Miami expanding its PeopleMover, the "MetroMover" for the 2nd time. Why can't we?

[masterblaster]

https://www.thenextmiami.com/metromo...-2028-or-2029/

https://twitter.com/CompletedStreet/...84354716807169

$1,000,000,000,000 Expansion to South Beach

75% funding from the city/county, 25% from the state's Department of Transportation

Completion of Metromover to Miami Beach is expected in 2028 or 2029, according to a presentation yesterday by a Miami-Dade commissioner [[photos of the presentation were tweeted by Mark R. Brown.)
That timeframe is similar to an announcement made by Miami-Dade County a few months ago.
In November, the county said that it expected to begin construction on the Metromover expansion to South Beach in 2025, with operations beginning by 2029.
The Metromover expansion to South Beach replaces a previous plan for a monorail on the route.

[ddaydetroit]

I have traveled the world and seen many mass transit systems the successful ones take people from where they live to either shopping or work or both Detroit failed on both the Detroit people mover and Qline it does neither of these.
They have a people mover [[Sky Train) in Bangkok it is packed every time I ride it taking people to and from home.

[ShadowSoarer]

Another thing is that the Metro Mover is free [[at least pre-pandemic). Not really an issue but the Metro Mover doesn't have seats either. Miami also has the Metrorail that runs from Downtown to the Miami International Airport. There is also the Tri-Rail that runs to the Fort Lauderdale Airport from Hialeah.

Miami just has a lot more population growth and wealth compared to Detroit. If you look at the Miami Metro population in the 90s it was about 4 million and today it is 6.2 million. It is also reflected in the skyline, for example in the 90s the Miami skyline looked more like Detroit's but today the Miami skyline looks more like Chicago's. Metro Detroit's population has stayed relatively stagnate and the Detroit's skyline has stayed roughly the same as it has since the 90s.

[401don]

Worst idea ever.

[stasu1213]

Detroit is still ruled by companies thru leaders and elected officials whom want to keep Detroit car dependent plus keep the repair shops in business through damages done to vehicles from these damned roads

[masterblaster]

Worst idea ever.

Please read opinion piece from 1956 - a rebuke of what Detroit was doing compared to Toronto.

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZBXfVoZ

What was good for Toronto can do the same for Detroit. It just seems to me that you take some sort of pleasure in Detroit being a stagnant, dead city and any development proposal that would suggest it might be turning around, you minimize it/say it won't work or won't happen. Every.Single.Time.

Do you actually have any ideas to turn Detroit that wouldn't take a massive cultural shift to accomplish [[decrease crime, stop the corruption, yada, yada, yada.)

[401don]

Please read opinion piece from 1956 - a rebuke of what Detroit was doing compared to Toronto.

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZBXfVoZ

What was good for Toronto can do the same for Detroit. It just seems to me that you take some sort of pleasure in Detroit being a stagnant, dead city and any development proposal that would suggest it might be turning around, you minimize it/say it won't work or won't happen. Every.Single.Time.

Do you actually have any ideas to turn Detroit that wouldn't take a massive cultural shift to accomplish [[decrease crime, stop the corruption, yada, yada, yada.)

Nobody who has seen the ridership of the PM for the last 3 decades can seriously think expanding it would be a good idea. Let me know how many posters here think it makes sense. Mass transit should be developed to fill a need. Yes, if you have light rail in a city that's growing then high rise residential will develop at the stops along the route but Detroit is nowhere near the point where it's feasible.

[drjeff]

The PM is without much value because it doesn't go anywhere you can't walk in 10-15 minutes. At least the QLine goes a few miles. I wouldn't walk from New Center to Campus Martius but walking from Huntington center to Grand Circus Park isn't that far. If the PM had been expanded as originally planned it would have had a lot of value.

[Zacha341]

Yep. And there's also the individual factor that some Detroiter's like and prefer driving and owning a car over public transportation.

Detroit is still ruled by companies thru leaders and elected officials whom want to keep Detroit car dependent plus keep the repair shops in business through damages done to vehicles from these damned roads

[ABetterDetroit]

Why???

