  Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4457 Registered: 02-2005 |
Okay-- should have thought so. Agreed. I haven't had a car even after the dorms. | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1130 Registered: 12-2006 |
Mackinaw, I have "embraced transit", but only a small (but growing) number of us have. It would be easier to embrace if it worked better: more routes, better frequency, some rapid routes. | ||
Living_in_the_d Member Username: Living_in_the_d Post Number: 69 Registered: 01-2008 |
Yeah, Were doing the one car gig, it takes some time to adjust, but still worth it in the long run. | ||
Trainman Member Username: Trainman Post Number: 634 Registered: 04-2006 |
The problem with mass transit is the high per passenger cost. It just simply cost too much. What we need in metro Detroit is the Henry Ford of mass transit to take over and make the cost affordable to the average worker. The assembly line approach of moving vast numbers of people around is the answer to bring back good paying jobs and increase the standard of living for everyone including those who work at the Livonia Wal-Mart. I'm sure we can do this in Detroit because we put the World on wheels and we can fill up the buses better then anyone if we all put our minds to this. | ||
Fnemecek Member Username: Fnemecek Post Number: 2716 Registered: 12-2004 |
quote: There's no reason why we can't maintain our existing roads and still have money for a much better mass transit system. You need decent roads in order to have a decent mass transit system because buses run on those same roads. The solution is that we move money away from one freeway expansion project and over to mass transit. | ||
Fnemecek Member Username: Fnemecek Post Number: 2717 Registered: 12-2004 |
quote: Have you been on a bus lately? quote: And yet you advocate a system of ever expanding freeways that would require even more subsidies from taxpayers??? | ||
Detroitrise Member Username: Detroitrise Post Number: 1664 Registered: 09-2007 |
"Have you been on a bus lately?" Apparently, the people posting on this thread are avoiding that aspect of the issue. | ||
Hairybackjoe Member Username: Hairybackjoe Post Number: 29 Registered: 06-2005 |
Wow! Just checked my email and saw this. It's time to put up or shut up for all of you....  | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 224 Registered: 04-2007 |
This argument means nothing: "We put the world on wheels, so mass transit won't work here." Those two things have nothing to do with each other. That is like residents in Silicon Valley saying, "We got the world digitized, so let's make sure we don't buy any more paper and pencils." Scotland: "We supply the world with haggis, so we all say no to soup." Really, that argument pops up every time somebody has a new transportation idea for this region. Basically, it says, "That's not the way we do things here." Look where that's gotten us. | ||
W_chicago Member Username: W_chicago Post Number: 3 Registered: 01-2008 |
Detroit is the Auto capital of the world, so why can't it be the transportation capital in the world??? We can have the best roads/cars AND best transit! Think about it!! It would be great for economy. | ||
Darwinism Member Username: Darwinism Post Number: 693 Registered: 06-2005 |
Metro Detroiters, if you are tired of throwing big money away and yet arrive home each night feeling road rage burning you up - here's your chance to relax, read a newspaper/book, listen to your MP3s and enjoy the rapid mass transit mode of getting from home to work and back home; US House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/conyers/ http://www.house.gov/dingell/ http://www.house.gov/kilpatric k/ http://www.knollenberg.house.g ov/ http://www.house.gov/levin/ http://mccotter.house.gov/HoR/ MI11/Home/ http://candicemiller.house.gov / US Senate: http://levin.senate.gov/contac t/index.cfm http://stabenow.senate.gov/ema il.htm Make these people WORK for you, BRING IN THE MONEY for major rapid mass transit implementation, and TAKE MICHIGAN out of a perpetual circle of losses in number of residents and in economical metrics. Put money in your own pocket, by getting rid of the second or the third car in the household. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5328 Registered: 10-2004 |
Duh! Unless one lives but a few blocks from a rail route, a transfer to a bus would be necessary. Many of the SMART E/W buses have headways an hour apart for most of the day. Likewise, the E/W DDOT buses have longer headways than the N/S routes. Because virtually nobody rides the bus in Macomb, for instance--0% rounded to the nearest integer, it doesn't seem likely that (a) mass transit would be received too favorably and few will ride and (2) SMART will not add (m)any increased buses for connecting to any rail line(s) if virtually nobody rides. So, if a commuter misses those E/W buses with long headways by a few minutes, a very long wait at those bus stops will be inevitable. As a result, some otherwise inclined to use mass/rapid transit, will resort to the mode they prefer more--their own transportation. | ||
