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  #741  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2019, 11:58 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by DetroitSky View Post
And Ann Arbor's home of University of Michigan with something like 30,000 employees on top of being the fourth largest population center in Detroit's CSA at 124,000.
What does any of this have to do with the viability of a commuter line to downtown Detroit?

You really think Ann Arbor employees are coming from Taylor? And the AA station isn't even next to the university, so they would have to take a shuttle bus.
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  #742  
Old Posted Dec 30, 2019, 2:22 AM
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The airport isn't on the rail line. You would have to take a shuttle bus from a commuter stop to the airport.

And there's no evidence that Metro Airport needs commuter rail to downtown Detroit. Metro Airport is a transfer hub, with most passengers never leaving their terminals.
You act like nobody from here actually uses the airport lmao. Detroit Metro is the main airport for eastern Michigan, northwestern Ohio and southernmost Ontario. It's not like the airport relies 100% on transfers. People are obviously going to and from the airport 24/7. There is a rail line along the airport; not the one that would likely be used for commuter rail though, yes. But this is all trivial because there are no plans publicly announced for rail transit between Detroit and Ann Arbor, anyway. A new bus connection is what got this conversation going, not rail.

What does a center of jobs and population have to do with the viability of a commuter line between AA and Detroit? Really? People don't take trains to the middle of cornfields. Jobs, entertainment and education are located at both ends and spread out in between.

And yes, I do think there are U of M employees between Detroit and AA. I actually know for a fact there are.

I'm not really sure why you seem to have such strong opinions on us trying to broaden our transit options after decades of decline. There's so much room for improvement and these little announcements are a step in the right direction.
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  #743  
Old Posted Dec 30, 2019, 2:56 AM
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^ Crawford has nothing to offer this site but an obsessive-compulsive reflex to gaslight and project all of his slants, biases, delusional belief system and entrenched prejudices. Especially with this sad angry baby boomer-esque vendetta against Detroit he has. Been doing it on here for near decades.

I mean this guy was typing this stuff up on Christmas...
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  #744  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2020, 10:00 PM
pianowizard pianowizard is offline
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An exciting update on the Detroit - Ann Arbor express bus:

https://rtamichigan.org/introducing-...dium=HTMLEmail

From the FAQ document: "In Ann Arbor, the bus stop is located on 4th Ave at William St. In Detroit, the bus stop will be located at Grand Circus Park, a short walk to DDOT, SMART, PeopleMover, and QLine stops."
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  #745  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2020, 10:47 PM
canucklehead2 canucklehead2 is offline
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Got a quick question for all your long-time Detroiter's... Do you have any online links to old rapid transit plans for the city more especially the plan to expand the Detroit peoplemover city wide? I just find it sad and ironic that the same technology that makes the Vancouver and Dubai metro systems world class is the same one that sits unloved and abandoned above central Detroit... Thanks if anyone has the scoop!
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  #746  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 12:34 AM
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Calling the Detroit People Mover and the Vancouver Sky Train the same technology in this situation is a little bit like saying a go-cart and an automobile or a toy boat and a real boat are comparable because they're "the same technology."
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  #747  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 12:57 AM
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Originally Posted by canucklehead2 View Post
Got a quick question for all your long-time Detroiter's... Do you have any online links to old rapid transit plans for the city more especially the plan to expand the Detroit peoplemover city wide? I just find it sad and ironic that the same technology that makes the Vancouver and Dubai metro systems world class is the same one that sits unloved and abandoned above central Detroit... Thanks if anyone has the scoop!
People mover is not abandoned but it's unloved because it was never meant to be actual transit. It was supposed to transfer people to different hubs that never happened.

There is no plan to expand it because it's impossible and makes no sense. The city is better off focusing on a dedicated light rail system.
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  #748  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 6:04 PM
canucklehead2 canucklehead2 is offline
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Originally Posted by The North One View Post
People mover is not abandoned but it's unloved because it was never meant to be actual transit. It was supposed to transfer people to different hubs that never happened.

There is no plan to expand it because it's impossible and makes no sense. The city is better off focusing on a dedicated light rail system.
Well thanks for nothing but a salty attitude. No wonder Detroit is a shit hole if you're any indication. I found what I needed from an actual source that says it was the first phase of a proposed system, so go suck a lemon dude!

http://www.detroittransithistory.inf...tos1980sA.html
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  #749  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 7:23 PM
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Originally Posted by canucklehead2 View Post
Well thanks for nothing but a salty attitude. No wonder Detroit is a shit hole if you're any indication. I found what I needed from an actual source that says it was the first phase of a proposed system, so go suck a lemon dude!

http://www.detroittransithistory.inf...tos1980sA.html
He wasn't being salty. He was giving his fair assessment on the ideas actually going on at the time.
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  #750  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 7:39 PM
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I just discovered the ignore list thanks to this thread. Woohoo!
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  #751  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 8:52 PM
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I thought the expression was "go suck an egg." A lemon? That's a new one.
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  #752  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 9:05 PM
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Would it make sense to replace the people move with a two way elevated light rail system?
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  #753  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 9:10 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by plutonicpanda View Post
Would it make sense to replace the people move with a two way elevated light rail system?
No, the People Mover itself isn't a problem. The problem is that the larger system did not materialize around it. If you are familiar with the NYC subway system, it would be like building the Times Square to Grand Central Shuttle without building the rest of the subway system.
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  #754  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 10:02 PM
canucklehead2 canucklehead2 is offline
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
No, the People Mover itself isn't a problem. The problem is that the larger system did not materialize around it. If you are familiar with the NYC subway system, it would be like building the Times Square to Grand Central Shuttle without building the rest of the subway system.
That was my point to begin with before all the hubbub. It's a great technology that could still be great even in Detroit if they had bothered to finish the project.

