M-1 Funding Decision

[bailey]

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today Detroit’s proposed streetcar project won’t be receiving a federal grant worth up to $25-million but is still in the running to receive that amount from other grant programs.
In a letter to the Roger Penske, chairman of the M-1 Rail group, LaHood said the group won’t receive the grant it was hoping for under the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program because of lingering concerns about the project.
The group is proposing a $137-million streetcar line that would run 3.3 miles along Woodward from downtown to the New Center.
LaHood also spoke by phone with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder,Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and U.S. Reps. John Dingell of Dearborn and Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township, tellimg them what still must be addressed before the project can move forward.
In particular, he said there needs to be a "credible plan" for covering operating costs, suggesting a 1,200-page proposal sent to the Transportation Department didn’t pass muster.

Stick a fork in it folks. Frankly I think Detroit dodged a bullet.

[[also interesting to note all reports now call M1 a "streetcar" and NOT light rail. glad they're finally calling a spade a spade.)

[Richard]

Stick a fork in it folks. Frankly I think Detroit dodged a bullet.

[[also interesting to note all reports now call M1 a "streetcar" and NOT light rail. glad they're finally calling a spade a spade.)

IMHO He is saying that fed funds are used to cover transit that would have a regional impact,if everybody was on board with the original plan of the complete Woodward line it would have probably have been on track.He does not seem to be behind the 3 mile run.

He is releasing the 25 million to fund a regional system if the plan comes to together otherwise he would not have directed the FTA to start on the environmental work.

Keep in mind his tenure is up in the fall and the currant administration is very pro transit,it may fly next year in the politics realm of things to gain votes but right now time is of the essence thing to get it done before the fall.

You can go to any city and ride light rail there is a bit of a difference if you are a tourist and came to visit Detroit and rode the street car. When I ride the Tampa Teco street car which is a replica at any given time there are at least 40% tourist riders.It is in itself an attraction.

[corktownyuppie]

Stick a fork in it folks. Frankly I think Detroit dodged a bullet.

[[also interesting to note all reports now call M1 a "streetcar" and NOT light rail. glad they're finally calling a spade a spade.)

I'm confused, when you say "dodged a bullet", are you saying that signs point to the feds coming through with the funding?

[Hypestyles]

from Freep.com

Getting that kind of support and expertise is critical for us,” Cullen said. “There’s clearly more information that the secretary is looking for. This is a bog, complicated project. There’s work to be done.”

Now maybe this was just a typo, but a bog implies a swamp, marsh, something you can easily sink into, difficult to get out of.. I wonder was it a freudian slip?

I'm disappointed but not surprised about the renege on funding. Lahood needs to make the #1 issue getting the regional transportation authority- If Snyder was smart, he would create this in the same way that he brokered the bridge deal.

[Gistok]

That whole "donor state/receiver state" spiel is one of the most intellectually dishonest arguments out there. It includes the entire federal budget in its calculations.

One of the big parts of the federal budget is social security. If you have a high ratio of workers to retirees in your state, you are a "donor state" with respect to social security Florida and Arizona are prime locations for people retiring because of the warm climates there. They then become big "receiver states" with respect to social security.

Another big part of the federal budget is defense. States with large defense activities receive the bulk of defense monies. Virginia with the naval complex at Norfolk is a big "receiver state" for defense monies I don't think you would propose a major navy yard in Detroit?

You have to look at the areas where the feds dole out the money that the states should be raising themselves like education, welfare, health [[not Medicare), highways, transit, and other federal grants and see how they are allocated between the states before you say that Michigan is unfairly treated.

Hermod,

For the most part I agree with almost everything that you said. However back in the 1950s and 1960s most of the congressional committee chairmen [[which were always senior members) were predominantly from the south. It seems that southerners were more prone to re-elect their reps and senators back then, so almost all of the chairmen were from those states.

What did that do? It caused a propensity to spend more federal dollars in districts/states where the chairmen came from. When NASA got started... it's no surprise that Florida [[Canaveral), Alabama [[Huntsville) and Texas [[Houston) got the lions share of burgeoning NASA spending. Ditto for the Defense Department spending.

The irony is that now that Carl Levin is the head of the powerful Senate Arms Services committee... defense spending has been on the decline [[except for procurement), generally speaking.

[Mackinaw]

Wow, they should be sent back to the drawing board. The Detroit News account reports that the current plan is to shut down the system at 10pm every night.

