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COLUMBUS City Council meeting – Streetcars to get public hearing next week
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 3:06 AM
By Robert Vitale
Columbus City Council members complained last week that they’ve been left out of the loop on Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s streetcar plan.
Last night, they made the loop bigger.
The council will host its first public hearing next week on the $103 million proposal to build a 2.8-mile rail line between Downtown and Ohio State University. The council’s decision came in an impromptu debate at the end of the weekly meeting.
The day and time haven’t been firmed up, but Councilwoman Maryellen O’Shaughnessy said she wants the session to take place before the council votes on Coleman’s proposed 2008 capital budget.
That budget, which includes a $2 million request to begin design and engineering work for the streetcar line, is scheduled for council action on May 5.
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Streetcars to get public hearing next week
By: lazyfish
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wow…old guy on the news just now:
“This is supposed to bring all kinds of commercial development, but do we want it?!? That’s the question that isn’t being answered”
No, of course we don’t new businesses and commercial development which could bring jobs and economic development into downtown and surrounding area. Can you believe these politicians actually trying to solve city issues in a thoughtful, progressive and forward thinking way? How dare they!
[/sarcasm] :roll:
^^electric is about 4 times more efficient than internal combustion, cheapest way to move people and goods over land is electric rail, period
high fuel prices are going to force cities like Columbus to seriously rethink how it moves people around and provides services, street cars is just the first step, at some point they should replace buses inside 270
lots of other policies will be forced to change, things like forced busing of students across town for example
catering to cars will become untenable
density has to be raised in a huge way, the idea of a family of four having 2500 sq ft to live in is going to get real scarce or real expensive
I do like the one policy Coleman has been pursuing with some effort, moving people into downtown putting jobs and home close together, that is the essence of what a city is, he or the city will have much more success if they swallow their pride though and take a hit in the wallet and realize that $12k-$24k per year for just housing is insane and the principle reason why condos have hit a brick wall already. Get people and jobs close together and make transportation a moot friggin point, that is ultimately what needs to happen. The prices and needs of the people need to match. Businesses downtown make much more $$ and can pay higher leases when they benefit from business hours outside 9am-5pm, in order for that to happen people have to actually live downtown. I don’t know what the average wage is for those that work downtown but I would venture to guess that spending $24k per year on a condo is out of reach for the typical family of four, so they move out into the burbs and now the fuel prices will effectively force them to pay that much anyway !!
Yeah, a couple people did, which I have to say wasn’t really the point. The Mayor didn’t call this meeting together. Council did. They’re the ones who wanted the extra input. The mayor held a similar meeting just a few weeks ago and was there for that.
How many people who came to speak left immediately after they said their bit? ;)
Uhm… why can’t we do both? I was a bit annoyed when Councilwoman Tavares asked one of the OSU kids if they’d rather have a Streetcar or extended bus hours. Since when did this become an either/or proposition? If this money isn’t going to be raised for the Streetcar project it’s not going to be raised for anything else. COTA has their own next cashflow from their 2006 levy and are already underway with improvements.
Let’s multitask here, people! :D
That was the guy who got kicked out of council last week. I guess he shows up all the time to talk about whatever he wants and public access is a common complaint. I think he showed up today thinking that it was a regular council meeting.
Seriously though… YouTube killed the Public Access Star, guy. Sorry if you haven’t heard.
Anyway, seemed like a great mix of opinions tonight from what I caught in person and online. It seems like the questions that were raised will only be answered by going forward with the engineering study and then making a decision from there.
I’d love to see a rendering like this for Columbus:
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the mayor’s meeting. He did attend part of the hearing and his unscripted opening remarks were pretty powerful.
City council called a hearing and invited the public to join in. There was no request by council that the mayor stay four hours to hear all the comments solicited by the legislative branch.
Although it may be confusing to casual observers unfamiliar with basic civics, the mayor’s administration and city council are two quite different things.
I know most people here are pro streetcar so i’ll probably be shunned for this, but not all studies are supporting public rail transit.
In fact there is a study that found that the only system that was actually beneficial econoimcally to the community was BART in San Fran. Yes, this study included the precious Portland system which I know everybody would love to have here.
The study takes into consideration consumer surplus gotten from the system in addition to the revenue from the fare and compares them to what it costs to run the system. The costs are inevitably greater in every case but one.
I know this isn’t what people want to hear, but once I found it I couldn’t not post it here for discussion.
http://www.economics.uci.edu/docs/colloqpapers/smallconf/winston_paper_smallconf.pdf
I’m not trying to shun you or anything, but can regular roadways be measured using the same system? And if they’re found not to have economical benefits to a community, should we stop building them? Or should we start attaching fares to every road to make them economically beneficial?
