dged between the Fort Washington freeway trench and the Ohio River, a stone’s throw from the city’s baseball park and football stadium, sits the Riverfront Transit Center, a two-story tall, half-mile long underground concrete tube opened in 2003. That makes it one of the largest transit stations in the world. It is also another failed Cincinnati public transportation project: most of the time it sits completely empty.
When it was envisioned, planners thought that the transit center would be a hub where light-rail lines — if Cincinnati ever got around to building them — could converge. In the meantime, the massive underground transit station would serve as a pick-up and drop-off location for public and private buses, as well as special shuttles during game days. Today, the above-ground portals are locked and the driveway leading up to the main entrance is closed for 275 days out of the year. Though I’m told the center is lined with subway tiles and mosaic art, I wasn’t allowed inside.
"It is an orphaned station," a Channel 9 reporter mused in a 2011 investigative piece on the station’s underutilization. No rail lines currently run to the Riverfront Transit Center, and it’s only open during during major events. Public metro buses are left to do their pick-ups and drop-offs at street level.
With a $48 million price tag, the transit center has been enough of a money pit to turn once ardent supporters into foes. Former Cincinnati mayor Charlie Luken, who helped cut the ribbon on the Riverfront Transit Center in 2003, now calls it the biggest waste of money he’s ever seen. "The only reason there's not more outrage about it," Luken told Channel 9, "is because people don't know it's there."
When I ask him about the Riverfront Transit Center, Dan Hurley, a local historian and civic leader, almost chokes on his water. "Underutilized is such a kind word," he says. "Boondoggle is the one I hear more often."
http://www.go-metro.com/uploads/pdfs/RTC_MediaBackgrounder_1pager_rev10_28_13.pdf
You probably should link to the original article you quoted this from: "The Verge: Train To Nowhere"
NO ** I know about the the Subway that was built in the 1900s this artical is about a new subway that was built in 2003.....Cincy started a new subway in 2003 that was suposed to be part of a bigger system that never got built because the tax levy never passed. So a huge Subway Bus/rail terminal was built because the fed money was there in the hopes that the red necks of southern Ohio would see the light and vote for a rail system/
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