The "fun jingle" is the Barcelona Metro jingle! Which makes sense, it's CAF rolling stock after all! Besides the Cincinnati Street Railway, also worth mentioning that Cincinnati was home to one of the country's larger streetcar manufacturers, the Cincinnati Car Company, which produced streetcars, interurbans, and buses from 1902 until 1938. The company was among the first to make lightweight cars! In 1929, the company designed lightweight partially aluminum low profile high-speed coaches for the electrified Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad interurban that operated between Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo, called Red Devils. These interurban cars, whose open country speed could reach 90 mph (or around 140 km/h), were a forerunner of today's high-speed trains! In 1928, it bought the bus and trolleybus maker Versare Car Company (originally founded in 1925) from Watervliet, NY and moved Versare's base to Cincinnati, but faced the same fate as its parent in 1938. After the city council approved 102 million in funding for a Downtown/Over-the-Rhine line (they also looked at ideas for a Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/University of Cincinnati line would cost $128 million or a full Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/University of Cincinnati/Uptown/Zoo line would cost $185 million), they decided to look for an additional 35 million to get to the University of Cincinnati. The 35 million would only take the streetcars up to the university, that money would not extend it to the Cincinnati Zoo. Due to the severe economic downturn of 2008 and 2009 the city has had trouble raising the full 35 million needed from private sources, and Governor Kasich took away 52 million in state money in 2011 that the previous governor awarded, so plans for the Uptown section was scrapped. Like Cincinnati, this reminds me of a city that used an old canal bed to build a subway line (well, a light-rail that uses a subway line) that DID open and operate but got rid of it, and that's the Rochester Industrial and Rapid Transit Railway aka the Rochester Subway. Planning for the subway's construction began around 1910 as the Erie Canal was re-routed from downtown Rochester to pass south of the city. This new canal route was completed in 1918 and the year after, the city bought the abandoned portion of the canal to serve as the route of the subway. The Rochester Subway was designed to reduce interurban traffic on city streets, and to facilitate freight interchange between the railroads. Construction began in 1922 and began operations in 1927. As it was constructed in the old canal's bed, this allowed the route to be grade-separated for its entire length. Two miles/3.2 kilometers of the route through downtown were constructed in a cut-and-cover tunnel that became Broad Street, and the only underground portion of the subway. The line was operated on a contract basis by New York State Railways until Rochester Transit Corporation took over in 1938. There was a plan to extend the line but as ridership was declining after WWII, the city council made plans to abandon the subway and use its route for a connecting highway to the New York State Thruway instead. All service ended in 1956.
Here's more background on that Riverfront Transit Center you mentioned: The Transit Center is an underground tunnel running beneath 2nd street with two portals on each end. The tunnel runs parallel to Ft. Washington Way and opens up to Pete Rose Way on its East end and to Central Ave near Paul Brown Stadium/Paycor Stadium on its west end. The idea for the Transit Center was born out of the reconstruction of Ft. Washington Way and the construction of the new stadiums. Unlike Riverfront Stadium before them, Great American Ball Park and the Bengals stadium do not feature expansive plazas at street level for buses and taxis to park. The Transit Center was built to accommodate these buses which now required a new place to park for events like Oktoberfest, Riverfest, Bengals and Reds games, etc. The center was completed in 2003 and has the capacity to handle up to 500 buses and 20,000 people per hour. So the center can as a hub for SORTA during sporting events and other special events, as well as being used for charter bus parking and commuter parking. Designed with the future in mind, the roof of the tunnel is raised and features large, industrial vents to accommodate rail. A rail connection of favorable geometry could be easily made due to the Center's location and position, between the Cincinnati Terminal Subdivision and the Oasis Subdivision. As mentioned, the RTC has sat mostly empty for quite some time, but currently, SORTA's routes 90 the Metro Plus, and Route 85 run through the RTC, and they've planned two BRT corridors to originate at the RTC as well. Cincinnati was the birthplace of President William Howard Taft! Two years after the founding of the settlement then known as "Losantiville", Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, changed its name to "Cincinnati", at the suggestion of the surveyor Israel Ludlow, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati. St. Clair was at the time president of the Society, made up of Continental Army officers of the Revolutionary War. The club was named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a dictator in the early Roman Republic who saved Rome from a crisis and then retired to farming because he did not want to remain in power, becoming a symbol of Roman civic virtue. As you mentioned, Cincinnati is known as the Queen City, and it has been known as the Queen City since at least 1819. That’s when the nickname first made it into newspapers, but it was probably already passed around on the streets. That’s also when Cincinnati, founded in 1788, was first incorporated as a city. There were efforts by civic boosters to bolster the then young city’s reputation as a grand, cultured city, the finest in the west. Cincinnati was known alternately as the Queen City, Queen of the West or the Athens of the West (and also Porkopolis, as the preeminent meat-packing city of the time). The earliest reference to the nickname found was in the Inquisitor and Cincinnati Advertiser, a precursor to The Enquirer, on May 4, 1819, when Ed. B. Cooke wrote, “The City is, indeed, justly styled the fair Queen of the West: distinguished for order, enterprise, public spirit, and liberality, she stands the wonder of an admiring world.” The Queen City nickname was cemented by the 1854 poem “Catawba Wine” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem, which extolls the virtues of Nicholas Longworth’s winery, describes the city as “Queen of the West” in the final stanza: "And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver, To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River."
