Hide Freeways

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2011/10/ohio-highway-cap-at-forefront-of-urban-design-trend-retail-complex-atop-columbus-expressway-offers-m.html/

More Highway Waste

Unfortunately, I recently drove most of the eastern portions of I-275.  I noticed that miles and miles of precast concrete sound barrier has been installed and continues to be installed.  A quick internet search shows that these walls cost in the range of $3 million per mile, and effectively reduce the sound by 4 decibels within a few hundred feet of the walls.  But the walls also sometimes bounce sound and have negative effects further out.

I understand that living near a interstate sucks and that they REDUCE property value, so I can understand the lobbying to mitigate the hazard.   But no walls are proposed to help residents anywhere near downtown.

I once considered living on historic Dayton Street in the West End.  But the house was on the western end of the street, and the highway noise was oppressive.  I've never seen sound barriers on any of the western half of I-275.  Just wondering.. Why would  Milford, Loveland, Indian Hill, Blue Ash and Springdale get more attention than say Colerain, Harrison, Mt Airy and Northside?  Gee I couldn't begin to guess...

But despite the inequity of the chosen locations, is this really an important priority for transportation dollars? Seems extremely wasteful to me.

In related news: Parking lots and highways kill cities.

Also related, vehicle miles traveled  (VMT) is decreasing for the first time in the history of the automobile, and Millennials have less interest in cars than previous generations.

Also, car / truck oil consumption graphs here. And why we should dismantle freeways here.

Highway Widening

Widening work on I75 south of Mitchell is just begining
 

The Asphalt Sheriff

Kasich says "There's a new sheriff in town"

And that guy is Jerry Wray, a guy who worked as an asphalt lobbyist for the the past 11 years:

...Kasich tapped Jerry Wray as the next director of the Ohio Department of Transportation...

…”We’re going to be looking at the program and making sure it is the right size and trying to review it from the viewpoint of safety, economic development and, of course, congestion relief,” Wray said.

Wray also said the $150 million that current Gov. Ted Strickland in October promised to give to city transit systems in Ohio over the next three years also might be in jeopardy...

…After retiring from ODOT in 1999, Wray became vice president of Flexible Pavements of Ohio, an asphalt industry lobbying association.

Voters in the state are having significant buyers remorse about the results of last fall's election. In a rematch 55% say they would now vote for Ted Strickland to just 40% who would vote for Kasich. -Weigel blog

Cutting the Cincinnati Streetcar funding only transfers federal money to a lower-ranked road project

...John Kasich and ...(ODOT) are making an ill-informed mistake by reportedly denying federal funds to the Cincinnati Streetcar – ODOT’s highest-ranking proposed transportation project. Cincinnati city officials relayed to local media yesterday that Gov. Kasich would likely not approve state funding for Cincinnati's streetcar project due to “shortfalls in state funds.”

....the funds in question are not state funds – they are federal pass-through funds, most likely Federal Highway Administration dollars such as Surface Transportation Program (STP) and Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) funds administered by ODOT. Under federal law, these funds must pay for transportation projects or transportation programs only. They cannot be used for education, health care, prisons or other programs unrelated to transportation.

.... “The streetcar funding has nothing to do with the state's deficit. If it is not used for the streetcar, it will go to a lower-ranked Ohio road project or it will go to another state’s transportation project.”

Funding applications to ODOT’s Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC) are ranked using a scoring process by whether a project will achieve a more balanced and integrated multi-modal transportation system, embrace environmental stewardship, promote community economic growth and development, and leverage state transportation investment. These goals are aligned with federal transportation investment programs.

All Aboard Ohio and the Ohio Environmental Council believe that a project may not be denied these funds if the project has met all existing scoring criteria established by and if there are sufficient federal funds available.

Ohio receives about $50 million in federal CMAQ funds each year and many times more in STP funds. The streetcar is seeking $36.8 million in new federal funding.

The first phase of the $129.8 million Cincinnati streetcar earned the highest score (84) of any transportation project, existing or new, anywhere in Ohio being considered by the TRAC (100 is the highest possible score). The second phase, extending the streetcar to the Uptown area for $58.6 million, achieved a very high score of 71.5. The streetcar will be powered by electricity – a clean, affordable and domestically produced energy source.

“Why is our governor against redeveloping Cincinnati’s downtown and Over-the-Rhine areas with the streetcar? Steel rails offer a far superior path to jobs and growth and clean air than yet another asphalt road pitted with potholes,” said Jack Shaner, deputy director of the Ohio Environmental Council.

