Where Detroit public transportation goes from here.

[ghettopalmetto]

The point I am trying to make is that not every one of the 4 counties outside of Detroit is 100 percent suburban development. The entire Woodward Corridor, as well as Much of Gratiot, Grand River, and Michigan were built out when we were much more sensible about land use as opposed to the golden age of sprawl [[60's-mid 90's). You don't have to walk that far off of Van Dyke in Warren or Sterling Heights to get to homes. The same is true along much of the other radials out from Detroit. Better transit of any mode will help these areas the most and reduce development in other areas. Washtenaw County is a totally different case, but has most of its development in areas similar to old school suburban or small towns which are very conducive to transit. I am assuming that most of those who were designated to be on the Advisory Council will come from these areas and not places like Springfield Township or Manchester.

Heck at the rate the middle and lower classes are losing income, they sure need alternatives to building a McMansion out in the greenbelt as those developments are going to become a lot fewer and more reigned-in to economic realities.

I think you are a little harsh on MDOT. Read about complete streets. This is for real. https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,4616...564---,00.html

Besides not all of those blvds are owned by MDOT.

The accepted threshold is that people will walk a maximum of 10 minutes to/from a transit stop. That's 1/2-mile.

It would be nonsense to try to connect transit to every possible origin/destination combination in the suburbs--why should public dollars be expected to chase irresponsible private development?

Develop transit where it can be expected to work. No more, no less.

The more realistic [[but longer) name for "Complete Streets" is "Do Shit the Way We Used to Do It Before We Started Quantifying and Oversimplifying Every Damned Thing and Reduced It All to Bean Counting After WWII". Hilarious that a professional planner would trot out such a concept, as if it's revolutionary or something. New England has been doing "complete streets" for centuries...they call them "Towns".

[DetroitPlanner]

The more realistic [[but longer) name for "Complete Streets" is "Do Shit the Way We Used to Do It Before We Started Quantifying and Oversimplifying Every Damned Thing and Reduced It All to Bean Counting After WWII". Hilarious that a professional planner would trot out such a concept, as if it's revolutionary or something. New England has been doing "complete streets" for centuries...they call them "Towns".

Like this guy: http://www.dpz.com/

I like his work, but he is an arrogant pr!ck.

To be fair complete streets is looking at a lot more than WW-2. Bikes back then were not considered in planning nor were shade trees, storm run-off or the environment.

[ghettopalmetto]

Like this guy: http://www.dpz.com/

I like his work, but he is an arrogant pr!ck.

To be fair complete streets is looking at a lot more than WW-2. Bikes back then were not considered in planning nor were shade trees, storm run-off or the environment.

I may have been a little harsh toward you, Planner, and I apologize.

It seems that Complete Streets is the new "lip-service" fad. It seems that some unlikely places are adopting it as "recommended" practice, but not really putting it into practice. For example, North Carolina has adopted Complete Streets, but is still building freeways all over the state [[while its passenger rail program limps along).

A lot of the press seems to treat this program as a revolutionary concept. In reality, it's a lot easier to throw away the planning books published after 1945.

The big question, though, is how one adapts massive swathes of suburban landscape, what with their abundance of freeways, cul-de-sacs and high-speed arterials to a Complete Streets program. It's one thing to talk about it. It's quite another to make the difficult decisions necessary to make the concept work.

I only digress on this topic because an environment that is both safe and attractive to pedestrians is a minimum requirement to have any sort of successful regional transit system.

[professorscott]

The big question, though, is how one adapts massive swathes of suburban landscape, what with their abundance of freeways, cul-de-sacs and high-speed arterials to a Complete Streets program. It's one thing to talk about it. It's quite another to make the difficult decisions necessary to make the concept work.

It's only difficult politically, not technically, as you probably already know. Each part of exurbia can be managed. The residential subdivision streets, usually those are built to encourage low speed driving: dead end roads, short roads, curves, the roads are fairly narrow. At most you need to have sidewalks if they aren't already there.

