Cindaynati?

Are Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, on the road to becoming a single metropolitan area, or "metroplex", not unlike Minneapolis/St. Paul or Dallas/Ft. Worth? The Cincinnati Enquirer has raised that question, with additional commentary from The Urbanophile.

The expectation is that after the 2010 Census, the Cincinnati-Middletown and Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Areas would become a single entity. The rapid growth of the I-75 corridor between the two cities makes such a merger seem inevitable. Perhaps eventually leading to some sort of political merger as a mega-city of three million people!

Currently, the biggest thing connecting the two communities are the two very sorry Cincinnati sports franchises, the Bengals and the Reds. The cities have their own airports, television and radio markets. Their cultural and arts communities rarely interact, with separate professional theaters, symphonies and ballet companies. Hearty workers do commute in both directions. However, as a Daytonian I can say that I do not think of my self as a "Southwest Ohio Cincinnati-Daytonian"... Sometimes Cincinnati does not even feel like Ohio. I often think of Dayton as the last outpost of "the north", while Cincinnati feels to me like a southern city on the wrong side of the river... or as Ms. Cartophiliac often suggests, Cincinnati is its own feudal city-state.



It is going to take more than a Census Statistical merger to pull these two communities together. Dayton and Montgomery County can barely agree to cooperate on combined services. I think it will be some time before we see Cindaynati on the map.

MLK Day - The Dayton Puzzle

Today is the day that Americans honor the memory of civil rights leader and peace advocate, Martin Luther King Jr. As in many cities, Dayton commemorates the day with marches, rallies and speeches. It was a cold day for a march but spirits were warm.

Dayton has a special tradition that I always enjoy. Marchers gather at points north, south, east and west of the downtown and converge at the steps of the old County Courthouse. Each group is led by a piece of a puzzle. When combined the four puzzle pieces create a map of Dayton and the Miami Valley (the Great Miami River and its tributaries flow through Dayton).



This ritual is especially poignant for Dayton, because historically there has been a racial divide in the city of Dayton: Blacks on the West Side, Whites on the East Side. Over the years the lines between these divisions have blurred, and that's a good thing.

Dayton's Miami Valley Rail Authority

Transit Map Theme Week on Cartophilia concludes with a look at transit maps close to home.

Dayton, Ohio, is the only city in the United States that can claim more than 120 years of continuous electrically-propelled public transit. In the beginning, it was electric trolleys. Today, the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority operates eight different electric bus routes, in addition to standard diesel buses.



For more info on Dayton's electric transit system, visit The Dayton Railway Historical Society.

However, at one time it seems, Daytonians had dreams of a light rail mass transit system for Dayton. The Third Rail tells the story of DART Derailed—Light Rail Frustrated in Dayton, Ohio. At the tail end of the article, reference is made to Darrek Jones' brilliant Miami Valley Rail Authority website. Unfortunately, the parody website no longer exists, but through a search of The Web Archive and Robert Reynold's Whimsical uses of the subway map theme, I've been able to piece together a couple images.





Theses images appear to have been created between 1999 and 2000. According to Reynolds, "The original pages for MVRA constituted a hoax web presence for the entire operating company, with pages describing all phases of MVRA operation and containing an introduction to all key personnel... a tour de force!"

What detail! But why? Was it just a hoax? A labor of love? Neither Reynolds nor I can determine what became of Darrek Jones. He no longer appears to live in the Dayton area... If anyone can fill in more details about this fantasy transit system, let me know.

#530

Cardboard World

Driving around town this weekend, I had to pull over and take a picture of this company's sign:



Cardboardy Earth goodness.

Dayton Music Fest

The Fifth Annual Dayton Music Fest, a showcase of the Dayton Indie Rock scene, is this Saturday. I love the poster this year:

Dayton Real-Time Bus Schedule Map

A very clever use of Google Maps. A real-time bus route map for Dayton, Ohio:



The author, "dmcmanam", says on DaytonMostMetro:

If you want to know the Dayton RTA routes and view the location of the buses then check out the website I'm building -
http://geek-mafia.appspot.com/

It is based on Google Maps and shows the bus routes and schedules. At this point I'm looking for feedback about what features to add next and what people like and dislike about the site. Currently 5 routes are mapped and adding a route takes me a few hours to generate the GPS data such as location of the stops and to convert the timetable posted on the Dayton RTA website to the Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format my system uses.

When I know that there is some local interest in a cool transportation website I'll add the features people request.

The DMM board should be very useful for me - I was born and raised in Dayton but spent the last 15 years elsewhere so I have few local contacts. I appreciate all feedback on the site, positive or negative. I am aware of 1 technical issue currently in the Mozilla browser the page does not always come up and you must repeatedly click "Refresh" until the map shows. No known issues in Safari or Chrome.

Just noted above, I have also had trouble loading this app in Firefox, so try IE or something else.

Daytonology North

Last month, in a post about Lost Highways, I wrote about the National Road and the Dixie Highway as part of the national road system prior to the numbered U.S. Highways and Interstates.

The Daytonology blog has posted a brief history of transportation routes north from Dayton as part of a series of articles discussing development of Vandalia and other points North.

Maps include rivers, canals, railroads and highways.

Mike Turner gets my attention

While it is unlikely I will ever vote to re-elect my congressman, Mike Turner (R-OH) knows how to get my attention:



Putting a map on your franked postcard will always make me take a second look before it ends up in the trash...

See the original, from Google Maps:


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