn Ave, Stage 2 Auburn Ave to Winslow Ave, Stage 3 Winslow Ave to Woodburn Ave.  

 

Or, if a small section of track for a return loop at W Clifton Ave between Calhoun and McMillan was added: Stage 1 from Findlay Market to W Clifton Ave, Stage 2 W Clifton Ave to Winslow Ave, Stage 3 Winslow Ave to Woodburn Ave. 

 

(click to enlarge):

 

 

This line could work in conjunction with 2 more lines:

 

 

Or even something like this:

 

 

Edited July 5, 2024Jul 5 by thebillshark

11 hours ago, Philly215jawns said:

I'm just curious why Cincy isn't serious about building a proper light rail system. The city is similar in feel to Pittsburgh which has built a light rail and unlike PGH Cincy's urban fabric is more seamless as it doesn't have 2 rivers cutting through the city limits (Covington isn't part of the city, but I think it should be connected by rail in the future anyway).

Money

Here's ridership by individual lines (not systems) for modern streetcars. Personally I think Portland A & B should be considered one line, but Portland reports their ridership separately, so I'll defer to them. Also, Oklahoma City technically has two separate loops, but they're already in last place, so they would just have the bottom two spots if split up. 

Edited July 17, 2024Jul 17 by thomasbw