Category: Transportation

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News Politics Transportation

Cincinnati’s I-75 is worst commute in Ohio; one of worst in Midwest

Cincinnatians traveling along the Interstate 75 corridor can now go to bed at night knowing that they drive the worst stretch of interstate in Ohio, and one of the worst in the entire Midwest according to a recent analysis by The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast ranked the nation’s metropolitan areas with the worst rush-hour congestion based on peak hour Travel Time Index (TTI) for each particular highway segment. Once the 75 worst metropolitan areas were determined, the worst highway in each area was defined according to the most hours of bottleneck congestion. For Cincinnati, I-75 racked up 86 hours of weekly congestion with the worst bottleneck occurring at Exit 10 (map) for southbound traffic. The worst bottleneck stretches on average some .46 miles, with speeds of approximately 21mph, and adding up to 16 hours of bottleneck time each week.

Worst Commutes in the Midwest:
#9 – Kennedy Expressway, Chicago (712 hrs)
#17 – I-494, Minneapolis-St. Paul (184 hrs)
#34 – I-94, Milwaukee (50 hrs)
#36 – I-75, Cincinnati (86 hrs)
#39 – Edsel Ford Freeway, Detroit (174 hrs)
#42 – I-90, Cleveland (59 hrs)
#45 – I-270, St. Louis (89 hrs)
#52 – North Freeway, Columbus (14 hrs)
#56 – I-65, Indianapolis (19 hrs)
#58 – I-70, Kansas City (47 hrs)
#67 – I-271, Akron (4 hrs)
#69 – I-75, Dayton (46 hrs)

What becomes particularly problematic for Cincinnati is ODOT’s approach to handling congestion. This past fall ODOT spokesperson Liz Lyons told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “the main gist is widening, adding more lanes for traffic to flow easier,” when it comes to handling the congestion and daily gridlock on Ohio’s worst stretch of interstate.

Cincinnati’s stretch of Interstate 75 is the most congested in Ohio, and one of the worst commutes in the Midwest. Interstate 75 congestion photos from Scott Beseler, Nick Daggy, and Jake Mecklenborg respectively.

The reality is that ODOT’s plan to add, at most, one lane of traffic to this section of I-75 will do nothing more than cause tremendous headaches over the course of its construction and not achieve any congestion savings. The direction of transportation planning in the 21st Century is all about mobility options. Our aging population and the new workforce both desire increased mobility options more so than the immediate convenience of an automobile.

European cities are far ahead when it comes to creating mobility options, but in America there are a few examples where mobility has been placed as the top priority when it comes to transportation planning. Interestingly enough, the cities that have done this are among those trying to make up the most ground on cities like older built cities like Cincinnati that have inherent mobility advantages.

Cincinnati’s extensive street grid and compact neighborhoods that were built prior to the Eisenhower Interstate System offer lots of positives upon which to build. Additionally, Cincinnati’s aging demographics and 21st Century employment sectors represent a real opportunity to not only reduce congestion, but remove the need for automobiles altogether. Multi-modal transportation options like the Cincinnati Streetcar will promote neighborhoods in which people can live closer to their jobs and be only a short train ride away from their job, shopping, or entertainment destination.

So the question is whether Midwestern cities like Cincinnati will continue to try to solve 21st Century problems with 20th Century solutions, or will policy makers here finally have that “ah-ha” moment and start planning our transportation networks around options?

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News Politics Transportation

SORTA re-elects board members

The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) has named the 2010 board members that will oversee the operations and direction of Metro – Cincinnati’s primary bus operator. Both Chair, Melody Sawyer Richardson, and Vice Chair, William Mallory Sr., have been re-elected to their positions.

Richardson has served on the board since 2003 and has acted as SORTA chair since 2007 while Mallory Sr. has served as Vice Chair since 2008. During Richardson’s tenure as Chair, she has helped advance several initiatives including:

  • grow*Metro community involvement process to refine Metro’s capital plan
  • A new federal lobbying effort to secure funds for replacement of buses past their useful life
  • SORTA Board strategic planning process
  • Inclusive SORTA budget process that sought input from elected leaders and community partners
  • Diversification of Metro services through the addition of articulated (accordion) and hybrid buses
  • Expansion of the Everybody Rides Metro foundation

Also during that time Metro has faced extraordinarily difficult budget shortfalls due to what local leaders call a “failed” funding source and a difficult economy. As a result fares have been increased, service reduced, and ridership has even declined during this tumultuous time for transit agencies across the nation.

