Out of the office...

Will return Wednesday, Nov 18.

Casino builder Dan Gilbert likes rail...

Dan Gilbert, developer of Cincinnati's casino, likes rail transit so much that he's co-chair and a financial backer of Detroit's privately funded 3.4 mile Woodward Ave. light rail line:

The Woodward Ave. light rail project and organizational backers include Penske Corp. founder Roger Penske Peter, who is chairman of the M1 Rail project; Peter Karmanos Jr., founder of Detroit-based software maker Compuware Corp.; Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings and co-founder of Little Caesar Enterprises Inc.; and Quicken Loans/Rock Financial founder Dan Gilbert, who’s the project’s co-chairman.

Read the full article Here.

The virtual certainty that a casino will be built in downtown Cincinnati destroys numerous COAST anti-streetcar arguments. The earliest possible full year of streetcar operation, 2013, coincides with the expected opening of the casino, meaning:

• The presence of the casino will increase ridership and therefore increase fare box revenue, meaning the streetcar will operate at a smaller deficit than previously estimated
• Income from the casino will more than offset this deficit and allow faster repayment of bonds
• The casino itself might help pay capital and operations costs for a short spur directly into its facility
• Again, Gilbert is not only a financial backer of Detroit's plan, he's co-chair of the committee working to build it

Is ODOT's plan for I-75 light rail designed to stop I-75 light rail from ever being built?

Nobody seems to know that in a year or two I-75 is planned to be completely rebuilt from Kyle's Lane in Boone County, KY all the way to I-275 near Tri-County Mall. Fewer know that a light rail right-of-way is being preserved throughout the corridor as part of the reconstruction. Will the approved light rail route be economically feasible, or is it being designed with the intent to be prohibitively expensive?

History has proven that station locations are more important than speed. In an ideal transit setup, station locations are located in the center of existing neighborhood business districts. Knowlton's Corner in Northside is both a major bus transfer point and the heart of an established neighborhood business district and needs to be served directly by any city transit plan. So why, in this particular conceptual alternative, is The $28 Motel on Central Parkway getting a subway station, but not Knowlton's Corner?

This conceptual drawing envisions a 1-mile subway extension beneath McMicken St. to a new portal near the old city garage at Bates Ave. A new subway station would be built at the approximate location of The $28 Motel:

Cincinnati State gets its front lawn torn up for an elevated station, and Northside is served by an elevated station at Powers St. adjacent to I-74:

And another elevated station at Mad Anthony St.:

Green marks Knowlton's Corner -- where a subway or elevated station should be built. The left red dot marks the Powers St. station and the right red dot marks the Mad Anthony St. station:

The elevated Mad Anthony St. station would be in the vicinity of the blue building at center:

This plan completely ignores the abandoned rail right-of-way which travels straight through Northside:

Cincinnati State's stop would be built into this hillside and would cross Central Parkway twice:

I-75 and I-74 lines would split here and travel on overpasses across the Mill Creek:

The suspicious part of this conceptual alignment is by hinging the whole plan on a one-mile extension of the subway and a needless subway station for The $28 Motel, costs are increased exponentially over a more sensible alignment (such as surface running on or next to Central Parkway or in I-75's rebuilt median), meaning the line will never be built. The 1-mile subway extension and lightly used new subway station will cost at least $200 million more than surface running -- capital funds that could be spent instead on a better alignment for much more populated Northside or for a subway beneath the central business district.

November 2009 Song of the Month!

The election's over and done with, so fittingly the November 2009 Phony Coney Song of the Month is Iggy Pop's "I'm Bored". The following video clip, perhaps the finest lip-syncing performance ever captured on film, was recorded in New Zealand in 1979:

If The Provost had an iPod, "I'm Bored" would be on it, especially after this all-consuming election season. "I'm bored -- I'm chairman of the board" -- this guy's a genius!

Previous Songs of the Month:

October 2009: Chris Finney & the COAST All-Stars: "Charlie on the MTA"

September 2009: Bob Dylan: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"

August 2009: The Breeders: "Safari"

July 2009: Elvis Presley: "An American Trilogy"

June 2009: Rollins Band "Liar"

May 2009: James Brown "Night Train"

New footage from COAST's 10/30/09 press conference

New footage has surfaced of the 10/30/09 altercation:

Context:

Speaking of Charlie Winburn, will we see him push his rubber-tired trolley plan? If a federal award is announced in January? If the casino offers to kick its own money for capital and or operations?

And the election night Worst Dressed Award goes to...

From The Enquirer's "Winners & Losers" photo slideshow:

The Provost has influenced many minds, now he's influencing a certain someone's wardrobe.

But in all seriousness, what's with the hoodie-jersey combo?

The Enquirer runs photo of the Tampa streetcar *YET AGAIN*

The Tampa Streetcar is the new Rickroll:

The end of two political careers...

Issue 9 defeated!

The Provost witnesses election fraud...

...for the second time at the same polling place.

Last year, The Provost's ballot was taken by a poll worker, examined, and possibly discarded. The Provost never saw his ballot inserted into the reader and was non-verbally intimidated into leaving the premises. The new ballot-reading machine could not have been simpler, but nevertheless ballots were taken from the hands of voters, quite obviously looked at by a poll worker (unlike old-fashioned punch cards the design of the new ballots makes voter decisions visible from across the room), and then inserted (or not) into the machine by the poll worker.

