What's With The Streetcars? (Cleveland, Cincinnati: real estate, apartments, credit)

[abr7rmj]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

Here is what the future will hold for the toy trolley:

Hartmann floats sales tax increase | Cincinnati.com | cincinnati.com


When all the bills are in and the revenue never comes and the operating costs soar, as we all know they will, the bond money will not be enough and a tax increase will have to be imposed to cover their costs. Eventually, the trolley will die and its proponents shuffle off to promote other boondoggles, but the bond debt service will live on.

Are you the Oracle from the Matrix or just your standard, garden-variety fortune teller?

If the former, please tell me who to put my money down on for the Super Bowl.

[Wilson513]

Cincinnati voters to decide streetcar issue - again:

Cincinnati voters to decide streetcar issue - again | Cincinnati.com | cincinnati.com

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

Cincinnati voters to decide streetcar issue - again:

Cincinnati voters to decide streetcar issue - again | Cincinnati.com | cincinnati.com

Good point Wilson. Maybe this issue will be put to bed for awhile but I doubt it.

[Wilson513]

Smitherman is calling out his posse. Although he is the worst Councilman ever to serve the City of Cincinnati, here I find myself aligned with him on the Toy Streetcar issue, and his election will insure its defeat. Quite a perplexing dilemma. If enough people show up to elect Smitherman after his being once a rejected incumbent (a rare occurance) his big issue, defeating the streetcar will be drowned. Another way to look at it is a winner either way. Like seeing Iran and Iraq at war with one another.

[OlliesThoughts]

Cincinnati will vote this ban on rail down AGAIN.

Why would we handcuff ourselves to no rail development for the next decade?

[Wilson513]

Originally Posted by OlliesThoughts

Cincinnati will vote this ban on rail down AGAIN.

Why would we handcuff ourselves to no rail development for the next decade?

some one has to be the adult in the room. It will be the voters. The expensive trinket that the City council wants to buy for itself is a trojan horse. It will add dozens of civil service jobs and operating costs for the life of the trolley and the debt service alone will exceed the revenues. Why not a Ferris Wheel on the river like London has?

[abr7rmj]

This issue is oh-so-tiresome being argued by the same people on this site who hold the same line-in-the-sand positions they've held since, I don't know, Warren G. Harding was in office (or at least since voters approved the last streetcar measure two years ago).

Absolutely no one here is changing their mind based on message board posts and particularly not on rhetoric like we see in previous posts with words like "cronies," "adult," "trinket" and "toy" meant to derogatorily put down people who support the streetcar. I'm not a child; I've lived in cities that have streetcars/light rail and I understand well the economic benefits associated with rail transportation. I also understand that the streetcar is not meant to generate profits on its own - it's a valuable tool used to spur tremendous amounts of investment and development along its route. And I'm sure that last point is the primary reason that Chris Smitherman and the local NCAAP are against it - they know it will work as advertised and they fear it will further the gentrification of Over-the-Rhine. They obviously do not want that.

COAST and Chris Smitherman had months and months to collect the needed signatures to get this thing on the ballot and they had to go down to the very last day prior to the deadline, after trolling endless festivals and church picnics and street corners all spring and summer, to scrape enough together. Well, we've seen this movie before: The voters backed the streetcar by a healthy margin as recently as 2009; we'll find out if they will again as soon as November. I do know one thing is for certain though ... at least my vote will cancel out wilson513's!

I wonder though: Should voters again back the streetcar which I suspect they will, will we be right back at this in 2013? If you fail once, try and try (and try and try and try and try and try) again?

[motorman]

Originally Posted by Wilson513

some one has to be the adult in the room. It will be the voters. The expensive trinket that the City council wants to buy for itself is a trojan horse.

The streetcar a "trojan horse"? If and when Cincinnati voters are foolish enough to elect Christopher Smitherman to city council, they will quickly learn what a trojan horse really is! This political opportunist has demonstrated all too well how he's willing to destroy progress of any sort in order to foster unrest and turmoil. His plan is to turn the beautiful Queen City into Detroit Upon The Ohio, wherein HE can reign as its new political messiah. Recreate the Cincinnati of April/2001--and you will have given Smitherman the perfect platform for career advancement. (Just ask either Damon Lynch III or Alicia Reece how it's done...)

[Nomomo11]

Wilson, the issue as it stands on the ballot, would unnecessarily put a hold on all planning or discussion of rail projects in this city for the next ten years. This is a result of COAST(radical anti-tax group) and Chris Smitherman's misguided attempts to circumnavigate the will of the voters as demonstrated in 2009, when that incarnation of the anti-transit amendment to the charter was soundly defeated at the polls. They have yet again made the language on the ballot so vague, that it prevents any rail from being built in the public right of ways which the city owns. Including those that are not actually streets (the abandoned Wasson rail line for instance). This is yet another attempt to push their radical right-wing agenda, regardless of the drubbing they received at the polls last year. It seems to me the vast majority of those opposed to this project live outside the city-limits, which seems to be why so many of the signatures they submitted turned out to be invalid. This is also evidenced by the fact that they only barely gathered enough valid signatures to get the issue on the ballot yet again.

Now I am not a whole-hearted streetcar supporter, but I know a bait and switch tactic when I see one. COAST's anti-public transit stance gives them little to no credibility in my book, as they are using this one issue to try and put a stop to any public rail in the city. This is not good policy, as we cannot know what the world will look like even a month from now, let alone ten years. To tie the hands of our elected officials for a decade seems excessive and an almost childish overreaction to losing the vote in 2009. Maybe if they spent more time working towards equitable transit than opposing all public transit they would have more credibility, but as it is, they have never worked for anyone but themselves, in their attempt to avoid contributing to this society at all costs.

[Wilson513]

Originally Posted by motorman

The streetcar a "trojan horse"? If and when Cincinnati voters are foolish enough to elect Christopher Smitherman to city council, they will quickly learn what a trojan horse really is! This political opportunist has demonstrated all too well how he's willing to destroy progress of any sort in order to foster unrest and turmoil. His plan is to turn the beautiful Queen City into Detroit Upon The Ohio, wherein HE can reign as its new political messiah. Recreate the Cincinnati of April/2001--and you will have given Smitherman the perfect platform for career advancement. (Just ask either Damon Lynch III or Alicia Reece how it's done...)

Oh, I so agree with that. Smitherman is the definition of "lowest common denominator."