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I want to see the current downtown streetcar loop completed, because I want to see the result. What is the ridership? What are the actual operating costs? The cars look great, more like streamlined light rail than streetcars. If the starter system gets the public's interest should be capable of expansion to a far broader area. I could see running all the way to Kenwood Towne Center and several designations on the West Side. I also like the fact they are still called streetcars, meaning they are designed to operate on streets, not separate segregated rail lines. This is the way to provide transportation for your neglected citizens, not stop it at the start.
So we spend millions on a slow moving bullet train (that looks like crap), that looks totally out of place anyway in a historic district and when the operational costs bankrupt the city, we throw the pensioners and debtors under the streetcar as we march of to federal court for our banruptsy hearing like Detroit?
I know, lets put an aerial tram from St Clair Heights park In Knox Hill down to the banks? I am sure PG can find a way to pay for it. You know they have aerial trams in Portland? and Europe too! ....it will be "Uber cool". Sure it willl cost millions but I am sure we can go to the never ending pot of Obama transportation "shovel ready" project funds and get it paid for. It WILL foster redevelopment in my community, so lets just build the thing and see how much it encourages development.
FYI: I actually mentioned this on my facebook (satirically) and all these 20 somethings were just super excited about the idea , saying we should do it.
While we are at it, lets rebuild all the inclines and lets bring those horse and buggys back while we are at it (hey we can create a whole job training program for blacksmiths).
We can not continue to be dependent on the FEDS, for streetcar money, CDBG funds for demo, section 8 housing...WHY? Because one day Washington will wake up (or enough idiots get voted out of office), and the gravy train WILL stop.
When you send a 100 dollars to Washington in federal tax payments , after all the layers and fed worker overhead maybe 50 cents comes back.
The fact is if we spent the 125-175 Million the streetcar routre 1 "may cost", we could have put that money into neighborhoods, brought people back in and maybe create a tax and population base that we would need a streetcar and have the revenues to pay for it. In case you haven't noticed , Cincinnati (city limits), we are still LOSING population and have been for 5 decades.
I personally hope that Cranely and this council find every dime of waste they can, use some common sense and put this city on a sound financial footing. That is the BEST way to attract corporate investment, bring people back to the city and set this city apart from others.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that mass transit is for poor people. Or at least not for about 20 pages
If mass transit can be built effectively and to allow convenient travel between areas, why else then would it not be used? There are only so many logical explanations.
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Also the whole "boomers" have built cities tailored to the car... well, in a
technical sense when these cities were making a transition to a more
auto-centric situation, the boomers were toddlers, or at most a decade old. It
was the hollowing out after world war II, when the prosperity of the industrial
age led to the expansion into the suburbs (or further out into the suburbs in
some cases). You can't really blame that on the boomers (though for whatever
reason the millenials seem to dislike the boomers far more than the GenX's
do).
I didn't say Boomers started to movement, but they have continued it to the present day and have been in control for a few decades now at least. Cranley is not from the Boomer or earlier generations, but he is definitely from that school of thought. And it would make sense why Xers would not dislike the Boomers as much. Each subsequent generation is going to be further removed from earlier ones.
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Some cities never lost enough of their critical mass in the city to become
autocentric. NYC for example - even during the '70s early '80s (when the hard
core gentrification led by hippy artists was going on) never got to a point
where you could have a significant amount of vehicle ownership in the city.
There are always exceptions. The city was too big and too dense to ever be completely changed.
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Cincinnati just isn't that big. Its barely 300,000 people. As many have
pointed out the density so beloved by many on this board was really a factor
when certain areas of the city were basically slums. No one seems to be
suggesting we're going to go back to "4 to a room, and shared bath down the
hall" as a desirably living condition.
Density does not equal slum and they really have nothing to do with each other. It was about segregation, differences in housing policy, safety policy, differences in birth rates, immigration, poverty, education, etc. You will never have the same conditions today no matter how dense a neighborhood becomes.
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So even the environmentally conscious yuppies will likely want at least 900sf of
their own. Some of them might *gasp* want a small parking space for their smart
car/city car. That's not the end of the world. And, in and of itself isn't
prohibitive of having a functioning mass transit system.
