Ann Arbor-Detroit Commuter Rail

[J T]

While that may be true, many drivers think those extra devices make them invincible and drive like it.....

True, but people have driven like they were invincible since the invention of the automobile.

[John Ryan]

To expand on the theory expressed by MSchweibert, that we should throw $60M at this and see if it works, and if it doesn't, at least we didn't spend "very much" money. I don't know how you value money, but $60M is a lot of money to find out of something works, especially if the end result is a poisoned atmosphere against commuter rail. I'd much rather prefer that the people behind this came up with a plan that showed sufficient ridership to qualify for New Start money. The current proposal doesn't cut it, and that's why it's being sold as a "demonstration project."

Meanwhile, what's actually been demonstrated so far, is mostly chaos:

1. Costs keep ballooning, because the people making the estimates are uninformed or misinformed, and not competent enough to get a proper study done in the first place. This promotes the idea that those in charge are clueless, and busy learning as they go.

2. Unrealistic startup timeframes (summer 2007 for WALLY, October 2010 for E-W) create a false sense of accomplishment, triggering confusion and annoyance when the service does not start as advertised. This furthers the idea that those in charge are unable to get anything done.

3. Contradictory public statements about equipment acquisition (locomotives have been put out to bid, but the contract is signed / cars are being refurbished, but no lease agreement is in place) contributes to the appearance of chaos at the planning office.

4. A major transportation partner, the Ann Arbor Railroad, has no interest in participating in the current proposals, leading to questions about the validity and sincerity of the proposals.

5. Neither WALLY nor E-W terminate within walking distance of a major employment center, adding a transfer hassle to the commuter process and discouraging ridership.

East-West service is supposedly ten months from startup. When Minneapolis' Northstar was ten months from startup day, the service agreements had been signed with the host railroad, the maintenance facility was completed, the equipment was on the property, the contractors had spent two years upgrading track and signal systems, the schedules were established, and contractors were currently pouring concrete for the platforms. Four months later, the employees would show up for training and months of over-the-road testing would commence. The entire month before start day had everyone and everything running full service to work out all the kinks.

SEMCOG and MDOT are proposing the same train frequency over an almost identical-length route. Ten months to go, and there is no dedicated operating authority. There is no equipment on the property, no lease for the cars, no indication where the locomotives will come from, no final agreements with the host railroads, no established service operator, no land acquired for stations and parking facilities, no published schedules, no employees hired, and no answers to the fundamental question of how to get the riders downtown or to the airport without subjecting them to multiple transfers.

I'm asking you; does it look like SEMCOG and MDOT are going to have their act together by the end of the year? Is the level of service going to match that of other new starts, the type of well-planned, well-engineered service that inspires the confidence required for Michiganders to abandon their cars? Or is this going to "demonstrate" that commuters prefer their cars to the hassle of old equipment and multiple intermodal transfers? Will this demonstrate that Detroit and Southeast Michigan can compete on a national level, or that the region is mired in poor planning and oversight, perpetually putting the cart before the horse? Is there actually going to be a train to ride in December?

[ns8401]

You seem oddly vehement against this..... You're right they are being optomistic and the project will likely start late..... Amtrak is the operator they want. That's been established, whether they get themis another story.... The engines are an unknown, the schedule is an unknown, although I could put one together really really quick, so not a huge huge deal. Scheduling is a pretty easy thing to do. The connections with ONE bus at several designated transfer points is no big deal..... people transfer to buses or subways in big cities as well as suburbs. Transfers are NO BIG DEAL..... Engines, employees and infrastructure such as a station in Ypsilanti are the three big challenges. The old metra cars could be used for three years longer if need be. And if the project was a success, then they could get federal money and end up with newer or even new equipment...... It's not all as bad as you say.... just my two cents.....

[John Ryan]

You seem oddly vehement against this..... You're right they are being optomistic and the project will likely start late..... Amtrak is the operator they want. That's been established, whether they get themis another story.... The engines are an unknown, the schedule is an unknown, although I could put one together really really quick, so not a huge huge deal. Scheduling is a pretty easy thing to do. The connections with ONE bus at several designated transfer points is no big deal..... people transfer to buses or subways in big cities as well as suburbs. Transfers are NO BIG DEAL..... Engines, employees and infrastructure such as a station in Ypsilanti are the three big challenges. The old metra cars could be used for three years longer if need be. And if the project was a success, then they could get federal money and end up with newer or even new equipment...... It's not all as bad as you say.... just my two cents.....

