Following an open house held in late November, officials from Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) have released preliminary drawings that illustrate how portions of E. McMillan Street and William Howard Taft Road will be converted from one-way to two-way streets.
At the time residents in East Walnut Hills resisted the two-way street conversion, which then instead progressed only within Walnut Hills. Due to the success of that traffic pattern conversion, City officials say, neighborhood residents and leaders in East Walnut Hills have asked for the full project to continue as originally planned.
This second segment would convert E. McMillan Street between Victory Parkway and Woodburn Avenue, and Woodburn Avenue between E. McMillan Street and Taft Road. Once completed, the total project will have converted both streets from Woodburn Avenue on the east to May Street on the west near I-71.
The potentially biggest change will come at the intersection of Woodburn Avenue and William Howard Taft Road. According to the drawings, the existing center island at the three-way intersection would be substantially reduced in size in order to accommodate the new traffic patterns. A smaller version of the existing island would remain after the conversion.
The project is supported by the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, and is located in an area that is experiencing an influx of new businesses and private investment.
The Business Courier reported yesterday that Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Carl Stich (R) ruled that the City of Cincinnati must pay for the relocation of Duke Energy’s utilities along the first phase of the Cincinnati Streetcar system.
As learned from a leaked internal memo last December, this decision was expected by city officials who will now be on the hook for an additional $15 million in costs – expenses that will be covered by the project’s existing contingency fund.
In Stich’s ruling, he cited an Ohio Supreme Court case from 1955, Speeth v. Carney, that stated government-owned transit systems are proprietary functions, not government ones. This is important because that is what lays the foundation for Stich’s ruling, but also sets a potentially far-reaching precedence for what costs local governments are expected to bear when making infrastructure investments.
As a result, former city solicitor John Curp says that Cincinnati should appeal the ruling.
“The troubling element of the ruling for local governments is that the court looked under the hood of the streetcar and based its decision on one debated effect of the project rather than principal operation of the project, which is transportation,” Curp told the Business Courier – an UrbanCincy content partner. “Nearly every government project is justified as an economic development project. If applied more broadly, this decision could add significant costs to local government infrastructure projects.”
Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black seems to agree, and says that the city will in fact appeal the ruling.
Furthermore, Judge Stich did address the fact that the rulings used to make his decision were quite old and rendered during a time when private companies owned and operated public transit systems. This is a notable difference from today where that is largely non-existent, and would seemingly change the entire discussion in a case of this nature.
“The court noted that the case it found controlling was an anachronism to a bygone era where private companies ran public transportation,” Curp said. “The current reality is that government heavily subsidizes almost all forms of public transportation. No one mistakes public transportation as a proprietary, money-making venture. An appeal would help ensure that all local governments are working on equal footing and none have a competitive advantage on costs for new infrastructure projects”
In addition to Duke Energy, there are a half-dozen other utility companies that are within the project area, but all of those companies had come to terms with the City prior to the commencement of construction. The question now is what financial obligations, if any, those companies will have on future infrastructure projects pursued by City Hall.
Main Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
Race Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
Walnut Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
Furthermore, the decision shines an interesting light on how infrastructure projects and their associated costs are rarely neatly defined. These utility costs, for example, are being covered through the budget for the streetcar, but have nothing to do with rail transit. In fact, a large sum of the budget for the Cincinnati Streetcar is actually allocated to things that have nothing to do (e.g. buried utilities, utility upgrades and relocations, and road resurfacing) with the direct construction or operation of the transit system.
The project, however, brings up a very convenient and cost-effective time in which to make such improvements. As has been discovered thus far, many of these improvements have been sorely needed. In Over-the-Rhine, for example, broken water mains, wooden pipes and other outdated infrastructure has been discovered and either repaired or upgraded as a result of the project.
This is a coup for any utility company that can have the cost of upgrading their systems shouldered by the taxpayers, instead of their ratepayers, as such is the case in this Duke Energy example.
Since much of the costs for the project are related to non-streetcar items, it seems to lean toward Curp’s concern of the ruling being applied more broadly.
“The case is also important for other cities in Ohio,” said City Manager Black. “The decision may ultimately dictate who pays for local infrastructure improvements that require the movement of utilities on public property: the taxpayers or the utility.”
With an appeal forthcoming, it appears that lawyers will continue to reap the benefits of this political battle. Meanwhile, construction progresses on the Cincinnati Streetcar project on-time and on-budget.
Organizers say that they will be updating members, and all in attendance, on the progress of recent activities to develop daily train service from Cincinnati to Chicago, by the way of Indianapolis. The effort is perhaps one of the nonprofit organization’s biggest efforts since the 3C Corridor was notoriously cancelled by Ohio Governor John Kasich (R).
Another early advocate has been Cincinnati City Council Transportation Committee Chairwoman Amy Murray (R), who will also be the special guest at All Aboard Ohio’s meeting on Tuesday.
Derek Bauman, SW Ohio Director for All Aboard Ohio, also says that they will update everyone on the construction progress for the Cincinnati Streetcar.
It is all part of an effort, Bauman says, to get more people involved in the process, and engaged on these important issues.
“Since being elected to the board back in May, I’ve spent the summer and fall building advocacy for daily service from Cincinnati to Indianapolis and Chicago,” Bauman explained. “We have made some great progress, yet have a long way to go.”