For the arterial streets, the worst ones really aren't solvable [[M-59); for the other ones the concept of "road diet" is known to work: removing lanes, adding bike lanes, adding stop signs.

Freeways, where they exist in exurbia, are a real problem because typically there's only a crossing every few miles, and then there's nearly always ramp infrastructure which is dangerous and unpleasant to cross if you're not in a car. The solution is known, and easy, but not cheap: pedestrian crossings, such as the ones found all over Detroit, for example along I-94 on the east side.

The political difficulty lies in getting people to think about all the different ways people might want to move around a community, rather than remaining wedded to the 1950s concept that the whole purpose of transportation infrastructure is to move automobiles around as quickly as possible.

[DetroitPlanner]

MDOT has no cul-de-sacs under their jurisdiction. These are creatures of local government.

Complete streets law requires both the local and the state to review each road project in a way that both feel is appropriate. Local communities can in sense veto MDOT projects and the converse it true.

This is also being seen in federal law. I have seen some bizarre things where the feds have required crosswalks but not enforced the sidewalks to get peds to them. This has now changed. This enforcement is meant to ensure things like this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Dearb...+Michigan&z=20 don't happen again.

[ghettopalmetto]

In other words, there are no requirements to coordinate transportation, let alone coordinate transportation with land use. This is a major problem.

I foresee suburban communities voicing opinions like, "We pay into the RTA, but we get terrible transit service." And the reason will be because their fiefdom is littered with miles upon miles of subdivision roads that can't be served by transit in a cost-effective manner.

Even if a main road, under MDOT jurisdiction, has good bus service and pedestrian characteristics, no one will ride transit if they have to walk an additional 2 or 3 miles down pointlessly winding subdivision streets just to get to or from the bus stop.

MDOT has no cul-de-sacs under their jurisdiction. These are creatures of local government.

Complete streets law requires both the local and the state to review each road project in a way that both feel is appropriate. Local communities can in sense veto MDOT projects and the converse it true.

This is also being seen in federal law. I have seen some bizarre things where the feds have required crosswalks but not enforced the sidewalks to get peds to them. This has now changed. This enforcement is meant to ensure things like this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Dearb...+Michigan&z=20 don't happen again.

[Hermod]

In other words, there are no requirements to coordinate transportation, let alone coordinate transportation with land use. This is a major problem.

I foresee suburban communities voicing opinions like, "We pay into the RTA, but we get terrible transit service." And the reason will be because their fiefdom is littered with miles upon miles of subdivision roads that can't be served by transit in a cost-effective manner.

Even if a main road, under MDOT jurisdiction, has good bus service and pedestrian characteristics, no one will ride transit if they have to walk an additional 2 or 3 miles down pointlessly winding subdivision streets just to get to or from the bus stop.

All homes in all subdivisions south of 26 mile road are within a half a mile of an east-west "mile road" or a north-south section line road. This means that suburbanites are within the ten minute walking window from a major thoroughfare.

[professorscott]

All homes in all subdivisions south of 26 mile road are within a half a mile of an east-west "mile road" or a north-south section line road. This means that suburbanites are within the ten minute walking window from a major thoroughfare.

Mostly true - some parts of the roads are missing - but the counterpoint is that it is not likely we can provide transit service on each and every mile road. Even in the first six-mile ring of suburbs, parts of some of the mile roads don't have service, and some of the north-south section line roads have no service at all [[for example, Mound Road).

Basically the amount of transit in any particular part of the region will depend on demand, which comes down to three things: residential density, employment density and need. If you're in Ray Township on an acre and a half lot, you probably don't expect to see a bus go by your house.

People pay taxes all the time for things they don't routinely use. I don't mind paying for the fire department; I hope never to use their service. I go to the library but lots of people don't, but they don't seem to mind paying so that there's one. To have a decent community in which jobs will come and people will want to live, you have to provide basic services. Not everyone will use all of them, but they have to be there.

