As some of you are aware, I am a volunteer worker with the South Florida Railway Museum [[all volunteers). Tonight i was working on our archival holdings trying to put things in order and catalog the important pieces. I ran across an article clipped from the May 1973 issue of Modern Railroads [[not sure they are still in publication). The article looked at all of the metro areas of the US and Canada and gave the status of existing and proposed rail transit in those areas.

Here is what it cataloged for Detroit:

Penn-Central, 37.3 route miles, Detroit-Ann Arbor. Service was one round trip train a day using a Budd RDC car [[Beeliner) with total passengers averaging 100 each day.

Grand Truck Western, 26.1 route miles, Detroit-Pontiac. Service was six round trip trains a day with an inventory of 17 coaches. Total daily passengers was 1750. Grand Trunk was seeking to have SEMTA take responsibility for the route.

SEMTA: Proposed 81.0 route miles of rapid rail transit using 400 rapid transit cars by 1990. Also proposed was 12.0 route miles of "personalized rapid transit" using 100 cars [[I guess PRT was a type of people mover).

System funding to be from a half-cent gas tax share annually providing $10 mill for operating costs and $10 mill for capital costs.

Forty years later................