You answered your own question. 1,000,000,000 Dollars that’s why. Debating the need and ‘how it should be done’ endlessly and never addressing where the Billion comes from seems pretty dumb. The question that is never asked and debated is ‘how’ to pay for improved transit here.

[K-slice]

You can build one mile of elevated rail for the same price as 5+ miles of at grade rail, and being that we have no shortage of vastly underused right of ways there is no reason to ever think about building grade-separated transit in Detroit.

Woodward, Jefferson, Gratiot, Grand River, Grand Blvd, Michigan Ave, Ford Road, Fort St, and on on were built for a city with no freeways and now carry maybe 1/2 of the vehicle traffic they were designed for. You want rapid transit just re-appoint these miles and miles of unused vehicle lanes.

[Danny]

Why can't we? because the suburbs won't let Detroit business in. So Detroit has the Q-line [[Gilbert's Toy Train) instead.

[kuuma]

Nobody who has seen the ridership of the PM for the last 3 decades can seriously think expanding it would be a good idea. Let me know how many posters here think it makes sense. Mass transit should be developed to fill a need. Yes, if you have light rail in a city that's growing then high rise residential will develop at the stops along the route but Detroit is nowhere near the point where it's feasible.

It feels tiring to reiterate but I guess it's gotta be said again: DPM has low ridership because it doesn't connect where people live to where they need to go for work and culture.

Build spurs down Gratiot to Lafayette & Elmwood Park to connect to the downtown loop at Cadillac Place, and you add 8,000 residents to the network.

Build a spur down Michigan to MCS, connecting to the Michigan Ave station, and you add 5,000 residents to the network. Better yet, continue into SW and you can connect another 12,000.

You could more than triple the population of Detroiters living in walking distance from a DPM stop with just two well-placed spur lines. How many of them work in downtown/midtown? How many more people would consider those neighborhoods if they offered carless access to the business and cultural nucleus of the city? My bet would be a lot.

It's just a bad faith argument to say the existing loop's ridership means people don't want it. Add what we need to fulfill the utility and I guarantee it would be a huge hit.

[401don]

It feels tiring to reiterate but I guess it's gotta be said again: DPM has low ridership because it doesn't connect where people live to where they need to go for work and culture.

Build spurs down Gratiot to Lafayette & Elmwood Park to connect to the downtown loop at Cadillac Place, and you add 8,000 residents to the network.

Build a spur down Michigan to MCS, connecting to the Michigan Ave station, and you add 5,000 residents to the network. Better yet, continue into SW and you can connect another 12,000.

You could more than triple the population of Detroiters living in walking distance from a DPM stop with just two well-placed spur lines. How many of them work in downtown/midtown? How many more people would consider those neighborhoods if they offered carless access to the business and cultural nucleus of the city? My bet would be a lot.

It's just a bad faith argument to say the existing loop's ridership means people don't want it. Add what we need to fulfill the utility and I guarantee it would be a huge hit.

8,000 residents? Do you have any idea how much expanding the PM would cost? 80,000 residents MIGHT make one spur viable but I doubt it.

[masterblaster]

Why???

You answered your own question. 1,000,000,000 Dollars that’s why. Debating the need and ‘how it should be done’ endlessly and never addressing where the Billion comes from seems pretty dumb. The question that is never asked and debated is ‘how’ to pay for improved transit here.

Jason, a long-time contributor, has, in the recent past, provided a very detailed analysis that contends an extension of the PeopleMover down Jefferson to Van Dyke could be financially feasible through:

-Cost savings in lower operation costs by terminating 3 east side downtown-bound bus lines at the extended PeopleMover; supposedly, the per mile cost of running the people mover is less than running a bus

-The increased property tax revenue and income tax revenue from the new businesses and residents that would set up shop along the expanded route

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...219#post615219

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...802#post615802

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...293#post615293

-Additional funding sources would be federal transportation funding that you would have to apply for, fed money from some of the stimulus infrastructure bills that have passed Congress recently, and some state funding. We could also look at raising the hotel/rental car tax.

