Tag: Transportation

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Arts & Entertainment News

Cincinnati area parks a growing community asset

Cincinnati is known for its great park system. The Cincinnati Park Board boasts 70 neighborhood parks, five regional parks and 34 nature preserves. This doesn’t include the additional 16,000-plus acres of parks (80+% are dedicated natural areas) in the Hamilton County system.

Over the years both systems have seen a strong usership of the parks, and have gradually expanded their respective systems in quantity and available uses. Hamilton County has begun implementing mountain bike trails in their parks. Cincinnati in the mean time is building what will become the crowning jewel (Central Riverfront Park) for the already impressive Cincinnati Park System.

The Central Riverfront Park will then be connected with the nearly 1.5 miles of existing riverfront parks that stretch from Downtown through the East End. These parks will then soon be connected into the Ohio River Bike Trail that will introduce a dedicated bike trail from Downtown all the way to the Little Miami Scenic Trail (aka Loveland Bike Trail).

Ohio River Trail Map (click for larger version) – Provided

In 2008 more Hamilton County residents used the county’s parks than in any other year in the past two decades. In the recent University of Cincinnati study, 96% of respondents said that they or a member of their family had visited a park in the Hamilton County Park District in the past year.

The two systems combined make for one of Cincinnati’s strongest assets. They are great resources for the region and offer a wide variety of outdoor activities for people and nature preserves for the environment. In that same survey the most popular Hamilton County park was Winton Woods.

  • You can help make the Ohio River Bike Trail reality by making a secure, tax-deductible donation to The Ohio River Way on their website. $12m of the $16m needed has been identified to bring the trail from Newtown to Lunken Airport. The remaining $4m is needed to complete the final leg from Lunken to Downtown.
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News

The Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern Railway

The Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway (CL&N) is a defunct railroad in southwest Ohio, connecting Cincinnati to Dayton via Lebanon. Chartered by the city of Lebanon in 1850, the original incarnation of the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Xenia Railroad was to create a railroad between the namesake cities, bypassing the Little Miami Railroad — today’s Little Miami Rail Trail. It would give Lebanon a railroad connection to industry and it was hoped that it would entice industry to move further inland, away from Cincinnati.

The railroad changed hands over the years due to bankruptcies, becoming the Miami Valley, Cincinnati Northern, and later the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern. A branch was constructed to Montgomery, and a connection was made to the Spring Grove, Avondale and Cincinnati Railway, which made it only as far as to Avondale due to financial issues. At one point, a 10,000-foot tunnel was planned under the Deer Creek Valley, to give a more gentle grade for the climb out of downtown Cincinnati to Norwood. Only five brief sections were completed.


Controversies surrounded the railroad. During construction of the 1,050-foot Deer Creek Tunnel in the early 1800s, debris from blasting launched projectiles throughout the Walnut Hills neighborhood, killing several workers and pedestrians. Various residences were heavily damaged or destroyed. It’s Court Street terminus also fueled much debate, due to the city of Cincinnati refusing the railroad passage over Court Street to a connection with Fountain Square via an elevated line. The city feared that an air brake on a train could fail and cause catastrophic damage.

Towards the mid-20th century, the railroad went into decline. The rail line north of Lebanon was discontinued in 1952, and so began a series of station closures and branch abandonments. The Court Street Depot was closed in 1969 and torn down in 1975, which coincided with the dismantlement of tracks north of downtown to Norwood. An uptick in freight traffic in the vicinity of Mason, and the designation of some sections as Light Density Lines, kept some of the former CL&N in operation.

In 1985, former CL&N trackage from Hageman to Lebanon was purchased by the city of Lebanon, and themed tourist trains began rolling on the then-named Turtle Creek Valley Railway. It was later purchased by several investors and re-christened the Lebanon, Mason and Monroe Railroad (LM&M), which has been successful to this day.


Today, much of the original CL&N remains abandoned or lightly used. While the LM&M operate over some of the original railroad, others are being considered for reuse, identified in the Interstate 71 Corridor Transportation Study and MetroMoves Regional Transit Plan. One can only hope that Cincinnati and Hamilton County will take advantage of this already identifiable rail corridor for future inclusion into a regional transit network, and make the most use out of existing infrastructure that is in place.

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News Politics Transportation

Letting Cincinnatians Down

I know I promised no new posts for awhile, but the moment has struck me with a series of unfortunate events from organizations and people who are there to represent the interests of Cincinnatians.

The local Green Party, local chapter of the NAACP, and Green Township officials continue to let us down. What do these unlikely bedfellows have in common? They all seem to have a vested interest against the improvement of Cincinnati’s transit system beyond that of roadways.

