Stu Nicholson spent more than seven years working for the Ohio Rail Development Commission, the state agency overseeing rail services across the state.
“Here’s the ultimate irony,” Nicholson, who now sits on the board of the national Rail Passengers Association, said. “ Every single public meeting that I went to, I had to drive a state motor vehicle.”
This irony, in Nicholson’s telling, illustrates the long-standing transportation reality in Ohio and much of the Midwest. The dense network of railroads that once powered the region’s transit needs now carries few passenger trains, and except for a few urban areas, rail-based public transit has largely gone extinct.
The story of how Ohio got here is rooted in national policy, suburban sprawl and infrastructure decisions.
“We’ve created this image that Americans love to drive, that they’re married to their cars,” Nicholson said. “[But] if Americans are in love with their cars, it must have been a shotgun marriage.”
After World War II, a massive housing boom swept across the country, fueled by returning veterans and efforts to support them financially. The G.I. Bill in 1944 provided veterans with a variety of benefits to ease their transition to civilian life, including low-interest home loans. These benefits enabled many families to leave crowded urban centers and establish homes in the newly constructed suburbs.
This postwar migration reshaped both where Americans lived and how they got around. Suburban living required personal transportation, and with that came a shift in national infrastructure priorities.
“We chose, as a society, to fund [highways] at an extremely high level,” Nicholson said. “And we [ignored] public transportation for the most part.”
The apex of this car-centric strategy was the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which launched the interstate highway system and set up the Highway Trust Fund, which to this day draws on gasoline taxes to fund highway expansion.
By contrast, public transit and rail projects in Ohio draw from the state’s General Revenue Fund and rely on lawmakers and advocates to haggle over funding levels every two years.
The funding gap between rail and road in Ohio has compounded over the decades. As cars and highways siphoned away riders through the second half of the twentieth century, the privately run rail routes bled money and eventually closed one by one, without a self-replenishing stream of revenue to tap.
By the time the federal government stepped in — Amtrak assumed the nation’s intercity passenger rail service when it began operating in 1971— only a few of the routes roamed on, clipping Ohio cities, often in the predawn hours, on their way to Chicago, Washington or New York.
“I think we really need to change the way we fund transportation here,” Nicholson said. “We need to put public transportation and rail at the same level as highways in terms of importance.”
For John Esterly, a leader in Ohio’s Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the labor union that represents freight and passenger rail workers, the need to reform transit funding is both professional and personal.
A Toledo native, Esterly has for decades commuted between Northeast Ohio and Columbus by car. This two-and-a-half-hour drive made him realize the need for passenger rail in Ohio.
“It was about the 20th year of making that round trip between Toledo and Columbus where I … realized I cannot stand making this drive, and if I never have to do it again, it’ll be too soon,” Esterly said.
While his interest in expanding Ohio’s rail industry was originally a matter of economic growth, Esterly said his advocacy work has also shown him how passenger rail can provide crucial social infrastructure.
Ohio once had the chance to connect its major cities by rail. In 2010, the state received a $400 million federal grant to launch a high-speed passenger rail line connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati — known as the 3C+D Corridor.
The proposed rail plan had strong support from Governor Ted Strickland, who viewed it as an investment in Ohio’s future and a potential driver of job growth, Nicholson said.
But his successor, Governor John Kasich, saw things differently. He viewed the project as financially risky and doubted it would attract enough riders to justify the cost. Kasich ultimately returned the funding to the federal government to be reallocated to other states. He also withdrew Ohio from the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission, which advocates for improving the region’s railroad network.
Looking back, these decisions may have cost Ohio a prime chance to build critical infrastructure and the opportunity to reshape its transportation future.
Nicholson remembers the repercussions of the decision well. He was working at All Aboard Ohio, a statewide public transit and passenger rail advocacy nonprofit, and he said the group lost more than half of its membership: “Everybody said, ‘Well, there goes the money. Why am I even going to bother being an advocate?’”
But public interests in Ohio’s rail future lingered.
During Nicholson’s last year at All Aboard Ohio, the organization commissioned an economic impact study for the 3C+D Corridor project. He said the results showed significant benefits from job creation to boosts in local tax revenue. The study sparked renewed enthusiasm across the state — the group expected a public meeting in Crestline, a small town north of Columbus that once housed key railroad facilities, to draw fewer than 50 people. Instead, more than 500 people showed up.
To Nicholson, this is evidence of a growing divide between public need and legislative action.
“I think the desire is there in terms of public support,” he said. “Where there’s a disconnect, I think, is between what the public wants to see and what the legislature is willing to do — or even recognize to be done.”
But despite considerable public interest in passenger rail development, the Ohio State Legislature is reluctant to appropriate the necessary funding. In 2025, the Ohio House of Representatives made two separate attempts to rejoin MIPRC, but both provisions were struck by lawmakers in the state Senate. It would have cost $25,000 for the state to reenroll.
Esterly believes that passenger rail infrastructure can grow in Ohio, even if the state isn’t part of MIPRC. The 3C+D Corridor planning process still has momentum, and, as Nicholson observed, the project has the backing of citizens across the state.
But Nicholson is adamant that a true passenger rail revival in Ohio would require real structural changes. He endorses establishing high-level departments focused on rail and public transit, similar to those in states like Virginia, and he also urges leaders to promote transit-oriented development to decrease reliance on cars.
“I don’t want to take away anybody’s car. I don’t want to turn I-71 into a cow path,” Nicholson said. “But wouldn’t you like to have an option?”
Janek Schaller contributed reporting to this story.
