What It Means to Me, Part 1

While most of this blog focuses on news related to the streetcar proposal, we think it’s important to understand the intensely personal reasons that people might support it.  So here we begin a series called “What It Means to Me,” in which we’ll offer our personal stories about how the streetcar would be important in our lives.

And beyond the gaggle of us here, we’ll post your stories too! Either leave a comment after this post, or send us an e-mail.

So without further ado:

I was born in San Francisco to two people that I still say are among the bravest Americans who ever lived. In their youth, they were both shuttered off to a WWII internment camp and spent the duration of the war there. I was, of course, too young to be there myself, but their descriptions made it seem so present to me. Nothing else has taught me so well the utter importance of freedom and fairness, and the enduring power of the human spirit.

We lived near downtown, in a small community between the Castro and skid row. It wasn’t the nicest neighborhood in the city, but I had a good childhood. There I met the most fascinating people and experienced the diversity that life has to offer.

That interest in the plight of others is probably why, when it came time for me to head off to college, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Still wet behind the ears, I was merely 18 when I left my parents in San Francisco and moved to Chicago to study at Loyola University. The years I spent there were a blur of academia and romance, and are a story for another time. When I finally received my JD, I was hired by a large firm in the Loop. It was a firm some that some might describe as bi-polar, given its range of clientele from big corporations to residents of Cabrini Green. It was there that I first met my future best friend and wife, Sarah, with whom I’ll soon be celebrating 10 years.

It was about seven years ago that we relocated to Cincinnati, both following interesting job opportunities. Sarah was a few months into our first son during the move, and the realtor steered us toward the typical places for new families. We knew we wanted something more than just good schools and soccer fields and insisted on looking to places closer to the center city. It didn’t take us long to find a beautiful little house in Hyde Park, where we’ve lived ever since. Our kids, now 6 and 4, have gone to good pre-schools and this neighborhood has provided decent access to our jobs downtown.

Cincinnati, though, is the first city where I’ve that I couldn’t get everywhere I wanted to go with public transportation. In fact, this is the first city in which I’ve even owned a car. Driving has never been a great hobby of mine, and I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the thing. So when I heard about the proposed streetcar plan, I got excited. I’ve been doing some volunteer work in Over-the-Rhine, and I’ve seen the neighborhood transform over the last year. We’ve seen such a transformation that Sarah and I have been considering a move into the neighborhood. With all of the arts institutions and new stores and restaurants, it’s really becoming the kind of neighborhood where someone can find anything. And of course, the proximity to work would be incredibly valuable.

The streetcar would only clinch the deal for us. If I could take a streetcar to work every day, I might even forget that I’m in the Midwest. (Not that I have a problem with the Midwest.) All of these old, mid-size cities like Cincinnati were built for streetcars, and they have the capacity to be connected like that again. So let’s make it happen!

Transport á Paris

This is perhaps a quizzical topic for my first submission to this lovely little blog about streetcars in Cincinnati, given my lifetime of experience with our wonderful city itself, but I did just return not a month ago from an exquisite vacation in France.  My girlfriends and I spent most of the trip in the southern wine-growing regions (divine!), but wandered the beautiful streets of Paris for nearly a week.  From crêpes in Montmarte to Da Vincis in the Musee du Louvre to people watching on the Champs-Élysées, we had a marvelous time.  And not once did we step into a car!  

I miss the days when we could travel all over Cincinnati without a car.  It was so refreshing to use the clean, efficient trains in Paris.  

And today I read an excellent piece in the International Herald Tribune about this very issue.   

“What Paris has dones right is to make it awful to get around by car, and awfully easy to get around by public transport or by bike.”

Read this article. It says so much about what Paris is doing to make neighborhoods more beautiful and more accessible. Do we really want to live in a world of parking lots? I love the wonderful small neighborhoods of Cincinnati, and how better to connect them than with network of trains and streetcars?

I know this blog was started to talk about the specific downtown and Over-the-Rhine streetcar proposal, but I can’t help but remember the streetcars that once ran all over the city. Oh, to have that again! Perhaps some time again we will be the Paris of the West.

Eastern Corridor: Terrible Idea

It baffles me that Todd Portune, whom I otherwise greatly respect, is so gung-ho about this Eastern Corridor project that would be a huge mistake for the region and could jeopardize future transit projects.

We here at Connect Our Dots are usually in the game of promoting public transportation. The Eastern Corridor is a different story. It’s just stupid.

The first problem is that the route simply doesn’t make sense. Sure, it’s an existing, formerly used rail line, but it would start at the riverfront transit center (far from most of downtown) run right along the Ohio River (not very close to many neighborhoods), then turn north at Lunken Airport (not many people there) and then stop in a few seemingly random places in Anderson Township sort of near Mariemont, Newtown, Indian Hill and at the outskirts of Milford, all the while flirting with the Little Miami River.

I hate to stereotype, I really do, but are the people from those neighborhoods really the type of people you would expect to take a train to work? I really wish they were, but let’s face it. They’re not early adopters. If those neighborhood really wanted some efficient transit service, it would be incredibly easy to implement a bus rapid transit line (BRT) on Columbia Parkway and US-50.

The issue here is that transit funding is hard to come by, especially when citizens don’t want it. If we want the Cincinnati region to get on the transit bandwagon (or railcar, more appropriately) we need to show a big transit success story. Because the Eastern Corridor line runs through so few neighborhoods and would have such low ridership, it would be hard to market as an astounding success. In fact, at such a high cost ($411 million plus $19m per year) it would be an easy target for transit critics of why we shouldn’t do more transit projects.

