Tag: public policy

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Business Development Transportation

Metro to debut real-time arrival screens at transit centers

Metro will debut real-time arrival screens at its Government Square transit center on Friday. The announcement is part of a recent series of moves by the transit agency to modernize its operations.

Since 2010, Metro has implemented a new electronic fare payment system, GPS tracking, GoogleTransit interface, articulated buses, and a new westside commuter hub.

“We’re collecting more feedback from our riders with our Way To Go initiative,” explained Metro’s Public Affairs Manager, Jill Dunne. “We have already received close to 2,000 surveys online and in person at various events this summer, and these changes are adding the types of improvements that our riders want.”

The new real-time arrival screens at Government Square cost $11,200 each and will be positioned at each of the transit center’s eight shelters, with a master information board at the front of the Government Square booth at Fifth Street and Walnut Street.

According to Metro officials, bus departure times will appear on the boards 45 minutes before a bus is scheduled to depart from Government Square. The boards will then begin a real-time countdown once the bus is within 20 minutes of its scheduled departure time.

The real-time arrival upgrades were made possible thanks to an $8.2 million American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant that funded Metro’s computer-aided dispatch and automatic vehicle location (CAD/AVL) technology in 2011, in addition to the new video boards.

The implementation of the real-time arrival boards at Government Square is just the beginning. Metro officials say that they will soon install the same technology at the new Glenway Crossing Transit Center and the Uptown Transit Hub which is scheduled to begin construction later this year.

In addition to the physical upgrades, transit officials say they plan to leverage the GPS tracking data to add real-time arrival information to its website, and debut a smartphone application within the next year.

The system updates do not, however, include open-source GPS data which is increasingly being more closely studied throughout the United States. Dunne says that Metro is working with their data vendor, and is working on developing these types of interfaces in 2013 through Google Transit Real Time Feed.

Real-time arrival board photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

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Up To Speed

Cincinnati’s form-based code moment in time

Cincinnati’s form-based code moment in time.

Cincinnati officials continue to push forward with a new effort that would bring a form-based zoning code to the Queen City. The move wouldn’t be the first in the nation, nor would it be the first in the region, but it would be one of the biggest and most noteworthy. More from Better! Cities & Towns:

Choosing and refining a form-based organizing principle for a city the size of Cincinnati with such a diverse range of pre-1940s urban patterns and a rich urban morphology is one of the most challenging, but underappreciated aspects of creating a form-based code. For Cincinnati, the urban-to-rural Transect was selected as the organizing principle and was up to the task. The calibration of the Transect allowed the team to create a framework that would reinforce the fine-grain fabric and rich palette of building types that are an important part of defining the community character of the city’s urban neighborhoods.

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Business News

UrbanCincy launches new monthly networking event for urban professionals

On Tuesday, July 3, UrbanCincy will host the first of what will become a monthly networking event for urban professionals. The event, called URBANexchange, will take place from 5:30pm to 7:30pm on the first Tuesday of every month at the Moerlein Lager House.

URBANexchange is meant to not only engage active urban professionals, but also those who have a general interest in urbanism and want to exchange thoughts and ideas with others with similar passions. The event will be casual in nature and is meant to serve as a place to exchange ideas and build personal networks.


The Moerlein Lager House along Cincinnati’s central riverfront. Photograph by Cory Klein.

UrbanCincy has partnered with The Urbanists, who previously helped foster iRhine, to activate the region’s network of individuals interested in continuing the urban renaissance taking place in Cincinnati.

“In previous years the collection of engaged urbanists in Cincinnati has grown, but it has largely been focused in center city neighborhoods,” explained UrbanCincy owner, Randy Simes. “This event is meant to serve as a gathering place for urbanists throughout the region in an effort to grow that base of individuals advocating for better public policy.”

The inaugural event will take place at the Moerlein Lager House’s second-floor bar overlooking the new Smale Riverfront Park and historic Roebling Suspension Bridge. Thanks to Metro, those who sign-in will have a chance at winning four tickets to the World Choir Games’ Champions Concert on Saturday, July 14.

Future URBANexchange dates will be announced on UrbanCincy.com and through Facebook. URBANexchange is free and open to the public, and those attending are encouraged to use Metro bus service to get to the Moerlein Lager House and the World Choir Games should you be the lucky winner of the free tickets.

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Up To Speed

What if mayors ruled the world?

What if mayors ruled the world?.

It can be argued that government structures are set up in a way that under-represent cities, but some argue that mayors are actually the ones taking care of business. And one renowned political scientist is speaking out about the idea to shake up the world’s political bodies in a new book. More from The Atlantic:

The question raised in Jihad vs. McWorld was whether there were inter-state and global institutions that could mediate the tensions between modernity and its aggressive materialism (McWorld) and the reactionary forces of “Jihad” that opposed it. It was increasingly apparent to me that traditional state-based organizations like the U.N. and the Bretton Woods institutions were paralyzed by sovereignty and distorted by private market relations and could not do much to further the interests of global democracy in the space between Jihad and McWorld.

As a result, I began to look at alternative building blocks for global governance — at which point the city appeared as a natural candidate; and one, it turned out, that was already deeply engaged in networking and transnational cooperation. The city was the solution to the hard question of whether there was a global form of democracy.

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Up To Speed

Cincinnati comes back to its Ohio River shoreline

Cincinnati comes back to its Ohio River shoreline.

Cincinnatians can finally feel the results of decades worth of work to reclaim the city’s riverfront. More than a billion dollars worth of investment has brought new stadiums, museums, a riverfront park, and an entire new neighborhood still rising from the ground. More from The New York Times:

Cincinnati is experiencing a strong revival in urban core business and residential growth, much of it prompted by development along a scenic river that state and federal water quality data show is cleaner and more ecologically vital.

On a bright blue afternoon, just the sort of day that prompted Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831 to describe this part of the Ohio River as “one of the most magnificent valleys in which man has made his stay, ” the full sweep of Cincinnati’s new development, clearly designed as the city’s gateway, comes into full view.