RTA's new "Reflex" service

[Tig3rzhark]

These would help get rid of the stereotype of buses, but bike racks are still needed either on the outside or inside of the bus.

Placing the bike on a hook is the one thing that I liked about QLine. It's one of the few things that they did get right the FIRST time.

As much as we need better transit, we all know that it's going to take a long time for metro Detroit to recreate one. Meanwhile, we have to make short strides into making this happen.

[Jason]

That is exactly what we need! Maybe extend the Grand River route to Twelve Oaks, but otherwise I like it. When I visited Disney World as a kid I remember the parking guy telling my Mom and Dad to follow the purple line painted on the pavement to our hotel. There were multiple colored lines eventually going off in other directions for the other hotels. Painting a line near the curb in a neon color might help those who are not used to taking transit and looking at maps find their route more easily. These routes could be color coded, and include color on the bus, stations, and road, giving them a similar impact as light rail. Everyone will know that whatever color reflex bus line will come down this road.

I think this is a really interesting idea. I think a lot of people don't like and are intimidated by buses because their routes are so amorphous, especially in the suburbs they tend to squiggle around more. Having the routes painted on the roads would vastly increase awareness and familiarity with the buses. I think the problem with that though is that road striping is surprisingly expensive. Has this ever been done in other cities?

Raising the fare of the People Mover money pit should also be looked at. Seattle's elevated monorail turns a profit somehow. Florida's People Mover is free. They should raise the fare for "tourist" riders and provide free rides as a convenience to those who take the bus or rail lines.

From everything I can tell, they're doing the best they can to operate the People Mover and keep up with repairs [[and whoever runs their twitter does a good job https://twitter.com/detpeoplemover ).

As far as raising the fare... People Movers are capable of being profitable, but Detroit's isn't in the position to be. If the extra fare money was used for improvements, I'd support that. But I wouldn't want to raise the fare just for the sake of reducing the subsidy.

I'd like to see more attention paid to the PM. What are the numbers for each station? Could some of them be closed to make the loop go faster? Could the train interiors get a deep cleaning/refreshing? Could the speakers be replaced? What could be done to improve the experience?

I still wish the Q-Line was built as a People Mover extension. It would have cost about the same. People are complaining about the Q-Line headways. If it was a PM extension they would be 3-5 minutes all day every day from day 1. And I think the Q-Line and PM will complement each other but obviously not as much as if they were the same system. The funny thing is that with the PM you don't even need an app to show you the schedule, because with the PM the concept of a schedule or being late is irrelevant because of the frequency. I hope the PM is heavily considered in future transit projects.


It's hard to do the math for it with the numbers and hypotheticals we have available, but I'm pretty sure that if the People Mover had originally been built with the Q-Line route added onto it, that today the city's [[not state's or grants etc) subsidy would be covered by the fares, and that the subsidy savings would have paid for the extra few miles of line in the first place. Assuming the city has been paying $4 million per year [[I think it was more in the past) in subsidies, they'd have paid over $120 million by now, not considering inflation, which is more or less enough to cover the Q-Line route. If the Q-Line is getting 5,500 a day now, and the PM 6,200, and if you raised all of the fares to match the Q-Line's $1.50, that would cover the current city subsidy. This is all oversimplified but I think it makes enough of an argument that the PM wouldn't look so bad if it was expanded.

I'm getting off topic from the RTA, so I'll just throw out there that the RTA should get $5 billion to build a PM route from Ann Arbor, DTW, Detroit, to Troy.

[DetroitNightLights]

I think this is a really interesting idea. I think a lot of people don't like and are intimidated by buses because their routes are so amorphous, especially in the suburbs they tend to squiggle around more. Having the routes painted on the roads would vastly increase awareness and familiarity with the buses. I think the problem with that though is that road striping is surprisingly expensive. Has this ever been done in other cities?

Colors are being used in several cities and states.

• Purple is being used in Washington DC to denote EZ Pass lanes on their toll roads.
• Other cities are painting dedicated transit lanes red for busses and green for bicycles.
• New Jersey used blue paint in between the central yellow lines on some roads as a sign of solidarity with law enforcement.
• Some states are utilizing orange paint for construction zones.

Our lines would probably not be very wide, and might be most cost effective and the least confusing if painted in a simple pin stripe along the curb, unless we wanted to do something more like the purple DC toll road markings. New Jersey's central running blue line would be illegal here.

More Info here and here.

[mtburb]

The bike lanes that were recently at least added at Cass and Michigan are painted green.

[Tig3rzhark]

The bike lanes that were recently at least added at Cass and Michigan are painted green.

Hopefully there are more bike lanes to come. More people are going to need them, considering that more people are riding their bikes in Detroit. It costs too much to drive now.