Cincinnati Light Rail News

[UncleRando]

There are two tiny surface lots on campus itself...there is the one next to Campus Green that is connected with that short squatty building, and there is one next to the baseball stadium that is used for a variety of things mainly associated with the offices inside of the Edwards complex.

As for east/medical campus I cannot think of the parking lot that you are mentioning jmeck.  There are just VERY few surface lots on/around campus...just about 100% of the parking available is either on-street parking or inside garages.

[BallHatGuy]

and there is one next to the baseball stadium that is used for a variety of things mainly associated with the offices inside of the Edwards complex.

That's where I tailgate!

[jmecklenborg]

Randy don't make me walk over there and take a picture of it.  It's huge.  And there are some more big ones along Martin Luther King Drive toward Reading Rd.  Probably not UC property but nevertheless lots that wouldn't be there if a transit line had been built through the area 50 years ago.   

[atlas]

^oh yea, that one is huge, and very unkept and hideous.  ugh!

[Neville]

There is also the parking lot next to Daniel's hall... at Jefferson and W Charleston (i think). The short squatty building is the Alumni Center, and the lot is known as A Lot. The one by east campus... is that on vine?

[UncleRando]

Randy don't make me walk over there and take a picture of it.  It's huge.  And there are some more big ones along Martin Luther King Drive toward Reading Rd.  Probably not UC property but nevertheless lots that wouldn't be there if a transit line had been built through the area 50 years ago.

You will walk over there and take a picture...it would be better if you drove though. 

[atlas]

i like you rando, but youre crazy!

[GCrites80s]

^theres a tiny one on campus next to that faculty building and the one at the corner of vine and daniels is fairly large, although kids use that to play on, etc that go to that school/church/whatever that is.  But yea, cant really think of any other than that at the moment. 

Doesn't that belong to the elementary school? Also, I gotta say that it would be sh!tty to go to elementary school without a playground or at least some grass.

The lots listed above don't really "divide" campus though.

[LincolnKennedy]

Doesn't that belong to the elementary school? Also, I gotta say that it would be sh!tty to go to elementary school without a playground or at least some grass.

When you're growing up in the city, most of the time that's all you've got.

[noozer]

If ignorance is bliss, here's the happiest guy in Cincinnati.  Somebody please write a letter in response:

Adding lanes to secondary roads best transit solution
Cincinnati Enquirer / Letter to the Editor

I am tired of hearing about these high-priced dreams of improving access to the city/Metro area via light rail, streetcars, etc. Why don't we follow other cities and just add one or two lanes on some of the state routes to downtown? Better traffic signaling and traffic direction changes for lanes depending on the time of day will obviously be needed. These are secondary roads that should be used by local residents to travel to downtown or intermediate areas.

Click on link for article.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/EDIT0202/801020303/1022/rss

[5chw4r7z]

^sigh^
Am I speaking for myself when I say we don't want more cars downtown?
OK if we add extra lanes to secondary roads how does that help anyone get from the ballpark up to Cadilac or McFaddens or Fountain Square? Once in the car after a baseball game its just as easy to go to Kenwood as Fountain square. Maybe easier.
But I'm preaching to the choir here, I know.

I just sent a letter, thanks for the link.

[sfisher]

If ignorance is bliss, here's the happiest guy in Cincinnati.  Somebody please write a letter in response:

Adding lanes to secondary roads best transit solution
Cincinnati Enquirer / Letter to the Editor

I am tired of hearing about these high-priced dreams of improving access to the city/Metro area via light rail, streetcars, etc. Why don't we follow other cities and just add one or two lanes on some of the state routes to downtown? Better traffic signaling and traffic direction changes for lanes depending on the time of day will obviously be needed. These are secondary roads that should be used by local residents to travel to downtown or intermediate areas.

Removed rest of letter - xumelanie

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/EDIT0202/801020303/1022/rss

If I wanted to get back into school mode, I would go look up my notes on added lanes - but I believe the most recent study on this says that congestion would be equal on the new roadway within 5 yrs.  At the cost, (economic, social and environmental) of new road construction, that is insane.  You would have to build a new lane each way every 5 years to keep pace.  .....or you could start a decent multimodal public transportation system and simply increase service frequency to meet demand. 

[David]

Not to mention, it also costs a lot of money to add lanes. Even if the state is paying for it.

[thomasbw]

and the state highway fund and the federal highway fund are both projected to go into the red in the next few years.  I can't imagine a politician will try to raise gas taxes with $100 barrel oil

[David]

^...and if taxes are raised, combined with the inevitable increase in energy cost, the masses will be begging for these street cars, light rail and commuter rail. But hey, what do we know.