Transfers may be "no big deal" in a lot of places, but we do not have a transit mentality here. The WALLY line requires two transfers if you do not work for the UofM. One bus takes you to the AATA transit center, and then you transfer to whatever feeder line takes you closest to your place of employment. This is Southeast Michigan, land of gas hog. People here want something convenient, and I can't blame them.

It would make a lot of sense if the WALLY train stopped at Plymouth Road (and was met by a free UofM bus) and also on the West Side of Ann Arbor, where most offices and the transit center are within walking distance. The East-West train would make sense if it went into downtown Detroit, where the jobs are, not stop out where the parking lots are. The Metro Airport transfer would make a lot of sense if it connected with a free bus, running on a dedicated ROW, that whisked people to the airport. But, the important thing to remember, is none of this is in the current proposal.

Transit is supposed to be about ease and convenience, not standing on the edge of Plymouth Road, waiting for a bus. Can you imaging if Chicago's Union Station was down south of Cermak Road? That's the same distance between the Detroit station and downtown. It's a two-mile ride on a Detroit bus. That's the sort of thing that excites suburbanites; if these people wanted to spend quality time on a Detroit bus every day, they would already be living there.

You can add ADA access to your list of major challenges. The president of Federated Railways was asked about this issue at a banquet in November, and the response was, "We do not know what we are going to do." Turns out equipment designed in the 1940's, with narrow vestibules and a high center boarding area, doesn't readily support maneuvering a 48" long powerchair, as is required by law. Metra solved this issue with ADA access cars with extra-wide vestibules and wheelchair lifts. They determined that it was impossible or cost-prohibitive to modify any existing equipment, and the ADA access cars were all new equipment. In fact, to comply with ADA requirements, Metra had to run a parallel bus service for each of its services to accommodate ADA passengers until the new cars were delivered, at the cost of millions per year. It's not something you can get around or wish away. We are trying to reinvent Metra's wheel, further proof that someone put the cart before the horse.

Without any money or equipment lined up, I think it's borderline dishonest to establish a startup date. You may think I'm "oddly vehement" about this, but I just don't like watching a disaster unfold. If the project is a success, they might get federal money. Possibly. If the project is a failure, we won't have a hope of realistic, regional transit in Southeast Michigan for many years. Failure here will set us right back to the 1980's, when the SEMTA train and the Michigan Executive folded up from lack of ridership, and we got into the mentality that you can't do commuter trains here.

So, now that commuter trains are making a resurgence nationwide, MDOT has it in their mind that Michigan needs some commuter trains too. If you look closely, you can even figure out how this idea got in their head. (Hint, it's one of the reason we are doing things the way we are, not how Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and and Albuquerque started their systems.) I can't help thinking that we're going down the path that brought us to the 1980s. This time the equipment is even older than the SEMTA equipment, and the trains stop farther away from where people work.

I would wholeheartedly support these projects if;

1) Studies showed ridership would support them. (Not spend $60M to see if it works.)
2) A dedicated commuter agency was in charge of finance, planning, and operations. (Not people that are wasting time by learning as they go.)
3) Trains terminate where the jobs are. (See above. Might cost $100M to create a new alignment on the northeast side of detroit, but this is necessary.)
4) Equipment meets all ADA and FRA requirements, and comes with a track record of reliability.

Until then, I'm going to be a vocal critic of what I see as a disservice to the long-term viability of transit in the area. It's better to take longer to do it right, than do it fast and dirty and badly enough that there's no second chance.

[ns8401]

While I don't know the latest and greatest things on the DDOT/SMART end of this mess (and yes, the way they are going it will fail, I wanted to be clear about that.) This idea has been a pipe dream since the 80's when Mike Bolton was head of things on the AATA end. He even once took a Hi-Rail trip on the AA to test the idea of "Busways". Talk on this end is "if" and it's a big if, the service starts, that the bus from downtown to the station will be extended to go to the UofM. And if they get their Fuller rd. Transit center built than they will have U of M and AATA buses servicing the entire university and going to all the major employers. That's the plan at least on this end. Just wondering if you'd heard the same thing. I'm hearing this from inside the two organizations involved on this end. Like I say I can't speak for the Detroit end of this tangle.

[John Ryan]

While I don't know the latest and greatest things on the DDOT/SMART end of this mess (and yes, the way they are going it will fail, I wanted to be clear about that.) This idea has been a pipe dream since the 80's when Mike Bolton was head of things on the AATA end. He even once took a Hi-Rail trip on the AA to test the idea of "Busways". Talk on this end is "if" and it's a big if, the service starts, that the bus from downtown to the station will be extended to go to the UofM. And if they get their Fuller rd. Transit center built than they will have U of M and AATA buses servicing the entire university and going to all the major employers. That's the plan at least on this end. Just wondering if you'd heard the same thing. I'm hearing this from inside the two organizations involved on this end. Like I say I can't speak for the Detroit end of this tangle.

