  Darwinism Member Username: Darwinism Post Number: 517 Registered: 06-2005 |
California will be getting funding for High-Speed Rail. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news /local/Did-Stimulus-Just-Give- California-High-Speed-Rail.htm l Will Michigan receive federal funding to build the same transportation infrastructure here in Detroit? How did our House Representatives and Senators perform on our behalf in Washington DC? | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 958 Registered: 04-2008 |
Who knows what's in that 1073 page, 8 inch thick bill?  | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 4350 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: The high speed rail funding is likely going toward Designated High Speed Rail Corridors already established by the Federal Railroad Administration. The only Michigan corridor in the program is the route from Detroit to Chicago. | ||
Dcmorrison12 Member Username: Dcmorrison12 Post Number: 28 Registered: 02-2009 |
I'm the head of the Transportation Committee of SEAL (Student Environmental Action Leaders) at Wayne State and I keep in close contact with the project manager of the DDOT Light Rail project. Michigan/Detroit will not be getting any money for that because it's not engineered yet (It's not shovel ready) BUT in the stimulus package, the government has allocated a good amount of money to the New Starts program. Just as a refresher, the New Starts program is designed to assist cities in building mass transit projects. Detroit is applying for this program and if they are selected, then the federal government will cover 50-60% of the cost to build the line. SO, with this injection of much needed money into the program, there is more money to go around and therefore it increases Detroit's chances of being accepted into the program. (It's looking good, by the way) | ||
Sparty06 Member Username: Sparty06 Post Number: 187 Registered: 03-2007 |
As far as I know Cockrel didn't ask for light rail funding in the Conference of Cities wish list. | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1791 Registered: 12-2006 |
Dcmorrison, if you keep in touch with one of the folks on the DTOGS project, perhaps you can update us on how the "consolidate the two competing projects" talks are going? | ||
Novine Member Username: Novine Post Number: 1096 Registered: 07-2007 |
"Who knows what's in that 1073 page, 8 inch thick bill?" What? Why weren't they able to pass this legislation on a single piece of paper? I'm outraged. | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 959 Registered: 04-2008 |
http://www.readthestimulus.org / Happy reading.  | ||
Dcmorrison12 Member Username: Dcmorrison12 Post Number: 29 Registered: 02-2009 |
I'm not told many details about the talks, they are being very hush hush about it (because of the private side - they want to make sure everything is solid before they go public with everything). All I know is that I'm not doubtful that there will be light rail going down woodward within a few years. | ||
Novine Member Username: Novine Post Number: 1098 Registered: 07-2007 |
Thanks Retroit. I still don't understand your problem with the length of the legislation. If you actually view the legislation, which I'm sure you did, you'll quickly see that due to the formatting of the text, each provision in the bill may take up 5 or 6 pages. This isn't a textbook. It's consistent with the Republican alternative which averaged 5 - 6 pages per provision and which included zero infrastructure proposals. I don't expect the general public to be familiar with the format or why legislation actually requires more than one line of text to implement. But when it's lawmakers attempting to make an issue of the length of the law, it's a charade and a sham. | ||
W_chicago Member Username: W_chicago Post Number: 98 Registered: 01-2008 |
There will definatly be light-rail on Woodward within the next 5 years. Now this isn't dependant on increases to federal transit funding. But we should all still hope and lobby for increased transit funding. But I do think if not this simulus bill, there will be increases soon. It would be amazing to see funding secured for a REAL transit system. If Detroit had light-rail on all major spoke avenues, and street cars and bus routes connecting them, we'd see massive benifits for the city. If it is just on Woodward, thats great for the Woodward coordidor and neighborhoods... Downtown, Cass Corridor, Brush Park, Midtown, New Center, North End, Boston-Edison, Highland Park, Palmer Park, etc... but what about the countless other neighborhoods that need more help then those? I think probably THE biggest thing to help the city of Detroit short of a revolution is to build a comprehensive mass transit system. | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 43 Registered: 01-2009 |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P ersonal_rapid_transit PRT is the answer. Busses, light rail, rail, HOV lanes, are all