“Most people recognize the bus funding model is a failure,” said Cincinnati City Council member Chris Bortz in a recent interview with the Cincinnati Business Courier. “There are going to be those that are resistant to any new tax structure. But we’ve got to think through it.”

The solution, seen by many, is a county-wide funding structure instead of one that only focuses on Cincinnati’s Earnings Tax. As SORTA’s re-elected Chair and Vice Chair focus on long-term plans for the transit authority there needs to be serious discussions about how to permanently right this ship and make Metro a financially stable transit operator.

You can stay connected with the latest news and updates from Metro on Twitter @CincinnatiMetro.
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Business News Politics Transportation

Zipcars don’t live here

As Cincinnati painstakingly works its way towards a more comprehensive transit network we must not forget that American cities are largely built around the automobile and sometimes having access to an automobile makes life easier. This does not mean that you must own and maintain a personal automobile though.

The option for those looking to live car-free or at least car-light is urban car sharing which has taken off in several American cities. In a nutshell urban car sharing compliments lifestyles that use public transit, walking and/or cycling as a primary means of transportation. In these cases the car sharing then acts as an option for trips otherwise not possible through the aforementioned means of transportation.

Out-of-town trips, special occasions (i.e. moving, joy ride, date), or trips to locations accessible only by automobiles are then made easily accessible for those not interesting in owning and maintaining a costly automobile. Users of car sharing programs like Zipcars have been found to reduce the number of automobiles per household and increase their usage of transit, bicycling and walking.

Programs such as these are often popular in high density urban locations well-served by public transit or near places with low car ownership rates like college campuses. In Midtown Atlanta alone there are 21 Zipcar locations that serve the high density urban community which is also home to the Georgia Institute of Technology and its 20,000 students. Comparatively, Uptown Cincinnati has zero Zipcar locations to serve its high density urban community and the University of Cincinnati’s roughly 40,000 students.

If you look further to downtown Atlanta you can add in another seven Zipcar locations with two more in the Inman Park/Little Five Points area just a stones throw away. In downtown Cincinnati and historic Over-the-Rhine the trend continues with zero Zipcar locations serving a higher density urban community than its Atlanta counterpart.

In the rest of Atlanta another 14 Zipcar locations can be found bringing the total to 44 Zipcar locations in Metro Atlanta with one to two cars per location while Cincinnati has none. Meanwhile in Cincinnati car-free individuals struggle to make things work in a limited-bus and car only city with many more looking to have the option of living car-free or car-light.

The number of American cities that boast public transit systems comprehensive enough to allow for mainstream car-free lifestyles can be counted on one hand. As a result car sharing programs like Zipcars play an instrumental role in the process of creating a lesser demand for personal automobiles. And it seems to me like Cincinnati is a perfect urban region for such a program, and regional leaders in Cincinnati should examine establishing a local carsharing program as has been done in cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland.

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Development News Politics Transportation

The Urban Parking Paradox and the Need for Regulation

As previously discussed, providing the necessary parking to meet local government regulations can be both costly in terms of finances and social impacts to the immediate neighborhood in which the parking is built. The question should be asked about whether parking should be regulated at all in terms of how much should be provided.

In the Central Business District and historic neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine there is roughly 92 acres of surface parking lots. To put this into real terms, the amount of surface parking lots present in our urban core is nearly equal to the entire size of Burnet Woods (89 acres).

The Gateway Quarter parking garage sits empty on a typical Saturday afternoon (left), while much of the on-street parking remains readily available (right) for those looking to shop in the rejuvenated district of Over-the-Rhine.

Many of the commonly used calculations for parking requirements have been seen as arbitrarily derived. One reason this is thought to be the case is because of the limitless variables presented in each particular situation. In an area with high transit ridership and lots of pedestrian activity there should be a lesser requirement for parking than an area that is solely dependent on the automobile. This is reflected in the zoning code to a certain extent, but what would happen if the regulation disappeared completely?

No Regulation:
Parking is an amenity, not infrastructure, and should be treated as such. Government should not be regulating how many square feet of closet space there should be in each dwelling unit, nor should it be regulating how many parking spaces need to be provided for retail and office development. This is something a private developer should know based on their client demands.