And my point being all I wanted were some links to some studies from the era, not a fistful of commentary.
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  #755  
Old Posted Jan 22, 2020, 11:41 PM
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No, the People Mover itself isn't a problem. The problem is that the larger system did not materialize around it. If you are familiar with the NYC subway system, it would be like building the Times Square to Grand Central Shuttle without building the rest of the subway system.
ca
It's hard to make a rapid transit system provide coverage to the entirety of a city's downtown unless you're planning to build many interconnecting lines. Bus connections are possible, but buses tend to get stuck in traffic, especially downtown, and they can have reliability issues since their routes usually stretch far into outlying neighborhoods.

For a very basic rapid transit system, it makes sense to build a cheaper circulator system as a complement that bridges the last mile between rapid transit stations and people's actual destinations in "greater" downtown areas. There are different kinds of circulators, from DC's circulator bus system on regular city streets to the Portland Streetcar to the elevated people movers in Detroit, Miami, and Jacksonville.

My guess is that Detroit planners saw the city's neighborhoods in free-fall and figured it was easier to start with a downtown loop, with the support of big downtown employers like banks and government agencies, than to build all the spokes and deal with neighborhood politics. At the time, planners also saw benefit in linking downtown employers and businesses to more plentiful parking lots and garages on the edges of downtown, beyond convenient walking distance. Today, I think we recognize the folly of building transit to support further auto use.

I still think the People Mover has value today, though! As I mentioned previously, there's no way to get Amtrak trains close to downtown Detroit. But the People Mover could easily bridge that gap, with an extension to Michigan Central Station or other sites (New Center is a little too far), and it would already link to almost all of downtown Detroit. There's also other up-and-coming attractions and neighborhoods just outside the Lodge/Fisher/Chrysler freeway loop that the People Mover could connect to. It's definitely an asset that could be very handy in the future with some tweaks.
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Last edited by ardecila; Jan 22, 2020 at 11:53 PM.
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  #756  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 1:02 AM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
ca
It's hard to make a rapid transit system provide coverage to the entirety of a city's downtown unless you're planning to build many interconnecting lines. Bus connections are possible, but buses tend to get stuck in traffic, especially downtown, and they can have reliability issues since their routes usually stretch far into outlying neighborhoods.

For a very basic rapid transit system, it makes sense to build a cheaper circulator system as a complement that bridges the last mile between rapid transit stations and people's actual destinations in "greater" downtown areas. There are different kinds of circulators, from DC's circulator bus system on regular city streets to the Portland Streetcar to the elevated people movers in Detroit, Miami, and Jacksonville.

My guess is that Detroit planners saw the city's neighborhoods in free-fall and figured it was easier to start with a downtown loop, with the support of big downtown employers like banks and government agencies, than to build all the spokes and deal with neighborhood politics. At the time, planners also saw benefit in linking downtown employers and businesses to more plentiful parking lots and garages on the edges of downtown, beyond convenient walking distance. Today, I think we recognize the folly of building transit to support further auto use.

I still think the People Mover has value today, though! As I mentioned previously, there's no way to get Amtrak trains close to downtown Detroit. But the People Mover could easily bridge that gap, with an extension to Michigan Central Station or other sites (New Center is a little too far), and it would already link to almost all of downtown Detroit. There's also other up-and-coming attractions and neighborhoods just outside the Lodge/Fisher/Chrysler freeway loop that the People Mover could connect to. It's definitely an asset that could be very handy in the future with some tweaks.
No, what happened is that the city and suburbs couldn't agree on the details of the larger system (one sticking point was about how much of the system would be submerged vs elevated), and the regional leadership also didn't create a regional transit authority that the federal government required in order to provide the federal funds (it was the same pool of funding that built the first legs of the D.C. Metro, Atlanta MARTA, and SF BART systems). So Detroit city went ahead and built the circulator on its own, in hopes that by doing so the political appetite to continue building the system would materialize.

The People Mover never made sense by itself. It was always planned to be part of a larger system.
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  #757  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 2:49 AM
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^ Exactly

I don't think there's any hope for the people mover today. It's future is demolition and I think it's a huge eyesore anyway. I want it gone.
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  #758  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 4:43 PM
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^I personally do find the People Mover useful, and don't think it's an eyesore. But it's a huge money sink, costing the city and state over $10 million each year. I agree its future is demolition.
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  #759  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 8:02 PM
canucklehead2 canucklehead2 is offline
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
No, what happened is that the city and suburbs couldn't agree on the details of the larger system (one sticking point was about how much of the system would be submerged vs elevated), and the regional leadership also didn't create a regional transit authority that the federal government required in order to provide the federal funds (it was the same pool of funding that built the first legs of the D.C. Metro, Atlanta MARTA, and SF BART systems). So Detroit city went ahead and built the circulator on its own, in hopes that by doing so the political appetite to continue building the system would materialize.

The People Mover never made sense by itself. It was always planned to be part of a larger system.
Thank you genuinely for your response. That was my point apparently lost on others. I am just trying to find those studies that were no doubt produced before the decision to defund the "rest of the system" was made. I am sure they exist which is why I posted on here hoping to find some good old fashioned local brain trust. Alas...
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  #760  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 8:25 PM
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Demo? How about a Highline-style park or covered/heated walking track?
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