Proposed Ohio Amtrak Lines Get Federal Funding Boost

An Amtrak Charger ALC-42. Credit: Amtrak

The illusive dream that is the 3C+D transit corridor—an Amtrak line linking Cleveland with Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati—just moved a bit closer to reality.

On Tuesday, the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown announced that line will receive $500,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration, primarily for the years of planning needed to make 3C+D, as it’s commonly called, a real thing. An equal grant will go to planning a line between Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit.

A noted champion of buffing up Ohio’s Amtrak service, Brown was adamant on Tuesday that those dollars will blossom into, one day, a way of traveling to Central and Southern Ohio without a car. What is often daily life for commuters in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C. could be an actual possibility for Northeast Ohioans.

Amtrak’s proposed stations among the 3C+D, from a 2021 factsheet. The study, if granted, will most likely revise or update the station list based on ridership projections. Credit: Amtrak

“Good Amtrak service shouldn’t be a privilege only for people on the coasts,” Brown said in a statement. “These new routes would expand opportunity, help grow businesses and create jobs, and connect communities in Ohio and across the Midwest. I fought for the investment to make Amtrak expansion in Ohio possible—and I will keep fighting to make sure that Ohio receives these critical infrastructure projects.”

Existing as a big wishlist item for transit gurus and experts for the last few decades, the 3C+D has picked up steam in the recent years, as Biden-era federal agencies have opted to reverse years of disinvestment in the country’s meager transit lines.

Imagining three daily round trips, clocking in at five-and-a-half hours, Amtrak is proposing the creation of six new train stations to make 3C+D as efficient as possible, including one at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Of course, such new builds, and conversion of industrial railroad lines, would cost hundreds of millions, none of which is secured.

Though such a corridor, the release said, would “receive priority in future funding competitions.”

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