BY GREGORY A. HALL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CRESTVIEW HILLS -- Northern Kentucky leaders praised the boom that continues with a Fortune 500 company's decision to move to the area.
Ashland Inc. announced Monday its corporate headquarters are headed to Covington from the Ashland area.
The decision provided an obvious reminder of Northern Kentucky's economic growth for area leaders assessing the state of the region Tuesday. It also led to a discussion during Tuesday's "State of Northern Kentucky" addresses by the area's top government officials of what needs to be done to prevent gridlock.
"Yes, it's a quick trip from downtown to the airport in 20 minutes today," said Campbell County Judge-executive Ken Paul. "But in 20 years, are we going to be like Chicago, (where) it takes two hours, and you're going to want to get on a light-rail or a monorail system?"
The county leaders also praised cooperation on both sides of the Ohio River for helping to lure Ashland. "Northern Kentucky has come of age," Mr. Paul said.
Along those lines of cooperation, the Hamilton County commissioners will meet next month -- possibly for the first time ever -- with their Kenton County counterparts, called the fiscal court, to discuss regional issues.
Mass transit is one of the area's unresolved issues.
"There's no question of where any mass transit is going to go in Boone County," said former Boone Judge-executive Ken Lucas. "It's going to the airport.
"That makes it easy," he said. "We've got our end secure, folks," he joked. "You work it out on the north end."
The north end, in particular the Ohio River crossing and the route through Covington, has been debated for months.
Mr. Lucas resigned from office last month to pursue his congressional campaign but gave the Boone presentation on Tuesday.
The cities of Cincinnati and Covington want the mass transit system, most likely ground-level light rail, to cross over the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge.
However, the regional committee studying the issue for the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments has doubts the bridge will do the job. The issue is being re-examined.
That committee has selected light rail as the preferred mass transportation system. Another transportation group led by Northern Kentucky developer Bill Butler is pushing an elevated rail system, most commonly known as monorail.
The other variable is what path through Covington the new mass transit system will take. City officials fear a central route would hurt homes and businesses along the way.
Kenton Judge-executive Rodney "Biz" Cain questioned whether the cost of light rail -- estimated at $1.2 billion from the airport to Mason, or $27 million a mile -- is worth it.
"We have mass transit," Mr. Cain said. "It's just on the highways." People prefer their cars, he said, and the freedom to go anywhere they want, any way they want.
He suggested the answer may be a new highway coming from northern Cincinnati and heading south to Delhi Township, crossing the Ohio River and going past the airport to the Walton area.
The head of the OKI study, Kenton County Commissioner Bernie Moorman, said the region's economic growth depends on a new mass transit system. Without it, air pollution will continue to increase and jeopardize federal funding for new and existing highways. "To build more roads would be a catastrophe," Mr. Moorman said.
Projections show about 30,000 people would use light rail each day, he said. "That's enough to make this thing work."
If the current study proves successful, construction could begin around 2005, with the first segment of the light rail system opening around 2008, Mr. Moorman said.
Both Mr. Lucas and Mr. Paul endorse a loop between downtown Cincinnati, Covington and Newport that would link major attractions.