[5chw4r7z]

Doesn't the state pay for the upgrade and maintenance of these state routes?

I guess the state grows money on trees, and his SUV runs on the sun shining out of his ass.

[Jimmy_James]

^sigh^
Am I speaking for myself when I say we don't want more cars downtown?
OK if we add extra lanes to secondary roads how does that help anyone get from the ballpark up to Cadilac or McFaddens of Fountain Square? Once in the car after a baseball game its just as easy to go to Kenwood as Fountain square. Maybe easier.
But I'm preaching to the choir here, I know.

I just sent a letter, thanks for the link.

No, you're right.  The problem is that most people don't even consider living "in" the city.  I honestly don't think it even enters their minds when they read a story about the streetcar or light rail in the Enquirer.  They come strictly from a suburban mindset that can't fathom anyone actually residing downtown; only commuting in and out of it every day.  This type of criticism won't disappear until the streetcar is actually built and people can see what it really does.  Of course, it may not vanish even then, but at least at that point we'll have some rail in this city, and hopefully more on the way.

[KJP]

I posted this at the Cleveland RTA thread, but I thought you folks down south might find this interesting too. I wrote this article last May and which was published in the Midwest High Speed Rail Association newsletter....
_____________________


The Plot to Derail Rail’s Revival
New federal criteria is denying rail funding – on purpose
By Ken Prendergast

With 25 years of rail’s popularity and success – including for light-rail, regional commuter rail and intercity passenger trains – you’d think the federal government would be eager to meet their electorate’s desires.

Instead, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and other federal transportation agencies have made a concerted effort to change project-scoring criteria to deny funding to rail projects and make it appear there is actually less demand for new rail projects. The end result is what they desired – divert federal dollars to new high-occupancy vehicle lanes on freeways and bus alternatives that have little hope of encouraging denser, mixed-use developments around transit stops.

The obvious question is – why?

The disturbing answer is reminiscent of a dark chapter in America’s transportation history book in which highway and oil industries joined forces to create shell companies to buy electric streetcar systems and replace them with buses. Today, the highway lobby is using a slightly different tactic to stop the transit renaissance dead in its tracks. It’s a tactic that gained traction in the last six years with the White House and Congressional leaders.

The transit renaissance, and rail’s energizing of it, is hard to ignore. In March, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reported that Americans took 10.1 billion trips on local transit in 2006. It was the first time in 50 years that public transit was used so heavily. The ridership growth didn’t just start when gas prices began heading upward in 2004.

“Public transit use is up 30 percent since 1995,” APTA reported. “That is more than double the growth rate of the (nation’s) population (12 percent) and higher than the growth rate for the vehicle miles traveled on our roads (24 percent) during that same period.”

Rail transit ridership was responsible for the nation’s increased use of public transportation, according to an analysis by Ed Tennyson, Pennsylvania’s former deputy secretary of transportation, now a consultant to the nonprofit organization Light Rail Now!

“If we analyze the APTA data, ridership went down with streetcar eliminations from 1956 to 1981 when San Diego Trolley came alive,” Tennyson wrote. “Ridership had gone down 75 percent as (the nation’s) population grew. Transit was no longer relevant except in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and New Oreleans. Why there? Rail service. Even Shaker Heights, with Cleveland’s partial demise, lost only half as many riders as bus systems did.

“Now, since 1984, what has happened?” Tennyson asked. “Using APTA-FTA data, light rail has grown 274 percent from a small base. Regional commuter rail has grown 57 percent from a larger base. Rapid rail (subways, elevated railways, etc.) has grown 40-some percent from a large base and buses lost half a percent from the largest base.”

New rail transit services continue to be added while existing services are expanded. Yet, many of these are happening with federal funding contributions reduced from 80 percent of total project costs in the 1980s to less than 50 percent today. Smaller, new-start rail transit projects – Denver’s Central Corridor, St. Louis’ Cross-County light-rail line, the first phase of New Mexico’s RailRunner – are getting built with no federal dollars.

The total number of new-start transit projects receiving federal funding fell from 80 projects in 2002 to 40 in 2006, according to the New Starts Working Group. Most new-start projects are rail. The declining federal contribution is a big factor, especially for conducting preliminary engineering. Another factor is the increasingly complicated planning process which the FTA puts a project through. In the past, it would typically take five years for a project to go from the alternatives analysis phase to final design. Today, the planning process takes at least 10 years, said Jeff Boothe, chairman of the New Starts Working Group and a partner at the Washington D.C. office of Holland & Knight, LLP.

