The curse of the subway: A look at Cincinnati’s troubled century of mass transit

It's easy to see public transportation in Cincinnati as cursed.

After all, the city sits on the burial ground of one of the most embarrassing public transit debacles in the nation: the abandoned subway.

The story of Cincinnati’s mass transit woes reads like an epic Russian novel spanning generations. Struggling bus services, rejected tax levies, one abandoned project after another for 100 years, including, yes, that subway system.

Why don’t we have better public transportation?

Wallace Power asked that question while he sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Beechmont Avenue in 1964. A crash had snarled traffic, giving Power time to think.

“As I sat there, I thought how bad it was that more of us were not on buses,” said Power, who, as the utilities director for the city at the time, was responsible for roads and infrastructure.

Power told The Enquirer in 1964 the city would need some form of rapid transit. But 54 years since that traffic jam, very little has changed for people relying on public transportation in Cincinnati.

Bus ridership has continued to decline. Light rail remains hypothetical.

Why? Is it a curse? What do we do about it?

To look at the start of Cincinnati’s trouble with transit, we must begin on the fetid waters of a stagnant canal.

A subway leaves the city with an expensive hole

At the start of the 20th century, Cincinnati was optimistic about public transportation.

Horse-drawn streetcars had begun carting people around the city on Sept. 14, 1859. By 1900, electric streetcars crisscrossed downtown and Northern Kentucky. Railroads replaced canals.

This left – festering in the middle of town – the Miami and Erie Canal, the same canal dubbed “the Rhine” by homesick German settlers (and source of Over-the-Rhine’s name).

So it didn’t seem absurd in 1884 when The Cincinnati Graphic newspaper first floated the idea of a street and subway replacing the old canal, which is now Central Parkway.

The Enquirer and many other papers around the city supported the project. The idea picked up steam, and, on April 26, 1916, Cincinnati voters approved $6 million in bonds for the subway by a vote of six to one.

“Cincinnati voters were in a very generous and progressive mood yesterday,” The Enquirer trumpeted on its front page.

Cincinnati was bigger then.

The Census Bureau ranked Cincinnati in 1920 as the 16th largest city in the nation with a population of 401,000. The city was a boomtown at the time and needed a way to transport all the new residents.

“The Enquirer believes that Cincinnati is destined for large growth,” The Enquirer wrote in a staff editorial in 1921 pushing for the completion of the subway. “That the very near future will see a demand for every additional facility for transportation passenger and freight that the loop and subway rapid transit plan, as well as the steam railroad terminal proposition, can make available.”

Once again, the subway plan came up for a vote in April 1917, this time approving the ordinance to allow for construction. Cincinnati voters approved it two to one.

Unfortunately, the Kaiser got in the way – 11 days earlier, the United States had entered World War I.

The project ground to a halt until 1920. Costs inflated.

A fiscally conservative movement overtook city hall – the Charterites. The Charterites defeated the corrupt political machine of Republican boss George Cox and reformed the city government.

By 1921, public sentiment started to turn against the subway. Voters that year rejected by a margin of two to one a $4.2 million bond issue to build a boulevard above the subway.

The opposition may sound familiar to modern ears, as quoted in The Enquirer in 1921, that the project “would be a waste to provide for the boulevard at a time when the city needs money for so many other important matters.”

Work stopped in 1927 when the subway project ran out of money.

Cars became more popular, and city leaders didn’t see a need for a subway, said Allen J. Singer, author of the 2003 pictorial history book, The Cincinnati Subway.

In 1929, Cincinnati Mayor Murray Seasongood declared the subway dead. He also mocked the subways of other cities. After a visit to New York in 1929, Seasongood found the subway as “not fit for human beings. The people are crowded into cars like cattle.”

The rest of New York didn’t impress him, either. “People live in Cincinnati, but in New York they simply exist.”

Cincinnati was left with an expensive hole in the ground. Crews had graded 10 of the16 miles of the system’s loop and completed two miles of tunnels.

The city still had to pay the debt. When the final bonds were paid off in 1966, Cincinnati had spent $13 million. The city still pays for the subway.

The city did end up building Central Parkway over the unfinished subway in 1928.

Two miles of underground subway tunnels remain under Central Parkway. Since the unused subway holds up the roadway, the city must maintain it. Cincinnati has spent $3.8 million in the past 30 years on major repairs to the tunnel in addition to $2,500 each year on basic graffiti removal, inspections and upkeep, according to the city engineers.

Over the years, the abandoned subway has become the stuff of legends. And it’s inspired dreams of what could have been.

The city has 100,000 fewer people now than in 1920 when construction began on the subway. The population spread out. The city's population growth slowed and then started to decrease after 1950.

But at the same time, Hamilton County's population began increasing with the rise of automobiles, going from 494,000 in 1920 to its peak of 924,000 in 1970.

Cincinnati could have accommodated more industry and workers with a subway, Singer said. A subway would have meant fewer parking lots and less traffic.

“I think downtown would have grown,” Singer said. “I think Cincinnati would have expanded in all directions.”

Streetcars deemed a “menace to motorists”

Without a subway, people used streetcars as the dominant form of public transportation in Cincinnati in the early 20th Century. And to get up hills, Cincinnati had five inclines, including Mount Adams and Price Hill.

The city had used inclines since 1872. They were heralded as a way for the common folk to get up the hills, though not without risk. In 1889, the Main Street Incline broke free and plummeted down from Mount Auburn, killing six, including a well-known judge.

Buses arrived in Cincinnati in 1926 when the Cincinnati Street Railway first purchased a fleet.