"Avery, I know you're already typing that the only other major North American streetcar system to do this was Havana, Cuba" UNCALLED FOR...but true! 😂One other North American system used double overhead wire and two trolley poles on each car too besides Havana and Cincinnati, the small city of Merrill, Wisconsin! Streetcars began operations in Merrill in 1889 and when poor bonding of the track led to the electrocution of animals, they opted to develop a second suspended wire for return power, the first use of such by a trolley company! They then experimented with trolleybuses in 1913, one of the earliest trolleybus operations in the country, but this stopped in less than a year. The company was absorbed by the Wisconsin Valley Electric Company in 1916, and after the franchise ended in 1919, the company was offered to the city for just one dollar! The offer not being accepted, the service was replaced by buses in 1921. Havana on the other hand was the second Latin American city to get passenger streetcars in 1859, preceded only by Mexico City in January 1858. The Ferro Carril Urbano de la Habana was chartered in September 1857, began construction in November, and opened a horsecar line from the former Villanueva railroad station (now Havana Central; Havana Central opened in 1912 and was designed by Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison who also worked on Hoboken Terminal) to the docks (Muelles) in February 1858. The first cars carried only freight, baggage and produce from nearby farms, but passenger vehicles were added in September 1859. FCU had opened its first passenger line, to Carmelo, in September 1859. The streetcars were electrified in 1900. The Havana Electric Railway built no more streetcars or streetcar lines after 1925. The Cuban government would not allow it to raise its fare, which had remained at 5 cents since 1901. Buses and jitneys, unrestricted by the city, followed HER's routes and took its passengers. A nationwide strike in 1933 shut down all public services in Cuba. When Havana trams began running again after the strike, passenger loads were heavy. Rail ridership declined from 140 million passengers in 1929 to 69 million in 1935. The situation reversed briefly during the Second World War. Oil and tires were rationed, and the buses almost disappeared. Streetcar ridership increased once more and even surpassed previous levels, 146 million passengers in 1945! In 1949, HER announced that it had acquired 44 trolleybuses secondhand from Newark, NJ to replace its aging trams. The transition would be easy, for the streetcar lines already had double wires. A few trolleybuses began testing in September 1949, but never entered revenue service. Some were rebuilt and ran with gasoline motors. But it was no use. HER declared bankruptcy and was purchased by Autobuses Modernos S.A. in June 1950, and the final streetcar ended in April 1952. While it doesn't have streetcars, Havana does have a network of suburban, interurban and long-distance rail lines, as well as a 17-line MetroBus network. This MetroBus network was the solution for a city that desperately needed a subway (they were gonna build one in the 1980s but the USSR collapsed) but can't afford one, and is notorious for using weird Camello buses, running tractor-trailer buses, with camel-like trailers to stuff up to 300 people as the country faced a fuel shortage. Cuba has since received articulated buses like Chinese-made Yutong and Russian-made LiAZ, but with the recent crisis, the Camellos have returned, even as articulated!
As you said, the subway system was woefully under-engineered for modern subway or trolley/tram cars. Good thing they built the street-level trams instead.
Those CAF streetcars are a big reason why I liked the KC Streetcar so much when I rode it briefly earlier this year - they feel LEAGUES ahead of any other modern streetcars I've ridden, and at least in KC, they actually accelerate quickly and can get up to a decent speed! The stop request sound is the same sound that plays before the automated announcements on Lines 9 and 10 of the Barcelona Metro!