“They (FTA) are putting more of the onus on local funding for design with less certainty for federal funding,” he said. “People are spending a lot more time, which is money, before you get considered for a full funding grant agreement (from the FTA). There aren’t many transit agencies willing to going through that. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

As is typically the case for any transportation mode, there are far more transit projects than there is federal funding available to them. For transit, however, there is a 20-year backlog of projects waiting for federal funding. Last year, the FTA New Starts Program was funded at just $1.2 billion.

Furthermore, in 2002 the FTA began changing the weighting, or emphasis on criteria it uses to rate new-start transit projects in search of federal funding. Cost, ridership, benefits to low-income areas and environmental impacts are among the key factors FTA uses to measure the merits of a New Start project. Cost-effectiveness is now a primary factor, determined by travel time savings and annualized capital costs over the short term. Land-use impacts were pushed farther down the list.

Although rail projects tend to have large, up-front construction costs, they have more long-term benefits than buses by encouraging denser, mixed-used communities around transit stops. The reason is rail’s permanence provides confidence to real estate developers; they know that rail will serve their investments for decades. Rail services also have more easily identifiable routes and carry less of a social stigma than buses. Rail competes well with express buses on travel time savings when higher-density neighborhoods exist around stations.

But when land-use impacts carry less weight with the FTA than short-term cost-effectiveness, the FTA will opt for high-occupancy vehicle highway lanes in low-density, suburban sprawl areas and a few Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes.

“It (the New Starts standards) totally misses how you reshape a city,” said Kevin McCarty, senior director of federal policy at the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

“There are no cost-effective rail projects anymore,” Boothe said. “The focus is on BRT and to use FTA money on HOV lanes and put in express buses. Then they turn the HOV lane over to single-occupant cars. The New Starts Program has become a highway program.”

“They (FTA) seem to be more highway oriented,” McCarty said. “If you make the whole (project rating) thing about travel-time reduction, then the truth is that for a lot of (rail) segments, it isn’t going to be enough. On a given rail corridor, up to 30 percent are taking transit. That’s a lot of lane capacity, saving (drivers’) travel time.”

So how did the FTA come to hold new rail projects in such a low regard? Like everything else in Washington D.C., nothing happens without political pressure. That pressure was applied by a succession of congressmen who chaired the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, which has spending authority over U.S. Department of Transportation programs. First was Harold “Hal” Rogers (Kentucky’s 5th District). Next was Ernest Istook Jr. (Oklahoma’s 5th District). Most recently, it was Joe Knollenberg (Michigan’s 9th District).

“They put the pressure on OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and OMB puts pressure on the FTA,” Boothe said.

And who put the pressure on Congressmen Rogers, Istook and Knollenberg? Highway and oil lobbyists are funneling their message, and money, through so-called independent “think tanks” espousing far-right causes. They include the Reason Foundation, Thoreau Institute, Coors Foundation, Buckeye Policy Institute and others.

Among their funders, according to Media Transparency and compiled by Light Rail Now!, are the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, Charles G. Koch Foundation, David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, plus The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Founders of these “charitable groups” grew their fortunes from oil, pipelines and asphalt, Media Transparency reports. And, they gave more than $50 million to right-wing “think tanks” seeking to block rail transit and smart growth.

“They are in complicity with the committee chairs, the FTA and OMB,” Boothe said. “We have a lot of ideology working here. They view that road and air (travel) is the free market. Rail is viewed as social engineering. It’s frustrating and ludicrous.”

At a 2004 hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, then-Chairman Istook opened the session by saying that while he comprehends the nation’s need for more transit services, “we need to distinguish between the grass and the weeds.”

“It’s all an effort to move away from rail and it extends to high-speed rail, too,” said Boothe, a Washington D.C. political insider for 25 years. “It’s history repeating itself. They’re trying to kill off rail transit again.”

He referred to National City Lines, the most prominent of many shell corporations created in the 1930s by General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Truck (which made buses) to acquire electric streetcar and interurban railway systems. Back then, most transit systems were run by private companies which competed against government-owned roads. Transit companies were wracked by the Great Depression and a Supreme Court ruling that divorced their railway and electric utility operations on the grounds they wielded too much political power and ignored rural interests. More than 40 transit systems were acquired by National City Lines, their streetcars dismantled and replaced with buses made by GM and Mack, burning Standard Oil and Phillips fuel and running on Firestone tires.

In 1949, the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted National City Lines and its corporate financiers on antitrust conspiracy charges, winning at the district and appellate court levels. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the lower courts’ rulings.

