M-1 rail discussion

[bust]

I'm surprised Professor Scott's suggestion how a express line from 8 mile could work was ignored.

If the trains run super-frequently like the streetcars did in the old days - the headways on Woodward and Grand River in the 1940s were 1 minute - then you can't do it on the same tracks. But M1 isn't talking about that kind of frequency. If the M1 trains are, let's say, 10 minutes apart, then you just let the southbound express onto the tracks just before an M1 trip starts, and it will have no other train to run into; the M1 train ahead of the one just mentioned will reach downtown a couple minutes ahead of the express.

So it takes timing and coordination, and you would have a hard time doing it at all without computer-aided dispatch, but it's not impossible, given that M1 is only about three and a half miles long, and will run on something like a 10 minute schedule, I think.

Of course, the big problem with extending it to the north in any manner at all, is money.

It seems like a great idea. No need for separate tracks. The express makes only a few widely-spaced stops, and is timed to arrive at New Center just in front of the next local heading downtown. From there the express continues to Congress uninterrupted or perhaps with one or two stops, and no local ahead of it in its way. Any passengers wanting to exit at a bypass stop can transfer to the local. If they do it at New Center they'll have only a short wait. This assumes the timing can be coordinated, like the prof said.

Of course it's all theoretical until money is earmarked for the project, but we can hope.