[ABetterDetroit]

Jason, a long-time contributor, has, in the recent past, provided a very detailed analysis that contends an extension of the PeopleMover down Jefferson to Van Dyke could be financially feasible through:

-Cost savings in lower operation costs by terminating 3 east side downtown-bound bus lines at the extended PeopleMover; supposedly, the per mile cost of running the people mover is less than running a bus

-The increased property tax revenue and income tax revenue from the new businesses and residents that would set up shop along the expanded route

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...219#post615219

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...802#post615802

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showth...293#post615293

-Additional funding sources would be federal transportation funding that you would have to apply for, fed money from some of the stimulus infrastructure bills that have passed Congress recently, and some state funding. We could also look at raising the hotel/rental car tax.

Just a guess here but a Billion dollar TIF is not in the cards. Everybody and their brother is busy dangling property tax abatements in front of every major developer/employer in this state and city just to get shovels in the ground. Next up is even the Mayors office is getting on board that if we are cutting those taxes for the wealthy and the poor that the homeowners that do pay their bills are the only ones left still paying them and That Fact is a detriment to people wanting to live in the neighborhoods of the city.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...d/69791114007/

I have no issue with dedicating or increasing hotel/rental car tax to transit. Further I would propose investigation on charging the 6% sales tax on entertainment/sports ticket sales in Detroit and dedicating a portion of that revenue to transit. Another avenue that should examined is a non attached surface parking tax.

Property Tax millage increases for public transport are not only a several decades long proven way to fail at raising the capital the ones that already exist are increasingly in the cross hairs for extermination. Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is just plain stupid and not remotely actual problem solving.

[royce]

The People Mover is a nice convenience when it's cold and your going to the Auto Show or a Redwings' game at the Joe. Oh, wait, those events or places don't occur or exist during the winter anymore. Those were the only times when ridership for the People Mover was high. Construction of an elevated train to anywhere in this region would just be too expensive. There's a chance with light rail, but that's not a guarantee.

I think the Covid-19 pandemic changed the enthusiasm that people had for light rail. You can't catch Covid in your car going to work or working from home. Also, until the population in Detroit's city- center increases, expansion of the PM or Q-Line is a dead deal. Now, I still think ridership on the Q-Line would vastly improve if it extended along West Grand Boulevard to the Motown Museum [[taking workers to Henry Ford Hospital and tourists to the Motown Museum). Extending it up Woodward makes no sense to me, unless you plan on eliminating the Woodward bus and adding more rail cars. That's my two cents.

[EGrant]

Using the People Mover's current usage as a reason to not expand public transit is like saying we shouldn't build the Gordie Howe bridge because no one is swimming across the river at that location. The People Mover is virtually useless, but that doesn't mean an expanded version that ran along Woodward, Jefferson, Grand River, etc. is a bad idea.

The posts linked here convinced me that expanding the PM is a good idea, but I think actually building the system is almost impossible. We have all kinds of federal dollars floating around post-COVID, and yet the president is driving around $90K Hummers in photo ops touting EV tax credits, the governor seems to only care about car-based transit, MDOT is spending billions widening highways, and progress to improve the most basic bus services take forever to pass [[thankfully the transit millage passed in Oakland and Macomb county), so I'm not sure where a billion dollars would come from.

If nothing can come out of supposedly progressive leadership at the federal and state level, I'm not sure when it ever will.

[Jason]

The opposition to the idea is mainly based on assumptions and "common wisdom", and not by actually looking at the numbers.

This is a long post, the TLDR is that a People Mover expansion along Jefferson to Van Dyke would pay for itself after about 40 years, and then it would start being profitable for the city. A QLine expansion would be $171 million in the hole at that point, and doubling the pre-pandemic bus schedule would put the city $120 million in the hole, and the regular pre-pandemic bus service, $60 million in the hole.

