Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) was quick to give away a $400 million federal investment in Ohio for high speed rail to California and Florida. And now it seems as if his opposition to transport extends beyond high speed rail and includes all forms of transit.
Last week Kasich announced he would reduce transit funding by $70 million. The original three-year, $150 million pledge made by former Governor Ted Strickland (D), in part, included $1.3 million to establish express bus service that would connect Westwood (Glenway Crossing) and Butler County (Liberty Township/West Chester) with Uptown and the University of Cincinnati.
“It’s too early to know the long-term impact on our funding,” said Metro’s Chief Public Affairs Officer, Sallie L. Hilvers. “The immediate loss is the Innovative Services grant for express service to Uptown which was in the planning stage.”
The idea was to invest $10 million into transit systems around the state in a way that would connect people with important job centers and education hubs like Uptown.
In Columbus, $3.2 million would have gone to connect Ohio State University, Columbus State, Franklin University and the Capital Law School with regional hospitals. Nearby, Dayton had received $534,000 to pursue similar transit goals.
This move, combined with the return of $400 million for high speed rail and consideration of pulling $50 million in state funding for the Cincinnati Streetcar, appears to point to a dramatic policy shift from Strickland to Kasich, and one that does not favor the state’s transport network.
When asked about this striking policy shift and what it might mean for Metro, Hilvers said, “We really can’t comment until we have more facts. There just isn’t enough information yet to really know what the future impacts will be.”
Last week President Obama announced a bold $53 billion plan for high speed rail. The investment is proposed to take place over the next six years as part of the transportation reauthorization bill. If successful, President Obama (D) would place himself among the likes of Eisenhower and FDR in terms of infrastructure legacies.
Long-term, President Obama’s administration hopes to connect 80 percent of Americans with high speed rail within 25 years, but what does that mean for Ohio whose governor recently gave away a $400 million federal investment for such a system?
Well, what immediately is clear is that Ohio has gone from one of the nation’s leaders in high speed rail, to one of the last adopters in the matter of a few months. What may also be true going forward is hesitancy for the federal government to invest in high speed rail in Ohio while Governor Kasich (R) is in office – thus pushing Ohio further behind in the race to “win the future” and develop a nation-wide system of high speed rail.
“The Obama Administration understands that in order to win the future and grow America’s economy over the long-term, we must modernize our national transportation network,” said Secretary LaHood said in a prepared release. “We’re committed to repairing our existing infrastructure and building new ways to move people, goods and information around so we can strengthen our communities and our economy.”
The federal investment would provide money for both new infrastructure and critical maintenance and upgrades for existing intercity rail corridors. With Ohio boasting one of the best-suited corridors in the nation for intercity rail, but still lacking any existing intercity rail, it creates the possibility of the state receiving absolutely nothing from the $53 billion investment thanks to the decision by Governor Kasich to give away the original $400 million investment in intercity rail between Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland.
For perspective, over the past 50 years, the federal government has spent more than $400 billion building the interstate highway system.
“A national high-speed rail system is not only an opportunity to redefine how we travel and how our regional economies grow,” said Reconnecting America President and CEO John Robert Smith. “It represents the type of innovation and progress that can secure a better future for our grandchildren.”
With the addition of 100 million citizens by 2050, Smith asserts that the nation needs new infrastructure that has the ability to move more people in more places and at higher speeds.
Reconnecting America research has found that investments between Harrisburg, PA, and Philadelphia have increased speeds to 110 mph, and the corridor has seen rail ridership rise by 57 percent. The corridor, Reconnecting America says, now boasts more passengers traveling by rail than by plane.
Many of UrbanCincy’s readers have asked what it is you can do to help support the Cincinnati Streetcar and defeat the special interests that are once again trying to keep rail transit from Cincinnatians. Well, the time has come for you to get involved and get active.
The first thing you can do is write an email to the State of Ohio encouraging them to continue their support of the state’s highest scoring transportation project. The special interests working to keep rail transit away from Cincinnati have made an aggressive push with the anti-transit Governor Kasich (R) to pull upwards of $50 million in state support from the project. The funding would largely help build the modern streetcar system from the riverfront to Uptown near the University of Cincinnati. Some of the money would also fund preliminary engineering work for phase two of the project which would send the streetcar further into Uptown.
You can contact the appropriate state officials by emailing TRAC@dot.state.oh.us (must email by Friday, February 11). Tell them why you support the Cincinnati Streetcar and be sure to remind them that this is the state’s highest scoring transportation project, by far, and that they should approve the $35 million in construction funding for “Cincinnati Streetcar Phase 1” and $1.8 million in preliminary engineering funding for the “Cincinnati Uptown Streetcar.”