Another big issue is that Little Miami River. If you haven’t spent a lazy summer afternoon paddling a canoe down that river, you haven’t lived. I had the chance to go with my nephew’s boy scout troop once and it was absolutely divine. The Little Miami is the first designated, the longest, and only urban State Scenic River in Ohio. It was also the first in Ohio designated as a National Scenic River. The Eastern Corridor plan bridges over the river at least once and then runs right next to it for at least a mile. All that construction would surely kill the Little Miami’s scenic distinction and destroy much of the rich biodiversity in the area.

Finally, what the proponents of this project often don’t talk about (ie. they don’t want us to think about) is that the major purpose for the entire thing is a 6-lane highway to West Virginia and on to North Carolina. The plan is to explode OH-32 into an eastern extension of I-74.

The Eastern Corridor website claims that improving air quality is an important factor in federal projects. Indeed, the federal government is required to consider the environmental impact of any infrastructure project they take on. (And we all know much the federal government has cared about the environment recently.) Proponents claim that the Eastern Corridor is a component of implementing the requirements of the Clean Air Act and the Transportation Efficiency Act of the 21st Century. TEA-21 encourages multi-modal transportation projects with the expectation that that will give people the option of not using the highway.

Granted, building a bike trail and commuter rail along with a highway may have a marginally better environmental impact than your typical 6-lane highway, but how good is the natural environment going to look when this project spurs acre upon acre of exurban sprawl in Clermont and Brown counties?

So, in exhausted conclusion, the Eastern Corridor is a terrible idea. Tell Todd Portune you think so.

New York Bike Share Project

In addition to being a streetcar advocate, I love biking.  When the weather is nice enough, I often ride by bike from my apartment in Clifton down to the office on 4th Street.  People say Cincinnati is too hilly for lots of biking, but with bike racks on all city buses so easy to use, it’s a piece of cake to bike down the hills and take the bus up them.

There are a bunch of initiatives in the city right now encouraging greater bike usage. The Cincinnati Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (Bike/PAC) is one group that’s doing a great job to energize current bikers, and I’m really excited about the planned bike hub in Newport that will serve as a way station and wealth of information for bikers.

But I think we have a lot of work to do toward making biking more accessible to the general public. The New York Bike Share Project, launching today, is a great example of how a community can expand biking services and make it exciting in the process. It seems kind of like a Zipcar (car-sharing program popular in Boston, DC, San Francisco etc) for bikes.

Imagine walking to a sidewalk corner and finding a public bicycle. With a cellphone call or swipe of a card, you unlock it from its bike rack and ride it across town. Once at your destination, you steer to the closest bike rack and, with one more call or card swipe, return the bike to the public network. You pay less than $.50 for the trip, and the bike is once again available for the taking.

With more companies and stores (such as Park + Vine) offering bike racks out front, it would be incredible to have a network of these places where you could hop on a bike for a small charge and get where you need to go. This would be ideal for those who don’t ride enough to need a bike of their own, and really push the message that Cincinnati is a bike friendly city.

And of course, the streetcar will accommodate bikes too.

Ohio Moves to Encourage Historic Preservation

Oh, this is wonderful news!  On Monday, the Ohio Department of Development announced a new program to assist businesses and homeowners restore their historic buildings. The new Historic Preservation Tax Credit will provide credit for up to 25% of qualifying rehabilitation expenditures (like restoring roofing, windows or siding) in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation.

“One of the most important principles in economic development is to build upon the assets and strengths we already have, and the Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program is another tool that demonstrates our commitment to preserve the physical assets in our local communities,” said Lt. Governor Fisher. 

Ohio already ranks first in the nation for the use of federal historic preservation tax credits. But while the federal credits are only available for commercial or rental properties, this state credit program appears to also provide funding for residential properties. That could prove to be incredibly useful for homeowners who wouldn’t otherwise have the money for a historically-accurate restoration.

This is really exciting. Cincinnati, and in particular Over-the-Rhine, has so many incredible historic buildings. I love to just wander the neighborhood looking up at those old buildings. I don’t know much about architecture, but I know those beautiful buildings contain so much wonderful history. It’s nice to know that we now have another tool to help keep them around.

Cranley, Portune discuss SORTA

This morning on Newsmakers with Dan Hurley, Councilman John Cranley and Hamilton County Commission President Todd Portune discussed this week’s rejection of a far increase for Metro.  They also talked at length about the need to completely restructure how our regional transit system works.  

The problem with current funding, they say, is that suburban jurisdictions pay far less than their fair share.  To really maximize the usefulness of the system, it’s obvious that a reformed system will have to include more cross-town routes and loops that don’t necessarily go all the way through Government Square.  If suburban jurisdictions are going to see the value in transit and put some money into it, we have to make a system that actually serves them.

We can probably all agree that as important as the streetcar will be for economic development in the city core, a comprehensive regional transit system will have an even greater impact on the whole region.

If you missed the program, it should be up on the Newsmakers website later. The second half of the show was about a really interesting study of Cincinnati’s scenic hillside views.

Connect our dots

Well, welcome to a new blog all about the proposed Cincinnati streetcar plan.  The five of us (check the About section to see who we are) all support the plan and will, over the next few months, offer a diverse commentary on why it’s in everyone’s best interest to see more public transportation, and in particular the proposed streetcar, implemented.

We’ll probably be starting a little slowly to see how this whole thing works, but do make sure to come back frequently as we get going.