Year: 2011

Categories
Business News Transportation

Metro to install new eletronic payment system on entire bus fleet

In February 2011 UrbanCincy challenged Cincinnati transit leaders to create a universal transport payment system that would rival the world’s very best. The challenge was made, in part, because we knew an overhaul of Metro’s 17-year-old fare collection system was imminent.

On Friday Metro officials announced those long-anticipated changes. By the end of 2011 Metro will install new fareboxes on their entire 333-bus fleet. The new fareboxes will utilize smartcards that can be loaded with monthly passes or set pay amounts ($10, $20 or $50). The use of smartcards will allow riders to simply tap-and-go, and it will allow transit planners to more accurately track ridership patterns system-wide. The new GFI Odyssey fareboxes will also automatically issue transfers upon payment.

“One of our goals is to make riding Metro easier and more convenient for our customers and potential customers,” Terry Garcia Crews, Metro CEO, said in a prepared statement Friday. “The new fareboxes will help Metro boost productivity by generating detailed ridership data that Metro needs to manage our service.”

Each year Metro collects approximately $23 million in fares, which accounts for roughly 27 percent of Metro’s total operating revenue. The new fareboxes are being purchased largely through a $3.6 million federal grant which is providing 80 percent of the total cost. The remaining $900,000, officials say, will come from local funding.

Officials say that future improvements may be made to the smartcards that could allow for more flexible spending accounts, but for now only set payment amounts will be accepted. While the system is an enormous improvement over Metro’s nearly two decade old system, it still falls short of UrbanCincy’s challenge.

As currently planned, the system does not integrate with the other regional transit agencies or with local businesses, and there is no mention of the smartcards compatibility with financial institutions. Furthermore, the new system does not integrate with other modes of transport like taxis or the University of Cincinnati’s bike share program, for example.

As the new GFI Odyssey farebox system is implemented over the next six months, regional leaders should meet to discuss how this $4.5 million investment should be leveraged to improve Cincinnati’s quality of life for tourists, businesses and residents. A truly integrated payment system, like London’s Oyster Card or Seoul’s T-Money Card, has the ability to change the game. Cincinnati should be so bold.

Categories
News Transportation

Cincinnati wins national CDBG award for Ohio River Trail project

City leaders will gather today in downtown Cincinnati to accept a national award for its Ohio River Trail project. The John A. Sasso National Community Development Week Award will be presented at the National Community Development Association (NCDA) convention currently being held in Cincinnati.

NCDA officials say that the Ohio River Trail project is helping to improve neighborhoods and better the lives of low- and middle-income residents through the use of the association’s Community Development Block Grants (CDGB). In 2011, eight departments within the City of Cincinnati made more than $13 million in total CDBG requests. Over the past five years, the City has requested approximately $13 million annually in CDBG funds.

The association specifically looked at a 1.1-mile stretch of the Ohio River Trail through Columbia Tusculum which was recently completed thanks to a CDBG Economic Development Initiative grant of $745,125. In May, UrbanCincy partnered with the City of Cincinnati to give future bicycle commuters a tour of the Ohio River Trail.

Once entirely complete, the Ohio River Trail will connect with the Little Miami Scenic Trail to the east and downtown Cincinnati at its western terminus. Future segments could go further west along the Ohio River.

The Ohio River Trail project was chosen for this year’s award out of 550 local governments who work with NCDA on community development projects. Those projects include a wide variety of efforts that are targeted to improve economic development, housing and human services.

Officials will be presented the award by Cardell Cooper, executive director of NCDA, at 12:30pm today at the Pavilion Room inside the Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News

“Courses” brings food and community together on Main Street

CS13 is an art and performance space, located at 1420 Main Street, that hosts concerts, monthly reading series, and bi-monthly art projects/exhibitions. These projects often engage with overlaps in art practice and everyday life. Over the 2 year run of the gallery, CS13 has become more than just a collective that curates and hosts, transforming into an art collective that also produces projects of our own, also under the name CS13.