This year, someone -- either a voter or a poll worker -- taped a flyer advertising four school board candidates to the "desk" part of the booths so that it was visible directly above ballots. Poll workers are trained to patrol booths in order to prevent people from doing this, but given the crinkly character of this particular flyer, it appeared to have been taped to the booth for several hours. Of course, if the flyers were posted by poll workers, it is a serious crime.

Groups like COAST goad "the people" into a myth of pristine democracy, but incidents like this illustrate democracy's Achilles' heal. Even in an environment devoid of election fraud, specific issues do not occupy a tautology. In this off-year, no doubt Issue 3 brought more voters to the polls than would have otherwise. Nobody will ever know how Issue 3 voters treated Issue 9, but if this comes down to a few dozen votes, COAST cannot claim that "the people" truly supported their nutty charter amendment.

Cincinnati Enquirer calls Issue 9 "Wretched"; reruns photo of Tampa, FL's non-modern streetcar

The Cincinnati Enquirer offered this scathing assessment of Issue 9 in its 11/01/09 Forum section:

Unfortunately, they mischaracterized "How Things Are Now":

"Cincinnati City Officials can move forward on any rail plan whenever they choose", while technically correct, does not accurately describe the present situation. The current streetcar plan does not require a tax increase, therefore it does not require a public vote. A larger citywide rail plan would require a vote because it would require a tax increase.

Oh, and while Cincinnati is planning a modern resident-oriented streetcar system, The Enquirer reran its photos of Tampa's non-modern tourist-oriented streetcar, which bears a resemblance to the rubber-tired tourist bus pictured on COAST's yard signs.

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COAST's City Hall press conference descends into chaos: big fat lies and a shoving match!

COAST's Friday Oct 30 City Hall press conference descended into chaos. Tom Luken denied that COAST had yard signs, then someone from COAST shoved an anti-Issue 9 proponent as network cameras rolled.

Click Here for The Enquirer's coverage, including an account of the scuffle.

Here are a variety of video clips from the press conference:

Conspicuously absent from the day's events was Mr. Chris Smitherman.

Washington, DC announces 30 miles of streetcar lines...

Washington, DC has begun construction on two modern streetcar lines. Cincinnati might have beat them to the punch, becoming the first eastern city to build a modern streetcar line, if not for the year-wasting actions of Chris Smitherman and COAST.

Washington, DC already has a 100+ mile rapid transit system, with lines radiating in 10 directions from the city center, and over 50 miles of subway tunnel. Streetcars are a much less expensive way to provide high-level public transportation for areas currently served by buses.

Here is a link:

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2009/10/28/washington-promotes-massive-new-streetcar-project

Suspiciously, the report states that streetcars will not return to Pennsylvania Ave, meaning the thought of modern streetcar on every White House and Capitol promo shot might be too much for the auto industry to bear.

Forbes Magazine's city rankings are idiotic!

Sports Illustrated has its swimsuit issue; Forbes publishes sloppy city rankings. Its most recent article ranked Cincinnati the 9th safest city in America, just a few months after nowpublic.com ranked Over-the-Rhine the most dangerous neighborhood in the county.

These lists draw attention by employing metrics that purposely create erratic and dishonest results. City boosters in cities that rank well race to get on camera; city boosters in cities that are ranked unfairly are tasked with untangling the mess on local TV, talk radio, and on local blogs.

Central to the useful confusion generated by these lists is exploitation of the public's ignorance of city versus metro population statistics. Every major city in the country occupies a different percentage of its total metropolitan statistical area's population and physical territory. The City of Columbus, OH, for example, is larger than the City of Cincinnati, both in terms of land area and population, but Cincinnati's overall MSA is about 20% larger.

Also, any report on the statistical safety of Downtown Cincinnati that does not account for its daytime worker population, hotel guests, and attendance at sporting and cultural events is one useful only to those who profit from fear. 80,000 people don't commute to Westwood or Pleasant Ridge or Mt. Lookout (in fact they commute from those neighborhoods, drastically dropping their daytime population -- shouldn't that be factored?), and those neighborhoods don't regularly host huge sporting events either. So why are crime stats based only on permanent resident population?

Similarly, the absurd Over-the-Rhine crime statistic was arrived at by not compensating for people who cannot be counted by the census such as temporary residents of the neighborhood's homeless shelters, renters who did not sign a lease, and outright squatters. In the case of Over-the-Rhine, it's the area's uncounted residents and drug dealers from other parts of town who are the cause of much if not most of the crime, and when total reported crimes are not divided by a number that reflects that reality, the resulting figure is wildly misleading.

Chris Smitherman now says Issue 9 ballot language written by NAACP lawyer Chris Finney is "an attempt to trick voters"!

"Political chaos is connected with the decay of language..."
-George Orwell

So is COAST/NAACP at war with Eurasia or Eastasia?

Chris Smitherman is now insinuating that The Vast Streetcar Conspiracy and/or Mark Mallory are responsible for Issue 9's upside-down wording:

This development was foreshadowed by this recent post by a COAST sympathizer on COAST's blog:

Over the summer Chris Smitherman announced that a privatized waterworks raised the specter of syphilis being pumped to black neighborhoods. Now a COAST sympathizer pegs the syphilis threat on "the government".

The real trick is that Finney and Smitherman scripted intentionally confusing ballot language so that a week before the election they could turn everything around and claim that streetcar supporters are responsible for the confusion surrounding the ballot language.

Reread your own media release Chris...this is nothing short of madness and political corruption: