Light Rail - Where and how do we get started! (Cincinnati: college, live)
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I would say that the people I know are roughly 50-50. With only a few exceptions, they aren't fans of mass transit, almost all want to drive, and quite a few "lefties" disapprove of the streetcar for the exact same reason that both the NAACP and COAST do.
Gotta say you do know how to keep COAST well represented around these boards.
LOL, I wish I could say that - generally it just invited a flurry of DUI's and tickets for public intoxication during my first two, maybe three years of college. I consider myself lucky I wasn't one of them that ever got ticketed or worse (or gotten into a crash).
Funnily enough, I highly approve of going to the Greene because you can walk around there (and so do many of the same friends), so long as a car's being driven there. I'm contributing to thread drift here, but I wonder what the status on Liberty Centre is? IIRC Steiner is going to build another Greene/Easton/whatever in Liberty Township?
I believe they just got the final go ahead. I think Dillards is going to be the main tenant. As a Lebanon resident, once Libert Centre is built, I will likely not need to go up to the Greene much anymore.
We enjoy the Greene and go up fairly regularly, but this would be 15 minutes closer... so it'll definitely become our new hangout.
According to the developer the greene was 1.0 and Columbus was 1.5 but the new Liberty development will be 2.0! (Whatever that means).
Maybe they can eventually put light rail from the development back to downtown?
I believe they just got the final go ahead. I think Dillards is going to be the main tenant. As a Lebanon resident, once Libert Centre is built, I will likely not need to go up to the Greene much anymore.
We enjoy the Greene and go up fairly regularly, but this would be 15 minutes closer... so it'll definitely become our new hangout.
According to the developer the greene was 1.0 and Columbus was 1.5 but the new Liberty development will be 2.0! (Whatever that means).
Maybe they can eventually put light rail from the development back to downtown?
Once they got Dillards as a prime tenant, they had to redesign the layout again to accommodate more space. Last I read it has now gone from 64 acres to over 100. I still abhor the traffic it is going to bring, but even I have to acknowledge it seems to have a head of steam. Once built, I can't think of a single reason why anyone in our surrounding area would have a need to go downtown other than for a Reds or Bengals game. Oh maybe a concert at Music Hall, but that is such a small percentage of the population it is negligible. So tell us again why we need rail transit.
Once they got Dillards as a prime tenant, they had to redesign the layout again to accommodate more space. Last I read it has now gone from 64 acres to over 100. I still abhor the traffic it is going to bring, but even I have to acknowledge it seems to have a head of steam. Once built, I can't think of a single reason why anyone in our surrounding area would have a need to go downtown other than for a Reds or Bengals game. Oh maybe a concert at Music Hall, but that is such a small percentage of the population it is negligible. So tell us again why we need rail transit.
LOL! When I posted how looking forward my husband and I are to it, I was thinking, "Oh KJ is going to DEPLORE the traffic!!"
Hopefully it will have a direct on/off (or nearly so) from the highway. I originally thought it was on the East side of I-75, but with the recent talk they've been showing more maps ... its on the WEST side of I-75 - at Liberty Way. There's not a lot there right now, so hopefully it won't make the Tylersville VOA traffic any worse.
Some decent restaurants (hopefully), a space to walk around and enjoy, and a great movie theatre.. ? Yep, we'll definitely be semi-regulars.
We'll still go downtown (season tickets to the broadway series, occaional plays at other venues, occasional sports/music events) of course, but as I said this will cut down on our commuting to other malls (Kenwood, the Greene) unless for a specific store.
LOL! When I posted how looking forward my husband and I are to it, I was thinking, "Oh KJ is going to DEPLORE the traffic!!"
Hopefully it will have a direct on/off (or nearly so) from the highway. I originally thought it was on the East side of I-75, but with the recent talk they've been showing more maps ... its on the WEST side of I-75 - at Liberty Way. There's not a lot there right now, so hopefully it won't make the Tylersville VOA traffic any worse.
Some decent restaurants (hopefully), a space to walk around and enjoy, and a great movie theatre.. ? Yep, we'll definitely be semi-regulars.
We'll still go downtown (season tickets to the broadway series, occaional plays at other venues, occasional sports/music events) of course, but as I said this will cut down on our commuting to other malls (Kenwood, the Greene) unless for a specific store.
They keep touting how walkable it is going to be. But before you can walk you have to get there, and in this case that means driving. I look at the artist renditions and it looks like a park. Let's say to me it looks more like Disney World.
The last time I strolled around 100 acres it was called a golf course. And I no longer do that, it is either a golf cart or no go. Perhaps I should contact the developers and request they consider granting me a golf cart rental concession. How do you envision shoppers tramping all over that complex and carrying their goods with them?
The artist renditions just do not satisfy me. They have carefully not presented an overview of the traffic flow in and out of the place. Something of this scale is not going to be served by a couple of lanes.
Oh well, I am not going to stop it. At least we can survive by not going anywhere West of 42 or at least Butler-Warren Rd.
The first segment of the system uses an abandoned railroad right-of-way through St. Louis. This includes the rail level of the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River and its tunnel approach. Two subway stations were built into the existing tunnel in Downtown St. Louis. Unfortunately the two or three miles between Busch Stadium and Barnes-Jewish hospital are useless because the line travels through a railroad yard and light industrial area not unlike our Queensgate Yard. There is only one stop in this 2-3 mile stretch, at the mid-point of a Viaduct not unlike the Western Hills Viaduct. St. Louis University and the city's Children's Hospital are completely missed by this part of the line.
