Category: Up To Speed

Links to keep you up to speed on what’s happening in Cincinnati and what we can learn from other cities.

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Up To Speed

Miami developers are turning away from cars, can Cincinnati be next?

Miami developers are turning away from cars, can Cincinnati be next?.

Cincinnati has seen a wealth of private real estate investment over the past decade. The problem, however, is that almost all of that investment is oriented toward those residents and workers using cars to get there. But in Miami, a city known for its flashy cars, a new development is looking to change that mindset. More from The Atlantic:

Miami and cars. They go together like piña and colada, right? Well, maybe so. But one new luxury condo in the heart of downtown is making what is, for this Florida city, a bold move. The building in many ways fits the profile of recent development in Miami’s reviving core: It has 36 stories, 352 units, and 10-foot ceilings.

But as for parking? Zero of that. Not for private motor vehicles, anyway. The Centro, as it’s called, will have a five-car Car2Go auto share station featuring the city-backed service’s distinctive, blue-and-white Smart cars; covered bike parking; and, if Miami gets bike share, maybe one of those stations as well.

The project breaks ground this fall, and the parking-garage-free tower was made possible by city zoning that allows no parking garages in buildings that are close to transit in densely developed areas.

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Up To Speed

Is the deck stacked against cities in state legislatures?

Is the deck stacked against cities in state legislatures?.

It is difficult enough for local or regional governments and agencies to figure out how to pay for their necessary infrastructure investments, and it’s even more difficult when state legislatures dominated by rural representation do not even grant those entities the authority to hold public votes on the matter. Is this yet another example of anti-city bias in our nation’s political system? More from the Seattle Times:

When the gavel sounded adjourning the state legislative session this year, a critical piece of work was left undone. The Legislature failed to grant local cities and counties the power to ask voters for transportation funding. We will face crippling congestion in the coming year.

In 2011, the state Legislature recognized the reforms Metro made to reduce costs and run more efficiently, and partnered with King County to provide a temporary Congestion Reduction Charge, allowing Metro to avoid transit cuts for two years. A public hearing over whether the Metropolitan King County Council should enact the charge or cut transit service drew a thousand people who stood in a line around the block to testify in favor of saving transit service.They deserve to have their voices heard by leaders in the state senate.

The pending cuts to Metro Transit is an emergency that can no longer be ignored, particularly by the state Senate Majority Coalition Caucus. Transit cuts mean fewer buses, and the overcrowding and inconvenience drives people back to their cars. When there’s no more room on our crowded buses and congested roads and highways, jobs move elsewhere and we lose out.

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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.