Unlike Cincinnati, Indianapolis has wide streets. The streets are so wide that there is room to do some neat things within the right-of-way with regards to non-automobile forms of transportation.
As a result, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard (R) made it a priority of his administration to not only support the eight-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, but to create a city-wide bicycle network that he hopes will have 200 miles by 2015.
It’s a steep change for a city that had virtually no on-street bike lanes in 2007, and only 70 to 75 miles of on-street bike lanes now.
“It feels different when you’re riding a bike, because of how it’s been built and what’s underneath it,” Mayor Ballard told Clarence Eckerson Jr. from Streetfilms. “It’s the part about connecting up everything that’s really made a dramatic impact and is getting the international attention.”
The $63 million project was largely funded through private contributions, and has now created a physically separated pedestrian and bicycle facility that connects many of the city’s significant attractions and center city neighborhoods.
As Cincinnati works on developing a bicycle network of its own, complete with physically separated facilities like the Cultural Trail, what do you think the Queen City should do the same or do differently?
Metro officials say that new routes, including the agency’s new Metro*Plus service, will utilize the new uptown transit hubs. Additionally, direct service from Metro’s Glenway Crossing Transit Center will be able to take advantage of the new facilities.
Transit officials believe the Uptown Transit District will be a critical improvement for the regional bus network, allowing more direct and better access to the region’s second largest employment center.
“It is a wonderful concept and I’m so pleased that Metro is undertaking this because we really need it,” explained Cincinnati City Councilmember Wendell Young (D). “Uptown is a very important economic engine in this city, with 50,000-plus jobs up here.”
The Uptown Transit District will include four distinct bus hubs throughout the area including the Clifton Heights Business District at Calhoun Street and Corbett Drive, Vine Street between Calhoun and McMillan Streets, Jefferson Street at University Avenue, and the Medical Center Area.
The stations will include enhanced shelters and will also include real-time arrival information.
“We’ll have informational kiosks that will provide real-time information…so therefore you know exactly when you can embark upon your destination,” Terry Garcia Crews, CEO of Metro, told the crowd at the ceremony. “We want to make sure that we’re designing a system that meets the needs of our consumers.”
Construction was originally anticipated to begin in April 2013. Approximately 72% of the funding was provided by the Federal Government with the remainder coming from the City of Cincinnati, Metro and the OKI Regional Council of Governments.
On Friday, April 19, UrbanCincy partnered with the Niehoff Urban Studio and hosted an event that showcased student work and included expert analysis and discussion of urban mobility issues in Cincinnati.
Approximately 100 people showed up to the collaborative studio space in Corryville to view the student work, and learn more about the challenges facing Cincinnati today and in the future.
Metropolis & Mobility: Bus Rapid Transit and Bikeway Planning focused on five proposed bus rapid transit and three bikeway corridors throughout Cincinnati. Engineering and planning students were paired together in groups to examine the issues and propose implementation strategies for those potential projects.
Students examining bus rapid transit focused on the Reading Road, Downtown, Hamilton Avenue, Vine Street, and Montgomery Road corridors. The students studying bikeway planning, meanwhile, examined the Wasson Way and Western Riverfront Trail and Mill Creek Greenway.
Those who attended the event were also able to vote on their favorite project, which will then be profiled right here on UrbanCincy.com in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please enjoy the video put together on the Metropolis & Mobility event by our contributing videographer Andrew Stahlke.
Slashed meters and broken meter tops liter the normally beautiful Orchard Street in Over-the-Rhine, and many other streets throughout the historic neighborhood.
Residents began to notice the meters being vandalized in November 2012 when the city initially announced its intentions to lease its parking system to a private entity. The city insists that the vandalism and parking privatization is not connected. However, UrbanCincy’s investigative sleuthing has found that although the meters are not connected to city sabotage, they are instead connected to a lone vigilante who wants nothing more than to park…for free!
“You shouldn’t have to pay to park,” exclaimed the culprit from a shadowy street corner.
The vigilante who goes by the name Free Space Man, agreed to speak to UrbanCincy only after we agreed to pay for his two-hour metered spot on Liberty Street so that he would not harm the meter. The vigilante described his day-to-day activities, meticulously choosing the meters to be vandalized and deciding on the best time of day to strike.
He says he travels the country, setting out to rid the world of working parking meters so he can park his 2007 Range Rover at metered spots for free. He came to Cincinnati when he heard about the parking privatization.
“I didn’t even know you had meters and now the city is selling them off. Parking should be free…why do they even charge? That’s the real crime,” Free Space Man said as he sliced off another parking meter at the corner of Elm and Green Street.
Attempts at trying to inform the vigilante on the revenues parking brings in to the city and how it allows businesses to turnover spots for patrons seemed to fall on deaf ears with this eccentric individual.
The vandal disclosed that his most brazen act of social defiance was in San Francisco, where leaders there attempted to install smart parking meter technology. One day, shortly after the new meters installation, a parking meter head was found at the foot of the mayors’ bed with coins still rolling out from its receptacle.
“That man was a menace to our town,” disclosed Tom Delegado, the mayor of San Francisco City Hall on foursquare. “He’s a terror to parking enforcement everywhere!”
Officials who have dealt with the villain have described him as squirrely and demented, and warn that the only defense measure is to throw copies of Donald Shoup’s 763-page book, The High Cost of Free Parking, at the bandit until he finally flees to another town, hopefully never to return.
Woodward is a graduate of Cincinnati State Technical & Community College’s audio/video production program. Since then he has done video production work for the Cincinnati Reds, worked as an assistant camera operator for the failed Queen City reality show, and currently works full-time as a photographer for Fox 19, WXIX.
The video showcases scenes of Cincinnati’s skyline from Devou Park, views from the Carew Tower Observation Deck, Lytle Park, Mirror Lake in Eden Park, a bustling Findlay Market, the newly renovated Washington Park, Sawyer Point, Great American Ball Park, The Banks, Smale Riverfront Park, and various shots from the Ohio River.