I've heard two things. One is to have a number of busses meet the WALLY train at Plymouth Road, and then run from there to various parts of town. There are two problems with this approach. One, if you have six or seven AATA busses all leaving from the station, along with however many UofM busses, that a lot of busses that AATA will need to acquire to support this service. Furthermore, there is only so much room at the site for busses, because the tracks are so close to the road. Much of the AATA service will duplicate existing routes if it's going to try to serve the majority of riders. And some riders will be left out, because not all areas of town will be equally served.

The other option is to have an AATA express bus that would make only two or three stops, terminating at the downtown bus transfer. This method only requires two or three additional busses to connect the majority of WALLY riders with the city's bus network. It's cheaper and serves more riders, but it's also an additional transfer. UofM would still run their own dedicated routes from Plymouth Road to North Campus, the Medical Center, Central Campus, and so on.

Obviously, the best solution is to have the train stop at Plymouth Road to offload most of the UofM riders, and then continue to downtown Ann Arbor, where the train can stop exactly three blocks from the transportation center. That splits the load, gets the UofM people closest to where they work, doesn't plug Plymouth Road with a dozen idling busses, and allows those needing to transfer to the AATA network to do so with a short 5 minute walk. If AATA were really forward thinking, they would revive the "Link" circular in downtown and connect that to the train station.

But, to get a train downtown, a transit agency or MDOT will have to approach the Ann Arbor Railroad with an offer to buy the northern end of their system. The AARR has stated that they are very concerned about liability resulting from a derailment into the Huron River, and will not have anything to do with commuter trains on their tracks as a result of this fear. I can't blame them for seeking to preserve their business interests, and it will take both cash and indemnification against future liability before they reverse this position. Sadly, with no agency willing to step up and assume Chatsworth-scale liability coverage (>$1B), this isn't going to happen.

As for the East-West line and the Fuller Road station, the current projection is that it will cost $60M, which is as much as SEMCOG is touting for the entire Ann Arbor-Detroit commuter startup. I'm glad that someone understands what major infrastructure really costs. It's also interesting to note that space for three light rail lines are included in that plan. Credit is also due to those who recognized that Ann Arbor is a growing city (not like Detroit, which is still shrinking rapidly) and planning for a future when some sort of surface rail transportation will return. It appears that actually getting this station built will be dependent on a successful commuter operation, as it's unclear where the $60M for construction of the facility will come from. I doubt the UofM would sink that kind of money into something that serves a "demonstration" project without guaranteed long-term viability. The Ann Arbor-Detroit line will originate at the current Amtrak station, which is more or less served by the existing #1 and #2 bus routes. Beyond that, I don't know what the plans will be. I am assuming that Ann Arbor will originate more commuter riders to points east than it will terminate riders from points east. There will also be commuters coming into Ann Arbor, but not by the thousand. There are more people working in Detroit and Dearborn than Ann Arbor, so the ridership would flow in that direction, as opposed to the WALLY line, where ridership flow would be almost exclusively commuters coming into the city. Developing a serious feeder network in Ann Arbor for the East-West line only becomes an issue when the service is extended to Chelsea or Grass Lake, and the trains pick up a significant volume of commuters coming into downtown in the mornings.

It's unfortunate that the geography of the area prevents one station from serving both commuter lines, as that makes it difficult to transfer from one to the other, and erodes the effectiveness of the system. Back when there was big talk of commuter rail between Detroit and Lansing, someone had the pipe dream of a horseshoe flyover between the Ann Arbor RR and Norfolk Southern. That's another way to make things work, but if the federal government won't give us New Start money, I doubt we'd get $50M for a horseshoe flyover bridge.

[ns8401]

Something like 78% U of M and 22% city of Ann Arbor costs for the multi-modal thing. The easiest thing to do would be to terminate wally at the Barton Hills station where buses going to U of M and downtown already pass. Then with 5 or 6 buses waiting in a pull-in built next to the road and the station no traffic is blocked. Funding is the major problem with everything being proposed.... The ideas are pretty sound on how getting people into town and to their destinations would be accomplished.

[Typhoon]

The Metra equipment is far from "worn out." It has around 25 years of service left in it and am sure that it cost far less than brand new equipment.

You do realize this equipment was designed in the late 1940's and delivery started in 1950, do you not? If it has 25 years of service life left, as you claim, the cars will be retired when they are 85 years old. Raise your hand if you want to be riding in an 85 year-old commuter car.

