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The next time you’re on Central Parkway between Walnut Street and the Western Hills Viaduct, go ahead and imagine the rumble of a train beneath your feet. This stretch of 2.2 miles is what remains of Cincinnati’s abandoned subway tunnels, a legendary piece of the region’s history and, some hope, a fragment of our future.
These tunnels are unique. There is no other known city in the world with subway tunnels that were constructed but never used. Empty tunnels are common enough, says Jake Berman, author of The Lost Subways of North America. There are partially abandoned tunnels, like that beneath Second Avenue in East Harlem, part of a plan for expansion that never came to pass. And there are subway systems that became abandoned after years of operation, like that of Rochester, New York, whose subway ran for nearly 30 years before it shut down. But Cincinnati’s tunnels have remained perpetually vacant.
“Cincinnati really is unique in that they built most of a subway system and just never used it for anything,” Berman says.
Although they are home to a 4-foot wide water main, some fiber optic cables and plenty of graffiti, whether or not these tunnels will ever be used as intended remains to be seen. Some public transit advocates say we’re sitting (or driving) on gold. Others think it’s unrealistic.
“I think a bike path would be the best, most possible [use],” says Nolen Wright, a local railway enthusiast who runs the Instagram account @cincinnati_railways.
Last fall, the city of Cincinnati put out an RFI — Request for Information — inviting folks to submit ideas for repurposing the tunnels. Responses included everything from a bathhouse to a speakeasy.
To be clear, there are no plans to move forward with any of these.
“The future of the subway has not been determined,” a spokesperson from the City Manager’s office told CityBeat over email. “The Request for Information (RFI) was just that, an opportunity to seek input and ideas from the public.”
Read CityBeat‘s Eco Issue to learn more about the future of Cincinnati’s underground subway system:
[content-1] Photos by/provided by Nolen Wright
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