“Street railways failed for economic and demographic reasons which had nothing to do with any plot by General Motors,” GM officials countered.

The transit renaissance in recent decades, riding on the rebirth of rail, has become a threat to the highway and oil lobbies’ monopoly power over how we have lived and traveled for the past 50 years.

Boothe said there is hope in Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota, a strong supporter of rail transit who took over this year as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation. Oberstar said he will hold oversight hearings in the coming months on the FTA’s scoring criteria for New Starts.

“I’m optimistic we’ll get an airing of these (New Starts) issues,” Boothe said. “I hope that FTA realizes there’s a new sheriff in town.”

END
___________________________

The Plot, In a Nutshell...

Full Speed Ahead – Since 1995, ridership on public transit has risen 30 percent, faster than the nation’s population growth, and even faster than the rising use of cars. According to transit industry data, all of public transit’s ridership growth is the result of the greater availability of rail transit and its encouragement of smart growth around stations.

Not so Fast – At the same time, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has made it more difficult for transit agencies and communities to submit federal funding requests for rail projects and get them approved. Instead, bus rapid transit and high-occupancy vehicle lanes on highways are getting an increasing share of the federal funding. It is an apparent attempt to make it seem as if there is less demand for rail projects.

The Train Robbers – The FTA is under pressure from the Office of Management and Budget, which in turn was under pressure from the last three chairmen of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation. Those three chairmen saw eye-to-eye with right-wing “think thanks,” funding by highway and oil interests, who consider rail to be social engineering and highways/aviation part of the free market.

New Sheriff in Town – There is a new chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, James Oberstar, who is very pro-rail, and will hold hearings on FTA’s anti-rail bias.

END
___________________________


Why care?

Why should advocates of intercity passenger trains care what happens to local transit systems? The reasons are numerous:

There is a synergistic relationship between real estate development patterns and different modes of transportation. Higher-density, mixed-use communities nourish, and are nourished by higher-density modes like rail transit and intercity rail; Low-density, sprawling communities encourage, if not require people to drive for virtually every trip, be they across the street or across the state;

There is also a synergistic relationship between the usage of intercity passenger trains and local transit systems. Where the modes are conveniently linked at shared station facilities, with coordinated schedules and clear information, ridership on both modes tends to increase. When people have to get in their cars to reach the train station, they are more likely to keep on driving.
 
Federal investments in local transit can benefit intercity passenger train service quality. For example, regional commuter rail services often share rights of way and stations with intercity passenger trains, so a federal investment in commuter rail can speed up intercity trains, improve their safety and reliability, and provide their riders with more comfortable station facilities. Even where there is no commuter rail service, federal funding has created intermodal transportation centers uniting light-rail, and/or local/intercity buses with intercity rail.

In some cases, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a commuter and an intercity rail travel corridor. The FTA considers a travel market 135 miles or less and having at least several thousand weekday travelers bound for one or more cities along the corridor to be a commuter market. The start-up of Amtrak’s Boston-Portland Downeaster service was funded in this manner. Eligible Midwest corridors could include Chicago-Milwaukee, Chicago-Champaign/Urbana, Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh, Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus and others;

The anti-rail transit attitude in recent years in Washington D.C. has extended to intercity passenger rail, creating a negative policy climate for Amtrak and high-speed rail funding.

END

[Jimmy_James]

^ Great article, but why do you term those groups as "right-wing think tanks"?  Isn't the Reason Foundation tied to the Libertarian Party, which stands for one's right to do pretty much anything that doesn't impinge on someone else's rights?  I mean, they support the legalization of everything from marijuana to cocaine to gambling to prostitution.  You don't get much more left wing than that.  Not trying to quibble, and I'm certainly off topic, but I tend to think that rail's enemies share ignorance and/or greed, more than political affiliation.

[KJP]

Thanks for the compliment on the article. But Libertarian groups are, first and foremost, anti-government in just about all circumstances. Thus the reason why they want illegal drugs legalized are very different from why left-wing groups want them legalized.

Many in the oil and highway lobbies don't support libertarian groups becasue they agree with all of their politics. They do share an anti-rail, smart-growth position and libertarian groups are all too happy to take the oil/highway lobbies' money. And, until very recently, libertarian groups were silent on government ownership and control of highways, making them hypocritical. When rail supporters called them on that discrepancy, they began to make noise about a newfound desire to sell or lease some highways to private owners. But many libertarians still believe roads and highways are a public good (even though communist China is building a highway system that will be operated by private enterprise). I haven't made up my mind on this issue, but I find the discrepancy fascinating.

