 
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11029
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 3:11 pm: |    |
My bad on the 329 being for all 5. I am curious how the projects that I quoted above will be done for that price.
How much does adding a lane each way for 75 from 8 mile to 59 cost? The numbers seem really low for the aggressive plans listed in Metro Detroit. |
El_jimbo
Member
Username: El_jimbo
Post Number: 429
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 3:14 pm: | |
jt1,
anything listed in the 5 year plan about that I-75 expansion would represent only minimal preliminary steps like environmental clearnance. the actual construction phase would probably be somewhere between $500 million to a $1 billion project. Don't hold your breath on this project actually happening. MDOT just doesn't have the money to devote that much to one project. |
Clark1mt
Member
Username: Clark1mt
Post Number: 110
Registered: 06-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 3:16 pm: | |
The cost of actual construction is not included in the I-75 expansion, so unless extra money shows up for it, it won't be done in the next 5 years, I think. |
Futurecity
Member
Username: Futurecity
Post Number: 704
Registered: 05-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 3:17 pm: | |
"Capacity Improvements" means adding lanes, which is sheer stupidity.
MDOT is pursuing the same unsustainable, fucked-up transportation policies that has made Michigan the complete and total disaster that it is now. |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11030
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 3:22 pm: | |
Got it. Thanks for the clarification. |
Danindc
Member
Username: Danindc
Post Number: 3822
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:13 pm: | |
quote:The roads that MDOT maintains in Detroit get used. They own trunkline roads like the interstate, Michigan routes and US routes. Wayne County and the city of Detroit own other smaller streets and maintain those with their own budget. These numbers you see here do not reflect any money spent by county or municipal transit agencies.
I understand that. But I've driven down nine-lane Woodward before with traffic levels that could be handled by a two-lane road. Repeat this phenomenon over and over again throughout the City on Gratiot, Van Dyke, Michigan, Fort, the Davison, the Jeffries.... You don't think there's just a BIT of extra capacity along those roadways? |
El_jimbo
Member
Username: El_jimbo
Post Number: 431
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:16 pm: | |
When those roads were initially built like that they NEEDED the capacity. |
Danindc
Member
Username: Danindc
Post Number: 3823
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:20 pm: | |
quote:When those roads were initially built like that they NEEDED the capacity.
And they still need to be maintained, while MDOT builds MORE new roads that will also need to be maintained.
Do you understand that inefficient and underutilization of infrastructure is EXPENSIVE? |
Dnvn522
Member
Username: Dnvn522
Post Number: 306
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:20 pm: | |
I've made a few trips down Woodward when I wished it had two more lanes. |
El_jimbo
Member
Username: El_jimbo
Post Number: 432
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:21 pm: | |
Yes I do, but what is the alternative? Let it go to gravel? I don't believe in any future capacity expansion for the time being. However, we can't just let what we have already built fall apart. |
Danindc
Member
Username: Danindc
Post Number: 3824
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:24 pm: | |
^^^Exactly.
The point that a lot of people are trying to make on this thread is that Michigan can barely afford to maintain the network is has. Why is MDOT building more? |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 958
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:39 pm: | |
In Detroit, Livernois from Eight Mile to Six Mile was capacity corrected from 6 travel lanes and a center turn lane to 4 travel lanes and a grass median, so instead of having to maintain 7 lanes of roadway, Wayne County from now on only has to maintain 4.
This cost money, but only cost that money once, and the savings are permanent. I believe there is a plan to extend that configuration from Six Mile to Grand River Avenue next year.
There are many roads where extra capacity exists. On trunk line roads, where most of the traffic now uses parallel expressways, a lane or two could be taken off line, replaced by a median or (gasp) rail. In that way, we can reduce the excess of pavement where it exists, saving money in the long term.
Or is there some reason which I am not seeing that this is not practical? |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 959
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:40 pm: | |
By the way, the savings come in at least three forms that I can think of off the top of my head:
1. Pavement maintenance
2. Use of salt
3. Plowing |
Burnsie
Member
Username: Burnsie
Post Number: 1230
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 4:51 pm: | |
Futurecity wrote, "the same unsustainable, fucked-up transportation policies that has made Michigan the complete and total disaster that it is now."