I remember living in Cincinnati way back in the early 90s and wishing we had more trains (I was and still am a huge train fan). I even watched this streetcar being built online that was fun 😁😁😁😁😁. I hope one day I can return to Cincinnati to ride The Cincinnati Bell Connector and maybe see a Reds Game and get some Skyline Chili lol.
Fun fact - All three major auto manufactures had a hand in making sure the public transportation in Hamilton County, Ohio would not include any sort of subway options. A steady stream of bought and sold city leadership position over the decades, made sure that all efforts to finish the current subway infrastructure, were quashed. One of those tactics also included making sure that any routes out of the city were paved for cars, or sold off as private property that had to be developed right away. This, so as to future proof the efforts to justify a subway that would then have no options to expand. These efforts paid off for the automotive industry.
You should've told us you would be in Cincy!! I'm not from there but I've visited there a bunch of times, including to ride the streetcar. Also, come further south into KY, there might be some interesting stuff to show!
Cincinnati didn't ditch the subway for streetcars; the agency building it ran out of money in mid-construction because of World War 1 inflation between the bond issue and beginning of construction. In the 1920s the interurbans that were supposed to feed it gradually went out of business one by one. In the 1950s the state took the half-built grade separated surface portions for its interstate freeways! Edit: added interurbans
I love the Connector and have been on it at least once a week since I moved back to the Cincinnati area last year - it's an awesome free ride through the city and it compliments the bus systems of Metro and TANK really well (I also frequently ride TANK with their monthly pass) It isn't the subway or MetroMoves project we hoped for, but it's a start; I hope to see the Connector extended across the river to Covington or Newport, or uphill to the university. Probably gonna be a while before any extensions are built, though, but I'll be there when they happen.
Just think how different Cincy would be today if their subway actually got built back in the day. The streetcar is mostly useful for tourists, I rode it when I visited the city in '17. Also: you could have walked to Kentucky over the Purple People Bridge to Newport!
Great video. My mom grew up in Cincinnati so neat to see a video about this. I've never ridden the streetcar as it didn't even exist when I was out there. It's such a cool city . Now only if it could really get its act together on offering more alternatives car and freeways across the city I think it could be a top tier North American city. It's got such neat vibes and great bones in the form of so many pre-automobile era neighborhoods that still have very solid bones, just waiting for a transit renaissance.
The Cincinnati Street Railway not only used a twin-wire electric system but also was broad gauge (5' 2.5", 1588mm), two features which kept most of Cincy's interurban electric railways from entering town. The subway was supposed to be a way to solve this issue, by allowing the interurbans to through-line with it into downtown. So much so that the Cincinnati & Lake Erie's "Red Devil" lightweight high-speed interurban cars were fitted with a platform-level door at one end, which would have allowed them to load from platforms on the subway. Again, "The Connector" looks OK, but it's just too little for the city's needs - proper light rail (or better, a Stadtbahn), extending out into the 'burbs and into Kentucky would have done the real trick.
Amazing caleb i was waiting for this video for a long time and yesterday i went to the gold Coast and rode the G: LINK light rail I'm making a video for the one line wonders challenge
Seriously Airport-Kings Island would be a perfect routing (especially since there is an associated campground and a Great Wolf Lodge nearby, even if the physical station plot might not be conducive on paper for those fairly recent additions (Kings Mills would be very endgame anyway so maybe they could better situate the station with the Great Wolf Lodge proposal since said projects would be fairly concurrent, either based on the proposed growth plan or educated guess that had Kings Island's history otherwise remained the same (Cedar Fair sale in 2006, Six Flags merger in 2024) that this addition would be around 2020 at best
to be honest, though now I know, before my Cousin moved there, I did not imagine Ohio had three cities of any size... always kind of imagined everything but Cincinnati to be small little towns and some larger rural communities. even so, Cincinnati really does not feel large enough for a subway really... a good multiline streetcar or LRT network would serve far better certainly, the line they have built so far runs through the city in a very convenient and friendly manner.... extending branches further out (possibly even on both sides of the river) should really give a nice network for comparatively low material costs a more rural street alignment would also allow the outer sections to maybe have greater speeds and less stops to the outer fringes of such a network but that is far in the future...
