Cincinnati streetcar project to break ground

Cincinnati city officials, outflanking continued anti-rail political sniping, plan to to break ground this Friday on its streetcar line. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory announced the plan late last Friday during a special City Council meeting, during which two council critics of the streetcar continued to question costs and logistics.

A ceremony is set for 1:00 p.m. local time at Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine. “The streetcar project has been approved by the City Council, it is a priority of the city administration and it has been (supported) by voters twice at the ballot,” Mallory said. “This project will move forward.”

“Fifteen years in the making, Cincinnati will this week become the first city in the Midwest to start construction on a modern streetcar system,” said John Schneider, chairman of the Alliance for Regional Transit, which has championed the project. Cincinnati plans to place an order for streetcars sometime this year, joining the small but growing ranks of U.S. cities such as Portland, Ore., which have established streetcar lines.

Mallory said he hopes to personally meet with the president of Duke Energy in an effort to resolve a $12 million dispute over costs in relocating the utility’s underground pipes and wires underneath city streets to make way for streetcar track construction. The city has offered to pay part of the costs, but Duke Energy has balked at paying any costs itself.

City Councilman John Cranley, a project foe, charged, “It’s fiscally reckless to move ahead with groundbreaking with this unresolved.” But many light rail transit and streetcar projects have begun construction before all legal and logistical issues have been resolved.

Schneider, interviewed by Railway Age, praised Mayor Mallory’s resolve in the matter, saying the mayor “made this happen against all odds. As a result, he’s a rising star among our nation’s mayors.”