Originally Posted by
professorscott
Okay, then I'll be more specific. Sorry, we're going to be making sausage here, but it is what it is.
I'll start with Buffalo, NY. Buffalo is a great city to bring up, because the Buffalo subway is one of the very reasons the government has veered sharply toward promoting less expensive forms of transit, except in rare circumstances. The ease with which cities could get new rail projects funded - especially very expensive ones like subways where none ever existed - has diminished drastically in the 30+ years since Buffalo's project was approved.
You mention St. Louis. It took a while to get that done because they had [[but solved) the local-match issues we have [[and have not solved). Also, they had one particularly heavy transit corridor which, as I mention in a minute, helps move such projects along.
Cleveland I don't know why you even mention. GCRTA assumed control of railway which was still in service, and had been for decades, when it came into existence in the mid 1970s. The big deal change since then is precisely a BRT line. Cleveland hasn't got back into rail transit; it never went away. I'm not super familiar with Cleveland so if I'm wrong let me know, but they are not one of these cities which had completely done away with rail transit and is now trying to put it back.
There is, now, in 2014, a sort of formula the FTA uses in deciding which projects are "competitive", their term. One of the main drivers is existing transit ridership in a corridor which has been proposed for upgrades. If your ridership is at a certain level or below, you can't get anything funded. If it's at that level or higher, you can qualify for BRT; that is, at least your project would be competitive; it still may not get funded. Light rail is based on a higher level of existing ridership, and anything more expensive requires higher still.
Commuter rail is kind of off to the side since usually it is projected along existing tracks; the infrastructure costs aren't as high since you're usually upgrading signals, adding bypass track and things like that. So let's keep commuter rail out of this for the moment.
When I was studying this in detail between 2006 and 2008, it became apparent that the only two corridors in metro Detroit with existing ridership sufficient to qualify for FTA funded light rail were Woodward and Gratiot. A few more corridors would qualify, pretty easily, for BRT. Since then things have got worse; that is, the requirements have got even tighter, so it would be difficult to qualify Woodward for light rail unless you cut it off at downtown Royal Oak [[north of there the ridership is not close to sufficient to qualify). Oakland County isn't interested in a huge project that only benefits the lower three miles of the County, so there we are.
Gratiot actually has a better chance of light rail as the "locally preferred alternative" because the ridership is very strong all the way from the north city limits of Mount Clemens to downtown Detroit. But Woodward already has had a study partly completed, so Woodward gets to go first.
Now, why Detroit didn't do these things when everybody else did: we were living fat, dumb and happy off cars, thought that would go on forever, and there was just no appetite for change. We all know now how that worked out.