Author: Randy A. Simes

Randy is an award-winning urban planner who founded UrbanCincy in May 2007. He grew up on Cincinnati’s west side in Covedale, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s nationally acclaimed School of Planning in June 2009. In addition to maintaining ownership and serving as the managing editor for UrbanCincy, Randy has worked professionally as a planning consultant throughout the United States, Korea and the Middle East. After brief stints in Atlanta and Chicago, he currently lives in the Daechi neighborhood of Seoul’s Gangnam district.

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Up To Speed

California approves $7.9B for high-speed rail

California approves $7.9B for high-speed rail.

The California state Senate approved billions of dollars for what is considered to be the nation’s largest infrastructure project on Friday. Part of the nearly $8 billion of state and federal money comes from Ohio since most of the $400 million Governor John Kasich (R) returned to the federal government was redirected to California’s project. More from the San Francisco Chronicle:

The cost of the high-speed rail line – now estimated at $68 billion – has ballooned since voters approved the bonds four years ago, and public support for the bullet train has fallen as projected costs rose. The high-speed system would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles with trains expected to run as fast as 220 mph.

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Business Development News

Washington Park to celebrate grand reopening this Friday

Those who frequently spend time in Over-the-Rhine have dealt with the reconstruction of Washington Park over the past one-and-a-half years.

The $48 million growing pains, project officials claimed, would be worth it as the renovated and expanded park would enhance quality of life while also providing 450 new parking spaces tucked neatly underground beneath the park’s new northern lawn space.


Looking south along Race Street at the nearly finished Washington Park. All Washington Park photographs were taken last week by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

Project and city officials will gather with the community on Friday to celebrate Washington Park’s grand reopening. The moment comes at perfect timing as the World Choir Games, and its thousands of visitors, will begin populating the center city this weekend.

New features of the park include an interactive playground, dog park, open lawn space, performance space, and interactive fountains in addition to the overall upgrades made to the rest of the existing features.

The park’s completion marks the end of an era of change for the area that began with the demolition of Washington Park Elementary School, and included the addition of the School for Creative & Performing Arts (SCPA). Those changes, when combined with the future Music Hall renovation and Cincinnati Streetcar, have led to dozens of nearby buildings being renovated into new housing and commercial space.

Those who have not visited Washington Park in some time may want to check it out during the World Choir Games. The new look and feel of the area may surprise you.

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Up To Speed

Bloomberg Philanthropies to award $9M for urban innovation

Bloomberg Philanthropies to award $9M for urban innovation.

Cities are where innovation happens, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg knows exactly that. As a result, he has announced a new competition that will award $9 million in prize money to cities with bold, innovative ideas that could remake America’s urban centers. More from Next American City:

Twenty finalist teams will be chosen based on their proposal’s novelty and creativity, potential for impact, replicability and implementation plan. The finalists will participate in Bloomberg Ideas Camp, an experience that James Anderson, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ government innovation director, says will give mayors the opportunity to brainstorm and collaborate with their peers in other cities. The finalists will be whittled down to one grand prize winning team, which will receive $5 million; four runners-up will be given $1 million each.

Categories
Business Development Transportation

Metro to debut real-time arrival screens at transit centers

Metro will debut real-time arrival screens at its Government Square transit center on Friday. The announcement is part of a recent series of moves by the transit agency to modernize its operations.

Since 2010, Metro has implemented a new electronic fare payment system, GPS tracking, GoogleTransit interface, articulated buses, and a new westside commuter hub.

“We’re collecting more feedback from our riders with our Way To Go initiative,” explained Metro’s Public Affairs Manager, Jill Dunne. “We have already received close to 2,000 surveys online and in person at various events this summer, and these changes are adding the types of improvements that our riders want.”

The new real-time arrival screens at Government Square cost $11,200 each and will be positioned at each of the transit center’s eight shelters, with a master information board at the front of the Government Square booth at Fifth Street and Walnut Street.

According to Metro officials, bus departure times will appear on the boards 45 minutes before a bus is scheduled to depart from Government Square. The boards will then begin a real-time countdown once the bus is within 20 minutes of its scheduled departure time.

The real-time arrival upgrades were made possible thanks to an $8.2 million American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant that funded Metro’s computer-aided dispatch and automatic vehicle location (CAD/AVL) technology in 2011, in addition to the new video boards.

The implementation of the real-time arrival boards at Government Square is just the beginning. Metro officials say that they will soon install the same technology at the new Glenway Crossing Transit Center and the Uptown Transit Hub which is scheduled to begin construction later this year.

In addition to the physical upgrades, transit officials say they plan to leverage the GPS tracking data to add real-time arrival information to its website, and debut a smartphone application within the next year.

The system updates do not, however, include open-source GPS data which is increasingly being more closely studied throughout the United States. Dunne says that Metro is working with their data vendor, and is working on developing these types of interfaces in 2013 through Google Transit Real Time Feed.

Real-time arrival board photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

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Up To Speed

Cincinnati’s form-based code moment in time

Cincinnati’s form-based code moment in time.

Cincinnati officials continue to push forward with a new effort that would bring a form-based zoning code to the Queen City. The move wouldn’t be the first in the nation, nor would it be the first in the region, but it would be one of the biggest and most noteworthy. More from Better! Cities & Towns:

Choosing and refining a form-based organizing principle for a city the size of Cincinnati with such a diverse range of pre-1940s urban patterns and a rich urban morphology is one of the most challenging, but underappreciated aspects of creating a form-based code. For Cincinnati, the urban-to-rural Transect was selected as the organizing principle and was up to the task. The calibration of the Transect allowed the team to create a framework that would reinforce the fine-grain fabric and rich palette of building types that are an important part of defining the community character of the city’s urban neighborhoods.