Living_in_the_d Member Username: Living_in_the_d Post Number: 72 Registered: 01-2008 |
Yeah, I concur W. Chicago, well put. | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 225 Registered: 04-2007 |
Forget about what will happen if you build it where people are living all sprawled out. You build the system where there is a decent chance of dense development and the riders will come. You build it on Woodward or Gratiot or Michigan Avenue or Grand River where there is already heavy use of existing lines, extend it out as far as you can, and development WILL follow. It always does, everywhere the system is planned on good research and data. The goal is to draw higher-density development to within 1/4 mile of the stations. The folks who are settled into a suburban house with two cars and no sidewalks are not going to give up their cars. They don't have to. But we have to start moving away from that type of development. Read the news! Oil closed at over $101 per barrel. And, for the anti-tax crowd, tax burdens are slowly migrated to the new transit lines and the denser development. That means that over a period of time, sprawled suburbs pay a proportionally lower part of the total tax burden. They should like that part of it. Start somewhere! | ||
Fnemecek Member Username: Fnemecek Post Number: 2718 Registered: 12-2004 |
quote:quote: You missed my point so I'll make it clearer. DDOT and SMART buses are operating at much closer to full capacity than most freeways, especially on the Woodward routes and some of the other major routes. No one objects to spending billions & billions of our tax dollars to expand the freeways even more - even those expansions don't do diddly squat for Michigan or its economy. However, spend the same money on mass transit? That is what gets everyone's panties in a bunch??? Take a closer look at those buses. Or better yet, ride one and see what they're really like for yourself. | ||
Detroitrise Member Username: Detroitrise Post Number: 1673 Registered: 09-2007 |
Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. You really could have meant anything from just saying "Have you been on a bus lately?". | ||
Living_in_the_d Member Username: Living_in_the_d Post Number: 80 Registered: 01-2008 |
Yeah, Long Live D.D.O.T. | ||
Gene Member Username: Gene Post Number: 64 Registered: 10-2006 |
Haven't been on a bus lately, but as a kid we went everywhere by bus (DSR). Do I ride one now? On occasion, when my car is in the shop or the PM is down. Some reasons for lack of ridership,including mine: 1. Crime at the bus stops and on the bus. 2. Filth, urine, syringes, crackheads and so on at the bus stops.(see above). 3. Drivers don't give a shit. 4. Are they ever on time? 5. Did I mention crime? Until things change in this City, even if you spent billions on a light rail or some other fix all the worlds problems mass transit system no one other than those currently using the bus will ride. Attended the AIA 150 last year at LIT, at the top of everyones list to solve the regions problems was, guess what, MASS TRANSIT. My question posed to all of the many groups I was in was mass transit to and from where? No one had an answer. Lets fix the real problems in Detroit like education,crime,lack of city services and on and on and on. Once thats done there may be a justifiable need for mass transit if the people and jobs ever returned. Koolaid anyone? Cool City? (Message edited by gene on February 23, 2008) | ||
Ltorivia485 Member Username: Ltorivia485 Post Number: 2986 Registered: 08-2004 |
If we can make the city of Detroit a more desirable place to live and visit (decrease in crime and crackheads, better public schools, safer neighborhoods, improvements in city services), then the businesses and educated populations will follow suit. Clean up the neighborhoods before you can advocate any kind of mass transit. | ||
Parkguy Member Username: Parkguy Post Number: 226 Registered: 04-2007 |
Crime, education, transit... we have to attack ALL of these things... not one at a time. Each one is a vital cog in the way the city works. They are all basic quality of life services... and some of them are survival-level needs. Transit is a vital need for 300,000 riders every day. They need good transit to get to jobs that have moved farther and farther away from where they live, and they deserve transit that doesn't take three hours to get them to their jobs. A minimum wage job (or a $14 pre hour job) doesn't pay enough to let them move to Novi or Sterling Heights, nor buy and operate a reliable car. When places like Novi or Livonia opt out of the transit system, the people who argue against it aren't residents, but employers who now have to subsidize carpools and private van pools. | ||