The loss of manufacturing jobs has had a hell of a lot bigger effect than transportation policies. All the light rail and intercity passenger rail in the world wouldn't have stopped the auto industry and others from downsizing. |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 960
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 5:02 pm: | |
Burnsie, it doesn't stop what was here from leaving, of course. It does make it less likely that new economy companies will come though. Good transit is not the only thing companies look for when choosing a location, but more and more it's one of the things, and we score a zero.
Rapid transit is a basic public service people expect in big-city regions. It exists everywhere but here. Can you imagine selecting a new location for your company, and then finding out one of the cities you were considering had no public parks? Or no fire department? You would never choose such a place to locate; you could never attract the best employees.
That is how companies see us and our bizarre lack of transit service.
Every region everywhere has lost the manufacturing industries they had in the 1960s. They don't make computers in Boston anymore, and there are very few textile workers in the Carolinas compared to then, and nobody in Syracuse making televisions. The difference is, other places replaced what they had with other kinds of businesses, and we haven't. |
Hans57
Member
Username: Hans57
Post Number: 246
Registered: 05-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 6:02 pm: | |
Have any of you expressed how you feel on their website? |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 961
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 6:21 pm: | |
I have and probably some others have, but we can't see each other's postings there.
Plus there's the question, how much damn difference do our comments make anyhow. I have always had the impression that our regional planners just go ahead and do what they want to do, no matter what anyone says, or how many people would prefer a different result. |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 962
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 6:24 pm: | |
The other Michigan governmental crime is blaming machines. "The formulas require us to do it this way." Utter bullshit. Go to every other big damn city, which get funds from the same federal government we have, yet somehow found a way to get things done. It's not the machine, it's the people. |
Bearinabox
Member
Username: Bearinabox
Post Number: 447
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 6:41 pm: | |
Stupid question: What specifically can MDOT do, within the scope of its authority, to promote rapid transit in Detroit? I'm a bit fuzzy on what exactly they do, apart from maintaining state trunklines. Wouldn't regional rapid transit in metro Detroit have to be developed at the local level? |
Hans57
Member
Username: Hans57
Post Number: 247
Registered: 05-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 7:06 pm: | |
I wonder why they've even given the opportunity to post a comment. The plans seem to be set in stone, but I guess we don't really know. It doesn't make sense for them to give us chance if they won't take any of into consideration. |
Futurecity
Member
Username: Futurecity
Post Number: 705
Registered: 05-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 9:08 pm: | |
Burnsie just doesn't get it.
MDOT has created a gigantic, hideous, unsustainable transportation catastrophe here in Michigan that is built entirely to serve the needs of one industry and is designed specifically to give residents only one choice - travel by automobile.
Dynamic regions that attract investment and people (especially older northern ones) offer diverse transportation choices to their residences. Automobile, train, subway, walking, biking, ect.
The failed, backwards-ass policies of MDOT, the State of Michigan and local governments supported by residents like Burnsie, will not only continue to hammer home economic decline on Michigan, but give us little hope for the future. |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 963
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 11:57 pm: | |
Bearinabox,
A state department of transportation is responsible for some of the transportation within a state, and other transportation is delegated to local authority; but how it is done differs state to state. In Maryland, for instance, the state DOT is completely responsible for rapid transit. Denver and the surrounding counties in Colorado formed a regional transit district (much like what we did here with the Metro Park system).
If you want to develop something regional at the local level, you've failed before you even start. Imagine if each community in metro Detroit had been able to control the placement of expressways within its borders; you would have chaos, and no useful expressway would exist today. We have no government at the regional level (SEMCOG is a planning agency, not a government). The only government that can plan transportation at the superlocal level is the state, which is why all the major roads were designed and built, and are maintained, by the state.
So the state has to take a lead role, or nothing will ever get done.
SEMCOG, by the way, in its most recent long-range transportation plan, also calls for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on additional road capacity and exactly zero to improve transit. So that's where our local planning agency is as well.