As COAST has returned to keep rail transit from Cincinnatians who voted their support for the project in November 2009, Cincinnatians for Progress has also returned to the scene to once again defeat those special interests. In 2009, CFP led a massive grassroots campaign that gathered approximately 10,000 Cincinnatians to make phone calls, canvass door-to-door throughout the city, organize fundraising efforts and run a get out the vote campaign.
The group is getting fired up for what may be a vote this May or November (Yes, in November when the city will be well underway building the streetcar system – approximately $50M worth of construction). If you would like to get involved, show up at their kickoff event to be held at Grammer’s (map) on Wednesday, February 16 from 6pm to 8pm.
The Cincinnati Streetcar is projected to create 1,800 new construction jobs, generate thousands of new housing units, put people back to work, broaden the city’s tax base and continue the renaissance taking place in Cincinnati’s urban core.
I ran into a handful of people after the holidays who I guess had watched our struggles as we tried to deal with our budget in December, and they said uniformly, ‘Milton you look tired. Did you get any time off?’
Well, you can lay down if you’re tired, and you can lay down if you give up. But I work for the City of Cincinnati, Ohio and I’m not giving up. Our city is going places. We might be going kicking and screaming, but we’re going places.
We are still feeling the recession, but in spite of that, we’re developing our waterfront, we’re breaking ground soon on a casino, we just did a project announcement for the Anna Louise Inn that will make a difference in people’s lives. LULAC is coming this year, the World Choir Games are coming next year, and yes we are still committed to buidlng a streetcar system. Music Hall is going to be redone, Washington Park is being redone and new people are coming to call Cincinnati home. We’re going to build some new houses in Bond Hill and we’re going to try to make a difference around Findlay Market in that area of Over-the-Rhine. We don’t have time to lay down.
We are not perfect, but you gotta love your city, and you gotta be willing to fight for it and advance it, and that’s what we’re about.
Like City Manager Dohoney expressed, stay passionate about what Cincinnati is, what it used to be, and what it can become. Support the Cincinnati Streetcar. Support Cincinnati.
Cincinnati has selected the next two neighborhoods for its 2011 Neighborhood Enhancement Program (NEP). This year’s 90-day blitz will take place in Over-the-Rhine and Bond Hill.
First started in 2006, the NEP has moved through 10 of the city’s 52 neighborhoods including Mt. Washington and Corryville which were targeted last year. City officials say that the collaborative effort is designed to jumpstart community revitalization and reinvestment, and focus on developing neighborhood assets and improving quality of life.
Some in Over-the-Rhine feel like the focused effort could not come at a better time given the recent progress there.
“While Over-the-Rhine is a strong neighborhood, we could use more tools to address some real barriers, such as buildings with code violations, that prevent us from getting more things done,” says Over-the-Rhine resident and owner of Park+Vine Dan Korman.
The NEP employs the broken windows theory that changes the norms of an urban area in order to influence social behavior in such a way that prevents an escalation into more serious crime. Cincinnati’s NEP has won numerous local, state and national awards, and puts significant focus on building code enforcement, litter removal, vacant lot maintenance, beautifying landscapes and public right-of-way, and “cooling down” crime hot spots.
One-by-one, and with little fanfare, nearly every major American city which scrapped its streetcar and other rail transit lines mid-century has since 1970 built a new rail system of some kind. Between 1970 and 1990, new-start systems began operations in Washington, DC, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Atlanta, Buffalo, San Diego and Miami. Between 1990 and 2010, new-start systems were built in Denver, St. Louis, Seattle, Sacramento, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Phoenix.
As of 2011, Cincinnati is now the largest metropolitan area, with the exception of Detroit, with no rail transit whatsoever. Attempts to fund a regional rail transit system were defeated by Hamilton County voters in 1971, 1979, 1980, and 2002. Cincinnati’s modern streetcar plan, after winning at the polls in 2009, was fully funded in 2010 but faces yet another challenge from special interest groups in 2011.
Is there some physical reason why rail transit is poorly suited for Cincinnati, as its opponents have always contended? No – and the purpose of this article is to illustrate that Cincinnati is in fact much better suited than several cities that have recently built rail transit systems. In short, dating from Mayor Murray Seasongood’s assertion in the late 1920’s that Cincinnati was too small for a rapid transit system, a long line of Cincinnati politicians, usually self-proclaimed reformers or financial watchdogs have succeeded in diverting federal funds away from Cincinnati to less deserving cities.
How Atlanta received the Federal award to build MARTA Thirteen years after passage of Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Federal Government began funding construction of rapid transit systems. First was the Washington Metro, which received funding in 1969 and began construction shortly thereafter. The Urban Mass Transit Act of 1970 allocated $10 billion for the expansion and upkeep of existing systems in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and elsewhere, and funded approximately 80 percent of the cost of new rapid transit systems in Baltimore, Miami and Atlanta.
