Yesterday, The Atlantic Cities shed light on Chinatown buses, the intercity curbside bus services that gave rise to competitors such as MegaBus and BoltBus.
According to the map, there is direct Chinatown bus service between Cincinnati and New York — something that MegaBus doesn’t offer.
It turns out that two Chinatown bus services offer daily routes. Both pick up passengers in the northern suburb of Springdale, near the Tri-County Mall.
Wired Magazine on texting and driving
But I’m not convinced the bans will work, particularly among young people. Why? Because texting is rapidly becoming their default means of connecting with one another, on a constant, pinging basis. From 2003 to 2008, the number of texts sent monthly by Americans surged from 2 billion to 110 billion. The urge to connect is primal, and even if you ban texting in the car, teens will try to get away with it.
So what can we do? We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?
At some point, we will have to face the facts and realize that we’ve been making a huge mistake for the past 70 years by building for cars first and humans second.
COAST Demands Constitutional Right to Lie
What happens when you can’t win a ballot issue based on the facts?
COAST today filed a suit in federal court in Cincinnati seeking to overturn Ohio’s law against false statements in issue campaigns. […]
COAST claims Ohio Revised Statute 3517.22 violates constitutional free-speech protection. The statute makes it a crime — punishable by prison and fines – to “Post, publish, circulate, distribute, or otherwise disseminate, a false statement, either knowing the same to be false or acting with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, that is designed to promote the adoption or defeat of any ballot proposition or issue.”
In other words: when you can’t tell the truth, sue for the right to lie.
Free speech isn’t universally free. You can’t defame another person. You can’t induce panic by yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre. And you shouldn’t be able to lie to win an election.
Don’t let COAST amend our city’s charter — vote no on Issue 48.
1 locomotive engineer + 1 conductor carries 300 truck loads; 1 truck driver carries 1 truck load
Visit from President Obama raises political stakes surrounding the Brent Spence Bridge project
In summary:
- The bridge is “functionally obsolete” — that means it’s over capacity, not that it’s in danger of falling into the river.
- The bridge is being augmented, not replaced. Media should not be calling this the “Brent Spense Bridge replacement”. We will likely have the existing bridge for another 50 years.
- The bridge is congested during rush hour, but is it so bad that we can justify spending over $3 billion to fix it?
- Other ways to reduce traffic on the bridge include:
- Encourage Downtown-to-Covington traffic to use the Clay Wade Bailey bridge instead of the Brent Spence Bridge.
- Encourage/force non-local semi trucks to use I-275 to bypass the city.
- Encourage carpooling and build better mass transit.
The lack of curiosity from our local media is astonishing.
Several years ago, I was browsing the Eastern Corridor project website and came across the map above. It shows that the widening of OH-32 in Eastgate will require several businesses and homes to be demolished. As most of the businesses are chains like Starbucks, Blockbuster, Perkin’s, and Jimmy Buffet’s Cheeseburger in Paradise, I considered writing an Onion-style article to the effect of, Route 32 Widening To Destroy Eastgate Cultural Landmarks.
Now, The Enquirer has learned of the project by way of the closing of Cheeseburger in Paradise. They mention the restaurant “has closed its doors to make way for an ODOT highway project – a new westbound exit ramp for Ohio 32.” But not a drop of curiosity beyond that. (What is this highway project? Will other business have to close? What is the cost of this project?)
UrbanCincy published an article in January exposing what’s really going on: an $809 million extension of I-74 through Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs. Nine months later, the Enquirer has yet to make a peep about this.
