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PHOTOS: Mayor Mallory Energizes Supporters at Streetcar Social

Mayor Mallory Addresses the Crowd

Hosting their monthly Streetcar Social, Cincinnatians for Progress braved the summer heat wave at Rhinegeist Brewery as crowds gathered to listen to the featured speaker of July.

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory (D) took to the stage, presenting an update on phase one of the Cincinnati Streetcar project, to a room filled with approximately 200 supporters. Several City Council members were also present, including Wendell Young (D), Laure Quinlivan (D), Chris Seelbach (D), and representatives for Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) and City Council Candidate Mike Moroski (I).

The Mayor spent the beginning of the event mingling with the crowd, followed by delivering a 20-minute presentation that recapped the official signing of the streetcar construction contract with Messer, and the continued progress with utility relocation along the phase one route.

An updated CAF streetcar model was shown with interior finishes, and Mayor Mallory explained that Cincinnati’s five streetcars will have cutting-edge technology that will be the first of their kind to operate in North America.

Mayor Mallory also showed a rendering of the streetcar maintenance facility, which will be erected in the lot adjacent to Rhinegeist, and explained that the current cinder-block structure will be demolished so that the new facility can be built along Henry Street.

“We’ve decided to name the maintenance facility the Center of Advanced Streetcar Technology, or COAST for short,” Mallory quipped to a boisterous audience, as he commented about the anti-streetcar group with the same acronym.

The mayor continuously expressed his gratitude for supporters, both new and those who have been on for the long haul.

“Investing in the Cincinnati Streetcar will help stabilize the city’s tax base and repopulate the Queen City; the greatest challenge facing us today.”

All photographs were taken by Paige Malott and Travis Estell for UrbanCincy.

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Up To Speed

More bike/ped money from the feds equals more bicycle commuters

More bike/ped money from the feds equals more bicycle commuters.

In most cities, Cincinnati included, all you need to do is look outside to see that the number of people bicycling is on the rise. And perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that there is a “statistically significant” correlation between per-capita bike-ped funding from the federal government and a city’s bike commute rate. More from Streetsblog Capitol Hill:

Bicycling is at a tipping point in many American cities. Bike-share systems are multiplying rapidly, infrastructure that used to be seen as novel is now commonplace, and commuting rates are growing. There are many explanations for this cultural shift, but here’s one not to be ignored: federal funding.

Georgetown Public Policy Institute student Marissa Newhall posits in her master’s thesis that there is a statistically significant correlation between per-capita bike-ped funding from the federal government and a city’s bike commute rate.

The finding comes at a time when federal bike-ped funding programs are 20 years old and have poured $8.5 billion — a tiny fraction of overall transportation dollars, but not an insignificant sum of money — into reshaping American streets to accommodate non-motorized transportation. But these programs face an uncertain future.

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Up To Speed

Mexico to invest $100B in its infrastructure over next five years

Mexico to invest $100B in its infrastructure over next five years.

It’s been no secret that America has fallen behind on its infrastructure investments. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently improved the nation’s infrastructure grade to a D+ from a D. Now that’s improvement! Meanwhile other countries are heavily investing in their infrastructure, like Mexico’s recent announcement to invest $100 billion in its rail, ports and roads over the next five years. More from Bloomberg Businessweek:

The Mexican government announced plans Monday to invest about $100 billion in rail, road, telecom and port projects over the next five years, including Mexico’s first high-speed rail links. Among the projects are the modernization or building of four airports, seven seaports and about 3,350 miles (5,410 kilometers) of highways. The government will strengthen fiber optic networks and expand broadband internet access, and speed up freight train service.

But in announcing the plan, President Enrique Pena Nieto emphasized the goal of reviving passenger trains in Mexico…Pena Nieto said Monday that about 360 miles (583 kms) of high-speed rail links will be built, including links between Mexico City and the nearby cities of Toluca and Queretaro. Another line will cross the Yucatan Peninsula.

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Up To Speed

Setting the Score Card for Transit Oriented Developments

Setting the Score Card for Transit Oriented Developments

With the City of Cincinnati signing the streetcar construction contract yesterday, discussion can now move on to the type of transportation oriented projects that can be constructed along the streetcar route and its eventual extensions. The measure the impact of projects located near rail transit stops the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) has created a metric for rating projects developed near transit stations to determine if they are truly transit-oriented or merely transit adjacent. Read more at the Transport Politic:

The tool was simple to use and its results make sense intuitively: Whereas the MetroWest project is poor urban design from the perspective of encouraging transit use, the other two are far more oriented toward the nearby rail stations. Hypothetically, if the projects were all proposed for the same site, the tool would allow decision makers to make a quick quantitative comparison between the designs and identify the best project for public transportation riders. This could offer a clear benefit in terms of, for example, choosing a winning team for the contract to develop a publicly owned site. Rather than rely on “subjective” comparisons of the aesthetics of site designs (a comparison that too often devolves into a question of individual architectural taste), the tool quantifies the physical.

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Up To Speed

Should Ohio transition to a VMT tax?

Should Ohio transition to a VMT tax?.

Public dollars for transportation infrastructure seem to be getting ever scarce. This is the result of a wide array of issues, but one of them is the outdated form of collecting revenues to fund our nation’s transportation infrastructure. In some state’s they are beginning to look at transitioning from their traditional gasoline tax to a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. More from NextCity:

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, gas taxes finance about a third of highway construction and maintenance. But because of inflation and improved fuel efficiency, the purchasing power of gas taxes — how much actual concrete, steel and labor they buy — has been decreasing, sometimes forcing state and federal officials to forgo infrastructure improvements.

By taxing every car at the same rate, VMT programs ensure that drivers pay an amount proportional to how much they drive. VMT systems, though, don’t have all the same mechanisms as gas taxes: They don’t incentivize people to drive fuel-efficient cars, for instance, nor do they discourage the use of heavy vehicles that cause increased wear on highways.