Cincinnati officials have hopes of building a $128 million streetcar line in the city and are coming to Portland to check our system out.  It makes me wonder if they’ll get to actually hear both sides of the coin, the positives and negatives of the system.  I fear as systems are built around the country there will continue to be the skewed view of the transit planners and the extremely skewed view of the anti-transit pro-roads people.  It seems the middle ground of logical infrastructure will remain the distinct characteristic of America’s past and not our future.

So if any Cincinnati Streetcar people want some more thoughts, from an informed individual, you guys should shoot me an e-mail.  I also could speak distinctly to the conservative base that holds sway in the Cincinnati area.  Good luck to ole’ Cincinnati on getting something that works for them, I sure hope they do it well informed.  I can guarantee Cincinnati one thing, they will NOT see the level of development Portland has, so that skewed view hopefully won’t cloud the decisions for that city.  After all, Cincinnati seriously needs some help on a number of fronts.  Portland, by comparison, has made no mistakes.