[LMich]

It's funny you brought up the People Mover. Back in 2006, when the region began discussing the reintroduction of rapid transit, - or at least something more than bus service - there was a concept put forth by a former People Mover manager to expand the PM along the exact same route the light rail line is planned to take, and he was estimating that it could be done for $150 to $200 million. At the time, everyone (including myself) thought it was a ridiculous proposal and ridiculously expensive. Knowing what we know now after proposing a line upwards of $500 million, I wish we'd have taken that route. lol $150 to $200 million after this debacle almost seems like pennies, and looks eminently doable.

BTW, the PM was never built to its potential for the exact same reason why the 9-mile Woodward LRT proposal fell off the rails: no regional transit authority existed to be able to pool money for transit on a regional level. What was built was the first phase, but built in anticipation of a regional authority that the region could never work out. Why I'm convinced M1 will be different than the PM (at least for a time) is because the PM project existed entirely within the realm of government, and M1 - at least for its first few years - will have a huge private sector buy-in, a buy-in that won't just contribute a significant amount to the capital costs of building the system, but a private sector buy-in that could help sustain operating costs for a few years.

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of expanding the PM. It's already its own, seperate quasi-city agency. The city could expand it to be a legitimate city-center loop (i.e. downtown, midtown, New Center), and then have it fed with LRT or BRT are the spokes. With a regional system that would abolish DDOT and SMART, thus reducing Detroits subsidy to transit, Detroit city could then plough back in the savings to finally and appropriately fund the Detroit Transportation Corporation, as it'd be the only system they'd be solely responsible for supporting, and it'd something of a manageable size for a city whose tax base has been reduced to the point of Detroit's.