The horror movie clichés - dripping water of unknown origin, knocking pipes, and the requisite "What's that? What's THAT?!" hysteric - don't bother me nearly as much as the more subtle touches: an upended shopping cart, the iron handrail for stairs that no longer exist, concrete steps (mostly buried under debris) dead-ending at a solid concrete wall.

I suppose my guide was trying to comfort me when he said that the nylon noose - illuminated only by the beam from my flashlight and swinging like a lazy metronome - was too small and too weak to support a real body. Ha-Ha. Yes. Quite right. And you said the exit was which way, again?

Actually, the old subway tunnel reminds me of a James Cameron film: future archaeologist on a nuclear winter landscape, excavating a coffee- and tire-worshiping culture.

But where you and I see a mile of graffiti, trash, and shards of glass crunching under foot like someone eating Grape Nuts on TV, Christopher Burns sees the seed of an economic development bonanza for Rochester - if only the right people would get a clue.

"The idea is, we've got an asset in place," says Burns, communications director of the Subway-Erie Canal Revitalization Group. "Before we know what we want to do with the whole thing, part of it is going to be taken away from us."

Burns and company don't know exactly what the subway tunnel's second life might look like, but they figure it must be something more grand and useful than a big dirt pile. City officials don't entirely disagree, but they say that future's a ways off, and their safety concerns are real right now. The city is planning to fill in about 35 percent of the tunnel, on the far north end.

Burns is passionate, for sure. But is he realistic? Can the subway tunnel be salvaged, and for what? And is it even worth saving?

The glory days of Rochester's subway were short lived. It opened in 1927 and was abandoned in 1956. Historians blame a confluence of factors, including the Depression and the proliferation of the automobile. One of the four original mainline tracks was used for freight rail delivery of paper stock to Gannett until 1997.

Today, the tunnel is a dark, 4,500 square feet of old track, graffiti, litter, and concrete - a destination primarily for transients and urban explorers. 

It costs the city more than $1 million annually to maintain the tunnel, says city engineer Thomas Hack. The majority of the work, he says, is on the far north end - the section the city plans to fill in with dirt starting in the spring. The tunnel was built in two sections. The section from Nick Tahou's on East Main Street to the river is in relatively good shape, Hack says. But the northern section, from Main Street to Brown Street, "is just deteriorating beyond belief," he says. The city has closed a lane on Broad Street because of the deterioration.

Concepts for reuse of the tunnel have been floating around for years, Hack says: parking, an artists' colony, warehouse space, a museum, light rail, even refilling the canal with water. Burns, who is also the founder of Rochester Trolley & Rail - a group working to bring a rail-based trolley and streetcar system to the area - favors light rail. Burns envisions the line stretching from Paetec Park and Frontier Field through the Susan B. Anthony neighborhood and downtown, out onto Mt. Hope Avenue and the UR area - with stops along the corridor.

"The time could not be more right for this form of public transportation," Burns says. "Something that's electric. Something that's quiet. Something that - depending on where it's put - does not add to the traffic on our existing roads."

Filling in the north end of the tunnel would cut off important rail destinations, like the sports stadiums and the Susan B. Anthony house, he says.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to light rail, Hack says, is lack of community will. People have been talking about the subway tunnel, fill, and light rail in the same breath for 15 years, he says, and still nothing has coalesced.

"How long do you keep waiting?" he says. "How long do you keep saving something for the heck of saving something, with no plan? We kept delaying the project, hoping something would happen, something would gain traction, but nothing would materialize."

Light-rail operations typically have a great deal of community buy-in, Hack says, and even then it takes years to get the plans and money together. It can cost, he says, between $200 million and $500 million to get things rolling.

Rochester needs to create street life - energy, vitality - and you can't do that underground, Hack says.

"Underground transit usually runs in very, very dense environments: New York City, Boston, London," Hack says. "All new starts around the nation are on the surface. There's a certain appeal to having surface transit. It's fun. It's lively. The journey itself is an experience."

Using the tunnel for parking is really not an option, Hack says, because the tunnel is long and relatively narrow.

The age and condition of the tunnel are also concerns.

"If you convert it to parking, essentially what you've got is a parking garage that was built in 1924," Hack says.

Hack says he appreciates the SECR Group's passion, but he's not convinced that they represent more than a very small pocket of the community.

It's tempting to try to save the tunnel for historic and sentimental reasons, says Cynthia Howk of the Landmark Society, but it's really a question of planning and reuse: whether there is a legitimate proposal with a solid funding source.

"You have to ask many other questions," she says. "Sometimes you come up with answers you wish were different."

People often toss out "museum" as a means of preservation without knowing what they're getting into, she says. Having an endowment is crucial, she says, or it catches up to you in later years.

"You need to have a business plan, just as if you were going to start up a company," she says. "And a sizable, reasonable endowment has to be part of that."

But for Burns, it's all about the possibilities. The city has no plans currently to fill in the rest of the tunnel and is, in fact, working on a master plan for the Broad Street corridor. Why cut off a major portion of the tunnel, Burns says, before that plan is complete?

"The one thing we agree on is, it's too soon to tell what is the right use and thus it's too soon to take actions that are going to close the door on some of those exciting and high-potential re-uses," Burns says.

But Hack says the northern portion of the tunnel is not a major part of the master plan. Officials' emphasis is in the center city area, he says.

"That's where your opportunities are," he says.