Tag: Transportation

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Up To Speed

Inadequate regional transit burdens Infrastructure Grade

 Inadequate regional transit burdens Infrastructure Grade.

Last week the American Society of Civil Engineers released their report card on the state of our nations infrastructure. Earlier,  we broke down the report and analyzed what the numbers mean for Ohio and Cincinnati infrastructure but Next City has reviewed the numbers for rail and mass transit. Even though regional rail infrastructure has improved through Amtrak, local mass transit continues to lag behind with a D grade from the ASCE. The report highlights that even though more people are riding transit, the condition of our nations mass transit infrastructure has a backlog in $78 billion worth of repairs. More from Next City:

Transit that doesn’t fall under Amtrak’s purview fared much worse on the ASCE’s report card, earning a D and therefore pulling down the nation’s overall lousy-to-begin-with G.P.A.

Public transit ridership increased by 34 percent between 1995 and 2011, according to the American Public Transit Association, and the ASCE report states that access to transit across the country has grown by nearly 10 percent. Although transit investment has also increased, “deficient and deteriorating” regional transit systems cost the national economy $90 billion in 2010.

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Business Development News Opinion Transportation

Portland Aims to Replicate Streetcar Success on East Side of Willamette River

Six months ago Portland celebrated the opening of a 3.3-mile extension of their modern streetcar system across the Willamette River.

The $148.3 million Portland Streetcar project represents a significant expansion of the existing six-mile system, and city leaders hope it will find similar success in the Lloyd District, Buckman and Hosford-Abernethy neighborhoods as it has in the Pearl District and Northwest District.

At the time when Portland built its first streetcar leg, the Pearl District was a rundown industrial district in search of new life, and the Northwest District was looking to build on its existing stability.

Pearl District Buckman Neighborhood
Portland’s Pearl District [LEFT] has seen a massive transformation over the past decade, and many hope the streetcar’s recent extension will do the same for the city’s Buckman neighborhood [RIGHT]. Photographs by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

The story is not all that different on the east side of the river where the Buckman and Hosford-Abernethy neighborhoods are looking for the streetcar to breathe new life into its underutilized land and lingering industrial users, and the Lloyd District is trying to build on its successes and possibly reinvent itself with a lesser focus on the automobile.

While the streetcar extension is operating daily, the investments are not quite finished. Transportation officials are waiting on an additional six streetcar vehicles to roll off the production line so that service frequencies can be improved for the system’s four million annual riders.

TriMet officials are also overseeing progress on the construction of the new Portland-Milwaukie Bridge which will provide a river crossing for bicycles, pedestrians, streetcars, and light rail from Hosf0rd-Abernethy to the South Waterfront District as part of a the 7.3-mile Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project.

The $134 million bridge project is expected to open in September 2015 and buoy both new and existing ridership on the city’s light rail and streetcar systems.

Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Bridge South Waterfront District
Construction progresses on the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Bridge in November 2012 [LEFT], which will connect the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood with the South Waterfront District [RIGHT]. Photographs by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

The verdict is still out on whether or not the new east side streetcar extension will have as big of an impact as it did on the west side of the river next to downtown, but the possibilities are there.

The streetcar’s alignment through Buckman and Hosford-Abernethy heads south along Martin Luther King Boulevard and north a block over on Grand Avenue. To the west of MLK Boulevard is the river with a large collection of warehouses in between. To the east of Grand Avenue is an in-tact neighborhood that has become increasingly popular with young creative types over the past several years.

In between the two streets one will find a collection of aging car dealerships and associated service businesses that date back to the mid-twentieth century.

These large parcels, combined with the large warehouse properties immediately to the west, offer a unique opportunity for large scale redevelopment. Such massive real estate investment might not be plausible without another real estate bubble.

The prospects are there, however, and if Portland can pull off even a fraction of the investment in Buckman as they saw in the Pearl District, then the city will add billions of dollars to its real estate value and create a secondary downtown in the city center for the 2.2 million person region.

