Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
This is awesome news! A solid first step.
Now, of course, comes the reality...
1. How on earth can this be funded (metro Detroit will NOT tax itself for transit, and Washington will NOT give an authority construction $$$ without at least equal local funding)
2. How on earth can ridership projections be sufficient? Detroit doesn't have much congestion, and it doesn't have very major activity centers or corridors.
You need either factor (preferably both) for transit to have a chance of working. Woodward doesn't have any congestion. What would incentivize someone to take transit, when there's no congestion and plenty of cheap parking downtown?
And the airport line is a headscratcher. Everyone traveling to the airport uses a car, and visitors' destinations are too dispersed. There's currently a bus between the airport and downtown, and it only runs hourly. Why would you spend hundreds of millions to do the same thing by rail?
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The proposed tax is a NEW County Sales Tax to include Wayne, Oakland and Macomb of one half percent for transit operations and one half percent for the county road commision. The transit operation part would replace existing subsidies of $100 Million from the state fuel tax and would include the merger of SMART and DDOT into one regional controlled system without city funding from Detroit which would pay the same tax as suburbanites.
This is currently a popular one of many proposals by state lawmakers, regional transit planners, transit tax advocates and Detroit city officials. The existing funds would be used to match funding for federal transit grants and new start up costs according to those who support this and similar proposals.
See savethefueltax.org to learn more.