[Hermod]

Mostly true - some parts of the roads are missing - but the counterpoint is that it is not likely we can provide transit service on each and every mile road. Even in the first six-mile ring of suburbs, parts of some of the mile roads don't have service, and some of the north-south section line roads have no service at all [[for example, Mound Road).

Basically the amount of transit in any particular part of the region will depend on demand, which comes down to three things: residential density, employment density and need. If you're in Ray Township on an acre and a half lot, you probably don't expect to see a bus go by your house.

People pay taxes all the time for things they don't routinely use. I don't mind paying for the fire department; I hope never to use their service. I go to the library but lots of people don't, but they don't seem to mind paying so that there's one. To have a decent community in which jobs will come and people will want to live, you have to provide basic services. Not everyone will use all of them, but they have to be there.

If you don't make transit accessible and convenient to people, they won't use it. I would rather pay taxes to run buses down every mile road than to build a people mover.

You pay taxes for the fire department and don't use it. How willing would you be to pay fire taxes if they are closing down a one truck station near your house to have enough money to build a taj mahal office building for the fire dept bureaucracy?

[Detroitnerd]

Oh, yes, Hermod. Since houses are less than one-half mile from major roads, everybody would happily walk to the mile roads. Except that they're not set up to be directly accessible to the mile roads by foot.

If you don't make transit accessible and convenient to people, they won't use it. I would rather pay taxes to run buses down every mile road than to build a people mover.

But if you don't have the residential density to drive ridership, then people will not use it. But I suspect you really know all this, and are putting forward specious arguments because, at the bottom of it all, you really fear and loathe cities and government.

Nobody can tell you what to do with your land -- except wealthy developers...

[Wesley Mouch]

Mostly true - some parts of the roads are missing - but the counterpoint is that it is not likely we can provide transit service on each and every mile road. Even in the first six-mile ring of suburbs, parts of some of the mile roads don't have service, and some of the north-south section line roads have no service at all [[for example, Mound Road).

Basically the amount of transit in any particular part of the region will depend on demand, which comes down to three things: residential density, employment density and need. If you're in Ray Township on an acre and a half lot, you probably don't expect to see a bus go by your house.

People pay taxes all the time for things they don't routinely use. I don't mind paying for the fire department; I hope never to use their service. I go to the library but lots of people don't, but they don't seem to mind paying so that there's one. To have a decent community in which jobs will come and people will want to live, you have to provide basic services. Not everyone will use all of them, but they have to be there.

I don't see why service on each and every mile road is not the goal. Why is this not achievable? Find that impediment and squash it. Maybe it takes feeder systems. I'll bet there's a reliable retiree in each square mile who could affordably run a feeder bus.

[professorscott]

I don't see why service on each and every mile road is not the goal. Why is this not achievable? Find that impediment and squash it. Maybe it takes feeder systems. I'll bet there's a reliable retiree in each square mile who could affordably run a feeder bus.

Finding people who need jobs is not the problem here

Service on each and every mile road isn't the goal because it doesn't make any sense. You run buses where significant numbers of people will use them, not just everywhere. Your point about feeder systems, though, is very important and part of what's missing. If you had service on those major roads which run through areas of dense housing or dense employment, and small feeder buses running into neighborhoods, you could provide service to many more people than with the grid system we run today.

To give you an example, let's say you live in the apartment complex on Crooks just south of 13 Mile in Royal Oak. Right now, where's your nearest bus stop? I doubt many people in that complex are using SMART to get to work. Neighborhood feeders can solve problems like this.

But exurbia is a different situation. Anywhere you decide to live, you're opting for some benefits and some drawbacks. If you decide to live in midtown Detroit or downtown Ferndale, it's crowded and noisy and the streets are congested at time, but you can reasonably expect to be able to catch the bus to wherever. If you decide to live in Canton Township or Washington Township, it's quiter and you have more land and so on, but you're pretty much committed to driving everywhere.

