“It obviously makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint,” said Tony Kroeger, Dayton’s planning division manager. “But Sixth and Ludlow gets to take advantage of such great momentum and investment that has occurred in the greater downtown area in recent years.”
All Aboard Ohio’s Dayton chapter recently hosted a community meeting where city of Dayton and CityWide staff talked about Amtrak’s interest in creating a new intercity passenger rail service that would connect Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton (called the 3C+D route).
The Federal Railroad Administration has identified four routes in Ohio as priorities for potential Amtrak expansion, including the 3C+D corridor. Federal funding is paying for a study that is the first of three steps toward the development of new passenger rail corridors.
Next year, the Federal Railroad Administration is expected to identify which proposed routes can move onto the next step in the development process, said John Gower, an urban designer and development planner with the city of Dayton and Citywide.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
If this route moves onto future steps, it would take years of work and require state funding support.
“This whole process could take eight to 10 years, but be of good cheer — 10 years goes really, really quickly,” Gower said.
Gower said the city of Dayton years ago studied potential locations of a new passenger rail station and determined that the old Dayton Union Station was the only appropriate place for the facility.
Amtrak’s proposed new intercity passenger rail service in Ohio would share a track with Norfolk Southern’s freight rail operations, Gower said.
The former Union Station has the space needed for passenger trains to pull off and allow freight trains to go past, Gower said.
A passenger rail station would have a huge impact on the southwest quadrant of downtown, Gower said, noting that right now the area around Union station is mostly home to parking lots.
“The goal here is to strengthen and expand economic activity through strategic locational adjacencies,” he said. “That’s really describing a city, where you’ve got all of these multiple uses, it’s walkable, it’s connected.”
Greater downtown Dayton is home to tens of thousands of jobs that generate billions of dollars in business revenues.
Kroeger, the city’s planning manager, said a rail station at Sixth and Ludlow streets would be a five to 10 minute walk from a large number of amenities, destinations, institutions and employers.
“I know last time this was a hot topic, everybody would say, ‘Well, what am I going to do when I get dropped off in downtown Dayton?’” Kroeger said. “Well, there’s a hell of a lot to do.”
The former Union Station site is a short walk from the rehabbed Dayton Arcade, the Levitt Pavilion Dayton music venue, the Dayton Convention Center, the Oregon District and hundreds of hotel rooms that are in development.
The site is right by Sinclair Community College and U.S. 35, and there are arts and entertainment venues not far from there.
Passenger rail advocates say that connecting Ohio’s major cities would be very beneficial for tourism and business and job growth.
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