I agree. You can have a car in the city. You just don't need 100,000 surface parking lots in the urban core to have that. Building a walkable neighborhood with multiple transit options, however, will likely end up with a lot less necessity in use for one. You seem to be assuming, however, that people across generational lines, will want to own cars at the exact same rates and desire the exact same housing conditions. That's a bad assumption. The only time you need a large house is if you plan to spend most of your time there. I kind of feel like the whole McMansion thing came about because most of those people didn't have anywhere to go anyway, so why not build a big home. Outside of work, where else are you really going to go out in the suburbs? Wal-Mart? McDonald's? That 1980s enclosed mall?
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I think what has annoyed some in the city is that there seems to be a group
of people who basically want the attention on the touristy areas of the city
(including this proposed street car) - when many of the people who live in the
city and don't have their own transportation and need a good way to get to and
from other areas for work - their needs aren't really being considered. Whether
that means a different rail system, an improved bus system, or what.
That seems like an entirely selfish justification for killing this project. If you can't have it, no one should? It's not like the system couldn't have been expanded. And it certainly didn't mean that other transit projects couldn't be started elsewhere, although the city has no chance now of getting funding for those projects now, so it's a moot point. It will have to go it alone or not at all. Dire prospects for the future of transit in the city.
Quote:
Hopefully the new administration focuses on the city as a whole and determines
what the city's priorities are - whether or not that means this iteration of the
streetcar going forward.
The administration just severely damaged the city's reputation, was fiscally irresponsible by trashing a project already millions into construction, and will not be able to get funding for anywhere in the city, let alone select neighborhoods near Downtown. Your hope is already wasted on this administration.
So we spend millions on a slow moving bullet train (that looks like crap), that looks totally out of place anyway in a historic district and when the operational costs bankrupt the city, we throw the pensioners and debtors under the streetcar as we march of to federal court for our banruptsy hearing like Detroit?
I know, lets put an aerial tram from St Clair Heights park In Knox Hill down to the banks? I am sure PG can find a way to pay for it. You know they have aerial trams in Portland? and Europe too! ....it will be "Uber cool". Sure it willl cost millions but I am sure we can go to the never ending pot of Obama transportation "shovel ready" project funds and get it paid for. It WILL foster redevelopment in my community, so lets just build the thing and see how much it encourages development.
FYI: I actually mentioned this on my facebook (satirically) and all these 20 somethings were just super excited about the idea , saying we should do it.
While we are at it, lets rebuild all the inclines and lets bring those horse and buggys back while we are at it (hey we can create a whole job training program for blacksmiths).
We can not continue to be dependent on the FEDS, for streetcar money, CDBG funds for demo, section 8 housing...WHY? Because one day Washington will wake up (or enough idiots get voted out of office), and the gravy train WILL stop.
When you send a 100 dollars to Washington in federal tax payments , after all the layers and fed worker overhead maybe 50 cents comes back.
The fact is if we spent the 125-175 Million the streetcar routre 1 "may cost", we could have put that money into neighborhoods, brought people back in and maybe create a tax and population base that we would need a streetcar and have the revenues to pay for it. In case you haven't noticed , Cincinnati (city limits), we are still LOSING population and have been for 5 decades.
I personally hope that Cranely and this council find every dime of waste they can, use some common sense and put this city on a sound financial footing. That is the BEST way to attract corporate investment, bring people back to the city and set this city apart from others.
How much do you think the city spent in the neighborhoods in 5 decades? I bet it's well over 175 million as you say.
How much do you think the city spent in the neighborhoods in 5 decades? I bet it's well over 175 million as you say.
Very little actually these days, if you take the money for essential services (Police,Fire, trash) and servicing pension and debt, and current employment, there is not a lot of monies left over for neighborhood services. Remember out property tax revenues are declining so we are largely dependent on income tax revenues. The 2013 Budget gave each of the 52 neighborhoods a 'whopping' 5 grand each. Most neighbrohoods printa newsletter with those monies or have some very small asitance projects for seniors.
