Detroit & Michigan: Go-Town Transportation Lowdown

[LMich]

I see they are still saying that they are negotiating with the two different companies for the trains. lol Either way, I want to see them stick to this deadline and have shovels in the ground sometime next month, regardless. They need to make it so that it will be harder to back out of this than it already is.

Basically, though, they don't have any more excuses. They have to spend the fed money, and they can't spend it on anything else, so they might as well bite the bullet and start tearing up the road. And, since MDOT is reconstucting Woodward, maybe they should give M-1 the push. I see that the RTA chairman really wants to get this thing started, but without having his own organization's house in order his influence is going to be very minimal on this project. lol

[memph]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

SEMCOG released an interactive map using 2010 information on commuting patterns across Metro Detroit.

http://semcog.org/mapping/commute_map/index.html


For the most part, Metro Detroit is still pretty decentralized (not that I think anyone would be surprised by this). Nearly 280,000 workers commute into the city while almost 230,000 residents commute out of the city. Yet just under 115,000 actually live and work within the city.

At the same time, a number a suburbs have larger inflows than outflows. The top suburbs are Troy with 87,000 incoming commuters, Dearborn with 83,000 incoming commuters, Warren and Southfield with 82,000 incoming commuters, Livonia with 72,000 incoming commuters, Farmington Hills with 53,000 incoming commuters, and Novi with 34,000 incoming commuters.

Sterling Heights has 55,000 incoming commuters but still has 58,000 outgoing commuters. However, more residents are commuting to Troy and Warren than to Detroit.

Ann Arbor, on the other hand, is a little more centralized with 100,000 commuting into the city but only half that amount commuting out. And still about 40,000 live and work within Ann Arbor.

Interestingly, Detroit's second highest incoming commuters come from "out of region" which presumably means Canada.

Cool map. It looks like the balance of jobs and workers in the central 40-45% of the metro area is similar to Toronto's (40-45% of GTA = City of Toronto). Main difference is that Toronto has a bigger downtown, and hard to say what it has less of... Both have less office parks than many other American cities. Both have a fair bit of industrial areas in the inner suburban areas, but maybe Detroit has more. They seem to make up a similar share of land area, but I'm guessing the difference in job density between Toronto and Detroit's industrial areas is smaller than the difference in density of the rest of the land area (ie mainly residential).

Also there's an almost inverse relationship between jobs and wealth it seems. Canton, Bloomfield/West Bloomfield, Saint Clair Shores, the Pointes, exurbs... all have fewer jobs than workers. Meanwhile Detroit has more, and the other suburbs that have more jobs than workers generally have more working class residents (Southfield, Warren, Dearborn, Livonia). I guess they generally have somewhat older housing stock.

And maybe commute times/congestion aren't as much of an issue for the wealthy as in other metros?

I also noticed how Detroit proper has a lot fewer workers than you'd expect for its population. Most suburbs seem to have around 0.45 workers per resident, Detroit's more around 0.33. Detroit would need around 80,000 more workers to be in line with the suburbs.

[animatedmartian]

M-1 Rail set date for groundbreaking is July 28.

Detroit — Officials announced Friday construction will begin July 28 on the city’s M-1 Rail streetcar line.

The work will cause a 120-day closure of Woodward from Adams to Campus Martius Park, according to officials, who discussed plans with businesses in the Woodward corridor during the first of a series of meeting.

“Over the next 30 days, our team will be pounding the pavement to make everyone who lives, works and visits the Woodward corridor are aware of what they should expect from track construction and how to navigate around it once we begin on July 28th,” said Paul Childs, chief operating officer of M-1 Rail.

Official said the Michigan Department of Transportation and DTE Energy could start work around mid-July before M-1 Rail begins its work July 28.

....

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...#ixzz35sFilNRg

[LMich]

Originally Posted by memph

Meanwhile Detroit has more, and the other suburbs that have more jobs than workers generally have more working class residents (Southfield, Warren, Dearborn, Livonia). I guess they generally have somewhat older housing stock.