Metra got rid of them. In addition to being "old," they lack serious safety and accessibility features. Freight cars are banned from interchange when they are 40 years old, but Michigan is making a major investment in passenger service with 60 year-old passenger cars. These cars do not have collision posts and are prone to catastrophic telescoping in the event of a collision with another train. They have high floors and narrow vestibules, both serious impediments to ADA accessibility. In the aforementioned article, the Mayor of Ypsilanti states that most people don't get a Cadillac or BMW as their first car. The problem with this logic is first-time drivers don't get an old jalopy with no airbags, no seat belts, and a metal dashboard either.

Yes I realize how old they are. As long as the car is maintained properly, I have no issue to the age of the car. Amtrak has passenger cars designed in the 40's still operating with no issues. The UP puts in executives in cars that were built almost 100 years ago, no one makes a deal about that. Metra got rid of the Q cars for two reasons, first they have a different brake system then the rest of the fleet. They were the only cars in the fleet that had D-22 brake valves. It made them oddballs. That is not an issue if they are the only car type that a system has. Second, as a condition of the "Illinois first" loan that Metra received for the new Amrail cars, they had to get rid of some of the older cars. The ex CNW Pullman built cars were sold $1 each, which is why VRE and the Nashville outfit took them. The Q cars were sold for more, although I have no idea for how much. As an aside I would like to see some proof of the whole "prone to catastrophic telescoping" claim. I do not recall either the CB&Q or Metra ever having a telescoping issue with these cars.

[MSchwiebert]

Not being a local, Obviously I don't have any "skin in the game" for this proposal. The point I was trying to make is that other operations (VRE and Nashville for start-ups and NJ Transit for transfer of existing operations to governmental agencies) had success operating with "used" equipment. I'm guessing that the operation has a finite amount of $ to start up with and either that amount wasn't enough to make new equipment possible, or the operation chose to take money that could have been allocated to new equipment and redirected it elsewhere (stations, physical plant changes etc.)

[Shorthaul]

What we have is a service where there's no proven demand, with antique equipment, where riders have to transfer to busses at the endpoints to actually get anywhere. The danger here is that by doing this the "Southeast Michigan" way, with everything backwards and half-baked, that the result will be such a failure that it will kill the potential for any real, properly-planned service in the future.

Sadly, this is the truest thing that has been said so far. Michigan is such a clusterf@%* when it comes to things like this. The worst thing possible (save for a catastrophic collision involving equipment that my grandmother could have ridden as a child) would be a shortage of riders. I was very optimistic about this at first, but thinking long-term (a rare occurence in the USA), I realized that a 2010 start to this concept would be about the worst thing for future commuter service. I guess I shouldn't really worry about this too much, I will be out of this dead-end state soon enough anyway.

[OwlCaboose2853]

Transit Forum Critiques Fuller Road Station http://annarborchronicle.com/2010/02/17 ... d-station/

[Ypsi]

The last update said that they were going to lease the loco's.

I read on a websit that the engines wer suposed to come in of the 5th of march

[GTWChris]

The deadline for the Request for Proposal is March 5. If anyone wants to look at the RFP here it is: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdot/ ... 0846_7.pdf

For those of you who do not know what a Request for Proposal, this is basically asking for someone to lease them some locomotives and servicing(in SEMCOG's case).

[JANGAJONGA]

Wow when will we know if this is approved?

[GTWChris]

This is the current timeline:

March 12, 2010 Proposals due
March 19, 2010 Vendor selected
April 2, 2010 Contract negotiated
May 18, 2010 Contract executed
August 16, 2010 Delivery of first locomotive
September 27, 2010 Delivery of second, third and fourth locomotives
October 25, 2010 Service startup is tentatively scheduled for October 2010
April-July, 2011 Delivery of fifth and sixth locomotives
August, 2011 Delivery of seventh, and eighth locomotives

[JANGAJONGA]

Does anyone know were this locomotives will be stored?? there isnt any room in Ann Arbor.

[hobojim]

Does anyone know who is going to ride this everyday and but the tickets?

[AARR]

According to an article I just read this will probably die cause Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is pulling her support in favor of Obama's high-speed long-distance plan instead.

[Racer]

According to an article I just read this will probably die cause Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is pulling her support in favor of Obama's high-speed long-distance plan instead.

I had to say this, but this is what I agree with of the high-speed proposal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xyUg4J7Sf8

[Shorthaul]

Roads are profitable? Last I heard, they were subsidized by local and state governments, and by the US government. Never mentions that...