They are economically beneficial because of usage levels. They generate more consumer surplus than rail. Roads cost less to build and maintain and thought of by the ‘consumer’ as much more valuable.
Something related that I just saw on Facebook:
70/71 Split = $1 Billion, +/-5 Miles
$200 Million/Mile (we just get the road)
Streetcar = $103 Million, 2.8 Miles
$36 Million/Mile (everything included, out the door)
70/71 Split = $1 Billion, +/-5 Miles
$200 Million/Mile (we just get the road)
Streetcar = $103 Million, 2.8 Miles
$36 Million/Mile (everything included, out the door)
The 70/71 split is a whole different story because of the poor planning there that costs a lot to fix to begin with. That said, how many people use the 70/71 split per day versus how many would use the streetcar? And does that 103 million include just building it or operating and maintaining it?
Keep in mind that many of the systems are practically brand new.
It is kind of hard to compare BART, which laid track in ’60-’70 to Portland, which began in 2001.
Watched the TV coverage, it was really split. More of the “no’s” were people wanting more rail. I hope council still moves forward. As I view other cities plans like Cincy’s, I wonder why Columbus’s version is concentrating two way streetcars on high instead of a one way loop system? (Example: OSU south on high to courthouse up front st. to nationwide, north on Neil back to OSU route) Access to more of the residents.
Everyone seemed to Thank the board for holding the hearing which I don’t think happened in Cincy. Also, Cincy’s doesn’t have a “in stone” financing plan. All in all good showing.
70/71 Split = $1 Billion, +/-5 Miles
$200 Million/Mile (we just get the road)
Streetcar = $103 Million, 2.8 Miles
$36 Million/Mile (everything included, out the door)
The 70/71 split is a whole different story because of the poor planning there that costs a lot to fix to begin with. That said, how many people use the 70/71 split per day versus how many would use the streetcar? And does that 103 million include just building it or operating and maintaining it?
But look to the future. People are already changing vacation plans in relation to rising gas prices, how much longer until we do reach a breaking point and see a switch from car culture to mass transit as a norm? So the 71/70 split may seem more economically beneficial at this moment, but what happens in 10 years if gas rises 25% in price and car ownership drops 25%-35%?
It is kind of hard to compare BART, which laid track in ’60-’70 to Portland, which began in 2001.
The study included all major transit systems in the country. Ones like New York and Chicago weren’t economically profitable either.
This isn’t to say that there might not be valid reason for the Columbus streetcar, and idealy I’d love to have public transit, but economically there are issues.
70/71 Split = $1 Billion, +/-5 Miles
$200 Million/Mile (we just get the road)
Streetcar = $103 Million, 2.8 Miles
$36 Million/Mile (everything included, out the door)
The 70/71 split is a whole different story because of the poor planning there that costs a lot to fix to begin with. That said, how many people use the 70/71 split per day versus how many would use the streetcar? And does that 103 million include just building it or operating and maintaining it?
But look to the future. People are already changing vacation plans in relation to rising gas prices, how much longer until we do reach a breaking point and see a switch from car culture to mass transit as a norm? So the 71/70 split may seem more economically beneficial at this moment, but what happens in 10 years if gas rises 25% in price and car ownership drops 25%-35%?
I completly agree and meant to mention that in my first post. I’m looking into studying that as a thesis topic including gas prices and doing regressions to see the results. The years that the study was done gas prices were significantly lower, as it was published in 2005. The key to making it profitable is to have the demand for it. It almost never would be paid for at the farebox, but there needs to be a community value for it as well.
[gulp]
Damon Zex is dead? :shock: I’ll get you YouTube!! :evil:
Sadly enough, Public Access TV remains more accessible to Columbus residents than computers and the intertubes at this stage. Any forum for public speech deserves support. And its not like there’s not money for it. The cable companies already pay for it.
Sorry to go off topic on yet another thread.
Sure, it’s not the best comparison since 70/71 is a major interstate that services loads of non-local traffic, while the initial Streetcar starter line is a local service. Still… it’s something worth thinking about in terms of dollars being spent and how perception plays a huge factor in how easily we spend those dollars. People hardly bat an eye when $100 million is dropped on reconfiguring an interchange, but spending $100 million on rail transit goes through a tremendous amount of public scrutiny.
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the mayor’s meeting. He did attend part of the hearing and his unscripted opening remarks were pretty powerful.
City council called a hearing and invited the public to join in. There was no request by council that the mayor stay four hours to hear all the comments solicited by the legislative branch.
Although it may be confusing to casual observers unfamiliar with basic civics, the mayor’s administration and city council are two quite different things.
Didn’t post that particularly to show agreement with his statement, it actually struck me as gratuitously snippy…
What were the mayor’s comments?