The difference save for Southfield is that each of these suburbs have very large industrial corridors along major freight rail lines, and in the case of Dearborn has industrial access to the Detroit River via the Rouge River. It's why places like Warren, Dearborn and Livonia (and Sterling Heights) either top or once topped 100,000 residents, while others of similar physical size (the approximately 36 square mile survey townships) generally had smaller populations. Warren, Dearborn, Livonia (and Sterling Heights) all have significant industrial operations for General Motors. These weren't really built exclusively as bedroom communities and are kind of direct extensions of industrial Detroit, whereas those other suburbs were mostly developed as residential bedroom communities a few of which were also developed around shopping malls.

[animatedmartian]

Even the Big 3 have sent a letter to Washington urging them to fund the customs plaza in order the keep the bridge construction on time.

http://www.freep.com/article/2014063...bridge-funding


Which by the way, on the Canadian side, the Windsor-Essex Parkway is coming along at a stern pace. The construction of the NITC bridge will start as soon as the parkway is done which is expected to be by the end of 2014.

Detroit is at the top of this first picture.


Aerial Photos March 2014 by Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, on Flickr


Aerial Photos March 2014 by Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, on Flickr


Aerial Photos March 2014 by Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, on Flickr

[ardecila]

Cool. This looks like a true parkway, with huge swaths of land set aside for green space, recreational amenities, and extensive tunneling and decorative landscaping.

How is it that the US prides itself on road-building yet we can't build a single highway this nice in the entire country?

[LMich]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

Even the Big 3 have sent a letter to Washington urging them to fund the customs plaza in order the keep the bridge construction on time.

http://www.freep.com/article/2014063...bridge-funding

I can't for the life of me understand why the administration has been dragging its feet on this one. This has to be the largest international transit project in the country or close to it. I've heard some saying that the administration is playing politics and trying not to give Snyder a victory, but that comes across as totally non-sensical and almost feels like someone on the GOP side trying to run intereference given how incredibly involved the administration has been in other major transit projects in Metro Detroit.

This project is such a no-brainer from a purely PR perspective. Rarely do you have this many folks on the same side; I can't remember a project in this state with this much support across party and ideological lines. The only parties on this side of the border opposed to the bridge are the Michigan legislature and the tea party crazies they are completely and utterly beholden to.

[animatedmartian]

^I don't understand it either.

Meanwhile on projects that aren't being dragged out, M-1 released the schedule of the construction for Midtown portion of M-1 Rail:

http://m-1rail.com/wp-content/upload...4rev_FINAL.pdf

2014
– Track Installation & Roadwork: NB Watson to Canfield
• July – December
– DTE Ductbank: Sibley to I-94
• July 2014 – January 2015
– I-75 Structure Replacement
• Southbound: July 2014 – April 2015
– I-94 Structure Replacement
• Southbound: July 2014 – April 2015

• 2015
– Track Installation & Roadwork: NB Canfield to I-94
• March – June
– Track Installation & Roadwork: NB Sibley to Watson
• June – July
– Track Installation & Roadwork: SB Sibley to Warren
• June – November
– I-75 Structure Replacement
• Northbound: May 2015 – October 2015
– I-94 Structure Replacement
• Northbound: April 2015 – October 2015

• 2016
– Track Installation & Roadwork: SB Warren to I-94
• March – April
– Systems & Vertical Elements : Sibley to I-94
• February – August

Specific dates in 2014:

• I-75 Bridge Southbound Closure
MOT Staging -7/21/2014
MOT Closure -8/4/2014
Excavation/Utilities - 8/11/2014
Demo-8/22/2014 PM hours

• Watson – MLK Northbound Closure
MOT Staging - 7/21/2014
MOT Closure - 8/4/2014
Shovel in ground - 8/7/2014

• MLK - Alexandrine Northbound Closure
MOT Closure - 8/25/2014
Shovel in ground - 8/27/2014

• Alexandrine - Canfield Northbound Closure
MOT Closure - 9/15/2014
Shovel in ground - 9/18/2014

• DTE Ductbank – Canfield to I-94 Center Lanes Closure
MOT Staging/Closure - 7/21/2014
Shovel in ground - 7/22/2014

• I-94 Bridge Southbound Closure
MOT Staging - 7/28/2014
MOT Closure - 7/30/2014
Excavation/Utilities - 8/4/2014
Demo - 8/8/2014 PM

[Innsertnamehere]

The Windsor - Essex Parkway is an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure, given a 6 lane freeway typically costs around $30 - $40 million per km, this one clocks in at a whopping $168 million per km.

those pretty tunnels don't come cheap. (though there were also large expropriation costs involved)

[LMich]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

^I don't understand it either.