Are you kidding me? That is not a useful system or a credible plan. Let's consider two of the likely uses for this system. 1) Returning from downtown events-- theatre, baseball, hockey, shows. How many of these finish by 10pm? 2) Getting in from the new "High Speed" rail to A2 and Chicago. Hmm, the last train arrives at midnight.

If you're putting down the money, and you are doing this to transform the city, let's do this right.

[Hermod]

Hermod,

For the most part I agree with almost everything that you said. However back in the 1950s and 1960s most of the congressional committee chairmen [[which were always senior members) were predominantly from the south. It seems that southerners were more prone to re-elect their reps and senators back then, so almost all of the chairmen were from those states.

What did that do? It caused a propensity to spend more federal dollars in districts/states where the chairmen came from. When NASA got started... it's no surprise that Florida [[Canaveral), Alabama [[Huntsville) and Texas [[Houston) got the lions share of burgeoning NASA spending. Ditto for the Defense Department spending.

The irony is that now that Carl Levin is the head of the powerful Senate Arms Services committee... defense spending has been on the decline [[except for procurement), generally speaking.

The military had a little bit to do with that. You get a lot more military training days at Fort Benning, GA than you do at Camp Custer, MI because of the weather. Ditto air force flying days. Unless there is a strategic reason to locate a base in the north, other things being considered, the base in the south makes more sense.

Redstone was a little used arsenal that had the space to host the army rocket and missile program. Later, the munitions trainig was transferred from Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD to Redstone.

I don't notice you complaining much about TACOM out in Warren, MI absorbing a lot of the R&D and readiness missions of Ft Belvoir, VA and St Louis, Mo over the years.

[bailey]

I'm confused, when you say "dodged a bullet", are you saying that signs point to the feds coming through with the funding?

No, I'm saying we as a region were saved from being saddled with a street level People Mover-esque [[side running, in traffic, limited hours, minuscule route, ridiculous number of stops...etc) colossal failure.

This project is so fucking stupid even the Federal Government...not exactly a paragon of efficient use of money...can't figure out a way to justify throwing a measly 25 million at it even with the private sector cash. I mean, the Transit people are practically BEGGING municipalities to take these grants, but they can't do this? That should tell anyone pushing this project what real professionals think of it. I'm looking at you Mr. Cullen.

[illwill]

In the meantime, the CTA continues to get grant funding on a monthly basis it seems.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,3270908.story

[gnome]

We had at least a dozen brand new busses sitting around collecting dust for a couple of months. DDOT simply does not do a very good job with managing the current system. To add to their plate additional duties is rather cruel.

Now if there was a plan to scrap the current system, fire anyone involved, bring in outside experts and truly do a blank sheet re-engineering of the region's transportation needs ... Maybe, but a train without a brain is a pain.

[DetroitPlanner]

Now if there was a plan to scrap the current system, fire anyone involved, bring in outside experts and truly do a blank sheet re-engineering of the region's transportation needs ... Maybe, but a train without a brain is a pain.

you mean like this?
http://www.freep.com/article/2012022...es-reliability

[Hypestyles]

what are done with "retired" buses? are they sold for scrap? Melted down? sent to a landfill? What?

[antongast]

This is not anywhere near as complicated as the posts in this thread are making it.

In the real world, transit systems cost money to operate. There are different models for raising this money, and some work better than others, but all of them involve the residents of the system's service area taxing themselves in some way. Since it's stupid to spend a bunch of money to design and build a transit system if you're not going to pay to operate it, the feds want to check out our model and make sure it's viable before they give us money. From their point of view, this is basic due diligence, and they're constantly baffled by the fact that we seem to have no model whatsoever and no interest in developing one.

In the alternate version of reality occupied by metro Detroit's political elites, transit doesn't cost money to operate. When this philosophy is applied to DDOT and SMART, most people don't really notice, because we're used to DDOT and SMART providing lousy levels of service, because only poor people ride the bus anyway, and because it's easy to blame the problems on things like mismanagement or the lousy economy rather than systematic underallocation of resources. Because our local elites are so used to people swallowing their bullshit, they're genuinely confused that FTA is calling them on it, and they keep trying to fudge their way through the process and hope the feds stop asking questions.