failed policies of the past. In the future remember I was the one who keeps trying to introduce you to PRT. California has it now with the cash they are getting. Plan has been on the books for over 10 years. Detroit has always looked the other way when a real viable plan is introduced which doesn't include cars. Learn about PRT because it's what our grandkids will be using. If we were smart enough we'd lobby for it now. But "old thinkers" like Scott have nothing in the tank except sarcasm and an ill attempt at logic to counter the PRT movement. Wake up! Detroit should be first in line for the PRT because we have been saving the country billions for decades in public transportation by not using what the government has to offer in the way of co-pays that other cities and regions has used (like California.) these funds should be distributed evenly across the nation "Starting with Detroit First!" Instead folks like you keep dragging up all these old ideas. Hey let's go back to the days of record players and AM radio people, these are the ideas of your generation! PRT is ready NOW! | ||
Bearinabox Member Username: Bearinabox Post Number: 1237 Registered: 04-2006 |
LOL, are you serious? You sound like you're trying to sell us Amway or something. | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 44 Registered: 01-2009 |
Here is another good one from the paper in the UAE Today 2/14/2009 http://www.business24-7.ae/art icles/2009/1/pages/01252009_13 b2865bc04b4edebbb7c797412da9db .aspx | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 45 Registered: 01-2009 |
Is that all you got? Amway? I just gave you a very competent link from wiki with both pro's and con's of PRT, and all you give me is AMWAY? I was expecting one of you yahoo's to at least adopt one of the con positions outlined by some of the world's best public transportation guru's mentioned in the wiki. Instead you come back with "AMWAY?" It was obvious you gave it some considerable thought (12 minutes) from when I posted it to when you came back with your AMWAY? Just like Scott when I gave him one of the best links to PRT in California last month. All he could come back with was how about winter.... ROFL. No wonder Detroit is lost about its public transportation goals and ideas. There is no fore-thinking here; it's a hat in hand psychology with no imagination. Where did all those people go from Detroit who had enough guts to face an idea and produce a product? All I get in naysayers, come on give me some dialogue, some thinking here. Read at least a few lines of what I put up and come to some rational thought. Instead all I get is AMWAY? Does AMWAY make anything anymore? | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 4359 Registered: 10-2003 |
Purpleheart, PRT is known as "cars". The idea you propose has been "the wave of the future" for 4 decades now. There isn't a city on earth that has constructed a viable PRT system. | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 46 Registered: 01-2009 |
nice try Danindc, but this is operational and has been for over 30 years- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M organtown_Personal_Rapid_Trans it | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 2224 Registered: 12-2005 |
Purpleheart, you include a few taunts and disparaging remarks to "support" your argument and then you expect to be treated seriously? That's rich! | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 4360 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: Five stations, 8.5 miles, 16,000 riders a day, and limited to a university campus. Gee, I wonder why the Washington Metro didn't use this groundbreaking technology of the future when it constructed those outdated subway lines in the 1970s. The Morgantown system isn't Personal Rapid Transit--the correct name is Group Rapid Transit. Please. This has been discussed a million times. Go tell Roger Penske and SEMCOG that you've revinvented a 40-year-old square wheel. | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 967 Registered: 04-2008 |
There's only one possible solution to this dilemma:  | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 969 Registered: 04-2008 |
Trainman, I agree with you, at least the part about it not making sense to fund a new light rail system if we are unable to fund an existing bus system. However, I would like to hear where you stand on other issues. It sounds like you devote a lot of passion to this one topic. Spread it around! What else are you pissed off about? | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1793 Registered: 12-2006 |
