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Why do you think that? Did we avoid waste in this instance of intense public scrutiny? The street car is going to cost over $100 million and then it will lose money every year. Did the public attention do anything to mitigate that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kahns Krazy
I agree with a lot of your rants about the Cincinnati Metro / SORTA. There is lots of room for improvement there. The city agrees with you as well, and even went so far as to study options for creating a new transit authority. It's kind of an interesting read.
http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/W...'200800909'
I also agree that private industry is more efficient than public sector. Private industry would cut out all the unprofitable bus routes. I'm not sure that's in the greatest public interest though.
I got an error when clicking your link. I would like to read it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kahns Krazy
I obviously support the streetcar. I think the overall impact will make it one of the most valuable public projects on the table. Even so, it damn near lost a vote. I think there are worse projects that get approved that might not if subject to this level of public discussion on the costs and benefitsQuote:
Originally Posted by Snipe
Do we really need a fourth park on the riverfront? Is that worth over $100 million right now? I'm sure it will be very nice. Other than the Banks, there's zero developable land around it though, so other than being a pretty park on the river, it's really going to be limited on how much it can attract new residents or businesses to the area. If it were up to me, I'd put that on on the back burner until the economy improves.
On a much smaller scale, there's $200,000 in the capital budget for "Council Chambers Video Production System". Seriously? What the hell is that? People make award winning films on $5,000 video equipment. I'm pretty sure all Council Chambers needs is a handful of flip video cameras and a youtube account.
I think it was your idea that projects should compete for the available dollars. Put all of the capital project ideas on the table. Rank them all, then fund the ones with the best scores first until you run out of money.
hmm. try copying and pasting this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Snipe
HTML Code:http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/Webtop/ws/council/public/child/Blob/23272.pdf;jsessionid=87452B0F32D536F9E08F28ED45F3F1C8?rpp=-10&m=1&w=doc_no%3D'200800909'
I found it by searching "City/SORTA Agreement of 1973" on google.
Thanks for the link Kahns. It is interesting and somewhat encouraging that they took a fresh look at what they had to do to reorganize it.
Here are some links from Reason Magazine:
A Desire Named Streetcar, Chapter XXVIII
Clang Clang Clang Goes The TrolleyQuote:
And when your local councilman or mayor or senator or president or Better Business Bureau fundraiser comes around and tells you the only thing that keeps your hometown or state or region or country from being world class is the lack of a 19th-century technology that costs bazillions to build, bazillions to operate, and bazillions to tear down and start over when the monorail is the nostalgic wave of the future, tell 'em to lower your taxes, cut stupid regulations, and go to hell.
Why Cities Decline, Case Study No. 1,223 (Idiotic Streetcar Edition)Quote:
Indeed, the Queen City is flat-ass busted to the tune of a $50 million budget deficit and a school system that is cutting its budget by $21 million.
In shoveling scarce funds to projects that are useless at best and catatsrophic at worst, Cincy is, alas, a model for virtually every other municipality in the country, maybe the world. Phase One of the Great Streetcar Revival plan is upon the place that drunken statesman Winston Churchill once mumbled was "among America's most beautiful inland cities," a $128 million boondoggle that will surely double or triple in price as the years of construction wear on.
Terrifying Picture of City Pension FUBAR Coming Soon to Your Hometown!Quote:
The project is a fantastic example of how city officials delude themselves into thinking that whipped cream and sprinkles--or a goddamn transit technology that is one of the most frustrating, underperfroming rides imaginable--can save cities. What is it about trains? Or light rail? Or streetcars? Is there a Freudian analysis that's relevant here?
Why won't cities such as Cincinnati do far more basic things to lure people back into their craptacular clutches? The list might include: Generally reducing taxes and regulation so that it's relatively cheap to live and easy to do business in an area; creating a safe climate with regards to crime; reforming a public school system so people who don't have kids (a majority pretty much everywhere) don't have to worry about school issues and people with kids have some decent measure of choice; not spending billions of dollars on the owners of jerk-off sports teams.
The whole system is going to break. That is my fear. Sometimes I think I am some sort of paranoid freak because everyone else is business as usual.Quote:
Here's some news from a tale of municipal (and, hence, taxpayer!) woe from the toddlin' town of Cincinnati, which just earlier this week decided it was so flush with cash that it could afford to toss hundreds of millions of dollars down the craphole on a freaking streetcar. The topic today is one that is playing out in basically every city hall in the country. And every state capitol building. And at Social Security. It's We Are Out of Money, public-sector pension edition.
Our story thus far: Cincinnati's public employee retirement system is mired in a Gulf spill-sized ocean of red ink. The powers that be spent the past nine months figuring out just how bad the situation is, and yesterday they had a public meeting about the man-made disaster. Let's listen in, via the Cincinnati Enquirer's account:
Retirees are understandably freaked that their benefits are going to be cut, but it's worth asking how Pete Rose's hometown and so many others got in this suicide squeeze. Travel back to the 1990s, when the system was "flush with money."Quote:
Without substantive changes, the $2 billion system could see a projected $1 billion long-term shortfall balloon to $1.5 billion within five years....
Even if the plan achieves what many see as wildly optimistic investment returns, it still could lose up to $30 million a year. Not recommendations that, to avert those doomsday scenarios, City Hall might be asked to come up with an immediate cash infusion of as much as $439 million or nearly double its annual payments....
So what you want to do, Cookie Puss? How you gonna fix the system? The first thing to note is that the city's hands are somewhat tied in terms of screwing with core pension benefits. Which means that the costs will ultimately not be borne by the retirees but by future retirees in the system and, ultimately, taxpayers.Quote:
At that time, the city enhanced the annual cost of living increase retirees receive, added vision and dental benefits to health coverage, raised a death payment to cover funeral expenses from $2,000 to $7,500 and increased a so-called "benefit multiplier," the percentage of salary that city employees earn toward their pensions for every year of service.
Those changes increased the pension system's costs, an issue that has become more problematic amid soaring health costs, increasing life expectancies and a shrinking city workforce that now has only one city employee paying into the system for every 1.46 retirees drawing benefits from it.
Other factors that have dug a deeper financial hole include $574 million in investment losses in 2002 and 2008, changed assumptions about prospective earnings and expenses, and inadequate city funding - the latter being, contrary to many retirees' belief, a negligible element in the overall picture.
And I voted for the Streetcar, and I was aware of all the arguments against it. I have no one to blame but myself. It is madness.
Didn't Cincinnati have streetcars over 50 years ago? Didn't Cincinnati tear them down because people were using other transportation, namely cars?
So why do we tear something down for lack of use and then build it again 50 years later?
I wasn't around for that. The current story is that it was an intentional effort by GM to boost car sales. I have no idea if that is true or not. As Snipe pointed out, it was once the case that public transportation was run by for profit concerns. That would make public transportation vulnerable to being bought out and scuttled by a car maker that also happened to own the largest bus manufacturing facility.Quote:
Originally Posted by XU 87
After building the streetcar, I think we should resurrect the subway. And we have some of the tunnels built already.
Fortune favors the bold! Regardless of your position on the streetcar I think most believe that over the next ten years we will see a significant increase in the number of people living downtown. Take it from someone who lived for awhile in an urban setting........a necessity within walking distance or on the streetcar route will be a grocery store. Not a Jungle Jims but not a UDF either. Any partners out there?