Local newspapers heralded “rubber-borne transportation” as the future.

The city began shutting streetcar lines down in 1947 in favor of buses.

Cincinnatians at the time saw streetcars as noisy and disruptive compared to their gasoline-guzzling counterparts – buses. Enquirer articles described streetcar loading platforms as “a menace to motorists.”

The Enquirer editorial board in 1947 cheered, “The streetcar on tracks is unquestionably on the way out and there aren’t many persons who will be sorry.”

The final incline in Mount Adams closed in April 1948. There was an effort to save it, but the private Cincinnati Street Railway company deemed it too expensive.

The last streetcar left the station April 29, 1951.

As Cincinnati embraced buses, San Francisco opted to keep its cable cars.

In fact, you can ride a vintage 1948 streetcar – the same used in Cincinnati 70 years ago – in San Francisco today. It’s painted a vivid yellow with green stripes just like many were in Cincinnati. That’s not a coincidence. San Francisco painted it to honor the Cincinnati Street Railway, which operated the city’s public transit at the time.

The Cincinnati car takes people along Market Street and Fisherman’s Wharf. Its vivid color makes it one of the most photographed streetcars on the F-line, according to the Market Street Railway, a group dedicated to preserving old cable cars in San Francisco.

Cincinnati’s brief love affair with buses

Cincinnati’s love affair with buses didn’t last long.

In the 1950s, Cincinnatians moved to the suburbs and bought cars.

They’ve preferred to drive ever since.

Ridership on buses dropped from 130 million in 1946 to 39 million annually in 1963. Today, about 15 million people each year ride buses in the Cincinnati area.

Transit officials point out that this trend happened in many cities across the country.

Complaints of gridlock soon followed. With the interstate system in its infancy, it didn’t take much to lock up the streets.

An orphanage found that out the hard way in 1950. People sat in traffic for as long as eight hours trying to get to a festival at the General Protestant Orphan Home in Mount Auburn, according to news reports.

“With car ownership doubling in recent years, traffic in Cincinnati has become a definite pain,” The Enquirer opined in the wake of the orphan home festival debacle.

People still didn’t flock to buses.

In the 1960s, bus lines were cut as fares rose.

Public dissatisfaction led to a push for the city to own the bus system and keep bus fares affordable.

In 1968, Hamilton County created the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) to manage the bus system.

Planners initially planned for residents in both the city and county to shoulder the financial burden of public transit.

Nope.

Hamilton County voters in 1971 rejected a tax levy to pay for SORTA.

A year later, with the promise of lower bus fares, Cincinnati voters agreed to raise the earnings tax by three-tenths percent. That was the last transit tax levy approved by Cincinnati voters.

Hamilton County voters have continued to say “no” to public transit. They’ve rejected sales tax levies for SORTA every time they’ve come on the ballot – 1971, 1979, 1980 and 2002.

Cincinnati in 1973 bought Cincinnati Transit, Inc., which operated the bus system, for $6.9 million.

The last time a sales tax for transportation came up in 2002, the proposal included a plan for a 60-mile light rail system and a $100 million extension of the bus service. Voters in Hamilton County rejected it two-to-one.



That means buses still rely on the three-tenths percent earnings tax Cincinnati voters approved 46 years ago. That accounted for 58 percent of it’s $98 million in revenues this year.

Fares account for 18 percent.

And SORTA has considered once again resurrecting the idea of a half-cent countywide sales tax for buses. SORTA’s board in 2017 proposed putting the sales tax on this year’s ballot to prepare for a $3 million deficit.

But city and county leaders have opposed this, at least until SORTA can come up with a plan for better public transportation regionwide. As of now, the board has not moved to put the measure on the November ballot.

“SORTA needs to develop a compelling vision for improving our bus system," Mayor John Cranley told The Enquirer in February.

Just like old times

And not only are people dissatisfied with "rubber-borne transportation,” but streetcars are once again deemed a menace.

An electric streetcar began riding rails around downtown for the first time in 65 years when the Cincinnati Bell Connector opened Sept. 9, 2016.

And it’s stirred controversy ever since.

Ridership remains well below projections. While the system saw seven months of ridership averaging 60,000 rides a month, November saw a falloff from which the streetcar has not bounced back, Cincinnati Assistant City Manager John Juech said in March.

In January of this year 17,220 people rode the Connector, less than half of what the streetcar carried a year earlier.

Juech and others expect the streetcar will go into the red next year if nothing changes, meaning the streetcar could face shorter hours or other cuts in service.

Can the curse be lifted?

Lessons can be learned from the past, Singer said. The subway fell through because leaders didn’t look far enough down the road. Passenger railroad systems can take decades to build, but can be worth it in the long run, he said.

“Look to the future,” Singer said. “What is Cincinnati going to need 10-15 years from now instead of right now?”

Have your say at upcoming SORTA meetings

Getting there: Fixing Greater Cincinnati’s public transportation

Getting around Greater Cincinnati without a car can be tough. What can we all do make sure the area has a world class public transportation system that helps the economy, workers, businesses and families?

For the next year The Enquirer – and you, if you so choose – will be working on that.

We’ll examine how we got here, what the problems are and most importantly what we need to do. Let’s go.

Questions? Suggestions? Email Carl Weiser at cweiser@enquirer.com

About the series:

Today: How we got here. A look back at Cincinnati's sometimes troubled transit history

Summer: Where we are now. What are the shortcomings of Greater Cincinnati's transit system, and why it matters.

Fall: What can we do now? What can you do today to help improve the transit system?

Winter: Let's think big. What kind of transportation system do we want in 10 - or even 50 years?