If a developer feels that they can successfully renovate a handful of historic rowhouses along Race Street in Over-the-Rhine and provide zero parking spaces, then that should be their risk (or reward). Similarly, if a developer feels that they need X number of parking spaces for their new office tower in the Central Business District, then that too should be up to them. The potential problem with this approach is not providing too little parking, but rather too much.

The areas in black indicate the 92 acres of surface parking located throughout Cincinnati’s Central Business District (left) and the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood (right).

Parking Maximums:
Since some might say that no parking regulation whatsoever might allow the market to run wild and produce unsustainable results. In that case the lack of any regulation could be replaced by a parking maximum, or a cap. For Cincinnati this would make most sense in places already developed and built in a way not suitable for parking facilities. This would allow for developers to create the parking they feel is needed up to a certain extent deemed appropriate by the local government.

From there policy makers could decide whether it is in their best interests to allow flexibility with contingencies, or not. For example, a developer could exceed the parking cap if the overage was built with pervious paving, that the additional parking be shared, or if the developer paid into a fund that would then help offset the costs of other infrastructure improvements needed in the affected area.

In a nutshell though this would allow for developers, no matter how big or small, to make the decision of how much parking they actually need with regulation limiting their actions. This would prevent big box retailers from over-parking their sites and thus reduce the amount of impervious surfaces, loss of urban fabric, and other negative externalities.

Both scenarios presented above could be addressed by removing minimum parking requirements. This would enable small businesses and investors to succeed without the costly parking mandates while also not adding additional regulations through maximum parking specifications that would experience similar issues as minimum parking requirement regulations.

But in either case, the above scenarios seem to be better than the current urban parking policies currently used in Cincinnati and widespread across the United States. Both scenarios would empower small businesses and investors while also maintaining a free market system. Both situations would demand less staff time to oversee and thus reduce costs and/or improve service levels at the local government level.

Categories
Development News Politics Transportation

Examining parking policy from an urban perspective

The City of Cincinnati requires one parking space per residential dwelling unit throughout all four sub-districts of the Downtown Development District. For office uses there is one parking space required for every 750 to 1,200 square feet of office space.

These parking facilities could range from initially cheap surface lots to costly structured parking garages. Both facilities have the potential to severely damage the urban fabric in spite of design guidelines in place to improve their appearance. In addition to this damaging effect, the cost of parking is extraordinarily high in urban locations as parking spaces can cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per space in a structured parking garage. While surface lots are cheaper to construct, they squander valuable land and thus shoulder the cost of wasted revenues for local government and private land owners.

Thousands of parking spaces are being constructed underneath The Banks development with tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

The high costs of parking are immediately passed on to the customer (tenant) which results in one of two things. 1) The price points go so high that many are priced out of the market; or 2) The costs become too much for the developer to be able to recoup based on market demands which stymie investment absent substantial public subsidies.

Neither scenario is ideal, but both are seen in Cincinnati’s urban core today. Within the Central Business District the demands are there for increased development, but the prices are higher than the market will bear. As a result affordable living spaces are often not built, and new office development is rare.

In Over-the-Rhine, demand historically was too low to warrant the high parking costs, one factor in under-investment in the neighborhood, did not exist. The demands now exist in several portions of Over-the-Rhine, but in order for the price points of units to be kept artificially low, and keep inventory moving, parking has come in the form of surface lots.

The purple building seen here will be demolished to make way for an above-ground parking garage to supply parking requirements for nearby developments.

These surface lots throughout Over-the-Rhine have lower initial capital costs, but cause negative externalities for the neighborhood – one of America’s largest and most significant historic districts – and put additional historic structures at risk of demolition for these parking requirements.

Cincinnati Beer Company owner, Bryon Martin, currently owns the former Christian Moerlein residence and office on Elm Street in the Brewery District. His plans are for a brewpub restaurant that would play on the history of the two buildings. Martin would also love to have a large outdoor biergarten area on the vacant adjacent lot, but says that parking may have to be the use for that space at least initially.

There are potential solutions out there to balance out this equation without extreme demands that drive price points of investment in the neighborhood to unaffordable levels, or massive public subsidies. Over the next several weeks UrbanCincy will be looking into these potential policy solutions and how they might impact investment in our urban neighborhoods, preservation of the city’s historic building stock, and help change the way in which we design our communities.