The Status of “Cincy on Track.” (Spoiler Alert: We were right)
Cincy on Track Summary 1.14.26
At today’s city council meeting, the city manager provided a report on “Cincy on Track,” which is the city manager’s plan to spend the Railway money . Maybe this was her response to all the bad publicity the city administration has been receiving about the lack of progress on infrastructure spending. They were even scolded by former Mayor Luken.
The report is a 9 page list of projects, including their projected costs and status. The city manager neglected to provide a total number of projects on the list and also the total projected costs, so I asked ChatGPT to do that. It is also posted here.
As noted on the ChatGPT summary, the final list contains 158 projects with projected costs totaling $70 million for two fiscal years: FY25 and FY26. That is $35 million per year.
In an odd coincidence, $35 million was the last annual lease payment that was offered by Norfolk Southern during negotiations in 2023, before the Board of Trustees agreed to sell the railway and the city council agreed to put it on the balllot.
As we have been saying, the city does not even have the capacity to spend $56 million per year on infrastructure projects. Unfortunately, as our parents used to say, “the city’s eyes were bigger than their stomach.” (Or is it “their noses are longer than Pinocchio’s?”)
