Street car plan may include UC

A $102 million street car project that may link the University of Cincinnati campus to downtown is on the drawing board, but it is doubtful students will be riding it any time soon.

The first leg of the project will not be finished before 2010 and will terminate at McMicken Avenue.

However, work on the second phase of the project, providing direct service to UC students, will not begin until after the first leg is finished - and no completion date for this stage has been announced.

The Queen City street car is being modeled on a system in Portland, Ore., where city officials have reported more than 7,200 new homes and 4.6 million square feet of new commercial development along a 7.2-mile rail line since it opened in 2001.

Skeptics, however, believe people may be afraid to take the street car because of Cincinnati's higher crime rate.

"These programs are developed with the issue of safety in mind, what's the difference between riding a Metro bus or a street car?" asked Karen Patterson, captain of the UC police department.

"We need to get beyond the mentality that Cincinnati can't be great again," said city architect Michael Moore. "The inertia that we first have to overcome is the attitude that we can't pull off a big project. We've never ever attempted anything like this.

"Our goal is to bring people to a vibrant downtown area. In my vision of safety I always feel safer in a crowd than by myself," said Moore.

The city of Cincinnati is spearheading the project, which is projected to serve up to 5,600 daily passengers after the first leg opens in 2010.

Finding funding for the project is not a certainty. The city hopes that private corporations will share a third of the project's estimated cost. A potential state of Ohio grant would produce $10 million and general obligation bonds from new development in the area near the streetcar line would cover $25 million.

Under the proposal, the city has put up $25 million from its capital fund and will use

$11 million from the sale of its Blue Ash Airport toward funding. Cincinnati sold the airport this year to the city of Blue Ash for $37.5 million.

"Financial planning is definitely our first hurdle to overcome," Moore said. "Our goal is to simultaneously pursue federal funds during the first phase and secure funding so that we can extend our system to accompany the strong desire to connect uptown and downtown, which is part of phase two."

In the initial "phase one" portion of the process, the proposed lines would focus primarily on downtown running north on Main Street to 12th Street, west to Elm Street, north to McMicken Avenue, east to Race Street, south to Central Parkway, east to Walnut Street and then south to Freedom Way.

"No plans are in place yet for the next phase, but we have talked to UC officials," said Meg Olberding, assistant to City Manager Milton Dohoney. "We plan to use local loops as a match for the second phase and funding and plans will be occurring simultaneously with the construction of the first phase."

Moore thinks enough public support from the younger community is in place to get the plan in motion.

"Right now members of the community aged around 35 and younger have outweighed their counterparts in attendance of public meetings on the project four to one," Moore said. "In my 12 years I've never seen so many younger community members show so much support on a project."