Back to the Cincinnati streetcar.....

[UncleRando]

Yes...Libertarians are as far right as it goes.

[John Schneider]

Here's a rebuttal of a recent LA Times guest editorial that was written by two well-known opponents of rail transit. I know nothing about its author, but it's reasonable and emblematic of the debate swirling around public transportation all over the United States today. It's counterintuitive, so be prepared to think outside the box.

John Schneider

[Article follows]

"This past Sunday, the L.A. Times featured an op-ed titled "The MTA's Train Wreck" by James Moore and Tom Rubin, which made the claim that Metro has made a major mistake by investing in rail instead of buses.  Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Rubin are well-known transit experts and longtime rail critics.  I'm a lowly blogger.  So why is it that I disagree with their assertion that Metro is making a mistake by investing in rail transit?

The gist of the opinion piece is that transit ridership has fallen even though Metro has invested over $11 billion on rail in the last 20 years.  The authors imply that if expensive rail projects were scrapped and the savings were applied to add more bus service and lower the fares, transit ridership would increase.  To be honest, I don't disagree with this conclusion.  However, I also don't think it would solve any of the transportation problems our region faces.

I think rail, more than anything else, has the potential to reorient the city and solve its most notorious problems, most of which stem from what many would consider its No. 1 problem, traffic.

Click on link for article.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/01/buses-trains-an.html

[dmbfanatpsu]

hmmmmmmm......

[NBow37]

if this doesn't persuade the people against light rail and better public transportation to join our fight, nothing will. 

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/BIZ/803010340/-1/CINCI

Gas could hit 4 a gallon by spring...

[KJP]

if this doesn't persuade the people against light rail and better public transportation to join our fight, nothing will. 

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/BIZ/803010340/-1/CINCI

Gas could hit 4 a gallon by spring...

Read the Peak Oil thread. $3 and $4 gas will be pleasant memories in 5-10 years.

[thomasbw]

From Paul Daugherty's Blog

Sad Story Only I Care About

...

This is my hometown, only where I grew up, Bethesda, Md., is barely recognizable now. I can go home again, though. It's 20 minutes from my downtown hotel, by light rail. The Metro system here is fabulous.

Those who oppose light rail I'm guessing haven't used it much. It cost me $2 to get from the airport to downtown, probably a 15-minute car ride, plus outrageous parking costs. Taxi? Probably $25. I've ridden light rail in every big city in America. Nowhere is it anything but cheap and (mostly) convenient.

Click on link for article.

Reader comments at http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/daugherty/

[jmecklenborg]

Wonder of Daugherty knows you can take TANK to the airport from downtown Cincinnati for cheap. 

Unfortunately our aiport situation here is more complicated than most because of the Dayton factor.  Dayton's bus system doesn't have service to their airport.  And with only 3 Greyhounds per day to Dayton from Cincinnati, getting to Dayton's airport from Cincinnati is impossible without taking a cab from the Dayton Greyhound station and the 3 buses per day restrict what flights you can take.  And unfortunately a lot of people fly out of there, even business travelers.  Last week I flew on the company's tab out of Dayton to Atlanta on 24-hour notice for $600 but from Cincinnati it was $2200.   

 

[GCrites80s]

I think some people who troll forums and newsgroups are editorial journalists who are seeking points they didn't think of or are even trying to get others to basically write columns for them.

[The Nati Life]

Wonder of Daugherty knows you can take TANK to the airport from downtown Cincinnati for cheap. 

It goes back to the same argument... people who DON'T ride buses DO ride light rail.  It's true!

By the way, I was listening to sports talk tonight on WLW and Daugherty called in and repeated this sentiment.

[CincyInDC]

This is one of the things that makes me want to smash my head in David Letterman's 80-ton press.  It's the differences between streetcar, light rail, and heavy rail.  I can state with certainty that Washington, DC has heavy rail.  It's a true, 100%, grade-separated rail line; it's a schizophrenic subway that doesn't know that subways should be underground.  In the burbs is goes above ground, but maintains its grade separation religiously. 

I'm biased, but I really like Germany's separation of various types of rail service. Strassenbahn = streetcar; it is often grade-separated except where it's not practical/possible--often in the city center.  U-Bahn (subway)...should be clear to most.  S-Bahn (S = schnell, which means "fast" rail)...this is like commuter rail that goes both directions throughout the day.  Regionalbahn would be like service between Cincinnati, Fairfield, Hamilton, and Oxford (another biased point of view).  Intercity (ICE - Inter City Express) would be Cincy --> Dayton --> Columbus --> Cleveland