Detroit Subway Map

[professorscott]

1. Specifically, can anyone explain why the proposal shows rapid transit on M-59 as a potential LRT route? This looks like an incredibly transit-unfriendly stretch of suburban highway and it's way too far out to act as a useful link between Gratiot and Woodward service. If you want a northern suburbs/Macomb-Oakland line, why not 9 Mile / 11 Mile / 16 Mile?

The main thing was that there had to be a route connecting Oakland and Macomb Counties in order to get support, to get the plan approved. That general goal presents huge difficulties. Any road where it would look reasonable to provide the service, e.g. 9 Mile, there just isn't the real estate to get it done. M-59 has huge density generators at different parts of the day: Oakland U is nearby, the two big shopping centers in Macomb County, MC5, Beaumont. It also has a big technical advantage: you know those "lanes" along the central part of M-59 that are striped over and you can't drive on them? When M-59 was widened, Uncle Sugar's rules would not allow more driving lanes than M-59 ended up with, so the striped lanes can't be used... but they could be used for transit.

Admittedly, it's hard to imagine an M-59 transitway ever being built. The way the FTA scores projects, I can't see it qualifying for Federal funding under any circumstance, unless the formulas change in the future [[and drastically). Plus there are little operational difficulties, one being that you'd practically need shuttle service to get people across the street. On the other hand, if you developed it so that all the stops were just off M-59 - that is, have the bus pull into Oakland, into Lakeside, into Beaumont and so forth - it might accomplish something useful, but then it wouldn't be in any sense "rapid".

2. Generally, I think that the rapid transit portions of the 2008 plan aren't clear on what they're trying to build. In fact, the maps here are part of the reason I made my own map. In my opinion, plans for new service should make clear the entire overall network or service being proposed. [[Yes, I'm heavily biased based on my interests.) This plan doesn't do that very well, and not just in terms of maps - it uses unclear [[to the public) terms like ART and BRT alongside LRT and it shows segments with multiple kinds of service and no hierarchy, e.g. "ART/LRT" or "BRT/LRT". It even shows different levels of service on the same corridor and "job connectors" that don't follow any road at all. That makes it hard to understand what will actually exist in 2035 in terms of concrete service.

As contrast I'll use the example of DC. When DC was building the Metro in the 70s/80s/90s, they literally filled in the map as they went along. People given a map in 1976 could pretty much navigate the system [[with a few minor operational alterations) as it existed when finished in 2001. Here's an example: 1977 DC Metro map.

What they didn't try to do was make a plan with lots of flexible service levels on different corridors, build a little G Street segment, and then see if five years later that justified finishing the route, or upgrading the service level, or whatever. And while I know the situation there was not equivalent to the situation here [[see below), I tend to think that in general the public is more likely to support a big ask when you have a clear vision for a useful system, even at the expense of coverage. Given that the 2008 plan finishes with a big ask - $10.5 billion dollars of capital costs over 25 years - I wish it had a much more focused presentation of what people were getting for their money.

The presentation you'd like to see doesn't exist yet; in fact it's the initial charge of the RTA once it gets up and running, or at least one of them. The goal of the 2008 plan was to present to the "big four", who had to vote it up or down - and it could only be adopted by a unanimous vote - a long-term, fiscally constrained plan that they would all vote "yes" on. That is absolutely all it was meant to accomplish at the time. The idea was, once that was approved, the RTA would have a basis for something they could then flesh out and put into a form such as you describe.

What we really need is a plan that shows phased improvements to enhanced transit services overlaid with [[necessary) restructuring of local bus service to take advantage of the new routes. Since you mentioned DC, if you look at a DC bus map two years before Metro first started operating, and then look at a DC bus map from the mid 1990s when most of the subway was up and running, they are drastically different. Pre-Metro, the job of the buses was to get everybody everywhere [[which doesn't ever work, which is why everybody drove). Post-Metro, the job of the bus is to get you from your house to the nearest Metro at one end, and from Metro to your job [[or doctor, or grocery, or what have you) at the other end.

So your analysis is exactly correct; if the RTA is eventually going to "make a sale", as we might put it, first they have to provide an adequate description of what they are selling. Your map, overlaid with a system of modified local bus routes to get people to it, would be one such way to describe a new system. The 2008 plan wasn't meant to serve that purpose, which is why it doesn't

[Junjie]

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[Long, informative post]

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Thanks very much for all of the explanations on both issues. I admit to high levels of ignorance when it comes to the actual sausage-making process of getting transit service implemented. So what was the fate of the 2008 plan - I assume it was actually approved? And any insights on where the process stands now given the RTA apparently has a new CEO?

[DetroitPlanner]

Thanks very much for all of the explanations on both issues. I admit to high levels of ignorance when it comes to the actual sausage-making process of getting transit service implemented. So what was the fate of the 2008 plan - I assume it was actually approved? And any insights on where the process stands now given the RTA apparently has a new CEO?

The 2008 Plan was put together by the old team in charge [[Regional Transit Coordinating Committee) with Granholm. It shared a lot of the SEMCOG plan from what is now a long time ago.

The person selected to be CEO is Mike Ford from AAATA. He is still working at AAATA and has not started at RTA.

[professorscott]

Thanks very much for all of the explanations on both issues. I admit to high levels of ignorance when it comes to the actual sausage-making process of getting transit service implemented. So what was the fate of the 2008 plan - I assume it was actually approved? And any insights on where the process stands now given the RTA apparently has a new CEO?

The plan was approved in, I believe, November 2008. Once Mr. Ford starts at RTA [[assuming he does) and hires a staff, then one of the first things they will need to do is look at that plan and the Washtenaw County transit plan, decide whether they need to be updated, look at phasing and so on, in order to come up with something to sell to the public for a 2016 funding referendum.