Until this gets resolved, it doesn't matter if the plan is light rail to 8 Mile, streetcars to the Boulevard, or BRT on M-59, and it doesn't matter if it's run by DDOT, an RTA, or the ghost of Adolf Hitler. The same exact thing is going to happen every time, because transit costs money to operate.

[313WX]

Stick a fork in it folks. Frankly I think Detroit dodged a bullet.

[[also interesting to note all reports now call M1 a "streetcar" and NOT light rail. glad they're finally calling a spade a spade.)

Agreed.

Lets discuss mass transit again when we can come up with real funding sources and a serious plan.

It's gotten to the point that even the spend-happy federal government doesn't want to deal with Detroit/Michigan and its half-ass backwards way of doing things.

[illwill]

As I recall, some of us old time Detroiters were explaining before that we're very familiar with this same old song and dance that seems to rear its ugly head once every decade or so. And we knew this was just another spinning wheel. Being that Detroit couldn't get transportation when the economy was booming and the population was still around a million, I knew that under Detroit's population decrease along with the bad economy, there was very little possibility to get funding. I think Detroiters should be focusing on what we can control. Mass transit is a very unlikely scenario for Detroit in the distant future.

[Hermod]

Secretary Lahood just parachuted into Fort Lauderdale and dropped $18 million on the "first leg" of a proposed 2.7 mile streetcar loop around the downtown. Fort Lauderdale is expecting another $30 million from Uncle Sugar to complete the route which will have a total cost of $142.6 million. The route will primarily serve the tourist trade and the downtown condo dwellers in their movements around town. It will serve no purpose for the commuters into downtown every day.

Hmmm. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz [[Democratic Party chair and Nancy Pelosi's little gerbil) represents the area. What does Detroit have going for it in the way of political pull?

[Detroit Stylin]

Secretary Lahood just parachuted into Fort Lauderdale and dropped $18 million on the "first leg" of a proposed 2.7 mile streetcar loop around the downtown. Fort Lauderdale is expecting another $30 million from Uncle Sugar to complete the route which will have a total cost of $142.6 million. The route will primarily serve the tourist trade and the downtown condo dwellers in their movements around town. It will serve no purpose for the commuters into downtown every day.

Hmmm. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz [[Democratic Party chair and Nancy Pelosi's little gerbil) represents the area. What does Detroit have going for it in the way of political pull?

Whatever we had Kwame killed it when his Congress Woman Kilpatrick became a victim of his idiocy that cost her her seat. Aside from that all we have now are Conyers and Dingell..

[jpbollma]

I still think this street car will happen. Ft. Lauderdale doesn't exactly have Detroit's wonderful finances [[sarcasm). I think the Feds want Detroit to clean up their shit before they throw more money down the rabbit hole.

[bailey]

Secretary Lahood just parachuted into Fort Lauderdale and dropped $18 million on the "first leg" of a proposed 2.7 mile streetcar loop around the downtown. Fort Lauderdale is expecting another $30 million from Uncle Sugar to complete the route which will have a total cost of $142.6 million. The route will primarily serve the tourist trade and the downtown condo dwellers in their movements around town. It will serve no purpose for the commuters into downtown every day.

Hmmm. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz [[Democratic Party chair and Nancy Pelosi's little gerbil) represents the area. What does Detroit have going for it in the way of political pull?

This isn't worthy of conspiracy theory spin. M1 a stupid plan and we still don't have an RTA. No rta and no viable plan= no $$. It's really that simple. We should be applauding LaHood for strangling this in its crib.

[Hermod]

This isn't worthy of conspiracy theory spin. M1 a stupid plan and we still don't have an RTA. No rta and no viable plan= no $$. It's really that simple. We should be applauding LaHood for strangling this in its crib.

$142.6 million for a 2.7 mile surface level "people mover" isn't a "stupid plan"?

[jpbollma]

Not everything has to be hyper-partisan. LaHood is REPUBLICAN. Florida is controlled by the GOP. You could just as easily say he was doing Florida a favor for that reason. I highly doubt Nancy Pelosi gives two shits whether Ft Lauderdale or Detroit get a street car. I think Detroit just needs a clearer source of funding and planning. Detroit also needs the regional bus transit, however, it is Michigan elected officials mucking that up.

