That's OK. You see...Dayton doesn't have a subway. We almost did. But, currently, we do not. OK, admittedly, that's for "light rail" and it dates to 1976, but apparently some folks thought it was a good idea and it got pretty far in the process before it was unceremoniously killed at the state level.
But something like that is no challenge to a good imagination, is it?
A few years ago an enterprising young fellow by the name of Darrek Jones (maybe...it's a little fuzzy, and he was using aliases to create an entire company) started the Miami Valley Rail Authority. He drew maps and plans and routes and designated stations. Info is scarce, but the best source is here. Scroll to the bottom, they have more maps.
This was pointed out to me as I was complaining about my commute one morning. Basically something along the lines of "why don't you take the subway" and then we were off. Also, like I often do, I became a little too obsessed. How obsessed?
View Dayton Area Regional Transit.kmz in a larger map
About that obsessed.
There it is, as best as I can figure, the entire Dayton area subway system laid out in Google Earth and imported to Google Maps. Yep, I'm a dork. (By the way, the stations all get translated slightly north in the Google Maps version. Click through the map above and select "View in Google Earth" to see a better version)
So I thought, hey, why not...let's take a look at what he's got and, maybe critique it a bit. Maybe it's something another imagination can latch onto and turn into something beautiful. Maybe it's just something you're going to laugh at and move on. Anyways, here we go...
The first thing I noticed when putting this together is that the lines, for better or worse, do tend to follow major streets. 3rd, 5th and Col. Glenn all get their major lines. There's a good mix of north/south and east/west, as well as a fair number of diagonals.
Also, the central downtown district is handled well. There are actually 4 "major" transfer stations arranged in a square around downtown through which all but the Circle Line and the Governor Rhodes Line run. (I'm going to attempt to color code what I'm talking about. It'll help, I think). Every line intersects at least once with every other line. It's really not a bad solution, even if it is a little convoluted (more on that later)
The lines are clearly delineated and well named. The Salem Line follows Salem Ave to downtown and then maintains the same basic trajectory southeast of the city. The Circle Line is, well, a nice circle around town. The Eastern Line stays, for the most part, east of the city. Other lines are named after notable figures in Dayton. Among them the Wright Brothers, Dunbar, and, ironically, it would seem, President Ford and Governor Rhodes.
An aside to explain the ironies...President Ford and Governer Rhodes were both in power when the DART light rail system was shot down and right before/during the energy crisis of the late '70s. Ford gets off easy with a relatively useful, if not a little redundant, line running east/west through Dayton, but Rhodes's line is scathing. It's 6 stops whose chief achievements are to start, do nothing short of disappear into the countryside, then connect a military base with a university. I'm not entirely sure it's coincidental, but if it's not, it's pretty funny.
Anyways, there are some problems.
First off, Dayton is an already built-up city. Therefore the main roads used to define the system often meet at unfortunate angles. For instance, the Wright Brothers Line enters Centerville from the north and then makes a hard turn to the west towards Miamisburg. For those of you not familiar with Centerville, the old, historic downtown consisits of narrow streets and would never work for a subway as the 90 degree turn would never fit. It would require the moving or undercutting of numerous historical buildings (like the Panera or City Bar-B-Q) in order to fit in the turn. There are several more like this throughout the system.
Also, there's at least one station that can not physically exist. It actually appears on both the Circle and the Belmont lines. It's the Hoover/Philadelphia station. While those two roads are perpendicular, they never intersect as neither crosses the Wolf Creek. This is another instance where it's hard to tell if the original author was serious or not.
In a similar vein, there is a Sperling stop on the Eastern line between Smithville and Linden. The problem here is that the line should logically run along Burkardt Ave and Sperling does not intersect Burkhardt. Strange.
Also, the Dunbar line has some serious issues in downtown. It enters Dayton from the east, then stops at Union Station, then goes to the Convention Center, then to the Oregon District. All's well there. Then it turns northwest towards Cooper park, then west along Monument to South Webster. It looks good on the map, but it's hard to comprehend how such a thing could be possible. Eliminating the Oregon stop would provide just as many connections, but it would eliminate the switchback. Probably the better idea.