In fact, Former city manager Dohoney sought the following CUTS for 2013:
Media Bridges Support is eliminated ($300,000)
Downtown and Neighborhood Gateways Program is eliminated ($57,480)
Juvenile Firesetter Program is eliminated ($84,100)
Mounted Patrol is eliminated ($188,350)
Arts Grants is eliminated ($50,000)
Human Services Funding is reduced ($610,770)
Mind you I am talking about CITY monies. I still have one lane roads in part of my area with no sidewalks. In fact the last major improvements were done in the 1930's (WPA Project), again Federal , that paved the dirt roads. The city has no money to cut all the vacant lots they created, they have no money to pick up the illegaly dumped junk.I have vacant lots in my neighborhood that had not been cut in 4 years until finally our neighborhood group started cutting some of them. I have impassible sidewalks caused by hillside erosion. I dont even want to talk about the potholes, or the lack of lighting in our parks. I deal with city offficials just about every day on community issues and the response I normally hear is "we don't have money for that". Or, "our next year of federal monies is committed already." A disproportional amount of city resouces were directed at OTR at the expense of other neighborhoods. Those are facts. That is why Roxanne Qualls (more-of-the-same-Mallory) lost this election.
What you refer to as "neighborhood investments" are almost always federally funded. Either with CDBG funding or some HUD housing project. Our city is "addicted' to federal monies. In fact if federal money stopped flowing today? This city and dozens of others all across the country would be headed to bankruptsy court. Detroit just got there first.
Well, today I just e-mailed Comedy Central, and I gave them a little background on the Streetcar issue through links to the Cincy Streetcar page, the Mayor Cranley Twitter feed, and some articles from the Enquirer and CBC.
It's an absolute longshot, but I hope this issue is covered on Jon Stewart's show or Colbert!
1. It shows the incredible lie that Cranley was trying to pitch - that FTA funds might be able to be moved to another project. This article calls it a "dubious claim" but I would take it about 10 steps further - it was an out-and-out lie and a bad one at that. It's truly amazing that, as far as I can tell, I was the ONLY person, here or elsewhere who immediately identified that absurd statement as a lie. Not a single local media source even questioned him one bit on this. Shameful.
2. It also completely underscores what many of us were saying last week - that pause = cancellation. There is simply no way that Cranley is going to NOT veto any proposal to restart the project and the votes for overriding the veto are not there.
Let's be clear about what happened.
Cranley attempted the appearance of rationality (let's pause the spending for now, find out if the FTA will let us move the funding to another project, run the numbers and see if it costs more to complete than to not complete, and then take another vote) but it was all smoke and mirrors.
1. Pause actually costs more than letting construction continue with cost free options by concerned groups putting up funds.
2. The FTA would NEVER, and I mean not in a ZILLION years have allowed Cincinnati to move funding for a specified rail transit project to be used on a roads project (or any other project for that matter). It was a bald-faced lie. If not, it demonstration a ghastly incompetence.
3. Determing which option will cost more is absurd on its face. Under option 1 you get a streetcar line, under option 2 you get nothing, and a bunch of law suits. Obviously there is just a little bit of daylight between the two options.
4. Another vote is completely moot as he now has the power of veto and the votes to over come that not there.
Unbelievable - again, the is the worst abuse of the public trust that I have every witnessed on the local level.
Quick question: Is it possible for the pro-streetcar contingent to initiate a petition to get the issue on the ballot for May? This would send an unequivocal yes or no to Cincinnati City Council which direction the residents wish to move on the project.
Quick question: Is it possible for the pro-streetcar contingent to initiate a petition to get the issue on the ballot for May? This would send an unequivocal yes or no to Cincinnati City Council which direction the residents wish to move on the project.
To me it is a mute point, as the feds have said they will pull their grant money well before that. Whether they would reinstate it with an affirmative public vote is anybody's guess. I would think a public referendum would need to indicate Cincinnati was becoming obligated to complete the streetcar, federal money or not. I can't see such a proposal passing.
Quick question: Is it possible for the pro-streetcar contingent to initiate a petition to get the issue on the ballot for May? This would send an unequivocal yes or no to Cincinnati City Council which direction the residents wish to move on the project.
Petitions have been on the street for a week and final count will be Tuesday (I think). Slightly less than 6000 signatures are required to put this on the ballot. The pro-streetcar folks are shooting to gather 12,000 by tomorrow (to make sure that there are at least a valid 6000). If successful (which they should be) an amendment to the city charter will go on the ballot at either a special election in February or the election in May.
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