Cincinnati: Exploring the Southern Midwest

Look out, Michigan Central: You've got stiff competition.
In mid-December 2024, I traveled to Cincinnati for the the American Public Transportation Association's Transit Ballot Initiatives Workshop . This conference brought together transit provider staff members and community advocates alike to celebrate recent wins, compare local funding models, discuss campaign messaging strategies, and draft plans of action for future transit expansions across the country.
But this isn't a write-up of the conference itself: This is a trip report of my five-day adventure beyond the hotel room in the southernmost Midwest city I've visited to date. Grab a bowl of chili and settle in!
Cincy–Bound on the 'Hound
Although it's roughly as far south of Detroit as Traverse City is north, Cincinnati is far beyond the realm of Indian Trails . There are two viable options for getting there: Amtrak's Cardinal , which only departs Chicago on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and Greyhound or Barons Bus intercity coaches, which operate daily from Detroit.
The time had finally come. At 6:05, just minutes after security unlocked the doors, I rolled my suitcase into Howard Street Station.


Most intercity bus stations in Michigan are shared facilities owned by local transit operators that have a minimally secure boarding process: Simply show up at the curb or designated bay and board when the bus arrives. Howard Street Terminal in Detroit is a notable exception as it exclusively serves intercity carriers and requires passengers to wait inside and line up in front of gates, airport style. Doors are locked five minutes prior to departure, so arriving early is a must.
I had two ideas in mind for when I first decided to take Greyhound for a spin: The overnight ride from Chicago to Detroit via Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, which allows for a longer day trip than any of Amtrak's Michigan lines, or a round trip to Toledo. I nearly booked the latter last April for the total solar eclipse, but came to my senses at the last minute and chose to carpool instead. Unfortunately my gut instinct proved correct as I-75 transformed into an interstate parking lot for nearly the entire day.
That same bus continues to Cincinnati, and this time there would be no once-in-a-lifetime celestial event muddying my plans. Six hours, three intermediate stops, one seat: Tame by Greyhound standards but more than enough adventure for my first experience.
Just before 7:00, with the sun yet to rise, my journey to the other end of the Midwest officially began.

Greyhound Route US0110 from Detroit to Atlanta via destinations in Ohio. The bus stops in Toledo, Lima, and Dayton before reaching Cincinnati.

The view from Seat 5D: Not the very front, but just close enough for comfort.
In all honestly, the trip was uneventful — and that's really all you can ask of an intercity bus operator. I shared a row with another passenger between Detroit and Toledo but was fortunate enough to have it to myself for the rest of the ride.

Crossing into enemy territory, with style
Travel notes for first-time Greyhound riders
Indian Trails marks food stops on its itineraries. Greyhound, at least per my sample size of one, does not, leaving breaks up to the driver's discretion — or, by majority vote should they be willing to entertain it, the passengers' discretion. (As Amtrak would say, you're all in this together... literally!) My southbound trip made no unscheduled stops, but my return trip pulled off I-75 north of Dayton for a brief restroom and meal stop at a Love's. Your mileage may vary, so be sure to pack snacks.

Vending machines are an intercity bus traveler's best friend, but there's no guarantee they'll be available or accessible at the time your bus is passing through a station. Never pass up an opportunity to stash a water bottle or a few granola bars in your coat pocket.
Greyhound does have an in-flight entertainment system of sorts with a small selection of movies, TV shows, and bite-sized browser games, none of which count toward your onboard WiFi quota (and yes, there is one: Passengers get only 100 MB of data per 24 hours of travel unless they pay extra for up to 300 MB). External streaming services like Netflix aren't accessible, so you'll want to download anything you plan to watch beforehand if you don't have an unlimited cell data plan of your own. Just remember that like Amtrak, onboard internet should be seen as a nice extra rather than a fixture of the experience as more often than not it doesn't work or is too slow to be of any use.
On the topic of unreliable amenities: Travel with a power bank. This is non-negotiable. Greyhound's fleet is not known for being in pristine condition and just like a WiFi connection isn't a guarantee, neither are working outlets at your seat. If your phone dies, you'll be stuck without it until the next rest stop at best or the end of your trip at worst until you find a public place to sit and charge up. Buses don't tend to stop in particularly pedestrian-friendly locations, and I need not remind readers of this blog how business owners typically treat intercity travelers. I'd also recommend carrying a few small bills in cash for last-mile travel as open payment with credit cards is still less than common among local transit providers.
Trip highlights
Greyhound operators will often ask passengers not to disembark at a stop other than their own if they're running behind schedule, with meal breaks being the exception. I briefly stretched my legs in Dayton about an hour before we arrived in Cincinnati but otherwise remained on board.