A lot of the reason MetroMoves failed is due to Hamilton County residents getting absolutely FLEECED by the Brown family after voting to use taxpayer funds for Paul Brown Stadium. It took a while for that sentiment to disappear, but Hamilton County did at least pass a sales tax measure in 2020, which is why Metro has been pretty steadily improving.
Originally it was going to go up to the University, but a supposedly Moderate governor killed it the moment he took office. The system would have been 2x the size and would have connected the zoo, passing the University district then going down the hill into the current Downtown OTR loop. I wish that system was built, and hopefully one day it or something like it will be. Cincinnati deserves way better than the lot that's been handed to it, once of America's most urban and dense cities its a shadow of its former self. PS I voted for Metromoves and was absolutely appalled at the results it got :(
I think I know why the stop request chime is like that. It's the same as the one on the Barcelona metro system, which I've been on. Which makes sense, since CAF is a Spanish company.
Use the existing unused tunnel/freeway alignment for a proper Copenhagen-style automated metro system.... That's what every major city needs and ultimately deserves... Automated, electric light/medium or heavy rapid transit!
Fun fact: One of the subway stations was actually turned into a fallout shelter. It hasn’t really been maintained since the Cold War, so Cincinnati residents just have to deal with it, i guess. It’s none of my business, though, I can rest easy knowing the bus I take to school directly serves the local fallout shelter in the post office
I just can’t see the sense of these small loop systems really, they are difficult to expand beyond the initial corridor to become more useful, they are slow and mostly not that frequent.
The "fun jingle" is the Barcelona Metro jingle! Which makes sense, it's CAF rolling stock after all! Besides the Cincinnati Street Railway, also worth mentioning that Cincinnati was home to one of the country's larger streetcar manufacturers, the Cincinnati Car Company, which produced streetcars, interurbans, and buses from 1902 until 1938. The company was among the first to make lightweight cars! In 1929, the company designed lightweight partially aluminum low profile high-speed coaches for the electrified Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad interurban that operated between Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo, called Red Devils. These interurban cars, whose open country speed could reach 90 mph (or around 140 km/h), were a forerunner of today's high-speed trains! In 1928, it bought the bus and trolleybus maker Versare Car Company (originally founded in 1925) from Watervliet, NY and moved Versare's base to Cincinnati, but faced the same fate as its parent in 1938. After the city council approved 102 million in funding for a Downtown/Over-the-Rhine line (they also looked at ideas for a Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/University of Cincinnati line would cost $128 million or a full Downtown/Over-the-Rhine/University of Cincinnati/Uptown/Zoo line would cost $185 million), they decided to look for an additional 35 million to get to the University of Cincinnati. The 35 million would only take the streetcars up to the university, that money would not extend it to the Cincinnati Zoo. Due to the severe economic downturn of 2008 and 2009 the city has had trouble raising the full 35 million needed from private sources, and Governor Kasich took away 52 million in state money in 2011 that the previous governor awarded, so plans for the Uptown section was scrapped.
Like Cincinnati, this reminds me of a city that used an old canal bed to build a subway line (well, a light-rail that uses a subway line) that DID open and operate but got rid of it, and that's the Rochester Industrial and Rapid Transit Railway aka the Rochester Subway. Planning for the subway's construction began around 1910 as the Erie Canal was re-routed from downtown Rochester to pass south of the city. This new canal route was completed in 1918 and the year after, the city bought the abandoned portion of the canal to serve as the route of the subway. The Rochester Subway was designed to reduce interurban traffic on city streets, and to facilitate freight interchange between the railroads. Construction began in 1922 and began operations in 1927. As it was constructed in the old canal's bed, this allowed the route to be grade-separated for its entire length. Two miles/3.2 kilometers of the route through downtown were constructed in a cut-and-cover tunnel that became Broad Street, and the only underground portion of the subway. The line was operated on a contract basis by New York State Railways until Rochester Transit Corporation took over in 1938. There was a plan to extend the line but as ridership was declining after WWII, the city council made plans to abandon the subway and use its route for a connecting highway to the New York State Thruway instead. All service ended in 1956.