If you live in exurbia and you have a job in Detroit, and you'd like to not have to drive the whole way, then a better system of park-and-rides might help to solve that problem, especially if we do end up with reasonably fast bus service.

All tricky things the RTA will have to get its hands around, somehow.

[Hermod]

Oh, yes, Hermod. Since houses are less than one-half mile from major roads, everybody would happily walk to the mile roads. Except that they're not set up to be directly accessible to the mile roads by foot.





But if you don't have the residential density to drive ridership, then people will not use it. But I suspect you really know all this, and are putting forward specious arguments because, at the bottom of it all, you really fear and loathe cities and government.

Nobody can tell you what to do with your land -- except wealthy developers...

Duh, Tienken Road is a section line road. The commuter gets off the Livernois bus at Tienken and gets on the Tienken bus to get to the street entering his subdivision.

The problem with public transit is that it isn't frequent and convenient enough to be a reliable substitute for driving. When I sponsored my wife's family to come to the US, I got them a job right on a major bus line. The problem was when they got off work, they could catch a bus, but by the time they got to the connection, the last bus had already departed so that coming home on public transit didn't work for them. If the bus hours had been longer, they could have gone from in front of their work to within a quarter mile of our house by public transit. The upshot was that I drove 14 miles over and 14 miles back six nights a week to pick them up from work until my niece learned to drive and got her own car.

[Detroitnerd]

Duh, Tienken Road is a section line road. The commuter gets off the Livernois bus at Tienken and gets on the Tienken bus to get to the street entering his subdivision.

Well, that may not be the best example, but I have a friend whose parents live in Rochester Hills. I had to drive him out to his parents' house when he locked his keys in his car. At a certain point, we exited the section line road and entered his subdivision. We drove along one curvilinear street for about a minute, then got onto another curvilinear street for about two minutes, then onto ANOTHER curvilinear street for about two minutes, and then arrived at his parents' house, at the end of a court. At 25 mph, that's more than a mile. And that's some of the most secluded, desirable land in the subdivision, located more than a mile from the nearest section line road.

You see, these places were designed to be accessible only by car. You can't retrofit them to make them suitable for transit. Transit serves people best when they live densely. If you don't want to live densely, you had better be prepared to drive everywhere. Sorry, but that's how it is.

You say public transit is that it isn't frequent and convenient enough to be a reliable substitute for driving. That is a curious reversal of the truth: The problem with the way exurbia is arranged is that it is so spread-out and car-centric that you have to drive everywhere.

Transit is not a "driving substitute." In the past, we had places called cities, where all the goods and services of life could be accessed on foot. The job of transportation was to get all those things to where you could walk to them. Instead, we've turned it on its head, forcing every individual resident to get into his car and drive to big stores every time he wants a loaf of bread or a pack of cigarettes. It must have seemed like magic when it was first proposed. To a lot of people in today's generation, it just seems colossally dumb.

[RO_Resident]

M-1 issued its RFP for streetcars:
http://m-1rail.com/wp-content/upload...icle-RFP_2.pdf

[Detroit Stylin]

M-1 issued its RFP for streetcars:
http://m-1rail.com/wp-content/upload...icle-RFP_2.pdf

Cool so it is on schedule then and getting ready to happen...

[brizee]

Why is it referred to as M-2 throughout the document?

Even as I leave this state I hope Detroit gets this mass transit thing figured out.

Beacause all of the new buildings and redevelopment is moot without it.

Might even enable a spark of development elsewhere in the city.

[RO_Resident]

M-2 is the entity that will manage the construction of facilities and own the capital equipment. I had no idea that M-2 existed until the RFP came out. You learn something every day...

See section 8-5. http://www.m-1rail.com/wp-content/up...an-for-FTA.pdf

[DetroitPlanner]

Why is it referred to as M-2 throughout the document?

M-2 is the new freeway Snyder wants to build through Indian Village. The plus side is that it will have a bus lane.

