Quote Originally Posted by tkelly1986 View Post
A few points here:

1. I feel that this whole process has been disingenuous from the start. They hold these "community meetings", which I have attended in person, to hear what people want.....as long as it's BRT. It got to the point where when someone extoled the benefits of rail they come back and respond with "yes, but BRT..." If there was a poll done of the 30 people in attendance, 25 would say they support rail and the RTA folks would count "25 in favor of BRT!"

2. If you also follow their facebook feed it reads like a propaganda service for BRT. A few weeks ago they had a post comparing BRT to commuter rail, mentioning nothing about LRT, and I actually commented on it explaining that they are confusing commuter with LRT, or just plain do not understand the difference. It seems to me that the person in charge of their social media has no clue what they are doing.

3. If they are highlighting the "flexibility" of BRT on Gratiot and Michigan as a positive over fixed rail they are ignoring every publication and study produced by transportation economist over the past 80 years. BRT has nowhere near the multiplier effects of LRT and a fixed asset is what developers want! Why would you build a big residential or commercial complex when there is at the risk of the route moving. I hate to use Chicago as an example, but why is real estate so much more desirable [[even considering the noise) along the red line than another random bus line [[including the Ashland/Western BRT line).

4. I'm convinced none of these people have worked out of SE Michigan and understand the benefits to having a functional transit system and that what has been successful is going big-ish, or going home. Look at Minneapolis, Seattle, Phoenix, Denver ect....Cleveland is a horrible example, as the Health Line connected two fairly active neighborhoods, but has not really created the spillover development promised.

5. People equate rail with functional, world class cities. They equate buses with being poor. How many of you have visited New York or DC and come back to brag about riding the buses. None, but people certainly discuss the subway and how great it would be if Detroit had that......not realizing that we could if people spoke up....and before everyone says, "yea, but we're broke ect"..read John Maynard Keynes to understand the benefits "investing" as a way of pulling ones self out of a rut and look where Michigan ranks on the list of states and transit spending. We'er a joke.
Bravo. A well done post.

As much as we needed the RTA and I'm glad it's here, it has some major flaws that need to be addressed when we have a governor and legislature that's actually committed to transportation and not just paying lip service.

It's not well known that BRT is written into the RTA legislation to be the near mandatory service to be set up over LRT, which is why in those FB posts by the RTA, LRT is never mentioned. And here we have, if I may sound like a conservative for a minute, a great example of why politicians think they know better when in fact it they don't know anything about transit They see the HealthLine in Cleveland [[horrible, narrow example) and think it will work here! Without any other trip to see other transit developments.

In the context RTA is putting BRT in the regional plan, BRT is a joke. There used to be a discussion about BRT first then LRT but there isn't now. It's only BRT. BRT is just a lazy way to do it because Detroit can't have vision or progress.