This is all napkin math so it isn't perfect, but it should be in the ballpark. I have more information now than I did when I wrote those other posts, so this should be more accurate.


Expanding to Van Dyke along Jefferson would cost $1.2 billion to build. The FTA's New Starts grant pays for 60%, so the cost to the city would only be $480 million.

The land along the route, excluding the land within the DDA's boundaries, has a taxable value of $350 million. If a TIF district was created around this land, a 30% increase would be $7.5 million in new property tax revenue per year. Why 30%? Existing properties would increase in value. 10% is just rent going from $1,500 to $1,650. Then there's new development. There was that new apartment building in Harbortown that barely even got noticed. It has a taxable value of $11 million. So figure a handful of decent sized developments get built along the route, and then the Uniroyal site gets developed somewhat densely. Not turning Jefferson into Miami or Toronto, just a moderate amount of development more than usual.

Then there's income tax. Ignoring the potential of wealthier people moving into existing housing, if 1,000 new households moved in, making $40k per year, the city would get about $1 million in new income tax per year.

Before the pandemic, DDOT bus service along the route cost $10,800 per day [[$4 million per year) to operate. The People Mover's extension would cost about $3 million per year. So there's another $1 million per year.

The improved service quality and connectivity would increase ridership. The current People Mover gets about 5,500 riders per day. The QLine about 3,200. There's about 25,000 people who live along the route. If you figure 7,000 rides a day with an average fare of $1, that's $2.5 million per year.

So all in all, it would create or save $12 million per year. At that rate it would take about 40 years to pay for capital costs. That's a reasonable amount of time for a transit project to pay itself back for, and the service quality would be very good.


Going through the same math for doing it as a QLine extension, it would probably cost about $160 million to build. The QLine got a $25 million FTA grant, so let's say this does too. It would not be frequent or reliable enough to have people transfer to it, so you can't subtract bus costs. It's not automated and the way it was built there are no economies of scale or anything, so it would cost $7 million a year to operate. The existing QLine goes through an area with way more destinations, so figure lower ridership and only $0.5 million a year in fare revenue. The streetcar doesn't create much of transit service improvement, so it wouldn't increase property values by increasing convenience and desirability, but it would increase property values because of branding, so let's say it still gets 2/3rds of that revenue, $5.6 million per year. So it would cost $7 million per year and would only make $6.1. At 40 years the People Mover expansion has paid for itself, while with a QLine expansion, despite being cheaper to build puts the city in the hole $171 million, and has no transit service quality improvements to show for it.

And then if you go through and redo the numbers for light rail instead of streetcar, you're in the hole even more, because light rail has higher capital and operating costs. Light rail would have a large increase in capacity [[which in this circumstance we wouldn't need) but because of the route in question it wouldn't really be an improvement to service quality.

Or, "buses are cheaper, we can't afford trains". Ok sure, double the operating costs to double service, so you're paying $4 million per year extra. Based on that amount of spending and DDOT's farebox recovery rate, we can be generous and say the new service would get $1 million in new fares per year. After 40 years, the city would be $120 million in the hole.

[Sehv313]

Worst idea ever.

No, the People Mover is a brilliant idea with piss poor management. The Big 3 was a huge blow to it as well back in the day that’s why it never expanded.

[Lowell]

Here's a from-the-trenches take. With the growing residential population downtown, usage and the value of the People Mover is certain to continually improve, particularly in winter.

I have personal experience of this when I had an apartment in Renaissance City Apartments [fka Millender Center] in the mid-teens, had my company office in the Michigan Building and used it frequently for that and other trips. I always had tokens in my pocket.

Since then numerous other residential buildings and hotels have come online or in the making that are short walks from stations. It is unlikely to make money in itself, mass transit never does, but it immeasurably adds to walkability, lessens need for parking space, and adds attractiveness to living in an urban setting. This means tax-paying residents, tax-yielding properties and image enhancement.

Finally it is great as an entertainment ride. Whenever I want to show a visitor Detroit, I always start with a couple of laps on the People Mover.