The system has been expanded twice. The first expansion travels through East St. Louis and deep into rural Illinois. It was very cheap to build since it's essentially through farmland. The second expansion is a branch line to Washington University and Clayton. This branch includes about two miles of subway tunneling, no less than 8 miles from downtown St. Louis. It would be like digging subway tunnels in Bond Hill or Reading.
It is a pretty nice but not fantastic system. It connects many of the city's main points, but unfortunately use of the abandoned railroad caused it to miss St. Louis University, the Children's Hospital, and all the underused areas stretching between DT St. Louis and Forest Park.
The first segment of the system uses an abandoned railroad right-of-way through St. Louis. This includes the rail level of the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River and its tunnel approach. Two subway stations were built into the existing tunnel in Downtown St. Louis. Unfortunately the two or three miles between Busch Stadium and Barnes-Jewish hospital are useless because the line travels through a railroad yard and light industrial area not unlike our Queensgate Yard. There is only one stop in this 2-3 mile stretch, at the mid-point of a Viaduct not unlike the Western Hills Viaduct. St. Louis University and the city's Children's Hospital are completely missed by this part of the line.
The system has been expanded twice. The first expansion travels through East St. Louis and deep into rural Illinois. It was very cheap to build since it's essentially through farmland. The second expansion is a branch line to Washington University and Clayton. This branch includes about two miles of subway tunneling, no less than 8 miles from downtown St. Louis. It would be like digging subway tunnels in Bond Hill or Reading.
It is a pretty nice but not fantastic system. It connects many of the city's main points, but unfortunately use of the abandoned railroad caused it to miss St. Louis University, the Children's Hospital, and all the underused areas stretching between DT St. Louis and Forest Park.
The Metrolink does not miss St. Louis University. The Grand Avenue station is one of the busiest stations on the system and frequently used by students. We even built a new station and viaduct to serve the St. Louis University population better.
I also wouldn't compare the area around Washington University and Clayton to anywhere in suburban Cincinnati, the area is a lot more similar to areas near the University of Cincinnati. The system also gets heavy use and has been supported twice by increased local sales tax.
The Illinois portion of the system is mostly through rural areas and small towns outside of East St. Louis, but the Missouri portion, which is most of the system, connects two major business districts (downtown and Clayton, the airport, multiple universities, the sports stadiums, the Medical center, Forest Park, the Delmar Loop etc. The system has not been cheap. We've spent nearly $2 billion on it over 20 years with no state help, not very cheap, but most St. Louisans see it as a regional asset. There is also extensive planning for TOD going on and plans for BRT to better integrate the system.
The "SLU" station is a full 1,500-2,000 feet from the center of campus, and situated on a wind-swept viaduct above an industrial valley. People have to cross over an interstate highway to reach it, from what I recall. It's like if UC's light rail station was at Good Sam Hospital, and there was an interstate and some railroad tracks to walk over. What people have to walk past to get to a transit station affects how many people will ride. And when a station is located on a viaduct over tracks, there is no way for transit oriented development to take root.
The "SLU" station is a full 1,500-2,000 feet from the center of campus, and situated on a wind-swept viaduct above an industrial valley. People have to cross over an interstate highway to reach it, from what I recall. It's like if UC's light rail station was at Good Sam Hospital, and there was an interstate and some railroad tracks to walk over. What people have to walk past to get to a transit station affects how many people will ride. And when a station is located on a viaduct over tracks, there is no way for transit oriented development to take root.
SLU's medical campus is on the other side of the industrial valley. Thousands of people also use this station everyday because the Grand Avenue bus is the busiest in the system, many of these students are SLU students. Transit Oriented Development can and will take root at the station. The city, in coordination with SLU and the Urban Land Institute is moving forward with Form Based Code at the station as we speak. Much of the area you speak of is industrial now, but that will not likely be the case in the future. There is also major work taking place at the Cortex district a multimillion dollar science and technology district that has plans their own plans for a new Metrolink station. These are facts.
In this video we see all of the problems with this station, which I contend is the worst I've seen on any light rail system. You can see how far people had to walk, how they had to stand on the sidewalk to catch a connecting bus, and how people would drop off and pick up passengers.
Improved bus transfer and car pickup situation, but the station is still out in the middle of nowhere.
There is simply no doubt that the station would get more ridership and might spur TOD if it were located in the heart of the SLU campus. This is the point I'm trying to make: station location is the single most important characteristic of a rail transit line. Not speed, not train frequency (to a point). This is why the new streetcar lines are getting such huge ridership -- the stations are in the heart of the action, not down in a gully.
I've mentioned it before but it needs to be restated: a perfect real-world example of the superiority of slower in-street running to faster operation on abandoned rail ROW's is Houston vs. Dallas. The Main St. light rail in Houston has the highest per-mile ridership of the new light rail lines, and it's entirely street-running.
If we are to build a system in Cincinnati, ignore the CL&N ROW in Walnut Hills and instead build on the main streets -- some combination of Gilbert, Reading, Vine, Clifton, Spring Grove/Colerain, Harrison, Glenway.
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