The award of nearly $1 billion, to Atlanta in the early 1970’s, stands as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of public transportation in the United States. This enormous sum (equivalent to approximately $3 billion in 2011 dollars) was originally allocated to Seattle but was diverted after King County voters failed to approve a local tax to operate the planned system. Meanwhile, Atlanta-area voters did approve a transit sales tax, and due to a shortage of cities with such a tax, received the federal award and broke ground on MARTA in 1975.
The configuration of MARTA’s two lines, which radiate from downtown Atlanta in four directions, has been the subject of much criticism. Approximately four miles of subway construction in the Downtown and Midtown areas consumed enough of the project’s budget as to force cut backs in suburban areas. Outside of the Downtown tunnels, the lines typically follow freight rail lines, with inconveniently positioned stations. These poorly located stations have limited the system’s overall ridership by discouraging the construction of transit-oriented developments. Nevertheless, large transit-oriented developments (TODs) have been built at some MARTA stations, and system ridership is presently reported to be 260,000 each weekday.
So why did Cincinnati not apply for the award Atlanta received?
In 1970, Atlanta and Cincinnati were at the center of metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) identical in population. But Cincinnati was still much more densely built than Atlanta, and therefore much better suited for construction of a rapid transit system. Not only were Downtown and Over-the-Rhine much more active than they are now, but Cincinnati had numerous old neighborhood business districts that could have been saved from extinction with a subway station beneath their primary intersections.
A drawing for such a system was in fact made by the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI). In anticipation of a UMTA application in 1971, OKI developed a 57-mile regional rapid transit plan that would have included at least 10 miles of subway construction in Cincinnati, a tunnel under the Ohio River, and more subway construction in Covington and Newport. Under UMTA guidelines, Cincinnati-area residents would only pay $100 million of its estimated $500 million capital cost.
But Cincinnati could not apply because UMTA awards were available only for those cities with publicly operated bus companies. In 1970 public transportation in Cincinnati was still provided by Cincinnati Transit, the bus-only descendant of the Cincinnati Street Railway, a situation that persisted after a countywide property tax that would have funded a public bus company failed in 1971. Cincinnati Transit was not put out of its misery until city voters approved an earnings tax in 1973 that enabled formation of Queen City Metro.
The .03 percent earnings tax was insufficient to cover the 20 percent local match required for UMTA awards, therefore, even after having established a public bus company, Cincinnati could still not apply for large capital awards without either a supplement or replacement of the city earnings tax. A pair of countywide transit taxes failed in 1979 and 1980, and therefore Cincinnatians paid in but received nothing from the Urban Mass Transit Assistance Act.
What is so frustrating about these events is that of the three cities that received new-start awards, only the traditional urban character of Baltimore in any way resembles that of Cincinnati. Miami and Atlanta, which by 1970 had just surpassed Cincinnati in size, experienced most of their growth in the automobile era and so could not possibly benefit similarly from construction of rapid transit systems. In short, federal awards weren’t made on the basis of suitability or cost-benefit, but rather who fought hardest for the money.
What if…? Federal funding of rail transit declined after the exhaustion of UMTA funds in the late 1970’s. As such, the FTA has not funded any new-start rapid transit subway systems, with the exception of the Los Angeles Red and Purple Lines in the late 1980’s, and has shifted its funding to the less expensive light rail mode. In Cincinnati, regional transit system plans downsized from OKI’s 1971 Regional Rapid Transit plan to less ambitious light rail plans.
These light rail plans typically called for little or no tunnel construction. Unfortunately, this is not the best solution for Cincinnati, as many of its walkable neighborhood business districts can only be reached by the type of bored tunnels called for in OKI’s 1971 Regional Rapid Transit Plan. Since the FTA no longer funds extensive tunnel construction in mid-sized cities, Cincinnati has no hope of constructing such tunnels without a return of Federal funding for such projects to 1970’s levels.
Next time you are in Hyde Park Square, at Skyline Chili in Clifton, near St. Lawrence Church in Price Hill, or walking Covington’s MainStrasse Village, imagine being able to walk down a staircase to a subway train that could take you Downtown or to any of those other points in just a few minutes. The money was there for the taking back in the early 1970’s, and we could have gotten it just as easily as Atlanta did, but your parents and grandparents were tricked into voting against it.
Jake Mecklenborg is a transit historian and published author. His new book Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History explores the strange and largely untold history of rail transit in the Queen City.
Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) was quick to give away a $400 million federal investment in Ohio for high speed rail to California and Florida. And now it seems as if his opposition to transport extends beyond high speed rail and includes all forms of transit.