[K-slice]

The opposition to the idea is mainly based on assumptions and "common wisdom", and not by actually looking at the numbers.

This is a long post, the TLDR is that a People Mover expansion along Jefferson to Van Dyke would pay for itself after about 40 years, and then it would start being profitable for the city. A QLine expansion would be $171 million in the hole at that point, and doubling the pre-pandemic bus schedule would put the city $120 million in the hole, and the regular pre-pandemic bus service, $60 million in the hole.

This is all napkin math so it isn't perfect, but it should be in the ballpark. I have more information now than I did when I wrote those other posts, so this should be more accurate.


Expanding to Van Dyke along Jefferson would cost $1.2 billion to build. The FTA's New Starts grant pays for 60%, so the cost to the city would only be $480 million.

The land along the route, excluding the land within the DDA's boundaries, has a taxable value of $350 million. If a TIF district was created around this land, a 30% increase would be $7.5 million in new property tax revenue per year. Why 30%? Existing properties would increase in value. 10% is just rent going from $1,500 to $1,650. Then there's new development. There was that new apartment building in Harbortown that barely even got noticed. It has a taxable value of $11 million. So figure a handful of decent sized developments get built along the route, and then the Uniroyal site gets developed somewhat densely. Not turning Jefferson into Miami or Toronto, just a moderate amount of development more than usual.
And so on...

I hope you didn't spend too much time typing out this nonsense. Making up figures that can easily be checked [[almost ever number you posted is incorrect) and wild assumptions with no objective consistency between the comps, just to fit your apparent "elevated train lover" agenda, makes this nothing but laughable.

[Sehv313]

Finally it is great as an entertainment ride. Whenever I want to show a visitor Detroit, I always start with a couple of laps on the People Mover.

Out-of-towners love riding the People Mover, great Detroit tourist attraction. Sadly, the Q-Line does not provide that same experience.

[Jason]

I hope you didn't spend too much time typing out this nonsense. Making up figures that can easily be checked [[almost ever number you posted is incorrect) and wild assumptions with no objective consistency between the comps, just to fit your apparent "elevated train lover" agenda, makes this nothing but laughable.

Since the numbers can be easily checked and are incorrect, how about you go through and correct them?

People Mover expansion capital and operating costs are taken directly from recent SkyTrain planning documents for 4 separate expansions. They literally have the unit costs and formula they use for their own planning. If these numbers are good enough for them to proceed with multibillion dollar infrastructure projects, they're good enough for me. The only change I made to their capital costs was halving the cost of the stations. Theirs are $50 million CAD, and have 263' platforms, ours would be 120', they have 4 escalators ours would have none, they have a mezzanine, we would not, they have 2 elevators, so would ours, they have side platforms ours island. The Ontario Line in Toronto will have elevated stations very similar to the SkyTrain's but only $40. I didn't adjust their operating costs even though they would be running several times more trains than us on the same headways.

Capital and operating expenses for bus service are taken directly from DDOT's federal reporting, and their bus schedule. I ignored capital costs because buses are usually paid for with grants.

Capital costs of a QLine expansion are just the original's, adjusted for inflation. The length is about the same. We don't need to find a peer city when we already have our own numbers from already doing it. For light rail, by definition it's more expensive to build and operate than streetcars, and if you're proposing the exact same alignment for both, they're going to have pretty much the same service, except light rail will have higher capacity.

What is there to dispute?


If you don't like my estimates for property and income tax, idk what to say. I think anyone who follows developments and can look up the numbers would find what I posted pretty reasonable. A 2% increase in population across the route, a handful of medium sized developments, and some small developments and renovations. Do you not like that I said streetcars wouldn't create as much development? Other than branding, transit makes an area more attractive and valuable by improving connectivity and convenience. Why would adding service that is, at best, comparable to current service, make an area more desirable than the status quo? If you think I'm actually underestimating how much revenue a streetcar would create fine, but regardless of how much, higher quality transit is always going to do more than lower quality transit.

[Lowell]

^Awesome posts Jason!