Some of the other success, he says, can be seen in the 60 new All Aboard Ohio members from the Cincinnati area that have joined in recent months. It is a number he is pleased with, but hopes will grow even more. As a result, the meeting at Moerlein Tap Room will be open to anyone who wants to attend.
In 2011 Nate Wessel sought out to change the way Cincinnati mapped its transit. In a region with multiple transit operators that all use traditional bus mapping visuals, it was quite the daunting task. But after successfully raising more than $2,000 on Kickstarter, Wessel was able to fund his effort to print tens of thousands of his newly designed maps that ultimately received national praise.
Since that time he has continued his quest to improve the visual nature of map-making in Cincinnati, including serving as UrbanCincy’s official contributing cartographer, but he also embarked on another major endeavor. Instead of a transit map with bus frequencies, Wessel this time focused his energies on creating a new regional bike network map.
“Imagine someone kept taking, and reproducing and sharing, very unflattering photos of you or someone you loved. If you’re like me, you’d probably let the first one slide,” Wessel stated. “Maybe it was an accident, but by the fifth or sixth one, you’d start noticing a pattern and you’d start getting kind of miffed about it.”
Cincinnati Bike Maps [Provided]
This is the feeling the twenty-something urban planner, cartographer and fashion designer felt about the region’s existing bike maps, and he wanted to take control of the situation and improve it.
“This is a subtle visual game and words won’t do,” Wessel explained. “You need to make your own photo that shows the beauty you see in what you love; and then get other people to see what you see.”
One of the ways to accomplish that, he says, is to get the maps into people’s hands – digital maps are not enough. While the physical presence of a printed map gives it a sense of permanency and seriousness, producing a hard copy map also comes with its challenges.
After finishing the design for the Cincinnati Bike Map, Wessel said that he received feedback from the binder recommending a redesign to better accommodate the way the paper would fold, but that it was too late in the process. As a result, he wishes the maps folded a bit better, but that he is otherwise quite pleased with the final product. Perhaps leading to that feeling of satisfaction, however, is the fact that no compromise was needed since the project was entirely self-funded.
“Both times I’ve raised money for these projects it was in advance of having a real demonstrable product,” said Wessel. “In neither project have I ever had to check anything with a sponsor, supervisor or co-designer. The maps were totally my own in both cases, held to my own standards alone and uncompromised. That is very unusual for print maps.”
While quite unusual, it was a situation he preferred. In fact, Wessel says that a local organization very generously offered to fully fund the printing of Cincinnati Bike Map should he work with their graphic designer. A generous offer indeed, but one that came with risks that the final product not turn out as originally envisioned.
The release of the new regional bike map last month comes at a time when Cincinnati is in the national spotlight for its dramatic gains in bike ridership and development of new bike infrastructure.
Now that the project is complete, the goal now shifts to distributing the stack of Cincinnati Bike Maps that now exist. In addition to distributing the maps to local bike shops and organizations, Wessel is also mailing out copies of the map. His hope is that new or unfamiliar riders feel empowered by the maps, and that experienced riders use them to explore new routes throughout the region.
“Regular cyclists have found their favorite routes and will probably stick with what they know,” said Wessel. “Though, I totally discovered Fort Thomas through this map. Every map I’d seen made it look like a pretty crappy, suburban place to ride and I always avoided it; but the streets are beautifully wooded and very slow with 25mph speed limits.
Of course, all of this would not have been possible without access to the treasure trove of data on-hand at Cincinnati City Hall, and with the OKI Regional Council of Governments.
Those who would like to get a free copy of the Cincinnati Bike Map can do so by emailing Nate Wessel at bike756@gmail.com and informing him of your name, how many copies you want, and the address to which he can ship them.
Construction of the Cincinnati Streetcar system has been moving quickly over the past several months. In the Central Business District, track work on Walnut Street has been completed between Central Parkway and Seventh Street, and two stations are under construction along this stretch.
Downtown drivers will soon get a break from track construction until next year, when crews will return to the CBD to finish the Walnut Street track after the holiday season.
In the mean time, crews have moved to the Northern Liberties to finish up the Over-the-Rhine portion of the system. The special track work in this area includes turnouts on Henry and Race streets, connecting to the Maintenance & Operations Facility, and turnouts to Findlay and Elder Streets, which will allow the Uptown Connector to be built in the future without disrupting service.
Crews recently finished resurfacing portions of Elm and Race streets along the route, which means that underground utility work has wrapped up. Many of the streetcar stops in Over-the-Rhine are also now complete and many of the new traffic signals have been activated.
While much has been accomplished, a significant amount of construction remains, including track work along Main and Second streets in the CBD. But anyone taking a walk down Race Street, in Over-the-Rhine, today should get a good impression of what the finished track and stations will look like.
Walnut Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
Findlay Street Stub
Main Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
Race Street Repaving
Race Street Overhead Wire Work
OTR Track Work
Race Street Switch
OTR Track Switch
Walnut Street From Above
Maintenance & Operations Facility
Race Street Track Work at Findlay
Elm Street Repaving
Race and Liberty Repaving
Race Street Track Work [Travis Estell]
EDITORIAL NOTE: All 14 photos were taken by Travis Estell for UrbanCincy between October 21 and November 1, 2014.