It's one of the announcement chimes in the Barcelona metro, which depends on the train set model. Personally I prefer the one from the older sets
Here's more background on that Riverfront Transit Center you mentioned: The Transit Center is an underground tunnel running beneath 2nd street with two portals on each end. The tunnel runs parallel to Ft. Washington Way and opens up to Pete Rose Way on its East end and to Central Ave near Paul Brown Stadium/Paycor Stadium on its west end. The idea for the Transit Center was born out of the reconstruction of Ft. Washington Way and the construction of the new stadiums. Unlike Riverfront Stadium before them, Great American Ball Park and the Bengals stadium do not feature expansive plazas at street level for buses and taxis to park. The Transit Center was built to accommodate these buses which now required a new place to park for events like Oktoberfest, Riverfest, Bengals and Reds games, etc. The center was completed in 2003 and has the capacity to handle up to 500 buses and 20,000 people per hour. So the center can as a hub for SORTA during sporting events and other special events, as well as being used for charter bus parking and commuter parking. Designed with the future in mind, the roof of the tunnel is raised and features large, industrial vents to accommodate rail. A rail connection of favorable geometry could be easily made due to the Center's location and position, between the Cincinnati Terminal Subdivision and the Oasis Subdivision. As mentioned, the RTC has sat mostly empty for quite some time, but currently, SORTA's routes 90 the Metro Plus, and Route 85 run through the RTC, and they've planned two BRT corridors to originate at the RTC as well.
Cincinnati was the birthplace of President William Howard Taft! Two years after the founding of the settlement then known as "Losantiville", Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, changed its name to "Cincinnati", at the suggestion of the surveyor Israel Ludlow, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati. St. Clair was at the time president of the Society, made up of Continental Army officers of the Revolutionary War. The club was named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a dictator in the early Roman Republic who saved Rome from a crisis and then retired to farming because he did not want to remain in power, becoming a symbol of Roman civic virtue. As you mentioned, Cincinnati is known as the Queen City, and it has been known as the Queen City since at least 1819. That’s when the nickname first made it into newspapers, but it was probably already passed around on the streets. That’s also when Cincinnati, founded in 1788, was first incorporated as a city. There were efforts by civic boosters to bolster the then young city’s reputation as a grand, cultured city, the finest in the west. Cincinnati was known alternately as the Queen City, Queen of the West or the Athens of the West (and also Porkopolis, as the preeminent meat-packing city of the time). The earliest reference to the nickname found was in the Inquisitor and Cincinnati Advertiser, a precursor to The Enquirer, on May 4, 1819, when Ed. B. Cooke wrote, “The City is, indeed, justly styled the fair Queen of the West: distinguished for order, enterprise, public spirit, and liberality, she stands the wonder of an admiring world.” The Queen City nickname was cemented by the 1854 poem “Catawba Wine” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem, which extolls the virtues of Nicholas Longworth’s winery, describes the city as “Queen of the West” in the final stanza: "And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver, To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River."
"Avery, I know you're already typing that the only other major North American streetcar system to do this was Havana, Cuba" UNCALLED FOR...but true! 😂One other North American system used double overhead wire and two trolley poles on each car too besides Havana and Cincinnati, the small city of Merrill, Wisconsin! Streetcars began operations in Merrill in 1889 and when poor bonding of the track led to the electrocution of animals, they opted to develop a second suspended wire for return power, the first use of such by a trolley company! They then experimented with trolleybuses in 1913, one of the earliest trolleybus operations in the country, but this stopped in less than a year. The company was absorbed by the Wisconsin Valley Electric Company in 1916, and after the franchise ended in 1919, the company was offered to the city for just one dollar! The offer not being accepted, the service was replaced by buses in 1921. Havana on the other hand was the second Latin American city to get passenger streetcars in 1859, preceded only by Mexico City in January 1858. The Ferro Carril Urbano de la Habana was chartered in September 1857, began construction in November, and opened a horsecar line from the former Villanueva railroad station (now Havana Central; Havana Central opened in 1912 and was designed by Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison who also worked on Hoboken Terminal) to the docks (Muelles) in February 1858. The first cars carried only freight, baggage and produce from nearby farms, but passenger vehicles were added in September 1859. FCU had opened its first passenger line, to Carmelo, in September 1859.
