SPECIAL REPORT: Stimulus could boost Michigan mass transit

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the latest in our ongoing series of exclusive stories about Michigan’s transformation.

By Tom Carr

High-speed commuter trains running several times a day from Detroit to Chicago and back might be in our not-so-distant future if state officials get hold of the federal stimulus funds they want.

If you’re skeptical about that, you’re excused. We Michiganders pretty much expect to see runways for pigs at Detroit Metro before we ever see integrated, multi-modal mass transit in the state.

Yet there’s a rumbling on the proverbial tracks in the form of President Obama’s stimulus package. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $8 billion to develop high-speed rail systems throughout the country. Add that to the usual federal transit bucks, and the state transportation official leading the charge said Michigan could have the line up and running within three years.

“The amount of money that’s available, we could have the vast majority of the corridor upgraded for 110 mph service from Detroit to Porter, Indiana,” said Tim Hoeffner, a Michigan Department of Transportation administrator overseeing the charge to get the project funded. Porter is 45 miles from downtown Chicago and is the end of the Amtrak-owned line. Beyond Porter, which is east of Gary, Ind., there’s more intensive work needed on tracks, partly technical changes to allow the commuter line to coexist with the considerable freight rail traffic in the area.

“We’re working with Indiana and Illinois to make improvements from Porter to Chicago,” Hoeffner said.

Amtrak runs the Acela high-speed line on the East Coast and would operate the line proposed to run east-west and meet up in Battle Creek with a commuter line running from Port Huron via Lansing.

Hoeffner figures the initial upgrades to existing terminals, trains, track and crossings – as well as design and purchase of new trains – would take somewhere between $300 million and $400 million.

MDOT has dusted off five-year-old ridership and cost estimates, as well as engineering needs in order to put in a good showing for the state. Those figures were last updated in 2004, when Congress authorized funds but did not follow through and appropriate the money. State officials are getting ready for when the Federal Railroad Administration releases application guidelines, probably in June.

Economic benefits

There are plenty of reasons for a state built on autos to catch up with the rest of the country on mass transit. As the car industry and other manufacturing reels, many are looking for ways to encourage other types of economic development. Mass transit is popular among young professionals and can help entice them to remain in the state after graduating from the state’s colleges and universities.

Cities that have greatly improved and developed new transit systems in recent years – including Portland, Ore.; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Minneapolis and Denver – have seen rushes of commercial and residential development within walking distances of stations. They’ve also benefitted from the creation of thousands of jobs, such as tech industries that have blossomed near Portland’s Westside Max line. Property values near the terminals have meanwhile risen faster than those in other areas of the cities.

“When they survey people leaving the area, one of the reasons they give is the lack of ability to get around,” said John Swatosh, deputy director of the Regional Transit Coordinating Council, an agency planning transit systems for the city of Detroit and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

If it’s going to happen, this just may be the time, said state Rep. Marie Donigan, D-Royal Oak.

“It’s like getting two appropriations in one year,” said Donigan, a member of the House Transportation Committee. Because Obama has said rail development will be a priority, she also believes it’s not just a one-shot deal.

Sure, there’s a line for the money. There are 11 corridors ripe for high-speed rail development in the country, with initiatives in California, the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and other areas.

On top of that, the Detroit-Chicago line is just one of several proposed stretches in the Midwest.

Hoeffner expects all the projects around the country to get something.

He believes Michigan will fare well because the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, a coalition of area states seeking the money together, has states supporting each other.

“There are constraints as to how much can go to one area,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s enough to go around, but I believe that because of the work the Midwest partners have been doing, we can put forth a very good case as to why the money should come to the Midwest.”

Not just bullet trains

The Motown/Chi-town line would allow trains to travel up to 110 mph — not quite the 220 mph trains of some countries. But the point is that the plan would triple the daily round trips between the two metropolises from three to nine. It would also cut the time of the trip from the current 5 hours, 36 minutes down to 3 hours, 46 minutes with about 10 quick stops along the way.

The important thing is not the top speeds, but the average speeds, which affect the length of the trip, Hoeffner said.

Rapid interstate lines are only part of the picture. Planners and advocates say the state needs “multi-modal” transportation. That’s a blend of long-distance and short-distance rail lines, along with efficient buses.

And there are several attempts in the state to see that people can easily ride across town, across the state and distances in between without the hassle and expense of parking and gas.

Grand Rapids leads the state in rapid bus planning with the help of $32 million from the Federal Transit Administration, plus a pledge from the state to match 20 percent of that. By 2012, the Furniture City expects to have modern buses cruising through exclusive lanes, sending signals to traffic lights so they won’t need to stop along with the car traffic. Citizens will wait in modern, relatively comfortable shelters with displays to tell them exactly how long they’ll have to wait until the next bus gets there.