Fellow travelers saw a rare sight on the day of my trip: An Amtrak train departing Toledo during the daylight hours. Typically a bus connection is only possible via Amtrak's Thruway service.

Hollywood Casino, just south of Toledo on the banks of the Maumee River.

Downtown Lima (pronounced "Lye-mah"), the second home of the Lansing-famous Kewpee Hamburger .

Our noble steed at a scheduled stop in Trotwood outside Dayton.
Bridging the gap: The last mile (or ten)
When riding Greyhound, don't bank on getting dropped off in the center of any given city. For a variety of reasons, both operational and political, stations are often in outer suburban orbit and you're left to your own devices to figure out the rest. Cincinnati is a particularly egregious example of this with the station some 13 miles north of downtown, nestled in an entirely unwalkable crevice of the I-75 and State Route 126 interchange across from a car dealership in Arlington Heights. It's the same unfortunate story that's unfolded across the country: The downtown terminal was sold to a private developer in late 2022. A new station building is being constructed, but for the moment the ticket office is operating out of a mobile trailer.



If you step off Greyhound in Cincinnati expecting to grab lunch or a coffee near the station after the ride, you're in for a bad time. Here's hoping the new station building offers a warmer welcome (literally).
Metro , Cincinnati's fixed-route bus system operated by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), stepped up to close the gap. Service on Route 43 was extended to provide a 24/7 connection between the relocated Greyhound station and downtown.

Route 43, Reading Road, operates between Arlington and downtown.
In close partnership with the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK), Metro heavily advertises Transit as the trip-planning app of choice with cross-agency fare payment built in via EZFare. I hopped off Greyhound just four minutes before the next southbound bus, but thanks to the streamlined setup along with some crafty temporary wayfinding, I was still able to catch it and saved myself a solid half an hour of waiting in the cold. Shout-out to Metro's planning and comms teams for running a well-oiled machine!

If it works, it works! As a first-time Metro user, I appreciated this functional approach to informing riders of the new service pattern.

I punched the air when I saw the EZFare bar pop up at the bottom of Transit. Second to the availability and frequency of service itself, integrated trip planning and fare payment is by far the easiest way to make a good first impression on existing transit users who are new to your system.
As an aside: CincyLink, a standalone express service operated by the Butler County RTA on high-floor motorcoaches, supports physical reloadable EZFare cards that can be purchased from the Middletown Transit Station. A trip out there from downtown Cincy requires a full day as the schedules are commuter-oriented, so unfortunately I wasn't able to work it in. I'm curious to dive into whether these cards offer cross-agency support since back home, TheRide in Ann Arbor also uses the EZFare system — just mobile only.

CincyLink is built for one-way travel, which makes sense for commuters but doesn't lend itself to exploration. On my way home, an afternoon trip followed my Greyhound bus up I-75 for several miles.
Exploring Cincinnati: Tourist Mode
I spent five days in Cincinnati and ended up making repeat visits to certain places I enjoyed. Rather than a chronological recap, I've separated most of the trip into two sections: Tourist Mode for the attractions I'd recommend to anyone staying downtown without a car, and Adventure Mode for the farther-flung destinations that pushed the limits of Greater Cincy's transit network.
Downtown
After a grand total of seven hours in transit, I finally made it to Cincinnati's downtown bus plaza: Government Square.

My first glimpse of downtown.
I arrived on a Sunday and had the rest of the day free to explore, so I kept it simple to start: I poked around various destinations within walking distance of the conference hotel, and then picked one transit-accessible neighborhood to visit.


The art deco mall at the base of Carew Tower, Cincinnati's second-tallest building. Sadly, the 49th floor observation deck is closed with no anticipated reopening date.

Red Bike, Cincy's nonprofit bikeshare system, commands a strong presence throughout the downtown area and nearby neighborhoods. Similar to MoGo, e-bikes are available for the same price as a standard rental.
Clifton
Once I'd had my fill of wandering the downtown streets and the shops around the Fountain Square ice rink, I hopped Route 17 to Clifton Market, the neighboring Skyline Chili, and Burnet Woods.

Route 17 serves the University of Cincinnati. Students can ride Metro for free.


The bandstand pavilion at the center of Burnet Woods, a large, hilly park with walking trails and picnic tables aplenty.