Ahh, good to see PRT rearing its nonexistent head once again! The Morgantown system is "PRT" exactly as much as the Detroit People Mover is. The concept of PRT is that you would board very small vehicles, the size of cars or even smaller, which would travel on a comprehensive network of overhead tracks with many short turnoff loops, such that you could get to any destination from any location within some fairly compact area. Morgantown's system is nothing more or less than an overhead automated guideway transit loop, just like the Detroit People Mover. Nobody has ever built anything close to the concept of true PRT anywhere, and computer simulations have shown that it likely is just not workable in practice. There is that one professor out west who still preaches it, but it's pretty much a dead idea. The reason people all over the world build light rail systems for mass transit is that they work and get the job done for reasonable cost. There's nothing wrong with new ideas, but PRT isn't new, and just flat doesn't work. That's why nobody has ever actually built a real PRT system, anywhere on Earth. Prove me wrong, if I'm wrong: find a working, actual PRT system in actual operation anywhere, and I'll fry up some crow and eat it, with pleasure. | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 47 Registered: 01-2009 |
I posted those comments in an effort to provoke conversation about PRT, not to say anything mean about anybody. The PRT system is nothing about your remarks. I can take your comments right out of the 1970's. But a lot has happened since then. In the Morgantown case you should have read the article further where the computer system has been updated, in fact it is running on the latest Intel-Pentium technology has greatly increased it's uptime to 98% from an early preconstruction projection of 96%. Current light rail and busses can only hope to be half of that. PRT is more like the baggage handling systems we find at our major airports than the People Mover. I know this hard for some people to actually read the material and comment objectively but come on the Jetson's? And I take it Scott you missed the report yesterday that I posted about the system being built right now in the UAE. And I ask you why would the people of one of the world's richest communities turn to a system that doesn't work? Even when these same people could make gas available for free like water in a public drinking fountain? Because the system does work, we only have to contend with people who know nothing about it, comment with such ridicule about something they have so limited knowledge of. I guess such was the problem faced by early man when she invented the wheel. | ||
Purpleheart Member Username: Purpleheart Post Number: 48 Registered: 01-2009 |
The following is a good article about GM's process to develop a hybrid or dual mode (PRT and individual) of sorts for use within a PRT System. http://www.alternatefuelsworld .com/driverless.cars.html [quote]"What struck me particularly about the commentators and their remarks was how uniformly ignorant they were concerning the prior history of this concept, which in truth goes back to the very dawn of electronic computing in the early fifties. Long before anyone contemplated computer graphics or computer generated spreadsheets, deep thinkers were pondering the automated control of traffic streams. Perhaps this is because the design of missile guidance systems, a somewhat related issue, was one of the first really complex problems to engage the first generation of military programmers, who, it must be said, commanded most of the nation's computing power initially. In any case, the automated control of terrestrial vehicles was a well developed subdiscipline of transportation engineering by the late nineteen sixties. The modeling of an urban traffic system consisting of thousands of vehicles on miles of interconnected roadway turns out to be a nontrivial mathematical problem. Indeed, modeling a small rail system with a couple of hundred automated vehicles with varying destinations is a nontrivial problem as well." [end quote] To say our computing power is the same now as it was in the 60's-70's or even 80's is to be so naive about computers you should be counting with abacuses and slide rules. As a member of the US Military I have personally worked with some of the leading computing minds of this generation (DARPA-AEGIS System) and have nothing but hope and praise for what will be coming very soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D efense_Advanced_Research_Proje cts_Agency | ||
Trainman Member Username: Trainman Post Number: 745 Registered: 04-2006 |
See Trainman's Save the... in DETROIT LINKS A vote of NO next August 2010 only defeats the increase, if requested. The SMART property tax is nothing more then a charity to help the handicapped and the crippled by replacing state funding from the fuel tax. Advanced computers and letting those who know how to move people are the real answers for the future. The company I work for is doing this now and can move people all over southeast Michigan today without a tax increase using mass transit. The techology is here now and is now being used. We do not need Mr. Hertel's NEW Regional Transit Authority. There are private companies that can build his system much better without NEW County Sales taxes or increased property taxes. |
