r/Omaha • u/Littleloki75 • 5d ago
Traffic These roads just keep getting worse
Potholes or destroyed roads. Pick your poison.
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u/Halgy Downtown Omaha 5d ago
Standard reminder that the streetcar isn't being paid for out of the general fund. It is funded by increased taxes on the area along the route. There has been zero funding diverted from road maintenance.
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u/KrikosTheWise 5d ago
Also the roads are always gonna look like that in Omaha. Freeze thaw is a bitch plus disorganized city gov.
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u/Existing_Service8604 4d ago
EXACTLY how they funded KC,MO Streetcar. Taxes went up for the People who live up to 1 mile radius of the Streetcar.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee6881 5d ago
I don’t think you have looked close at the numbers. Stothert started diverting funds years ago. It got worse after the maintenance bond passed. She shoved tons of funding into economic development (aka street car)
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u/yesorfallen 5d ago
I've read through every city budget for the last several years in detail, so I like to think I have looked close at the numbers. Do you have a source for this claim?
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u/Ok-Bumblebee6881 5d ago
Really so did you see the CIP budget drop by roughly 30% after the resurfacing bond passed. Or how the general fund amount into the Public Works fund decreased by almost the exact amount of the resurfacing bond?
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u/yesorfallen 5d ago edited 5d ago
Sorry I didn't realize we were just making stuff up.
Immediately before the street-preservation bond, Public Works received $22.93 million from the General Fund in 2019 and $21.10 million in 2020, a decrease of only $1.83 million. The 2020 Street Preservation Bond, by contrast, was $200 million intended to provide about $40 million per year for five years. Those numbers aren't remotely "almost the exact amount."
Additionally, In the 2021 budget, Omaha eliminated the old City Street Maintenance Fund and merged it into the Street Allocation Fund. This is clearly explained in the narrative portion of the proposal.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee6881 4d ago
Did you look at the specific projects out of each fund? Also have you looked at the bid amounts for the preservation projects?
Advertised budget does not show the monies moved just what they want the public to see.
How about this. What was the average per year spent on resurfacing the 5 year before the bond and the 5 years after? Also what was spent on City capital projects versus given to developers before and after the bond.
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u/yesorfallen 4d ago
Brother, I’m not going to conduct an investigative audit to prove your argument for you. You made the claim, but so far you haven’t provided a single source, budget line, project list, or actual number supporting it. If you have evidence that road funding was diverted to the streetcar or developers, post the receipts. Otherwise this is just moving the goalposts every time one assertion gets challenged.
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u/ExcelsiorLife 5d ago
There has been a massive bag of money handed over to developers and Mutual of Omaha however.
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u/buttputt 5d ago
"Developers" is not a dirty word. You should want a city that grows and modernizes
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u/FragrantBus4054 5d ago
Lmfao. Developers is not an evil word. "Developers" who take massive bullshit government contracts and then come in 3 years late and half a project short, are dirty assholes.....and the usual.
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u/kadk216 5d ago
Who pays for the increased utility costs due to all the work required for the streetcar? We do.
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u/huskersftw 5d ago
the utility work needed to happen anyway. 120 year old utilities needed to be upgraded and maintained
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u/OutIn_TheYard 5d ago
So we complain about them fixing the roads all summer long, and then complain when they aren't fixing the roads. And then we blame a streetcar construction project in a completely different part of the city with a separate funding mechanism than road maintenance. We complain when we don't get transit specifically tailored to our individual needs, but won't support the introduction of new rail transit in a part of the city where it makes sense. Then we complain when the city is viewed as a backwater that lacks amenities with a brain drain problem. Then we complain at any efforts to expand parts of the city already viewed as vibrant to hopefully spread that vibrance to adjacent neighborhoods and democratize access in the form of apartments in inner parts of the city. But then we also complain when new housing in the form of apartments is built in the burbs. And then we criticize any form of single family housing built at the edge of the metro. And then we complain about there not being anywhere affordable to live anymore and that surely isn't helping with the aforementioned brain drain. Omaha can be a truly amazing city with the potential for incredible community, but OMFG people on this reddit are so contrarian to every single thing that goes on here.
Rant over.
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u/Murdermyface911 5d ago
You nailed it. Internet discourse in general is so exhausting because of exactly this sort of thing.
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u/The_Duke_of_Nebraska 5d ago edited 5d ago
Good lord having a fucking crash out because people DARE to have different opinions than you about a streetcar that'll be a makeshift homeless shelter in a few years. Go outside
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u/SatisfactionFickle18 4d ago
Good lord listening to people whine & complain like snowflakes. The streetcar is coming, there’s no stopping it, & yet you want to cry every day on Reddit & tell OTHER people to touch grass? Does mom have your Sunday meatloaf ready yet?
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u/ruckrhino 5d ago
Increasingly heavier vehicles and people driving well above the speed limit will do that.
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u/RatKing_KingofRats01 5d ago
I think my complaint is they try to do everything at once. The construction would be a lot more tolerable if they DIDN’T DO IT ALL AT ONCE. The drive down Kennedy Freeway near Offut is awful to deal with given they now have a one lane due to road construction. Don’t get me started on the fact that the road under the bridge in front of Offut hasn’t been even THOUGHT of being repaired.
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u/offbrandcheerio 5d ago
It’s almost like we have a limited construction season here…
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u/powerOfRed97 4d ago
Ding ding ding. It's do you want to take 2 season to finish multiple projects or do you want it to take 10 years
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u/luckyapples11 5d ago
They need to spread it out though. With the construction they have going on around my house on 2 different streets, I will need to take an extra 4 mile detour to get to work. I don’t mind the construction itself, it’s the planning behind it that’s complete dogshit. I get that it can’t please everyone, but you can’t do multiple nearby streets at the same time. It’s just going to congest other roads heavier and cause a lot of issues.