We seem to want, as a region and a state, to fail. Or at least we keep electing people with no guts and no imagination. |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 964
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 14, 2007 - 12:04 am: | |
Hans57, they give opportunities to post comments because the Federal government requires a certain process in order for the plans to be valid (read "fundable"). I've never seen them change a plan in any significant way after the public comments come in. If I'm wrong, someone please give an example.
Even if all nine point something million of us posted a comment that what we need is better transit and not more roads, MDOT would mechanically reply that the Funding Formula God has decreed we cannot have decent transit. |
Dnvn522
Member
Username: Dnvn522
Post Number: 307
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Friday, December 14, 2007 - 8:14 am: | |
quote:MDOT has created a gigantic, hideous, unsustainable transportation catastrophe here in Michigan that is built entirely to serve the needs of one industry and is designed specifically to give residents only one choice - travel by automobile.
Did you read the plan at all? Yes, most of it is for highways and bridges, but 27% of the Transportation budget is spent on aviation, bus, marine and rail transportation. That's 10 times the amount spent on capacity improvements and 50 times the amount spent on new roads. |
Funaho
Member
Username: Funaho
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, December 14, 2007 - 12:15 pm: | |
The problem is that while everyone thinks mass transit is a great idea nobody wants to pay for it. You should've seen the complains on the freep.com forums when the tiny income tax increase was passed...dozens of "that's it I'm selling my house and leaving Michigan" posts. Then of course there's the fact that in reality, the suburbs don't particularly WANT to be connected with the City at all. I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
I for one would happily take a reasonable tax hit to build mass transit if it meant I could finally save myself 70 miles of driving a day driving to and from work in Ypsilanti. |
Futurecity
Member
Username: Futurecity
Post Number: 708
Registered: 05-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, December 15, 2007 - 8:54 pm: | |
The best idea is to immediately stop all widening of roads and all building of new roads (a losing game that rams Michigan further and further down the shitter). Divert those funds to begin building a comprehensive transit system. Until then, there is absolutely no hope for Michigan. |
Detroitplanner
Member
Username: Detroitplanner
Post Number: 1480
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, December 15, 2007 - 10:54 pm: | |
Why don't you people tell MDOT all of your suggestions instead of arguing your points among each of you who have your own agendas and very little data to support your claims? |
Trainman
Member
Username: Trainman
Post Number: 592
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 10:05 am: | |
I take mass transit seriously and MDOT knows about my efforts very well. They know that I filled up the buses in Livonia.
DY'ers, please challenge them or me with the facts, if you can. Thanks to those who have tried. When I don't post, I work at my mass transit job and enjoy many hobbies and being with friends.
Go ahead DY’ers and make my day and see if you can get MDOT to do something to make mass transit work by filling up the buses, so Livonia will opt back in. |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11075
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 10:09 am: | |
Dnvn522 - Any idea when the freeways through the city that are 55 are going to be bumped up to 65 or 70? |
Trainman
Member
Username: Trainman
Post Number: 593
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 6:46 pm: | |
Jt1, no wonder mass transit does not work. Maybe it is because everyone wants to get where they are going as fast as possible? |
Detroitplanner
Member
Username: Detroitplanner
Post Number: 1488
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 12:16 am: | |
Most of the 55 freeways are that way for a reason. If you look at factors such as volume, geometrics, lane width and crashes you will see that the lower speed freeways make a lot of sense.
I'm with Trainman, even if we could address those issues you take away another governor on the growth of sprawl and decentivize transit.
I'm sort of surprised that the new energy bill did not force 55 mph speed limits. |
Gsgeorge
Member
Username: Gsgeorge
Post Number: 481
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 12:38 am: | |
Look guys, I like my trains and all-- but honestly, does anyone here actually go 55 on the Lodge? I know I usually go around 65-70 and still have a hard time keeping up with traffic. |
Dnvn522
Member
Username: Dnvn522
Post Number: 309
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 1:56 pm: | |
quote:Dnvn522 - Any idea when the freeways through the city that are 55 are going to be bumped up to 65 or 70? They won't be if they have a traffic control order with the state police that sets their speed at 55. The freeways that did get bumped up are the ones that didn't have traffic control orders that mandated lower speeds. |
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