City Council has delayed voting on the streetcar project for another 2 weeks. As stated in my last post Chris Bortz was supposed to motion to move forward with the project at yesterday's meeting, but instead told council members to take another 2 weeks to "work out their differences." The issue now is not whether or not streetcars will happen, but how they will happen. Even Roxanne Qualls declares herself a proponent of the streetars, however she wants to insure that the project will include a link to Uptown right away. The fear I have with this is that it will delay any start on the project at all and give the city more time to screw something up and not let it happen. I completely understand that they want to insure that an Uptown link will happen, but I think delaying construction of the first phase is pointless and potentially harmful to the entire project. They need to get this started now! In my opinion they should start the downtown/OTR loop immediately and work on the planning and funding for the Uptown link at the same time. Even if they start now, it will take until 2010 to get the first loop completed. I encourage everyone to really pressure council members through email to get started on this project quickly.
ENQUIRER ARTICLE
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Streetcar Vote Delayed Again
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3 comments:
This issue, coupled with The Banks Project yet again brings more truth to Mark Twain's "20 years Behind" quote about the Queen City.
I agree, Cincinnati is certainly behind the times when it comes to issues like these. However, I also think it's fundamental problem is a lack of progressively minded people. Both its citizens and its political figures tend to be overly conservative and unwilling to change. This leads to things just staying the same for way too long. Though this causes issues with projects like these, it has also helped us out in some situations. For instance, it has allowed neighborhoods like Over the Rhine to remain intact after all these years. Just think of how terrible it would have been if they would have bulldozed the entire neighborhood back in the 70's instead of just ignoring it like they did.
I'm just thankful the city has always had a strong, active historic preservation community that cares about the city's past.
Regardless, we now have a chance to really make up for the stagnation. Write your council members and tell them you want streetcars now!
I agree completley, 20 year behind has both helped and harmed us. After reading the article however I can't help but think if 2 weeks will help city council get together a proposal for both OTR and Uptown street car lines then so be it. But I'm not willing to wait much longer. This is a big project and time is need to get everything in order but with a project this size you could plan for decades and plan some more. We will soon reach a point where something needs to happen and now!!!
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