From The Kalamazoo Gazette:

Folks catching a bus or a train in Kalamazoo have a new resource to monitor arrival and departure times.

A small press event was held Tuesday to announce the new boards at the Kalamazoo Transportation Center. The boards have departure and arrival times for Amtrak trains, Indian Trails and Metro Transit buses. Each service is color coded.

The city of Kalamazoo is the first city to have the boards as part of the project organized by the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said John DeLora, vice chair of the association.

The Kalamazoo Transportation Center is also the first center in the country to have multiple transportation schedules on one board, DeLora said. The boards operate off of city computer data.

Funding for the boards was made possible through a $25,000 grant from the Sally Mead Hands Foundation, which promotes “green transportation.”

This is the first such board in the U.S. for intermodal transportation that includes inner-city transportation. It cost about $10,000 to do the research to create the boards. The hardware was about $500.

“It would have been a million-dollar project in the 70s,” DeLora said.

DeLora said he hopes to expand to six to eight other stations in Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. The next station will be Battle Creek, he said.

On hand for the event was Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell, Metro Transit Director Bill Schomisch and Kalamazoo County Transportation Authority Director Sean McBride.

Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/01/new_departure_arrival_boards_u.html

From The Detroit News:

Michigan’s costs for passenger rail service will quadruple this fall under a  federal act requiring the state to subsidize its busiest Amtrak route.

The 4-year-old law shifts an annual subsidy of about $25 million from the  federal government to the state.

Added to the $8 million Michigan provides for its other two Amtrak lines, the state’s tab for passenger rail service will jump to about $33 million.

Tim Hoeffner, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s rail  office, said the state has little choice but to absorb the added cost if it  wants to meet a growing demand for passenger train service in the lower half of  the state.

Ridership on the Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago route, Amtrak’s most popular with  three daily trains, has risen to nearly a half-million passengers per year.  Ridership totaled nearly 800,000 on all three state routes last year, a  record.

“I don’t think if we reduced the quality of service we would continue to grow  our revenues,” he said. “Our business model is that you have to grow your way to  prosperity.”

Under a different philosophy in the late 1990s, the state cut subsidies and  reduced service. The result was drops in ridership and revenue that were  proportionally greater than the decrease in service, Hoeffner said.

The subsidy shift — atop other federal dictates — irritates House Speaker  Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, who will be asked to OK it as part of the state  budget.

“I’m so mad at the federal government for its continuation to force our hand,  to try to tell us what to do,” Bolger said. “We need to evaluate on our own  what’s right for Michigan’s citizens, what’s right for the transportation  structure in our state.

“What bothers me about this is the federal government coming in and telling  us what to do when they can’t even get their own job done,” said Bolger,  referencing spending battles in Congress.

But the state is in the midst of a major financial commitment to improve  departure and arrival schedules, travel times and amenities.

In December, Michigan’s Transportation Department signed a deal with Norfolk  Southern Railway and the federal government to buy 135 miles of track between  Dearborn and Kalamazoo for $140 million.

Work begins in 2014 to upgrade the track so trains will be able to reach  speeds as high as 110 miles an hour on that section of what will become  high-speed service along the Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago route, which Amtrak calls  the Wolverine.

There’s been additional progress on MDOT’s high-speed rail project: Trains  have been able to run at 110 mph for almost a year on 80 miles of the 100-mile  portion of the Wolverine route between Kalamazoo and the Burns Harbor area of  Indiana.

It’s the first stretch of rail outside the northeastern U.S. rail corridor to  see that speed, Hoeffner said.

“We’ll raise the speed as much as we can in as many places as we can along  the route,” he said.

Hoeffner said the state’s higher tab to subsidize Amtrak will be included in  the 2013-14 fiscal year spending plan Gov. Rick Snyder presents to the  Legislature Feb. 7. The new state budget takes effect Oct. 1.

MDOT officials knew this was coming. It’s mandated by the Passenger Rail  Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, which shifts Amtrak subsidies from the  federal government to the states on routes shorter than 750 miles. The Wolverine  route is 283 miles long.

There is a trade-off: The federal act also awards millions of federal dollars  to Michigan to cover the full cost of new passenger cars Amtrak will start  running on the state’s lines in three to four years.

Most Amtrak routes are subsidized because ticket revenues fall short of  costs.

In Michigan, the state has been subsidizing two routes, the Blue Water and  the Pere Marquette. Until now, the feds had provided the subsidy for the  Wolverine.

Besides setting a new ridership high in Michigan in 2012, Amtrak took in a  record $29 million. The official ridership figures for the year: The Blue Water  route, once daily between Port Huron, East Lansing and Chicago, 187,991  passengers. The Pere Marquette, once a day between Grand Rapids and Chicago,  109,501. The Wolverine had 495,277 riders.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130126/METRO/301260353#ixzz2JQjaxH8O