And then there's the dated-ness of the map. This map was created between 2000 and 2006 according to the copyright. This means that the Dragons weren't as big a draw and therefore there's not a 5/3 Field stop on the Dunbar or Eastern lines. Also, the Greene hadn't yet come into its own and thus there's no line headed that way. It could be solved by adjusting the Belmont line, but it may just be easier to put a Stroop connector from the Circle line around to Belmont at Research Park.
There is, however, one major problem with the design. It's too redundant. The Ford line actually has 5 unique stops along its entire length and these, frankly, could be absorbed easily into an extension of the Belmont line. Which, in turn, shares several unnecessary stops with the Circle Line along Philadelphia. In most cases a transfer at a logical point (where you want to travel n/s instead of e/w for instance) is preferable to having to monitor the train you get on several stops ahead as some will be heading north and some west.
Then there's the Rhodes line. As mentioned, its lack of utility might be a nod at the governor, but that's no reason to keep it that way. By simply leaving it as is and then incorporating the Troy branch of the Eastern Line into downtown where it could then turn back to the east and complete a loop (possibly express) to WPAFB it could actually be quite a utilitarian line.
And, of course, we need more connectors. Connecting Rhodes with the western branch of the Eastern Line (wow...) would provide greater access to the airport while reducing the number of transfers needed.
And then there's a small naming problem. The "Linden Spur" off the Eastern line makes sense. It runs along Linden. Problem solved. Except it connects at the Hamilton Station. Move the connection one spot to the east and the Linden Spur connects in at the Linden Station. Done.
But that pales in comparison to the actual naming problem. There are several repeated station names throughout the system. Williams, St Mary's, Keowee, Spurling, Spinning, Woodman, Helena and a few others all have stops on multiple lines, often blocks or even miles apart. That's a problem that would have to be solved by naming locations and that, frankly, will be a problem. Dayton is pretty homogeneous and tends to not have tons of distinguishable landmarks, or else the landmarks are rather generic (quick - where is East Plaza? They have a shopping center, you know, and have a subway stop pretty much on their front door). Town and Country, the ballpark, City Hall, etc could work, but we'd still need a lot more to make the system work and they'd then have to somehow come into common use. Good luck with that.
Also, there are some strange gaps in the plan. Centerville to Miamisburg is 4 stops. Ouch. Oakwood is pretty much ignored (but probably by request) as is Beavercreek (ditto). Beavercreek pretty famously avoided the bus lines extending into its territory so I can't see them jumping on board with a subway system.
But it's got potential. I especially like the 675/Kemp station on the Eastern Line. That's like a quarter mile from my house and would give me access to several lines and, potentially, improve my resale. How could I not get behind that?
Oh, and there's the other problem: reality. Subways, since they are essentially trains, work best where it's flat. Think Chicago, New York, Paris, London, Beijing and, well, almost everywhere else with a solidly functioning train system. They're all flat. There are a few notable exceptions to this on the West Coast, but, for the most part, them's the ropes. And Dayton is, in spite of what many say, not that flat. It's actually pretty rolley.
Oh, yeah, and there's the money. I can't even imagine how much something like this would cost. Simple extensions to existing rail systems easily run into the millions. This would be orders of magnitude above that. If this came in shy of a even billion in any sort of realistic way, I'd be surprised. It'd take dozens of cities and a handful of counties working together to make this into a real product. And, frankly, I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Or, you know, ever.
So, there you are. My critique of a map of a subway system that does not, and never really could, exist. Did I waste a lot of time on this? Most certainly. Did I have fun? A little. Did I come up with a nice world-building activity for my alternate history novel where Dayton Ohio has become the capitol of the USA after the East Coast is wiped out by a Russian attack in the mid '80's? No, I most certainly did not. But I did have a good time, and that's probably the most important.
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