Many of us have heard from family members, friends, teachers, or blog writers about the tunnels beneath the city of Cincinnati that were supposed to hold subway cars and thousands of passengers. At one time, the unfinished subway was an ambitious plan that had robust support from state and local governments, businesses, unions, community organizations, and the public at-large. This would be Cincinnati’s jumpstart into the 20th century and cement the Queen City as a rival in economic power and population to that of Chicago, Detroit or even Boston and New York. Why didn’t it come to be and what can we learn from it? Has Cincinnati missed its moment to become a regional leader in urban development and transportation or is there still opportunity?

Cincinnati’s subway was a result of timely solutions to timely problems. At the turn of the 20th century, Cincinnati was facing aftershocks of its 19th century growth spurt with the urban core stressed with aging housing stock, and congested and dangerous throughways to the city’s extant hills. Streetcars and horse-drawn wagons battled with bicyclists and pedestrians in traffic downtown and interurban rail cars brought in commuters and visitors from Hamilton, Dayton, and from as far as Portsmouth, Columbus and Toledo. The result of this large ingress into the urban core was a call for a new way of moving people to and from businesses, residences, and amenities in the city. Luckily, this call was answered in the spirit of bold engineering projects that had been underway in other major cities such as New York, Boston, and the Queen City’s Midwestern neighbor - Chicago. Rapid transit in the city was deemed to be the solution and “The Loop” was proposed, researched, and refined into a plan the City could and would get behind. 

The Loop was developed as a response to outdated transportation technologies, canals, and more modern infrastructure, interstate highways. While canals once divided neighborhoods, highways would eventually amplify this division and destruction. The Loop meanwhile proposed connect and movement of people underneath and into these neighborhoods. Despite its potential to bridge communities and revamp urban movement, The Loop was ultimately outpaced by the rise of automobile culture and expressways. 

A victim of its time, The Loop suffered setbacks including loss of tax base during prohibition, the deep impact of the Great Depression on the city and region, and inflation and material scarcity during WWI & WWII. Ultimately, The Loop’s doom would be a result of political winds at the time which sought to crack down on political bossism and machines such as that of Boss Cox in Cincinnati. The Loop project ended with only a handful of stations under construction, no track laid, and no passengers moved. With rapid transit plans fading into history, highways emerged as the answer to the city’s problems and forever altered our landscape. With these highways came brand new problems to consider, one the city and region are beginning to grapple with today.

The problems the city faces today mirror that of the original inspiration for The Loop but are different in important ways. Instead of inaccessible greenfields, exurban neighborhoods have stagnated while the urban core is seeing slow but sure revitalization in new residential developments, businesses, and entertainment options. Instead of horses, wagons, and streetcars clashing with pedestrians, we see cars and parking lots occupy valuable surface lots and make our pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure more and more dangerous. Housing costs are rising and have priced out many young families, students, and would-be Cincinnatians. Highways became the answer to alleviate congestion in the 1940s and 50s, but with them came new problems and concerns. Instead of canals dividing neighborhoods from one another, expressways outright destroyed many neighborhoods and continue to divide and occupy potential communal spaces. Congestion remains an issue, namely that of traffic on said interstates and across the Ohio River on our bridges and connecting expressways. 

The Loop, or rapid transit options in general, represents a fork in the road for a city’s development, the physical representation of an investment in people and intentional growth over sprawl and shortcuts. Investing in more capacity on expressways by eliminating public spaces or development opportunities has been a common response to congestion and growth. This method of growth prioritizes movement of people out of and around cities rather than those in the city center, our hubs of culture, community, economic growth, and our future. 

Every decade or so, it seems that the city remembers the hope and dream of The Loop and a new study revives the idea, whether it be for true rapid transit, a scaled down underground streetcar variation or even for more superfluous purposes (underground wine tunnels, movie sets, shopping malls, etc.). The most ambitious periods of interest in rapid transit remain a century apart, with the original rapid transit plans at the turn of the 20th century and the 2002 Metro Moves proposal at the turn of the 21st. The city has once again asked for proposals and ideas for what may become of the long abandoned tunnels. When presented with new challenges, perhaps The Loop can inspire new solutions where we look forward to more foot traffic in our great city rather than sitting in traffic. 

Over a hundred years ago, we dared to say that a new Cincinnati says, ‘I will’ Today, as a city on the move, facing new challenges and opportunities, we should be confident in saying, ‘We must’.