Posted on 07/23/2010 10:31:08 AM PDT by Willie Green
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says the $425 million Woodward Light Rail Project -- which will run from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile -- "is going to happen" and that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood should be in town soon to announce additional backing.
Bing made the announcement Thursday during a "big four" round table discussion hosted by Paul W. Smith of WJR-AM 760, suggesting the line could help reverse economic and population trends.
"I think it's about more than just transportation," he said. "It's about economic development. Cities that I've been in that have a light rail system, you've seen all kinds of businesses pop up around the system itself -- whether it's the young people that are living in that area, whether there's entrepreneurs that come to the area."
A group of private investors -- including Peter Karmanos, Dan Gilbert, Roger Penske and Mike Ilitch -- previously committed more than $100 million to construct the first phase of the line, known as the M-1 Rail project, which will run from Jefferson Ave. to the New Center.
That group says a similar 3.6 mile light rail project in Portland cost $103 million to construct and resulted in roughly $2.5 billion in local development
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
Phoenix, unlike Detroit, is a viable city with a private sector economic base, although currently in recession. We have a superfluous light rail system opened 18 months ago. Its development was subsidized by the taxpayers and now its ridership is currently subsidized by the taxpayers and will be subsidized into infinity. What chance does Detroit have?
How much will the security and armed-guards cost?
which will run from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile
uhh.....8 Mile is the DETROIT CITY LIMITS!
This route will service nothing BUT blight and decay.
Almost a half bil?
man! How many miles is that?
“Can light rail make monkeys fly out of my butt?”
No. Here’s the way it works. You spend a half bil to build light rail NEAR your butt, and then the monkeys will all just naturally want to come out to ride it. :)
“That group says a similar 3.6 mile light rail project in Portland cost $103 million to construct and resulted in roughly $2.5 billion in local development.”
First lets look at the fact that the morecities that build light rail will reslut in dimishing returns. This is economics,not some money fairy waving a wand and crating a 24x multiplier to investment.
Second,location means something. Its not simply light rail that causes investment but light rail with other factors such as labor force,crime statistics,maybe even silly things like no ex mayors in prison.
Third i don’t even need to search around for comparable statistics to know that Portlands return was cherry picked to cast the project in the best possible light.
Lastly we’re talking Detroit. Give me a break.
The Eminem Express.
No thanks. “Light rail” = “flushing hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into a few well-connected pockets.”
}:-)4
A rail-based solution to a transportation problem is supposed to relieve congestion. To measure success, you measure the amount of congestion relief you get and for how long. Relief is never permanent because of the Ironclad Rule of Transportation: “Transportation infrastructure always creates its own demand.”
In Detroit, there is no congestion to relieve because there is no city anymore. It’s gone. What they are suggesting is to build a rail transit line to stimulate real estate development.
That, by the way, is a valid use of rail transportation. A century ago, the real estate developers who created Los Angeles built the high-speed electric interurban rail lines that connected and serviced the new towns they built. Note that it was entrepreneurs that built the lines that were merged into the Pacific Electric in 1911, not any governmental entity. There being no highway network, the transit operators had a captive audience. As early as 1914, people could take a 70 mph Red Car interurban from Covina into downtown Los Angeles, and that stimulated the development of the City of Southern California as we know it today.
Today, there are a number of cities that have built light rail interurbans to stimulate a special kind of development known as “high-density transit-oriented development”, or “TOD”. You measure the success of these lines by the amount of TOD the lines create, because that generates the passenger load the lines carry.
Unfortunately, the record for TOD-based rail lines is mixed.
Rail lines built to solve transportation woes have a better track record than those built to stimulate real estate development. Detroit, as a dying city, doesn’t have those woes any longer, and rebuilding the region’s old interurban network isn’t going to bring it back from the dead. It's just too late.
Dude. You laid a smackdown on both Detroit and its mayor. Good job.
Willie, you are always out to fleece the tax payer with a subsidized train, why don’t you tell everyone you are a liberal. We all know it anyway.
No, I'm the same old America First! paleoconservative nationalist that I've always been.
As far as I'm concerned, the GOP sold its soul to the libertarian devil in the global marketplace.
The neocon hypocrits and Wall Street sockpuppets don't even merit consideration as the "lesser of two evils".
We need to kick the bums out before we can take our country back from the rats.
DC Metrorail Subway...in the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country..with an aggressive automobile commute actually so tough it forces people into public transportation out of desperation...required $500,000,000 taxpayer subsidies in 2007 to remain viable.
http://www.wmata-rac.blogspot.com/
The financial viability of these systems is a pathological illusion in the liberal mind.
Seed money for graft and redistribution.
Help us out here.
Are “America First! paleoconservative nationalists” in favor of spending taxpayer money on light rail systems that will never, ever recoup their costs - or are they against them?
From the edge of the immediate downtown area to 8 mile via Woodward you would swear was the aftermath of a war zone. Hell they’ve got busses on Woodward already that are only 1/4 filled by people who have no vehicles and probably no jobs........
“Light rail” sounds awfully Eurocentric......
/s
Lurker, have you noticed that Willie lobs these “train Turds” out to us on FR. Everyone with few exceptions goes nuts screaming about how stupid trains are and rarely does Willie respond.
I’m beginning to think Willie is just scamming us and laughing as we hyperventilate.
Help us out here.Here: William S. Lind is a paleoconservative who favors sensible construction of light rail systems: What’s so conservative about federal highways?
Are “America First! paleoconservative nationalists” in favor of spending taxpayer money on light rail systems that will never, ever recoup their costs - or are they against them?
Hasn’t the existing light lail evivalent, The Detroit People Mover, sat unused and rotting for about 20 years now?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.