Corey's outside take on the local eats: Pretty good! The custom tabasco blend adds a nice amount of kick. I'd be willing to bet a coney in Michigan could whip up a fairly close replica if they were to try 🍝

One thing about Cincinnati I was not prepared for: It is HILLY. If I ever go back in the summer months, I'll definitely bring my e-bike with me!
Eden Park and Krohn Conservatory
I spent my third evening in Cincy walking through the conservatory's Golden Days of Yule event with other conferencegoers. A quick hop on Route 1 from downtown drops you right at the door, and Routes 4 and 11 get you close enough to walk.


Metro Route 1 winds its way through Eden Park. (Now how's that for a bus shelter?)
Depictions of Findlay Market and the historic Mount Adams Incline funicular.

Cincinnati Music Hall.


Paying the Cat Tax: The Lucky Cat Museum
Tucked away on the first floor of Essex Studios in the Walnut Hills neighborhood is the Lucky Cat Museum , open by appointment only Tuesday through Saturday. Metro Route 43 runs every 30 minutes and gets you about a block away.



Tama , the famous feline stationmaster at Idakiso Station in Japan.

I've got two other museums on my list of places to explore!
Findlay Market (Over-The-Rhine)
My go-to lunch spot during the conference was Findlay Market, an indoor farmers' market with a variety of vendors.


Findlay Market is a primarily indoor public market embedded in Over-The-Rhine, a historic neighborhood just north of downtown with tons of walkable shops and restaurants.


This is Market Square, tucked away behind Deeper Roots Coffee a block east of the indoor market itself. It was my "secret spot" during the trip – a publicly accessible yet quiet place to eat. Every city's got one if you know where to look.
The Connector
The Connector, formerly the Cincinnati Bell Connector, is a one-way figure-eight streetcar loop that serves the central business district. Operations were transferred from SORTA to the city in January 2020. From a planning perspective, it shares many of the same design concessions as the QLine in Detroit such as mixed-traffic operation and curbside stations rather than a center-running alignment. It's a transportation solution that prioritizes downtown economic development over providing a strong regional connection: Metro, TANK, and CincyLink fill the latter role for Cincinnati.


At peak hours, the streetcar often sees delays as a result of sharing the road with vehicle traffic.

You can learn a lot about intermodal network design, and the challenges that come with it, from infrastructure and stop placement in an area where services overlap. This is a Metro boarding shelter for buses that happens to be directly along the streetcar alignment just one block south of a station.
As a tourist attending a conference rather than a local relying on transit day-to-day, I was the target audience for the Connector and did make use of it a handful of times during my trip — mainly to reach Findlay Market for lunch and the downtown Kroger for hotel room breakfast needs. I prioritized exploring the bus system while I was visiting, but the streetcar was a fun attraction nonetheless. (And yes, I led a group of fellow conference attendees on a ride-along. How couldn't I?)
Exploring Cincinnati: Adventure Mode
The part you're all actually here for.
Crossing the Ohio River
Metro only forms half of Cincinnati's bus system. TANK is its counterpart across the river and the best way to jump the state line is the Southbank Shuttle , a trolley which runs every 15 minutes between Downtown Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport.


If you plan to ride the trolley, make sure at least one person in your group is familiar with Transit or other real-time tracking apps. The route is pretty circuitous and it wouldn't be too difficult to get yourself stuck on the wrong side of the river if you tried to wing it.

At the time of my trip, the trolley picked up right outside the doors to the Westin on 5th Street. On March 22nd, the stop will be removed as part of an effort to clarify the service for riders by simplifying the route.

This isn't a tourist trolley – it operates like a regular bus! The same passes used on other Metro and TANK routes are accepted.
Rather than waiting for the trolley back, I walked across the Roebling Bridge for some nighttime cityscape views.


The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, first constructed in 1867.

