Quote Originally Posted by Novine View Post
They can start out by ditching Snyder's BRT plan. There's nothing in the legislation that mandates BRT and there's much better ways to meet the transportation needs of the area than Snyder's half-baked plan.
Yesterday's meeting was pretty interesting.

This project has been acting as a pseudo RTA until an actual one was formed.

There were reps from the feds and the RTA there.

This plan is much farther along than the proposed "triangle" from Snyder.

If everything goes right and it's funded this Woodward bus/lightrail is gonna get started before any Gratiot/Michigan/M-59 line.

The guy answering questions on the RTA stated the Macomb to Oakland line was a bone thrown out to get everyone in the area to buy in. It's on the backburner. If they get to it ok, but it's not the real priority.

It was originally proposed Detroit's representation would be nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council but that's not the case.

Any rail projects need a unanimous vote from the exec board to go to vote.

The vote is a simple majority. He said if it was like the DIA vote, locations would be selfish and shortsighted. My words not his.

I think it was either Royal Oak or Birmingham don't want it to go down Woodward but to veer off to their downtown.

It's pretty much considering the same steps the original 9-mile light rail was.

Grand River was thrown out by either an FTA guy or someone with the state. Interesting as I never heard Grand River was on their radar.

There was a board where people could their three most pressing concerns about the project/transportation in general. Popular ones were reliability, access for elderly and disabled, infrastructure and development, ridership. I didn't see anyone voicing concerns for either startup costs or long term costs.

Appearantly land developers from downtown to the suburbs have been bugging the shit out of SEMCOG about this. They're ready to start projects and are waiting on word.

There were reps from other groups. One was talking about the state fair grounds. They're not even taking transit into consideration. Something like a third of their project is going into parking. They have been in contact recently though so progress might be made.

I recommend going to the remaining meeting they can. It's not a bad way to kill 90 minutes.