Quote Originally Posted by professorscott View Post
There are several factual errors in some recent posts.

1. DDOT could not have eliminated the Woodward bus line for two reasons, at least. First of all the FTA will not fund a project if you are going to get operating funds by cannibalizing your existing service. Second of all the Woodward Light Rail would not serve the function of a local bus; it would have been a quicker trip from 8 Mile to any of the stops, but there were dozens or hundreds of stops it would not make, and you can't just eliminate local service.

2. The WWLR was never fully funded. The City would have had an opportunity to compete for New Starts funding, and in fact the FTA was bending over backwards to help us, but there was never one dollar in "guaranteed" federal money to build it. What killed it in the end was the City, cutting bus service repeatedly throughout the year, could not prove that it had the money to operate WWLR, because it did not.

I like light rail as much as anyone on the blog, but this project died a natural death; it wasn't killed. All the Mayor etc. did in December was to recognize that it was already dead.
Professorscott,

Thank you for bringing some valid points to the discussion. This is exactly what I have been looking for from Bing, Snyder, and the local media. My concern is that these possible sticking points were never brought up and allowed to be addressed.

1. What is the FTA definition of "local service"? The WWLR proposal had 19 stops along a 9.3 mile route. That certainly sounds like local service to me. If the FTA defines "local service" as a stops placed no more than 1/2 mile apart, the WWLR proposal could have been easily modified to fit this definition. For example, we could have eliminated a few redundant downtown stops [[such as the silly Adams stop, just two blocks from the Foxtown stop) and replaced them with stops half way between 6 - 7 mile and 7 - 8 mile in order to bring the project in compliance with FTA "local service" standards. If the FTA defines "local service" as a bus that stops every three blocks, then there is no way that the WWLR project would qualify. However, I doubt that this is the case. In my experience as a rider of our existing "local service" busses, I would say that 1/2 mile between scheduled stops is fairly normal outside of the greater downtown area.

Given all of this, it is clear that replacing the existing DDOT Woodward bus line with the proposed WWLR line would not be an elimination of local service, it would be an upgrade of local service. The FTA is correct to require that new long-haul "commuter" lines do not cannibalize funding from local bus service, but that is simply not the case here.

2. Detroit had not yet secured "guaranteed" federal New Starts grants for the WWLR project, but it is disingenuous to assert that Detroit simply "would have had the opportunity to compete for federal New Starts funding", as if it was just a long-shot possibility. In November, President Obama signed a funding bill that approved the local matching funds for the WWLR project. In addition to this, the President and the US Transportation Secretary have both publicly voiced their strong support for federal funding of the WWLR project. If Bing and Snyder had worked out the sticking points related to the annual operating costs, it is extremely likely that the federal New Starts grants would have been approved.

As far as the ability of the city to pay for operating costs of the WWLR project goes, it shouldn't be that large of an obstacle to overcome. The estimated operating costs only called for an annual contribution of $2 million from the city's general fund. If the FTA would allow the WWLR line to replace the existing bus line, the city would be able to fund WWLR with the savings from eliminating the current Woodward bus line. Even if the FTA would not allow the elimination of the current Woodward bus line to pay for the WWLR line, the funding gap would be very small. Even though we are on the brink of insolvency, the city still has a budget of $3.1 billion this year. It seems that there must be some way for Bing and Snyder to secure this very small amount of annual funding to support a huge improvement in our mass transit system.