[jpbollma]

Some info on the People Mover from Wikipedia. I find the People Mover to be very useful when I visit Detroit and I could see it being fairly useful to Downtown workers or people who want to hang out Downtown without jumping in their car again and again. However, maybe they should focus on improvement to the People Mover and find better ways to fund it before another project is started. I do have to say, I am surprised at how many people do actually ride it, since Downtown is still not as bustling as many cities.

Cost-effectiveness and use

The Mover costs $12 million annually in city and state subsidies to run ^[9]. The cost-effectiveness of the Mover has drawn criticism ^[10]. In every year between 1997 and 2006, the cost per passenger mile exceeded $3, and was $4.26 in 2009,^[11] compared with Detroit bus routes that operate at $0.82^[11] [[the New York City Subway operates at $0.30 per passenger mile). The Mackinac Center for Public Policy also charges that the system does not benefit locals, pointing out that fewer than 30% of the riders are Detroit residents and that Saturday ridership [[likely out-of-towners) dwarfs that of weekday usage.^[12] The system was designed to move up to 15 million riders a year. In 2008 it served approximately 2 million riders. In fiscal year 1999-2000 the city was spending $3.00 for every $0.50 rider fare, according to The Detroit News. In 2006, the Mover filled less than 10 percent of its seats.^[12]
Among the busiest periods was the five days around the 2006 Super Bowl XL, when 215,910 patrons used the service.^[13] In 2008, the system moved about 7,500 people per day, about 2.5 percent of its daily peak capacity of 288,000.^[14][15]
[edit]Expansion

There have been proposals to extend the People Mover northward to the New Center and neighborhoods not within walking distance of the city's downtown. A proposal has been put forward by Marsden Burger, former manager of the People Mover, to double the length of the route by extending the People Mover along Woodward Avenue to West Grand Boulevard and into the New Center area.^[16] New stops would include the Amtrak station, Wayne State University and the cultural center, the Detroit Medical Center, and the Henry Ford Hospital. The plan would tentatively cost $150–200 million, and would be paid for by a combination of public and private financing.[17]


Ridership

Year	Riders	Source
1996	2,048,900	Motown Tranzit
1997	1,711,000	Motown Tranzit
1998	1,989,100	Motown Tranzit
1999	763,000	Motown Tranzit
2000	1,485,900	Motown Tranzit
2001	2,370,000	Detroit News
2002	2,186,600	Motown Tranzit
2003	1,267,900	Motown Tranzit
2004	932,400	APTA[20]
2005	1,792,900	APTA[21]
2006	2,368,300	APTA[22]
2007	2,320,600	APTA[22]
2008	2,059,600	APTA[23]
2009	2,161,300	APTA[24]
2010	2,216,200	APTA[24]
2011	2,328,084	Detroit Transportation Corporation

[bailey]

$142.6 million for a 2.7 mile surface level "people mover" isn't a "stupid plan"?

I'm not that up on what the Ft Lauderdale plan is, however, as they DID get the grant, it's clear that Ft lauderdale has the people to move, they have a regional transit authority, they have at least a credible regional transit plan, and they have credible ridership projections to back up the plan and justify the investment.

Detroit has fantasy.

[Richard]

FTA invests in projects that fulfill the six livability principles that serve as the foundation for the DOT–HUD–EPA Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

These livability principles include providing more transportation choices, promoting equitable and affordable housing, enhancing economic competitiveness, supporting existing communities, coordinating policies and leveraging investment, and valuing communities and neighborhoods.


So how many of these six has the city fulfilled?

On a side note where MCS is concerned, if it was per-say a transit center it would qualify for grants to rehab it and make it a viable venture.

Love to hate is understandable but sometimes in the interest of moving forward maybe it is better to sometimes form somewhat of an alliance with those that have shown the political will,maybe it is better to use that to benefit the city verses using it against,you do not have to always agree with what one does or the way they do it but all things considered if one decides to assist in the name of the public good would you turn it away?

[Hermod]

Not everything has to be hyper-partisan. LaHood is REPUBLICAN. Florida is controlled by the GOP. You could just as easily say he was doing Florida a favor for that reason. I highly doubt Nancy Pelosi gives two shits whether Ft Lauderdale or Detroit get a street car. I think Detroit just needs a clearer source of funding and planning. Detroit also needs the regional bus transit, however, it is Michigan elected officials mucking that up.

The state of Florida is controlled by the GOP. Broward County and the city of Ft Lauderdale are overwhelmingly Democrat. Ft Lauderdale is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's district.