The Green Party most notably led by Justin Jeffre locally has an unusual opposition to the ongoing efforts to bring a modern streetcar system to Cincinnati. Their unusual tactics have included referring to this modern streetcar proposal as a “choo choo train” and likening a streetcar’s functionality and benefits to that of an electric bus. For their efforts, as perplexing as they may be, are still just words and rank them the lowest of the three offenders mentioned here.

Next up is the local chapter of the NAACP. The NAACP has a stated mission of, “ensuring the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.” Seems reasonable enough to me, and you would think an initiative that would improve transit options and service in the center city while also creating many permanent and temporary jobs would be something that the local chapter of the NAACP would be on board with right? Wrong.

The NAACP has made the denying of improved transit for Cincinnatians one of their top 3 priorities for 2009. They have passed the measure internally and have agreed to collect signatures to have the issue put on the November ballot. What is most troubling about this is that they can not put the legislative measure itself on the ballot (as it is not increasing taxes or changing law). Instead they are putting in on the ballot as a Charter amendment.

So if the local chapter of the NAACP were to achieve success they would alter the City’s Charter to prohibit streetcars altogether. That means that even if some big company wanted to come in and fund a streetcar system with 100% of their own money they would not be able to do so as it would occur within the City’s right-of-way. I’m curious to look at the language even more closely to see if it would also include something to prohibit light rail or high-speed rail efforts that would also benefit Cincinnatians and their city.

Finally you have Green Township officials. Forget the fact that the State Representatives from this westside community have spoken out against virtually every single rail initiative that this region has seen. We’ll just look at buses – something that several townships and suburban areas, like Anderson and West Chester townships, have learned to embrace over the years.

Green Township is a community with close to 60,000 residents. To its west is the rural portions of Western Hamilton County. To its east and south are the first ring suburbs of Cincinnati including Cheviot, Westwood, and Price Hill. There is little to no bus service for this massive township and Township Trustees are working on getting rid of what is currently there.

During the Legacy Place rezoning effort Township Trustees worked to block Metro from serving the proposed retail development. Their rationale was that they didn’t want to see the same thing happen to Legacy Place (no mentioned tenants) that happened to Western Hills Plaza (home to stores like Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Old Navy, Bath & Body Works, Sears, and Staples) down the road. Ignoring the obvious racial undertones and prejudice of that statement I’ll assume that they don’t want to see any massive reinvestment in Legacy Place when it too loses its newness.

More recently Green Township officials have been lobbying Metro to remove some or eliminate all of the #33 bus route that runs through the township. With recent Metro budget constraints they figured why continue the fight and decided to cut a portion of the #33 route – one of the only routes in the township – at the township’s request.

Contact these organizations and people and let them know how disappointed you are with their actions. Let them know how out of touch their actions are with their constituencies. And most importantly let them know how important transit options are to you.

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Green Township Trustees | Cincinnati NAACP | SW Ohio Green Party

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Business News Transportation

Ridership down on Metro

It is with unfortunate news that Cincinnati’s Metro has reported a 4.3% drop in ridership from January-September 2007 versus the same time frame in 2008, despite higher gasoline prices. This is in sharp contrast to the The American Public Transportation Association’s figures that present a large gain for the vast majority of the mass transit networks nationwide.

Of course, what the Cincinnati Enquirer article fails to mention, is that long-distance commuting is up 18% in October compared with last year. A sizable increase was also reported in August, but both did not make the Enquirer’s radar.

What’s also missing is the University of Cincinnati’s partnership with Metro that has been overwhelmingly successful. Aimed at easing notoriously painful traffic congestion in the Uptown locale, and reduce the need for parking, nearly 2,000 University of Cincinnati students and faculty members take advantage of the free rides that is funded by the university’s Student Government. Nine routes are currently enrolled in the program, and all that is required is a student identification card.

It should be noted that the Cincinnati Enquirer should not be used as a point-of-reference for these local developments. When an article is a cut-and-paste job with a clear bias, and a lack of moderation in their user comments section, one has to wonder what the Enquirer’s real priorities are. Let’s hope that they report on the uptick in ridership by Metro when the figures are released for December 2008.

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News

Check it out – CiN Weekly article

There is a pretty good article this week in CiN Weekly that interviews UrbanCincy’s pal and founder of CincyStreetcar.com – Brad Thomas. He talks about the streetcar, what are some of the things he likes and best of all he plugs UrbanCincy. The writer added this bit about dying downtowns that you’ll notice. It made me wonder what list he was talking about. There are lists about dying cities that include Ohio cities like Cleveland and Dayton, but don’t tend to include Cincinnati. Either way, check out the article on page 44 of this week’s CiN Weekly, or check it out online.

Image Credit – “On the Tracks” by David Sorcher, CiN Weekly