[Detroitnerd]

M-2 is the new freeway Snyder wants to build through Indian Village. The plus side is that it will have a bus lane.

HA! Beware satire; it becomes tomorrow's reality all too often!

[brizee]

We're a month away from 4 of the 9 voting members of the RTA being replaced.

-They picked a retread limp CEO

-The RTA still doesn't have it's own vote campaign, or website, or even logo.

-Still walking with their thumb up their butts talking about funding without presenting even at least semi-solid dates. You want this place to fund transit without even talking about solid dates as to how soon after the vote groundbreaking on Woodward would begin, when the thing would actually be open to the public.

-Leadership talking about how they expect the vote to fail. Well when you're setting it up to do just that...

http://www.woodwardanalysis.com/pdfs...ommunities.pdf

[casscorridor]

This BRT thing is idiotic. BRT has worked in dense urban cities that need immediate relief from overcrowding. Detroit metro is the opposite - a sprawling, dying region that is in dire need of a revival.

The sensible option would be commuter rail serving the suburbs and light-rail inside the city, extending into a few suburbs that are major destinations such as Dearborn.

Improved bus service should come in the form of connections to rail, as well as improvements to bus shelters, signage, headways etc.

[Detroitnerd]

This BRT thing is idiotic. BRT has worked in dense urban cities that need immediate relief from overcrowding. Detroit metro is the opposite - a sprawling, dying region that is in dire need of a revival.

The sensible option would be commuter rail serving the suburbs and light-rail inside the city, extending into a few suburbs that are major destinations such as Dearborn.

Improved bus service should come in the form of connections to rail, as well as improvements to bus shelters, signage, headways etc.

Of all systems labeled "BRT" in the United States, precious few of them are actual BRT. That's because the people who decide to do a BRT system because it's cheaper will decide to cheap out in every other way possible, which results in a "BRT" system that is simply a bus system.

But since that's what the local leaders want anyway, what a great way to advance your agenda, while you convince your well-meaning transit advocates and allies to cheer the abortion on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit_creep

[professorscott]

Of all systems labeled "BRT" in the United States, precious few of them are actual BRT. That's because the people who decide to do a BRT system because it's cheaper will decide to cheap out in every other way possible, which results in a "BRT" system that is simply a bus system.

While I agree with 'nerd that there is a disquieting tendency in the United States to cheap down BRT all the way to being just slightly better than express bus service, I would add, so what?

I'm astonished by the continuing argument, posted here and stated elsewhere by so many, that it is a waste of time to make incremental improvements in bus service unless we can go all the way, and immediately, to major rapid transit service like all other big cities already have.

Yes, it would be fantastic to have light rail and commuter rail and subways all over the place. Find the damned money and political will for it. It was all we could do, in 2012, to pass legislation to create an RTA that can't do anything but improve bus service - the law very nearly prohibits anything with steel wheels. That's absolutely the most we could accomplish, and we just barely accomplished that.

Could we do better? Certainly. Is it likely in the next ten or fifteen years? No. In the meantime, improving is better than not improving.

[Detroitnerd]

Well, again, I would say it's about the difference between the proud announcements and the meager outcomes. I think you're a nice sort and sincere and all that professor, but to most people, that wide discrepancy between stated goals and actual achievements is not graded based on any incremental improvement. It is called bullshit. It is called being lied to. It is called being hosed. And, generation after generation, people who really care about access to quality transit get the message. They leave. They go to places where public officials say, "We're going to have a goddamn wonderful regional rail system," or "Our goal is to extend this streetcar line by 10 miles and gain 20,000 new riders," and -- amazingly -- they get it done.

Here, they promise little, cut every corner, defang every authority, defund, deflate, and present us with something that may or may not be marginally better than what we had before. And people feel burned. And so they leave.

People aren't stupid, Prof. They know when they're being hosed. And that explains why competent people who want more just keep walking past that Michigan border. What do you want to tell them? "Hey, wait! We're making incremental improvements! Come back!"