Meanwhile on projects that aren't being dragged out...

Kind of hard for a project having originally been conceived in 2006, and on its deathbed more often than John Paul II, to not be called "dragged out".

BTW, on that schedule, did I miss their mention of the downtown portion of the project?

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by LMich

Kind of hard for a project having originally been conceived in 2006, and on its deathbed more often than John Paul II, to not be called "dragged out".

BTW, on that schedule, did I miss their mention of the downtown portion of the project?

Nope, that's going to be in a separate meeting which is happening today at 6 PM. Other than that, they only mentioned that Woodward would be completely closed from Campus Martius to Adams starting July 28th.

[LMich]

You could tell I was having a brain-fart. You even specified that this was the Midtown portion in your original post. lol

BTW, I was reading somewhere else that MDOT was considering widening the bridges over the freeways, but found it cost prohibitive. Not exactly sure why they'd widen the bridges for the streetcar in the first place, but since it's not going to happen I guess it doesn't matter. Also, the streetcar will be powered by overhead wires from approximately the Fisher to Canfield, but work on battery power the rest of the route. I'm not sure how they came about choosing that length of the route for wires, but I'm sure it was carefully studied. It was always assumed that the north part of the route would be off-wire to deal with the railroad overpass, but I'm glad to see the downtown proper portion will be completely off-wire, too.

[LMich]

While we're waiting over the coming weeks to see which company was chosen for the streetcars, I saw this rendering M-1 sent to the SEMCOG for their blog:



This is looking south just south of Grand Circus Park. If nothing else, it shows what the wireless part of it will look like through the CBD. I'm really interested to see what it'll look like on-wire, and also how the stations in the median at the northern end of the route will look.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by LMich

While we're waiting over the coming weeks to see which company was chosen for the streetcars...

No controversy intended but it looks like Bombardier would be a better choice at the end of the day.

1. As seen in what I posted earlier in this same thread, the technology they've been working on seems a proper solution to this region, suggesting some interesting later upgrades in case the line is successful enough.

2. It's based in neighboring Canada, so there could eventually be some wider regional interest in Bombardier.

Given what we've got on here, I would definitely choose Bombardier if I was in charge of such a thing. But there may be things we don't know.
On a more personal note, I might add that's an unbiased point of mine since as a French citizen, I would obviously rather support the Alstom business, but you've got to acknowledge seemingly better solutions.

[subterranean]

I love how they didn't bother to put in any actual tracks in that photo. Are we sure this isn't a fancy BRT?

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I love how they didn't bother to put in any actual tracks in that photo. Are we sure this isn't a fancy BRT?

They actually look like hover cars which look 10x cooler than a bus or even a train.

[LMich]

It has begun:

Construction work begins Monday on Woodward Avenue in Detroit on the M-1 Rail streetcar line. (David Coates / The Detroit News)

Construction work begins on M-1 Rail streetcar project in Detroit

By Leonard L. Fleming | The Detroit News

July 28, 2014

Detroit— Work on the long-anticipated M-1 Rail streetcar line is underway in the city’s downtown as a large portion of Woodward Avenue was closed off Monday morning while workers began cutting concrete.

From Grand Circus Park to Campus Martius, orange construction barrels, metal barricades and fencing blocked off access to the roadway as workers wearing yellow, reflective vests and white hard hats prepared to begin the first phase of the public transit project, which is expected to last four months.

At Woodward and Grand River, concrete-cutting machinery was rolled out while a bulldozer was parked just north of West Adams Monday.

...

Something I didn't think about just until now is whether when they tear up the street, will they replace the brick pavers along the part of the route downtown? Anyway, glad we can finally get this part of the project out of the way.

[animatedmartian]

I totally miss when Woodward used to be brick paved. But wooo, finally this day has come.

[animatedmartian]

Two huge trenches along Woodward now.

M1 Rail construction expands north toward Midtown Detroit; I-94 closing this weekend







Photos by Ryan Zuke at Mlive.

[animatedmartian]

First load of rails arrived today. I'm really surprised at the pace of things.


https://twitter.com/StacyWitbeck/sta...944897/photo/1