The streetcars were electrified in 1900. The Havana Electric Railway built no more streetcars or streetcar lines after 1925. The Cuban government would not allow it to raise its fare, which had remained at 5 cents since 1901. Buses and jitneys, unrestricted by the city, followed HER's routes and took its passengers. A nationwide strike in 1933 shut down all public services in Cuba. When Havana trams began running again after the strike, passenger loads were heavy. Rail ridership declined from 140 million passengers in 1929 to 69 million in 1935. The situation reversed briefly during the Second World War. Oil and tires were rationed, and the buses almost disappeared. Streetcar ridership increased once more and even surpassed previous levels, 146 million passengers in 1945! In 1949, HER announced that it had acquired 44 trolleybuses secondhand from Newark, NJ to replace its aging trams. The transition would be easy, for the streetcar lines already had double wires. A few trolleybuses began testing in September 1949, but never entered revenue service. Some were rebuilt and ran with gasoline motors. But it was no use. HER declared bankruptcy and was purchased by Autobuses Modernos S.A. in June 1950, and the final streetcar ended in April 1952. While it doesn't have streetcars, Havana does have a network of suburban, interurban and long-distance rail lines, as well as a 17-line MetroBus network. This MetroBus network was the solution for a city that desperately needed a subway (they were gonna build one in the 1980s but the USSR collapsed) but can't afford one, and is notorious for using weird Camello buses, running tractor-trailer buses, with camel-like trailers to stuff up to 300 people as the country faced a fuel shortage. Cuba has since received articulated buses like Chinese-made Yutong and Russian-made LiAZ, but with the recent crisis, the Camellos have returned, even as articulated!
Now I am curious where the hell did Cuba get those camelitos. Because we also had them here in Manila back in the 1980s.
As you said, the subway system was woefully under-engineered for modern subway or trolley/tram cars. Good thing they built the street-level trams instead.
Those CAF streetcars are a big reason why I liked the KC Streetcar so much when I rode it briefly earlier this year - they feel LEAGUES ahead of any other modern streetcars I've ridden, and at least in KC, they actually accelerate quickly and can get up to a decent speed! The stop request sound is the same sound that plays before the automated announcements on Lines 9 and 10 of the Barcelona Metro!
As a Trontonian I want to thank Cinnci for selling 52 of your very good PCC streetcars in 1950. They ran in Toronto until the late 1960s.
I remember living in Cincinnati way back in the early 90s and wishing we had more trains (I was and still am a huge train fan). I even watched this streetcar being built online that was fun 😁😁😁😁😁. I hope one day I can return to Cincinnati to ride The Cincinnati Bell Connector and maybe see a Reds Game and get some Skyline Chili lol.
Fun fact - All three major auto manufactures had a hand in making sure the public transportation in Hamilton County, Ohio would not include any sort of subway options. A steady stream of bought and sold city leadership position over the decades, made sure that all efforts to finish the current subway infrastructure, were quashed. One of those tactics also included making sure that any routes out of the city were paved for cars, or sold off as private property that had to be developed right away. This, so as to future proof the efforts to justify a subway that would then have no options to expand. These efforts paid off for the automotive industry.
You should've told us you would be in Cincy!! I'm not from there but I've visited there a bunch of times, including to ride the streetcar. Also, come further south into KY, there might be some interesting stuff to show!
Cincinnati didn't ditch the subway for streetcars; the agency building it ran out of money in mid-construction because of World War 1 inflation between the bond issue and beginning of construction. In the 1920s the interurbans that were supposed to feed it gradually went out of business one by one. In the 1950s the state took the half-built grade separated surface portions for its interstate freeways!
Edit: added interurbans
I love the Connector and have been on it at least once a week since I moved back to the Cincinnati area last year - it's an awesome free ride through the city and it compliments the bus systems of Metro and TANK really well (I also frequently ride TANK with their monthly pass)
It isn't the subway or MetroMoves project we hoped for, but it's a start; I hope to see the Connector extended across the river to Covington or Newport, or uphill to the university. Probably gonna be a while before any extensions are built, though, but I'll be there when they happen.
Just think how different Cincy would be today if their subway actually got built back in the day. The streetcar is mostly useful for tourists, I rode it when I visited the city in '17. Also: you could have walked to Kentucky over the Purple People Bridge to Newport!
Great video. My mom grew up in Cincinnati so neat to see a video about this. I've never ridden the streetcar as it didn't even exist when I was out there. It's such a cool city . Now only if it could really get its act together on offering more alternatives car and freeways across the city I think it could be a top tier North American city. It's got such neat vibes and great bones in the form of so many pre-automobile era neighborhoods that still have very solid bones, just waiting for a transit renaissance.