Fnemecek Member Username: Fnemecek Post Number: 2719 Registered: 12-2004 |
GENE: I ride DDOT at least once a week for one reason or another and have for years. I've never had any issues with crime either on the bus or near any of bus stops. The buses are almost always on schedule or at least within 5 minutes of their schedule. I've also never seen a syringe on a DDOT or SMART bus. As for your question of where mass transit should go from and where it should go to, my answer is: from where you are to where you're going. Simple enough? LTORIVIA485: What makes you think that mass transit and improving the neighborhoods are mutually exclusive? EVERYONE: Why is that we can spend billions and billions of tax dollars on one freeway expansion project after another and never once even think about whether or not it's justifiable, but when it comes to spending it on spending it on mass transit all of sudden there needs to be a dozen different strings attached? Why would you spend $300 million on a new freeway offramp without worrying twice about crime and then have a meltdown at the very idea of spending a third of that amount to improve mass transit? Just how much of our tax dollars is everyone going to piss away before people start using their brains around here? | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5330 Registered: 10-2004 |
The mass transit routes of DDOT and SMART pass by thousands of vacant buildings or empty lots for new buildings, Fred. How come all those locations aren't being developed when all that mass transit barrels through there already? Maybe you don't ever look out the windows during your weekly bus rides and never noticed all those vacant buildings and empty lots just begging for development. But until you can explain away that, don't pontificate to us how much adding even more transit will help when it hasn't done squat yet. In the meantime, show us meaningful examples of synergy and the rising of Detroit that you are pushing all the time. If there's any of that, then where are the attendant jobs hiding all this time? | ||
Detx Member Username: Detx Post Number: 105 Registered: 07-2007 |
LY, The current light rail line in Houston, TX runs down a corridor that used to be just as blighted as most of Detroit. After about three years (approximate) of the light rail being up and running, massive swaths of land all round this corridor have been redeveloped. Visit this area now and it is overflowing with new housing, office space, restaurants, cafes, even a new campus in the University of Houston system. Comparing a city bus line to a light rail line is like comparing an apple to a banana. It’s like saying traveling across the country in a Greyhound bus is the same as traveling across the country in an Amtrak. Both are forms of mass transit. But the experience is totally different. If you build mass transit investment dollars will follow (has it ever been proved otherwise?). Think of it as infrastructure, and it is an infrastructure that will be crucial to growth in the 21st century, just as roads and freeways were crucial to growth in the 20th century. Frankly LY, your pessimism and unhealthy cynicism make me sick. When will the doubting and suspicion end? Honestly, it’s people like you who make me want to stay as far away from SE Michigan as possible. | ||
Russix Member Username: Russix Post Number: 69 Registered: 11-2006 |
Those corridors with empty buildings and vacant lots predate our current transportation model. Its what happens when you pull the thread on urban fabric, it completely unravels. Buses just don't do these corridors justice. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5331 Registered: 10-2004 |
Detx, by all means... Leave, if your constitution is so weak. It's people like you who prefer to waste public money needlessly that require a strong dose of cynicism applied your way. Now I don't desire to overload your reasoning process, so I'll merely return to one of Gene's points. [Gene is apparently another cynic, BTW.] quote: Maybe you, a rapid-transit zealot (with answers at the ready?), could answer Gene's question... Where are these mass (or rapid) transit routes to be expanded to? Surely, the routes in place now are far better than what was available during Detroit's boom years. Those living back during the 1920s surely would have been more than satisfied if they had today's SMART and DDOT systems--albeit with much shorter headways to accommodate the riders back then. And there's no shortage of real estate anywhere along the current Detroit mass-transit routes. And this phony elitism--that buses aren't good enough--won't cut it. Rickety streetcars over a half century ago were no match in class or comfort compared to today's buses, so don't play us for chumps. | ||