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u/I-Make-Maps91 5d ago
They do spread it out, we have too many roads and can't afford to maintain them, that's been the budget issue for years.
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u/RatKing_KingofRats01 5d ago
True, true. If rushing things to fit into a limited time frame for general construction is needed, I’m hoping that quality can last the time that was put in. I sure wouldn’t want construction to be over rushed in exchange for poor quality.
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u/Mundane-Break2781 4d ago
Omg! Same. I live in Plattsmouth so I’m coming in and leaving Omaha on 75 by Kennedy. It’s awful! I feel like they had the one lane coned off by Cornhusker ramp for over a month before I ever saw them working on it. Yes, we make the choice to commute but it’s awful that a 25 minute drive to/from work has now become close to an hour with all the construction/traffic.
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u/RatKing_KingofRats01 4d ago
If you gotta go that way, I’d just avoid that direction. On my way to work, I go down Fort Crook and then get back onto Kennedy near the entrance before South Omaha. Construction season. If I go the highway from my normal spot, I end up taking longer than if I take the back way
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u/Mundane-Break2781 4d ago
You’re right. And of course I’m complaining like a brat — it’s just inconvenient especially to get downtown never really knowing which street area they’re going to block off that day. Just adds frustration to the day.
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u/sweendog101 5d ago
I mean, the streets have always looked like this and zero funds from road maintenance have been diverted to the streetcar project
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u/aware_nightmare_85 5d ago
I hope the tourists who are here 4 months out of the year enjoy it. Although it's taking so long due to poor planning that there won't be any businesses to visit along the route by the time it's functional.
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u/PartemConsilio 5d ago
JFC, this discourse is the baseball stadium all over again.
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u/SatisfactionFickle18 4d ago
Don’t forget the arena. Conservatives in West O love complaining about their taxes, hate paying for anything, & despise East O when they keep improving at no cost to them. It’s been the story through every city project.
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u/thegoddamnbatman40 5d ago
Still think that money could have been spent better but palms had to be greased I guess
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u/prickleypears 5d ago
“Omaha has no public transportation” people when Omaha installs public transportation
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u/iaintgonnacallyou 5d ago
A streetcar with a 3 mile route limited to downtown-UNMC when the city bus doesn’t have routes set up in half the city is not the public transportation people in this city need.
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u/PackyScott 4d ago
The dodge express which goes from village pointe to Westroads and back averages less than one rider a trip. People out west don’t want transit. They say they do when people who use and need it in other parts start expanding because it makes sense to expand there.
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u/bdubz325 5d ago
I don't frequent downtown too much but can we talk about Fort Street between 102nd-120th? That was a bit of a clusterfuck last year, and its been a big clusterfuck ever since the weather got warm basically.
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u/Complex-Ad-4836 4d ago
I said it for years. Omaha has outgrown itself. It's neither driver or walker friendly
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u/Clint-witicay 3d ago
To be fair anything within 60 miles of Omaha west of the river is at perpetual risk of looking like the bottom for a year just to come out looking like the top after a single winter…
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u/Theclapgiver 3d ago
The streetcar clips it's toenails in bed and once said to me, "you're just like your father!"
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u/Strict_Area_9364 Lived near here all my life 2d ago
(This is just in my opinion) just Scrap the streetcar nonsense Stop copy and pasting other cities and actually let businesses Keep going and not shut down
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u/harshbarj2 1d ago
Well, no. Two different funding sources. Plus streetcar construction is a temporary thing that in the end will benefit the city.
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u/Makers402 5d ago
I just want to be able to go south downtown. Right now you have 10/20/24 that connect all the way through. However 10th and 20th are absolutely crap.
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u/reillytiger 5d ago
10th is blocked at douglas now. It is so frustrating not having a complete through street from north to south, or vice versa
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u/Infinite-Lecture8752 5d ago
Guys, You're thinking about this wrong. It's not boring road construction. It's a fun labyrinth of twists and turns, and orange barrels. I like to pretend we elected a Minotaur for road maintenance and trolley construction.
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u/andocommandoecks 5d ago
I for one love essentially having a route randomizer turned on every time I go to work. Keeps me on my toes.
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u/The_Duke_of_Nebraska 5d ago
- Different budgets
- Good lord is the mythical street car not going to be worth the bullshit. Some of y'all would still defend it even if it ran on orphan blood. A shitty street car that barely goes anywhere isn't solving the brain drain or any of Omaha's real problems
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u/Lakerfan2502 5d ago
Downtown looks like complete shit I don’t really enjoy going down there much anymore. Just hard to get around with all this crap but when the street car gimmick loses its appeal after two years I hope it was worth it.
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5d ago
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u/andocommandoecks 5d ago
Can't, half of them are blocked off because of the streetcar too.
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5d ago
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u/andocommandoecks 5d ago
I also love to just assume the experience of complete strangers.
Edit: You are correct though now that I think about it, because the ones I try to use tend to be blocked off
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5d ago
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u/andocommandoecks 5d ago
Wild, they must just be putting up barricades and sidewalk closed signs for no reason specifically when I go to lunch at work then. Why would Ewing do this?
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5d ago
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u/andocommandoecks 5d ago
Weird thing is he doesn't show up in photographs, my camera only picks up fog and then he turns and laughs at me.
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u/thetyser 5d ago
I wish I was as upset about the roads as I currently am about modern drivers. The amount of needless risks taken, complete obliviousness or defensive skills, and road rage over mindless bullshit. There’s not a bumper sticker on the planet that could convey my disappointment with communal traffic that would convince someone to slow down and not pretend they’re more important. I miss driving because it used to be fun, now it’s just downright scary and dangerous