How Cincinnati Defeated the Streetcar Haters ... Again

This time it's real. Cincinnati voters have (again) defeated a misguided attempt to block the city's new streetcar, which now will move forward and could be operational as early as 2013.

As I have written before, the Cincinnati streetcar will link the city's two most significant job centers, downtown and the uptown district around the University of Cincinnati. Even better, the streetcar will serve and help renew the wonderful historic district of Over-the-Rhine, which only a decade ago had fallen into such serious disinvestment and abandonment that 90 percent of its properties had become vacant and at least one survey called it the most dangerous neighborhood in America. (The "most dangerous" claim was convincingly rebutted here.)