Rail Rumors? Dukakis Sez Listen Up!

Several light rail projects were gaining steam in Detroit around this time last year, but have mostly become urban legend. Now they could get a jolt.

I'm told someday we'll have increased service along the Ann Arbor-Detroit corridor, with a new stop at an undisclosed location near the Detroit Metro Airport. The muzak doesn't inspire confidence:



Folks have been working on making real some version of a plan for light rail running up Woodward--one privately funded loop from Grand Circus Park to New Center, and a federally-funded extension of that line to 8 mile or 11 mile. But again with the muzak...

The more ambitious foresee expansion of light rail (and/or express buses) up some of the D's famed spokes--Michigan, Grand River, Jefferson or Gratiot--which would bring to fruition the original lost plans for the People Mover, which stalled before connecting its downtown loop to anything, well, outside of downtown.

Last March I spoke with Mike Paradise for this story about Detroit mass transit. Always envisioning utopias, the technology coordinator at Cranbrook Academy suggested that the Big 3 get in at the ground level, converting their manufacturing infrastructure, and putting the now squeezed UAW ranks back to work. He envisioned that each company could build competing protoype lines: Ford, from its HQ in Dearborn down Michigan Ave., GM from its 12 Mile and Mound Technical Center down Gratiot, and Chrysler from Auburn Hills into the city. There are undoubtedly fewer scoffing at these ambitions nowadays.


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Perhaps moved to action after an undoubtedly janky Amtrak whistle stop tour, Obama and his people pushed to add $8 billion last minute to last week's federal stimulus bill for the expansion of high-speed rail in corridors that the Federal Rail Association has recommended for upgrades since 2002. The money would go to updating existing rail infrastructure, for example between Chicago and Detroit, to allow higher speed trains like the Northeast Corridor Acela--the American standard that tops off at 150 mph.

Better than nothing, the $8b still doesn't come with a coherent nationwide plan to begin the shift from auto dependency, nor grapple with incorrigible sprawl. SEMCOG (the people behind the AA-Detroit plan and others) still predicts that most of its outlays in the next 20 years will go toward repairing existing roads in the region, a task that will take several billion on its own. Mayor Cockrel is now asking for $3.2b from the big stimulus bill to fund projects, including light rail, in Detroit.

The U.S. is not exactly ahead of the curve here, though California is promoting (with posterboy Michael Dukakis!) the construction of high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles that is comparable to systems in Europe and elsewhere that reach 200-300 mph. I have a sneaking suspicion the plan could be fated like '88. I'm waiting for the clincher; Dukakis in the promotional cockpit of his own rickety monorail, with over-sized accessories, hitting the afterburner.