Transit discussion
The future of public transportation in metro Detroit will be the subject of a panel discussion at 7:15 tonight in the lower mezzanine of the Guardian Building, 500 Griswold in Detroit.
The discussion will come during the annual meeting of Transportation Riders United, a Detroit-based advocacy group that focuses on public transportation.
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Commuter rail plan to Detroit gets a push
Amtrak from Ann Arbor
January 22, 2007
Megan Owens' twice-monthly drives to Ann Arbor are a frustrating exercise in stop-and-go traffic and construction dodgeball.
The Hazel Park resident can't wait for the day that she can visit her family in Ann Arbor by riding a train, as she reads a magazine or talks on her cell phone instead of staring at car bumpers for the hour-long commute.
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The plan has many details to be worked out before it becomes a reality, like who will pay for the line, which could cost tens of millions of dollars a year to operate, and how often the service will run. Costs of the rides have tentatively been set at $1.50 from one stop to the next or $6 for the full ride between Ann Arbor and Detroit.
But local officials are more enthusiastic about this plan than they've been about any of the other myriad transit plans that have been floated in metro Detroit for decades.
"What we really have achieved along this corridor that we haven't had before is a unanimity of support," said Carmine Palombo, director of transportation programs for SEMCOG. "Everybody we've talked to wants a commuter train."
Cities are clamoring for stops in their communities and an extension of the line north to Royal Oak, Birmingham and Pontiac. The train would make a stop north of Metro Airport and then buses would shuttle travelers to the airport. The City of Wayne wants to be that stop.
"We think that Wayne has a lot to offer and if people have to stop in our downtown even if it is just to go to the airport, they'll see all that we've got," said Peter McInerney, community development director for the city.
Officials in Chelsea, about 15 miles west of Ann Arbor, are hoping that the line will be extended beyond Ann Arbor to their city.
"We have a lot of residents who work in Ann Arbor and the western suburbs of Detroit," said Mike Steklac, Chelsea's city manager. "And this would work well to serve them."
The governments council was hoping to use a $100-million federal grant to study and develop the rail line. But after conducting a $3-million study of five options for the route, the agency found that there weren't enough riders to support the line -- only between 600 and 6,000 passengers daily depending on the option. And it carried a price tag ranging from $600 million to $3 billion to construct and $25 million to $110 million a year to operate.
The disappointing results didn't meet the criteria set by the Federal Transit Administration to qualify for the $100 million. But that doesn't mean the money is lost forever, Palombo said. The plan with Amtrak would last three years and be used to show that there is enough interest in the commuter train for the area to qualify for the federal money.
Owens, who also serves as the director of the Detroit-based public transportation advocacy group Transportation Riders United, said the momentum is there. She pointed to the success of the shuttle buses for the winter festival in downtown Detroit leading up to last year's Super Bowl and the Tiger trains, which quickly sold out for baseball games last summer.
"If you give people a choice, they'll use it," she said.
But Matthew Schneider, who takes a shuttle from his Washtenaw County home to his job as an attorney in downtown Detroit, doesn't think he'd switch to the commuter line. One downfall, he said, is that the Detroit stop would be in the New Center area; he'd then have to shuttle into downtown.
"Right now I walk out of my office door and there's the shuttle," he said. "This sounds like a pain in the butt to me. I don't think I would use it."
The governments council and other local officials will meet with Amtrak on Jan. 30 to try to iron out some of the details of the rail line. Another public meeting will be held in February to announce details of the plan.
Contact KATHLEEN GRAY at 313-223-4407 or gray@freepress.com.
motorvilleboy
The "unfortunate, coercive monopoly" of government-run transit is actually a result of private sector ineptitude and greed in the early days of mass transit and suburbanization.
Rail and streetcar line owners/operators would speculate on tons of land along their lines, build subdivisions and hope for the best. If their land or developments didn't sell, they'd go under and other residents of nearby developments would get stuck without service. That happened everywhere across the US.
So local governments took over transit or formed transit authorities to do it, seeing that private transit and its focus on profit didn't meet the public need. Auto companies also bought and closed transit companies and put well-documented pressure on governments to replace rail with buses (which decreased ridership) and build and widen more roads and freeways.
Today we're stuck with a meager patchwork of buses as a result. The public and private sectors went skipping over the cliff together, hand in hand. Now it's up to us to try to correct their mistakes and government remains the only sector with the public good as their charge, whether or not they can actually do it.
But don't count on private companies. Unaccountability, fund misuse, service failure and blunders by the public sector pale in comparison to the corporate scandals we've seen lately. Or do you want Halliburton running Detroit transit?
Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:42 pm
prattleon
This is a nice idea that would greatly benefit me personally, if executed properly. It's just a shame that it is being proposed by the unfortunate, coercive monopoly that is government. If something like this were ever to get off the ground, it would undoubtedly be an inefficient mess. It's frustrating to think of the innovations in transportation that would have come about from the "greedy," self interest of private companies, competing against one another for our business; relying on our satisfaction to make a profit. Instead we ignorantly consign this responsibility, as well as many others, to unaccountable bureaucrats, who misuse the funds confiscated from taxpayers, fail to provide adequate services, and continue to call the shots, blunder after blunder. Until there is a drastic shift of responsibility from public to private, services like transportation will continue to deteriorate, and commuting into Detroit will remain a hassle.
Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:37 am
nogoatee
Watch out for the Airport Authority... they've killed every attempt to link the facility-- long rated one of the worst in america-- by mass transit.
If this rail plan doesn't get off the ground, or eliminates a convenient airport stop (NOT a stop in Wayne, fer crissakes) within 10 minutes of a check-in to BOTH terminals, or limits train schedules to twice a day, check to see the Airport board members aren't quitely whispering in the Feds' ears-- when they oughtta be innovating as 50-100,000 white collars who fly on planes simply evaporate from the metro area.
Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 3:14 am
computer_guy
This seems like a reasonably cheap and cost effective starter project to me, reusing tracks that already exist.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky project that only a NY/LA/SF Bay area size metro could afford. All of the other more Detroit-sized metros such as Philadelphia and Atlanta have some sort of basic mass transit line, including a stop at the airport. Metro Detroit is the odd one out right now in this respect, which only makes it harder for it to recover.
The Ultra (linked below) doesn't seem like a particularly cost-effective solution per traveler. Better to have a cheap, high-quantity, low-tech type of fixed transit, and for people who want more individual freedom, they can drive a car instead.
For what it's worth, I work for Ford, so I'm not some kind of anti-car person. The idea that this would hurt the auto companies doesn't hold water, either... the benefits to the auto companies from having a healthy metro region with transit would far outweight the minute loss in car sales.
Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 6:10 pm
Jtizzo
This is a great idea for people who dont want to drink and drive- and also who dont want their money goin in grandmoles pocket. I would pay $6 easy rather than face a DUI! Lets get it up and runnin!
Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:59 pm
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