The Rapid, which plans the service that will be known as the Silver Line, will ask voters on May 5 to increase their property taxes by 0.16 of a mill to help operate the system. The agency has waged three successful millages so far, spokeswoman Jennifer Kalczuk said.

Meanwhile, a 3.4-mile light-rail line along Woodward Avenue in Detroit will be operated by the non-profit M1 Rail organization. The $100 million-plus project, much of it paid through private sponsorships, will take passengers between New Center and Hart Plaza. It will connect the riverfront, Comerica Park, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State University and other destinations. Targeted to open by spring 2011, the project was conceived by the Regional Transit Coordinating Council.

That line will link to the existing Amtrak station at Woodward and Milwaukee that is planned to connect the city with Detroit Metro Airport and Ann Arbor. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments is working on that project along with MDOT.

Playing catchup

While the United States is behind several other industrialized nations in rail travel, there are many U.S. states and cities that ride circles around Michigan.

The East Coast has been riding its Acela line, a high-speed hookup between Boston and Washington, since the beginning of the decade. The system passes through New York City and Philadelphia and has gained riders each year, although it has seen recent dips due to the economy, said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.

Denver is a shining example of what a comprehensive, multi-modal system can do for a city and its suburbs, said Swatosh of the Regional Transit Coordinating Council.

“If you went there 12 years ago and then went back now, you wouldn’t recognize it,” Swatosh said. The most startling difference has been in the core city, which was decaying during the 1990s but has seen commerce start to thrive after instituting three rail corridors, high-occupancy vehicle lanes and other improvements in the past two decades.

String of dashed hopes

Of course, Boston, New York, and Chicago have had famous systems within their cities and suburbs since the early 20th Century. Conventional wisdom has held that Detroit is too entrenched in the auto. The city that put the world on wheels was also largely designed around the car.

There have been repeated efforts to change that, but they’ve always come up short.

Political disagreements killed attempts to develop a subway system in the 1920s and ’30s, a precursor to the kinds of fractured support that doomed efforts to rebuild a system from the 1960s through the ’90s.

Despite that, a thriving trolley and bus system blossomed in Detroit throughout the early 20th century. The city’s population was peaking in the 1940s, coinciding with the glory days of its transit system. The city’s buses, street cars and commuter trains had a ridership of 490 million per year that decade.

Yet 1951 saw a two-month transit strike that ate into those numbers. And the trolley system ceased operation in 1956 after 93 years.

Dozens of attempts to replace or rebuild have risen and fizzled.

One of the only new systems to come aboard in the decades since is downtown Detroit’s 2.9-mile People Mover, which began operation in 1987. It was to have been part of a larger Southeast Michigan regional system but was downsized partly because of local disagreements and loss of once-committed federal funding.

Proponents believe the old political barriers will not hold the projects down anymore. For one thing, the different municipalities in the Detroit area are working together like never before. And there are more projects throughout the state with voter, business and government support.

Yet not only is there a greater opportunity right now to expand to large-scale, complementary systems, there is also a greater need as the state struggles to find a way out of the economic cellar and Detroit remains the only major city in the nation without rapid transit.

Mass transit is expensive, no doubt. Light rail, for example, averages $35 million per mile to develop.

Yet every $1 spent on the systems brings an estimated $6 to the local economy, according to the American Public Transit Association. In Dallas, Portland and other cities, their stations have become magnets for new restaurants, shops and condos and even some tech-related industries.

Mass transit also saves money for the riders. The cost of owning, operating and insuring a car averages $8,000, while the average annual transit pass costs about $800, says the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

Not to mention, riding with others reduces greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil.

And of course, it allows riders to work, read or use their cell phones without being a traffic hazard while going to and from their jobs.

Catching a train?

It remains to be seen how much federal money Michigan gets and how far that goes.

Hoeffner would like to see the state get the entire $300 million or more.

“I think we can make a good case for it,” he said.

Donigan is also optimistic.

“We do think we’re ahead of the curve,” she said. “A lot of background work has already been done on the Midwest coalition.”

As icing on the cake, Donigan, Hoeffner and others also want to see if the trains and passenger cars can be built in the state. State rail backers, unions and lawmakers are checking to see if there are existing factories or businesses that could take up a task like that.

“We don’t make Amtrak cars in this country,” she said. “There’s no reason we can’t build these things, not only in the U.S., but in Michigan. If we can create some manufacturing jobs as part of this whole deal, that would be swell.”

The time may be right from a demand side, in addition to the federal-money-supply side.

Nationwide, voters in November 2008 approved more than 75 percent of state and local transit-related ballot measures, states a report from the Center for Transportation Excellence.

In the case of the Detroit area, there’s also unprecedented cooperation from the various local governments, Swatosh said.

“There’s awareness that we need it,” he said. “We’re in the biggest financial trouble we’ve ever been in, and transit is an important part of a regional economic plan.”