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Business Development News

Private Investment Continues to Flow Uptown to Corryville and Short Vine

The Short Vine Business District is starting to show signs of a revitalization that has been a long time coming.

Uptown generally is seeing a wave of real estate investment and concurrent transportation investment. City and State officials are working to put the final pieces of  funding together for a new $70 million MLK Interchange that may also include upgrades to the Taft/McMillan interchange. Current estimates foresee project completion sometime around 2016.

Further helping accellerate the reinvestment uptown is the growing number of high-wage jobs in the area. Corryville’s neighborhood business district, for example, is surrounded by the University of Cincinnati, six major hospitals, and is within one mile of two interstates.

Short Vine Master Plan_2007 Update
Short Vine’s master plan was updated in 2007 through a partnership between the City of Cincinnati and Uptown Consortium. While much of the plan has not been adhered to, significant change is taking place along Short Vine and its surrounding streets.

The last few years saw the introduction of a handful new businesses, such as Island Fridays, Dive Bar, and Zipscene, a startup company. Recent openings include Mio’s Pizza, a third Beelistic Tattoo location, Caribe Carryout and new eateries Hang Over Easy, Smoke, and Taste of Belgium will open in the near future.

The rehabilitation of these structures capitalized on the historic charms found therein; Smoke and Hang Over Easy used reclaimed doors, chalkboards and windows from the recently demolished Schiel School. The edgy interior designs employed by all of these businesses show a remarkable congruence to the unique character that has always been represented on Short Vine.

Bogart’s, the 36-year old concert venue and an anchor establishment in the business district, just underwent renovations upwards of $100,000 as it seeks to attract more national performers.

The Old Schiel School, which closed in 2010, was torn down and is being redeveloped into a $20 million structure that will include 106 apartments and street-level commercial space. The previous owner of the site, Fifth Third Bank, has already signed on as a tenant for one of the street-level retail spaces. As noted, Taste of Belgium will also grow their footprint and open their first uptown location at the site.

The project with the most potential to be truly transformative, however, might be the redevelopment of University Plaza.

Vine Street Flats
One of Short Vine’s newest buildings, Vine Street Flats, sits immediately next to one of the business district’s long-time structures. Photograph by Luca Acito for UrbanCincy.

Although there were original hopes of reconnecting Vine Street with Short Vine, the plaza site will not change but the current structure will be demolished. Kroger and Walgreens are the only current tenants expected to remain.

The Uptown Consortium thus far has served as an effective catalyst for business attraction, retention and investment in the area.

The community development corporation was awarded $40 million in tax credits in 2012, with 90% of the funds going towards the redevelopment of University Plaza and the former Schiel School site.

Additionally, last month Cincinnati City Council approved the Uptown Consortium’s application for a Community Entertainment District (CED) to cover 77 acres and 150 properties on Short Vine, thus allowing the distribution of 15 new liquor licenses within the CED.

New streetscaping will include buried utilities, wider café-style sidewalks, street narrowing, new street trees and reconfigured parallel parking are all part of the improvements approved by City Council in 2011.

“Within a few years, this area will have been transformed,” asserted John Pedro, co-owner of Dive Bar, Smoke and Hang Over Easy.

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News Transportation

City of Cincinnati to Implement Safety Improvements for Pedestrians

The City of Cincinnati will be working to improve its pedestrian crossings over the coming years in order to align with recently updated state and federal standards.

The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) was updated in late 2009 and includes new best practices for pedestrian crosswalk designs.

The old standard accepted the typical parallel lines seen throughout most of the city today, but the new MUTCD calls for what traffic engineers call “continental” crosswalk markings, which feature two-foot-wide yellow or white stripes. The new MUTCD also calls for the implementation of countdown pedestrian signals where the pedestrian change interval is greater than seven seconds.

Traditional Intersection Design at Seventh & Walnut
The intersection of Seventh and Walnut Streets downtown represents both the old standard for crosswalk markings and signals. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

According to Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE), continental crosswalk markings have not yet been phased in throughout the city, but that as intersections are improved the City is working to upgrade both the pedestrian signals and crosswalk.