One foot in Ohio, one foot in Kentucky (or the center of the bridge, at least)
Florence, y'all
I was back downtown, but I wasn't calling it a night just yet: It was time to complete the usual new city ritual. 🥨
A connection between two regional bus systems I regularly ride back home in Metro Detroit is by way of a prominent shopping mall, hence the tradition.
Malls and large shopping centers are more often than not the seams that hold a regional bus system together. As they tend to be the poster child of car-centric development while also generating high transit demand, they're one of easiest places to see how local leaders and business owners tackle infrastructure-related barriers to access.
You can also learn a lot about the internal principles guiding a bus network's design from a trip into the suburbs. Does the bus come every 15 minutes, but drop you a quarter mile's walk away? Does it take you right to the door, but only once an hour? Both are valid answers to the challenge of serving low-density sprawl, and a pretzel run is a fun way to discover which regions favor which approach.
In Greater Cincinnati, Metro and TANK's solution appears to prioritize fast, point-to-point service. Route 42x is an interesting example: As an all-day express overlay on top of Route 1 between Downtown Cincinnati and a secondary transit hub in Florence which serves as an access point for multiple suburban destinations, ridership has bucked the post-2020 trend and increased while other commuter-oriented TANK routes have seen less use. The upcoming March service changes even see the addition of new 42x trips in the face of significant cutbacks elsewhere in the system.
Kenwood and the Riverfront Transit Center
I was down, but not out: The next evening I started a new quest for a pretzel, and this time succeeded.
Cincy has a good mix of high-frequency "core" routes with local stop spacing and commuter services with nonstop expressway segments, but MetroPlus is the only limited-stop bus line in the entire network. To me it feels like a pilot for a future buildout of similar routes.
The Grand Finale: Cincinnati Union Terminal
You didn't think I'd leave Cincy without visiting the train station, did you?

My last look at Government Square before saying goodbye to downtown.
I'll admit it: I didn't do much research ahead of this one. I'd planned to spend about 30 minutes there at most, expecting a simple exhibit akin to Durand Union Station with some memorabilia in a small room next to the Amtrak waiting area.
I could not have been more wrong.

My first glimpse of the station, and my first clue that I might be in for more than I'd bargained for.
Metro Route 49 takes you right to the front steps of Union Terminal, but I missed it after taking a little too long to eat breakfast and futilely sprinting across Government Square. It was a brutally cold morning with strong winds and I was concerned my phone would shut off before I could pay my fare, so even though the 49 departs every 20 minutes I decided I'd rather walk than wait in one place and took the 33 instead.
(To Metro's credit, a ticket vending machine is available at Government Square for purchasing paper passes with credit cards – I hadn't considered this option. Unfortunately, they don't currently support credit cards at the farebox or offer a reloadable fare card.)

It's about a 20-minute walk from the closest stop on Route 33 to Union Terminal.

Dalton Avenue runs directly under the station's elevated fountain courtyard.

Train passengers used to be able to access the station from the street below by way of two pedestrian tunnels. Today the entire perimeter of the building and courtyard is fenced off with entry only permitted from Western Avenue. Getting here without a car is a considerable challenge unless you take Route 49 (Red Bike won't help you either).
The station itself is unbelievably gorgeous — and it was just as unbelievable to learn that we almost lost it . Only within the past decade was it restored to its original condition for the public to experience. The Cardinal still serves the station overnight three times weekly.

If you're of a certain age, the station's facade might look familiar to you. It was the source of inspiration for the Hall of Justice in Justice League cartoons and comics.

No pictures can do the scale of this atrium justice — I set my camera's zoom to its lowest setting and still could barely capture a quarter of it in frame. You have to see it for yourself.
The Cincinnati Museum Center
The train station doubles as Cincinnati's largest full-fledged museum — not just transportation but science, natural history, and children's exhibits as well. I only had time to scratch the surface.


A historic streetcar is on display, complete with a film projected through the windows showcasing the destinations it used to serve.


Hey MoGo, here's an idea! Got an old, retired bike from the fleet to stick in the Michigan Science Center?
The Cincinnati History Library and Archives
As an accidentally perfect sendoff, I discovered the History Library in the basement of the museum. The staff there were incredibly kind and enthusiastic, even giving me a free locker for my suitcase and coat while I browsed the shelves.

It wouldn't be a transit trip if I didn't do a little local history investigating.


That's a Detroit United Railways car! Whether it's Kalamazoo, the Illinois Railway Museum (stay tuned for that) or Cincinnati, I can't escape uncovering historical accounts of this system. It's everywhere. It finds me.
That's all, folks
From the station, it was a hurried trip straight back to the suburbs for my Greyhound home.

Having to step out of such a beautifully grand train station and ride back to that Greyhound trailer in the middle of nowhere was soul crushing. As a country, we have a lot of work to do if we're ever to restore intercity travel to its former glory.

Toledo's Anthony Wayne Bridge welcomed us as we crossed back into Michigan.
I'll definitely be back someday — and maybe sooner rather than later. I very well might end up in Dayton this summer for a trolleybus adventure. See you all then!

Until next time, Metro! This is a fantastic bus system, and I'm excited to see where future expansions take it.