Detroit is looking for ideas to fill vacant space at Rosa Parks Transit Center

[dtowncitylover]

I'd say almost all office employment is within a few blocks of Campus Martius. Maybe not one block, but two/three blocks at the most. Detroit's office core is fairly small and concentrated.

Yes, I agree. But the physicality of downtown has usually been defined as the Lodge/Fisher/Chrysler/river. And Since RPTC is within those borders, RPTC is downtown.

I thought we prided ourselves on the smallness of our downtown and therefore meant walking it in an afternoon was something to showcase. As opposed to midtown/lower Manhattan or downtown Chicago which are several hundred blocks which take a weekend or more to explore.

[professorscott]

I thought we prided ourselves on the smallness of our downtown and therefore meant walking it in an afternoon was something to showcase. As opposed to midtown/lower Manhattan or downtown Chicago which are several hundred blocks which take a weekend or more to explore.

If you're exploring, downtown Detroit is nice and compact, but we're not talking about visitors who are exploring our nice, compact downtown. We're talking, for the most part, about people who are trying to get to their damned job, and aren't going to walk several blocks while, at each block, either having to wait for walk lights or just disobey them and take their lives into their hands.

Rather than engage in an endless argument about this, just go watch. Go to the transit center at 8:15 in the morning and see how many people are walking from there to the downtown employment centers, the major ones at the foot of Woodward. In my experience being at RPTC at that time of day, or at 4:30 in the afternoon, it is a vanishingly small number of people.

RPTC serves exactly one purpose: it facilitates transfers between buses where people don't have to figure out which side of an intersection to get to in order to reach their next bus. It's a decent bus stop for the very small number of people who work right in that neighborhood, but that's not its main purpose and that doesn't involve very many people. Nearly everyone at RPTC is getting off a bus and then getting on another bus, and is not likely to patronize retail shops or eateries lest they miss their connection.

[Tig3rzhark]

Create a light rail hub for Michigan Ave at the transit center.

That light-rail hub may have to be an elevated one.

We can't have it similar to the Q-LINE.

If we run a light-rail hub on the street, on Michigan Ave, it has to be center-lane, or it won't be effective.

The stops would definitely have to be pretty far from each other. If possible, connecting it to the amtrak rail, placing it on a separate track to go to Ann Arbor, would really serve a great service.

[Tig3rzhark]

Good news today.

There are now 2 water fountains there now.

However, the building is still in need of more improvements....

[Tig3rzhark]

An extension has been made.

Ideas and proposals can be submitted until August 31, 2017 at 4:00pm, EST.

Check this site for more information.

http://www.citymart.com/detroit-rosa-parks-transit-center