“The parallel markings were, at one time, considered “the standard” for crosswalk markings,” Michael Moore, Director of Cincinnati’s DOTE, told UrbanCincy. “However, with the update of the MUTCD in late 2009, best practices established the continental makings as a preferred design.”

The new continental markings are seen as a safety improvement for both pedestrians and drivers as they make crosswalks more visible, thus reducing collisions between automobile drivers and pedestrians.

The new markings, however, do pose some installation and maintenance issues for local governments.

Continental Crossing at Smale Riverfront Park
The mid-block crossing, connecting Smale Riverfront Park with The Banks, on Mehring Way features a continental crossing design. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

“We place most of our markings with thermoplastic because of its durability and reflectivity; however when wet, it can be slippery,” Moore explained. “And because the continental markings require more paint or thermoplastic, they cost more to install, and more to maintain since more of the stripe is in-line with the traffic flow.”

In order to help save taxpayer dollars, Moore says that the City studies where exactly to place the markings so that they avoid the most common path of wheel travel.

Crosswalk signals with countdown timers, meanwhile, have become more popular throughout the United States since cities like Washington D.C. began testing them years ago. Locally, both Covington, KY and Newport, KY have had these timers in use in their downtowns for years.

In addition to these new countdown timers at crosswalks, the time signals allow for pedestrians to cross the street may also soon be changing. Cincinnati officials say they will be adjusting pedestrian signals to accommodate the region’s aging population.

“Where the previous timing assumed pedestrians travel approximately 4 feet per second, the new manual reduces that to 3.5 feet per second,” noted Moore. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, think about the number of large intersections we have.”

There is no set timing on these upgrades, but Cincinnati officials say that more and more crossing signals will be changed out over the coming years, and that crosswalk markings will change as intersection upgrades are performed. Cincinnatians can already see the new continental markings in place a non-signalized, mid-block crossings.

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Business News Transportation

STUDY: Suburban Residents Have Longest Commutes in Cincinnati Region

The Cincinnati region scores better in several metrics that most American cities with regards to commuting patterns.

That is according to new study released by the U.S. Census Bureau, Out-of-State & Long Commutes, which shows that Cincinnatians spend three fewer minutes commuting each way when compared to the average American. The study also finds that only 2.9% of Cincinnatians spend more than 60 minutes one-way during their commute, as compared to the 8.1% national average.

The central concentration of jobs and economic power in the Cincinnati region also impacts the distribution of these travel times, with close-in neighborhoods boasting lower commute times and far-flung neighborhoods with the highest.

Cincinnati Commutes

“It is well known that Hamilton County draws a lot of commuters to work,” said Brian McKenzie, a Census Bureau statistician who studies commuting.

The draw of Hamilton County is strong. According to the Bureau, more than 188,000 people commute to and from Hamilton County each day, placing it at the top end of the spectrum in the U.S. Within Hamilton County, however, the East Side has it better off with lower average commute times, by about five minutes, as compared to the West Side.

The study also found that a mere 3.9% of Hamilton County commuters used public transportation in 2011. The rate of public transportation use is slightly lower than the national 5% average, and also does not take into account recent ridership increases that have outpaced national gains.

“The average travel time for workers who commute by public transportation is higher than that of workers who use other modes,” McKenzie continued. “For some workers, using transit is a necessity, but others simply choose a longer travel time over sitting in traffic.”

Due to the lack of a comprehensive regional transit system, approximately 79.3% of Cincinnatians are stuck behind the wheel of a car by themselves, and another 9.2% are carpooling to work each day.

The data for the study came from the American Community Survey (ACS), which collects information on education, occupation, language, ancestry, housing costs and transportation. The ACS has been ongoing in some form since 1850, approximately 60 years after the nation’s first decennial census, and is currently in jeopardy of losing its funding.

“This information shapes our understanding of the boundaries of local and regional economies, as people and goods move across the nation’s transportation networks,” McKenzie concluded.