New Streetcar Route

(Photo: Adam J. Benjamin)

City leaders have settled on a preferred route for a proposed streetcar system through downtown and Over-the-Rhine. To ensure the system generates the most redevelopment spin-off on surrounding blocks, the chosen route is longer than initially discussed and covers a larger area.

Although three different routes — each about four miles long — originally were mulled, city planners have chosen a slightly altered version that is 4.6 miles in length. Cincinnati City Architect Michael Moore said HDR Engineering Inc. complete an economic feasibility study of the route in mid-May.

The preferred route has three segments. To view the route, click here.

Under the alignment, the streetcars would begin their journey on Elm Street and travel northward to McMicken Avenue before turning and traveling south on Race Street. It continues on Race until it hits Central Parkway, where it turns east and travels to Walnut Street.

At that point, the system goes south down Walnut to the future Freedom Way along the riverfront, where it turns north again and travels up Main Street until it reaches 12th Street. At 12th, it turns west and travels until it reaches the origin point on Elm.

The route was selected for purposes of doing the feasibility study and could be changed later in the project if it’s ever built.

“A preferred alignment that we actually build will involve a whole lot more public input,” Moore said. “This just gives us something to work with, a starting point.”

The route was picked, in part, because of its potential to spark redevelopment. Since Portland, Ore., opened the nation’s first modern streetcar system in 2001, land development there has rapidly accelerated, mostly through the construction of apartments and condominiums.

Overall, $2.28 billion in new development has occurred within a two-block radius of Portland’s streetcar system since it opened. The investment includes more than 7,200 new housing units and 4.6 million square feet of new business space. About 55 percent of all new development in Portland’s downtown during the past decade has occurred within one block of the system.

Here city planners and consultants examined a three-block radius around the route, Moore said.

“Within that radius, we grab just about everything in Over-the-Rhine by doing that and, looking east, we pick up some key ridership from the office blocks,” he said.

The feasibility study will cost about $200,000 and is being done with a combination of city and private funds. After the study is completed, Cincinnati City Council will decide whether to move ahead with the project. If approval is granted, the system likely would cost about $100 million and could be completed by 2011.

— Kevin Osborne

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