By comparison, Ohio’s half of the $2 billion Brent Spence Bridge achieved a TRAC score of only 44. And the three components of the $632.2 million project to convert State Route 32 into an expressway in Greater Cincinnati's Eastern Corridor achieved scores of only 34, 39 and 48 (SOURCE).

“The Brent Spence Bridge and State Route 32 are costly, taxpayer-funded projects that will not create more long-term job growth for the region than the streetcar,” Prendergast noted. “In the case of Route 32, it will use taxpayer money only to disperse existing jobs and residents farther out, while weakening the city of Cincinnati's tax base, increasing our dependence on cars and foreign oil and making the region's traffic and pollution worse, not better.”

Two studies estimate that the streetcar will stimulate new Downtown/Over-The-Rhine development worth $1.5 billion, or roughly 15 times the cost of the streetcar.

...TRAC last December recommended awarding $36.8 million of ODOT’s share of federal funds to two phases of the streetcar project. The first phase is slated to receive $35 million of the state’s allocation of federal funding in 2012, on top of $15 million already awarded for 2011. The Uptown phase was recommended to receive $1.8 million.

More Info Here

How Wray sees Ohio, covered in asphalt:

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Can We Still Build Infrastructure?

The American notion of the open road is something we don't want to think about the details of.. we don't want to think about the real costs of it. We want to pretend that our gas taxes pay for our roads in full and that they should never have tolls on them and that raising the gas tax is unnecessary. But we haven't raised the gas tax since 1991 or 2 and it wasn't pegged to inflation or the price of gas, it was just a certain number of pennies per gallon. That money has become worth less even as the cost of construction has gone up and even as our roads are aging and the maintenance costs are going up so we're in a real pickle. The roads never paid for themselves really, because of the external costs, but we're in a position now where the notion that I can get in our car and drive wherever I want for free needs to go away...."

...I did get to interview the guy who was the head of Cintra operations in America, his name is Jose Maria Lopez Defuentes, and... he's coming from Europe, where there are tons of privatized toll roads, its normal there and nobody fights them. And he is trying to build them in Canada and the US, and I said "what were you surprised about as far as our culture and the way we see our infrastructure?', and he says: "You are all riding around, you're living in a house your grandparents built and you think it is free, but now the roof is leaking, and now you have to fix the floors and there's all this maintenance that you weren't really expecting.." and its a real culture shock. We're not in the frame of mind to build anything or even fix anything on a big scale...
-Matt Dellinger, on JH Kunstler's latest podcast

They are discussing Matt's new book, Interstate 69.

Federal Policy Depopulated Cities

In an editorial piece in the Enquirer last month, Ed Cunningham claimed that Federal Government policy assisted the depopulation of US cities. As I read this, I thought that his point can be demonstrated by my own family history. On a recent trip to the library, I paged through a 1911 City Directory and wrote down the addresses of 3 great-grandfathers, and found that two of them lived in houses that were later destroyed by freeway construction and urban renewal projects:

In 1911 Thomas, a plumber, lived at 1060 Wade Street. The house was near the Reds baseball field, which I guess is why my grampa was always talking about sneaking into games etc... This whole area was reconfigured for I-75 and the site is now the Enquirer printing press:

Anthony, a coachman, lived at 3840 Colerain. This site is now right next to an I74freeway ramp and the house was later demolished for the construction of a gas station:

Today:

Edward, a pressman, lived in Mt Auburn at 556 Milton, and thankfully, that house still remains in use:

I have no info on the fourth great-grandfather who was on a farm in Alexandria, KY in 1911.

It was a mistake to install freeways through the center of the our city. Thousands of brick dwellings were destroyed, and the properties nearby were made unpleasant and unlivable. It did not have to be this way. Freeways in Europe for example were often built on the edge of the city and connected via boulevards. Urban boulevards can move lots of cars and still support a vibrant city. As it is, we are still struggling to reconnect the parts of our city that were divided by freeway construction.

Anyway, I thought it was a relevant look back. Does anyone else out there want to share a story about their family home being demolished for highways, road widening or some urban renewal project?

Sounds Like A 5chw4r7z Quote

This quote in an article about the extreme congestion on the Cross-Bronx Expressway sounded like something 5chw4r7z would say, while relaxing on his fabulous downtown balcony:

“If I’m having trouble with my wife, I come here and watch the traffic. I thought I had problems, but look at these poor people. They sit in this traffic every day. These people have it so bad compared to me.”