Paralleling their ongoing interest in overlaps of art and the everyday, this June CS13 presents a month-long project that looks to the comforts, history and politics of the kitchen, emulating the format and layout of cooking lessons and TV shows as a vehicle for discussion driven presentations by local community members. This project will consist of a working kitchen built in the gallery that will double as a meeting space and lecture hall, from which a weekly series of talks and demonstrations will be programmed and led by local community members, merchants and non-profits. Focused on the social structures implicit in recipes, cooking traditions and food based services, COURSES hopes to provide a unique community space that will offer both free storytelling, educational programming and shared meals prepared on site.

“We constructed the the kitchen and programmed all the events, but the details of each dinner/discussion are left up to the guest cook/speaker,”CS13 collaborator Aaron Walker explains “[The forum] gives the speaker a platform to highlight personal topics of interest and to host informal, intimate cooking demonstrations and dinner conversation.”

The crew at CS13 hopes to break down the barriers that some may feel when dealing with art by presenting it through the familiar lens of food. Many different kinds of folks feel comfortable interacting with Cincinnati’s robust selection of dining establishments. But art spaces, for many, are conceptually distant. “COURSES” is a fun way to bring those worlds together and imagine a more integrated and accessible creative community. Meanwhile we hope to highlight the important community-oriented work that a variety of organizations have been doing and provide an outlet for learning and engaging with a these provoking, forward thinking trades/projects that many people might not be aware of.

This coming week’s “COURSES” events include:

Final Friday, June 24th from 5-8 PM: Ufuk Adak
UFUK ADAK is a University of Cincinnati PhD student from Izmir, Turkey, will lead an informal discussion about Turkish and Ottoman food cultures as he prepares a popular dish or two. Possible topics of conversation include the appropriating of Ottoman court cuisine by the masses and contemporary Turkish food culture.

Saturday, June 25th from 5-8 PM: Vicki Mansoor and Bill Brown
VICKI MANSOOR: Mansoor is part of an evolving initiative, Homemeadow Song Farm, where participants are active in areas of land stewardship, gardening, nutrition, education, artistic processes and cultural renewal.

Vicki has invited Susan Gilbert, a gifted storyteller and artisan and Jose Navales of Pura Vita, a pop-up taqueria in Dayton KY, to support this program. They will lead a cooking demonstration centered around the history of corn in the U.S. Corn from Homeadow Song Farm will be ground and used to make tamales.

BILL BROWN: Bill Brown is both the author and the publisher of “Fenced Off, Obscured or Painted Over” (Colossal Books, Cincinnati: 2011), which is a collection of photographs of murals in community gardens in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (NYC) that Bill took in 1997 and 1998.

Established as long ago as 1972, and the survivors of Mayor Giuliani’s attempts in the 1990s to have them all bulldozed and sold off, these community gardens in NYC still bring people together who want to better their relations with their neighbors and the earth itself. Small-scale food production is the key to these gardens, which are oases in the middle of one of the least-green metropolises in the world.

For more information, check out CS13 on Facebook.
Courses + Cincinnati Cooks! picture provided.

Categories
Development News

Green home show enters second weekend in historic Columbia Tusculum

Following the success of recent CitiRama home showcases, the City of Cincinnati has decided to present another urban home show but this time with a decidedly more green focus. The new Greenarama Home Show first opened to the public this past weekend, and still has one more weekend for public viewing.

Organizers say that Greenarama is the first home show of its kind which focuses on green homes built pursuing LEED for Homes certification. In total there are nine homes constructed, by five builders, along Strafer Street in Cincinnati’s historic Columbia Tusculum neighborhood.


2011 Greenarama home at 463 Strafer Street.

One of the three-story townhomes has already sold, but the remaining eight feature outdoor space, state-of-the-art green technology and modern finishes meant to accentuate the urban location.