The Cincinnati Street Railway not only used a twin-wire electric system but also was broad gauge (5' 2.5", 1588mm), two features which kept most of Cincy's interurban electric railways from entering town. The subway was supposed to be a way to solve this issue, by allowing the interurbans to through-line with it into downtown. So much so that the Cincinnati & Lake Erie's "Red Devil" lightweight high-speed interurban cars were fitted with a platform-level door at one end, which would have allowed them to load from platforms on the subway.
Again, "The Connector" looks OK, but it's just too little for the city's needs - proper light rail (or better, a Stadtbahn), extending out into the 'burbs and into Kentucky would have done the real trick.
Maybe one day they can try again to get that light rail plan built.
Brilliant video sir!
Amazing caleb i was waiting for this video for a long time and yesterday i went to the gold Coast and rode the G: LINK light rail I'm making a video for the one line wonders challenge
Hooray!
@@ClassyWhale 👍👍😊
VIDEO SUGGESTION WHAT ABOUT going out to the Country towns And Sampling Micro transit and once per week Cross county Jeepnee a.k.a truck bus
Seriously Airport-Kings Island would be a perfect routing (especially since there is an associated campground and a Great Wolf Lodge nearby, even if the physical station plot might not be conducive on paper for those fairly recent additions (Kings Mills would be very endgame anyway so maybe they could better situate the station with the Great Wolf Lodge proposal since said projects would be fairly concurrent, either based on the proposed growth plan or educated guess that had Kings Island's history otherwise remained the same (Cedar Fair sale in 2006, Six Flags merger in 2024) that this addition would be around 2020 at best
2:20 Barcelona Metro Chime
to be honest, though now I know, before my Cousin moved there, I did not imagine Ohio had three cities of any size... always kind of imagined everything but Cincinnati to be small little towns and some larger rural communities.
even so, Cincinnati really does not feel large enough for a subway really... a good multiline streetcar or LRT network would serve far better
certainly, the line they have built so far runs through the city in a very convenient and friendly manner.... extending branches further out (possibly even on both sides of the river) should really give a nice network for comparatively low material costs
a more rural street alignment would also allow the outer sections to maybe have greater speeds and less stops to the outer fringes of such a network but that is far in the future...
The announcer on the Streetcar is Emilio Estevez, who lives in the neighborhood
Classy🐳 😃
The Banks sits on probably the world's largest parking podium.
A lot of the reason MetroMoves failed is due to Hamilton County residents getting absolutely FLEECED by the Brown family after voting to use taxpayer funds for Paul Brown Stadium. It took a while for that sentiment to disappear, but Hamilton County did at least pass a sales tax measure in 2020, which is why Metro has been pretty steadily improving.
Originally it was going to go up to the University, but a supposedly Moderate governor killed it the moment he took office. The system would have been 2x the size and would have connected the zoo, passing the University district then going down the hill into the current Downtown OTR loop. I wish that system was built, and hopefully one day it or something like it will be. Cincinnati deserves way better than the lot that's been handed to it, once of America's most urban and dense cities its a shadow of its former self.
PS I voted for Metromoves and was absolutely appalled at the results it got :(
I think I know why the stop request chime is like that. It's the same as the one on the Barcelona metro system, which I've been on. Which makes sense, since CAF is a Spanish company.
I didn't even know Cincinnati had trams light rail or streetcars or any passenger rail
Never slog a free downtown circulator... They help to keep the most expensive and important parts of the city alive...
the avery callout 😭😭
Use the existing unused tunnel/freeway alignment for a proper Copenhagen-style automated metro system.... That's what every major city needs and ultimately deserves... Automated, electric light/medium or heavy rapid transit!
Fun fact: One of the subway stations was actually turned into a fallout shelter. It hasn’t really been maintained since the Cold War, so Cincinnati residents just have to deal with it, i guess. It’s none of my business, though, I can rest easy knowing the bus I take to school directly serves the local fallout shelter in the post office
The Connector sucks... It only goes to one direction...
I just can’t see the sense of these small loop systems really, they are difficult to expand beyond the initial corridor to become more useful, they are slow and mostly not that frequent.
Cincinnati mention! :D
Put the streetcar into the tunnels or very small trains
What the heck and WHY would they defeat Metro Moves? UGGHHHGHGHGHG.
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Where in Europe you wanna go?
I've already got it planned out! England, Wales, Switzerland, Germany, and France :)
wow very nice, enjoy!