Citizens For A Better Norwood

Monday, April 04, 2011

Enquirer reader offers solution to Norwood’s budget deficit

Until we saw the following comment by "COAST" under Saturday’s Enquirer article about Norwood’s budget problem, we had found nothing amusing about the crisis:


Clearly Norwood's biggest problem is lack of a streetcar. If they only had a streetcar, the clouds would part, sunlight would shine in, and dollar bills would rain down from the heavens to fill their vacant buildings with new residents and businesses. Streetcars are magical like that. They can even prevent crime; just ask a new urbanist.

Norwood needs to borrow a hundred million or so bucks and provide the kind of transportation choices that will motivate young creative hipsters to move into their community. If they did that, it wouldn't be more than a year or two later that they would be annexing Cincinnati. Streetcars are magical like that. They can even create jobs; just ask a new urbanist.

The other big problem Norwood needs to fix is their car-centric culture. What other suburb has a highway named after it? None. That's why Norwood is hurting. If they would just rename the Norwood Lateral, they would see some progress. Call it the St. Bernard lateral instead. Or better yet, tear it out within their city limits and convert it into a park or bike trail. What could be more progressive than that? They could even run their new streetcar through the park in homage to the Cincinnati Subway Boondoggle that never got built there. Even Portlanders would flock to Norwood then. Streetcars are magical like that. They can even solve the oil crisis; just ask a new urbanist.

Norwood needs to hire HDR to do a report detailing all the wonderfulness that will come from their new streetcar. Even if Norwood isn't a good candidate for streetcars, the HDR report will prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. All their reports do that, whether it's true or not; they have never come to any other conclusion.

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter whether Norwood has any cops or firefighters or trash collectors or pothole fillers at all; as long as they have a streetcar, everything will be fine. Streetcars are magical like that; just ask any new urbanist.