Photo: Amtrak.com
Stu Nicholson has been trying for decades without success to get Amtrak—or any other passenger rail service—to come to Columbus, Ohio.
As director of All Aboard Ohio, a passenger rail advocacy group, Nicholson helped explore possibilities, like creating a new route from Chicago to Pittsburgh, with Columbus in the middle.
But for now, Columbus, a city with 878,000 people, the second-largest city in the Midwest, has no passenger rail service. It doesn’t even have a station.
That could soon change. A plan Amtrak is floating would not just restore passenger service to Columbus, but also across Ohio and spanning the U.S., from Colorado to Florida to Georgia to Wisconsin. Whether the plan might become reality has yet to be seen, but it’s sparked hope in states and cities that, like Columbus, are now passenger rail deserts.