Organizers say that beyond Columbia Tusculum’s urban location, it also boasts inherently green lifestyle features that have made the neighborhood a destination for new homebuyers. Within a short walk of the Greenarama homes is the new Columbia Square development, dozens of neighborhood businesses, Alms Park and Riverside Academy Elementary School.

Those interested in seeing the new green homes first-hand can still do so this weekend. Tickets cost $10 per person (children under 12 years of age are free) with all proceeds going to benefit the Cincinnati Scholarship Foundation.

The 2011 Greenaram Home Show will be open on Friday from 2pm to 9pm, Saturday from 12pm to 9pm and Sunday from 12pm to 6pm. Tickets can be purchased online or at the event.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News

Roeblingfest expands to include focus on food & music

Photo provided by Paul Collett
Photo provided by Paul Collett

This weekend marks an annual celebration for one of Cincinnati’s most iconic landmarks, The John A Roebling Suspension Bridge. Roeblingfest, now in it’s seventh year, will take place this Saturday in the area just south of the bridge named Roebling Point. The festival which started as a midday celebration on a Sunday afternoon has now gown into a full day event on Saturday to be closed out by Rozzi Fireworks. As the festival has grown, so has the vision as it now features not only a focus on history, but also a focus on local food and local music among other things. It is a true mix brought forth by a collaborative effort of organizers from the Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee (the CCSBC) as well as the businesses in the Roebling Point Entertainment District.

This well known landmark is featured everywhere from the backdrop of local newscasts to the logo of your favorite site that talks about all things in the urban core. The bridge was just painted for the first time in almost thirty-five years and new lights have begun the process of restoring the bridge to its true glory. The CCSBC is dedicated to doing even more to modernize the lighting and maintaining the flags on the bridge, and while memberships are available via the web on an ongoing basis, this festival marks one way for the group to raise money annually.

As the roots of the festival focused on the history of the Roebling Bridge, a prototype for New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, there will be walking tours given of the bridge, the floodwall murals, and other historical Covington landmarks for $5 per tour. The tours are scheduled to go off on an hourly basis from 1p through 4p. It should be noted that there are no tours of the bridge that will allow folks to go to the top, but there will be a silent auction for such a trip which includes dinner for four at Keystone Bar & Grill.

In addition to a historical focus, this year’s event features quite a food selection. Of course all the local establishments that are part of the Roebling Point Entertainment District will be out including Keystone, Blinkers, Sidebar, The Down Under and Molly Malone’s. This year too features a few less traditional vendors including Covington’s Amerasia as well as both the Dojo Gelato cart and (making their inaugural outdoor appearance) Pho Lang Thang from Findlay Market. Add in a Roebling Porter from Rivertown Brewing and a special small batch Moerlein Roebling Fest Lager and there are plenty of special drinks to go around too.

Additionally, this year’s festival also features quite a line-up of music that is scheduled to run from 1pm to 1015pm. With the focus being on local & original music, this is one area that Roeblingfest 2011 has really differentiated itself from years gone by. With the stage located in the heart of the square at Court Street and Park Place, it will be a definite focal point throughout the day featuring bands from all across the region and it will have a true mix of genres too.

1pm to 1:45p – Perfect Sequel
2pm to 2:45pm – The Crick Gypsies
3:15pm to 4:15pm – Supermassive
4:45pm to 6pm – The Spookfloaters
6:30pm to 7:15pm – The Chocolate Horse
7:45pm to 8:45pm – The Dukes
9:15pm to 10:15pm – The Lions Rampant

Add in an art show as well as the finish line for the 2011 Covington Quest and the 2011 Roeblingfest has a little something for everyone. As parking could be challenging, the use of public transportation is most definitely recommended and the TANK Southbank Shuttle will be more than sufficient. Taking the shuttle will allow festival goers to park in downtown Cincinnati, Newport, or other parts of Covington and get to and from the festival for only $1 each way.