#19: Cincinnati’s Abandoned Subway and Highway Tunnels
Beneath Cincinnati, a transit dream sits unfinished in the dark. The city began building a subway system in the early 20th century, but inflation, funding troubles, political changes, and shifting transportation priorities left the tunnels without trains. Over the decades, people have proposed new uses, including transit revivals and other infrastructure ideas, but the system has remained one of America’s great hidden unfinished projects. It is not a highway in the ordinary sense, yet it belongs in this story because it shows the same pattern: ambition, construction, interruption, and a city left to live around the remains.
