A proposal that rail advocates say will move Ohio toward reviving passenger train service for the first time since the 1970s is back on track. The budget that House Republicans passed would allow Ohio to rejoin the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission, a group working on passenger rail networks.
The language to allow Ohio to rejoin the commission was dropped by the Senate from the transportation budget because of concerns over where the $50,000 to pay for it would come from.
Mitch Radakovich with the advocacy group All Aboard Ohio says rail advocates pushed hard to get it into the operating budget. He says this approval underscores a momentum shift.
“Quite honestly, whenever we talk to everyday folks on the street, there are very, very few hesitations about bringing passenger rail,” Radakovich said. “Their only hesitation is kind of a lack of belief because we've gotten close so many times only for it to not end up happening.”
Radakovich says regional planning organizations and the Chamber of Commerce have been on board with expanding passenger rail in Ohio. But he cautions that rail service probably wouldn’t start for a while.
“You could expect passenger rail service in probably first couple of years of the next decade—so 2031, 2032-ish. Now that would mean we are kind of full speed ahead on that planning process,” Radakovich said.
Columbus is considered the largest city in America without passenger train service, which ended in 1971. The state dropped out of the MIPRC under Republican former Gov. John Kasich after he turned down $400 million in federal grants for an Amtrak line running from Cleveland to Cincinnati. The federal government greenlit studies of four Amtrak routes crossing through Ohio’s major cities in December 2023 as part of its corridor identification program. Those routes include new and extended lines, from a 3C+D connector between Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati to a Midwest connector running through central Ohio from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
A study last year from the public policy research firm Scioto Analysis said the 3C+D could create more than a thousand jobs and generate as much as $66 million statewide. But it’s estimated the cost to build the line would be at least $100 million.
READ MORE:
- New passenger rail committee to help decide train stops, service details for central Ohio
- Support for passenger rail is picking up speed in Ohio. But there’s still far to go
- Study finds Columbus could get millions of dollars from passenger rail expansion