Mwilbert Member Username: Mwilbert Post Number: 93 Registered: 11-2007 |
To my mind, the only obvious place for a rapid transit line is up Woodward, from downtown to Grand Blvd, connecting the two main areas of redevelopment in the city, and also two areas where visitors/tourists might be a significant component, and who probably wouldn't ride regular city buses. It should make both midtown and downtown more attractive, and one could hope that this would hasten the improvement in area between downtown and midtown. That could also connect to the train station at New Center, so that anything useful running there could be tied to downtown. I am somewhat at a loss to know where else you could run transit lines to that would clearly make sense--obviously you COULD run them out the other radials, but as LY has said, I have a hard time believing they would attract anybody who doesn't ride the bus now. Maybe out Michigan to Dearborn. It isn't that far, and it could serve visitors too. It is too bad that Michigan is completely cut off from Mexican Town, as well as being farther than most people would walk. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5336 Registered: 10-2004 |
Another thing: The 4-mile stretch along Woodward has multiple bus routes running on it and has the shortest headways anywhere in Detroit. Spending a large sum to simply to shave a few minutes via LRT is folly. Much of the same could be achieved by running a dedicated bus route up and down Woodward that only makes express runs or one with very few stops along the way. Still, I ride the buses along Woodward, and except for those times that workers or school kids ride, they're not (very) busy. And I ride them at various times of the day and pretty much know how busy or how empty they are. | ||
Erikd Member Username: Erikd Post Number: 994 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: Much of the funding for for a mass transit system in metro Detroit would come from the federal government. Most people in metro Detroit/Michigan do not realize that our tax dollars have been funding mass transit projects in OTHER STATES. Due to our lack of mass transit systems, Michigan receives a paltry 43% return on the mass transit taxes that we pay out to Washington every year. The other 57% of mass transit taxes paid by Michigan residents is used to pay for mass transit in other states. Mass transit funding is similar to a matching 401K investment, only better. If metro Detroit/Michigan invested in a mass transit system, we would probably see 200% to 400% in matching funds from the federal government. If you ask how we can afford to invest in mass transit, I would ask how can we NOT invest in mass transit... | ||
Ltorivia485 Member Username: Ltorivia485 Post Number: 2987 Registered: 08-2004 |
I advocated this in the past, but I prefer monorail or elevated light rail for the city of Detroit rather than ground-level or underground mass transit (I know we are a much older city and have salt mines underneath). I really think we should be pushing the monorail idea. | ||
Fnemecek Member Username: Fnemecek Post Number: 2720 Registered: 12-2004 |
quote: I'm not sure who Fred is, but I'll answer this one. It's highly unlikely that bus routes would cause vacant buildings to be redeveloped. I never said they would. What I have argued is this: we as a state have spent billions and billions of our tax dollars on freeway expansions. We got nothing out it. No reduction in crime. No new jobs created. No vacant buildings redeveloped. We spent billions of tax dollars and we got nothing. Here's a crazy idea: let's take a third of what we're currently spending on freeway expansions and invest it in improving our mass-transit system. The rest can be used for improving other public services or cutting taxes. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that we're suddenly able to move people around region more efficiently. Danindc and a few others have argued that mass-transit will serve as a catalyst for job creation. They have based their argument on results in other communities. Maybe they are right. Maybe they're not. But no matter what, we'll still be a lot better off than if we keep throwing away billions of our tax dollars and getting nothing out of it. quote: Wait. You are talking wasting public money. You??? Perhaps you would care to share with everyone the benefits of any of the freeway expansion projects that have happened in the past 5 years. |
