From The Grand Rapids Press:

The head of Amtrak’s Board of Directors touted strides toward high-speed passenger rail in Michiganand work to enhance Michigan-to-Chicago rail services during a Thursday speech to transit and commerce advocates in Grand Rapids.

Tom Carper, Amtrak’s board chair, also argued Amtrak is an economic driver for communities and states, and said federal stimulus support in 2009 translated to enhanced rail service and job growth.

The visit was prompted by the Michigan Transportation Odyssey, a three-day, 350-mile journey by transit advocates from Detroit to Traverse City meant to highlight the challenges facing public transportation in Michigan.

The travelers had journeyed to Grand Rapids from Kalamazoo by bus prior to Carper’s remarks, which were offered before a transit panel discussion hosted by Rapid Growth Media.

The panel included Carper, an odyssey participant and several Grand Rapids business owners and commerce advocates, including The Right Place Inc. and a Founders Brewing Company co-founder.

“The economic development and community development benefits to passenger rail, you can see the ridership that speaks to itself,” Carper said, pointing to what he said was a record 30.2 million Amtrak riders nationwide in 2011.

Carper said ridership on Michigan’s three rail services, including the Grand Rapids-to-Chicago Pere Marquette line, has grown 60 percent since 2000.

Related coverage: Amtrak’s Grand Rapids to Chicago route could get in on high-speed rail with proposed upgrades

Some 797,000 passengers used Amtrak in Michigan in 2011, Carper said, up from 493,400 in 2000.

Statewide, increased ridership has contributed $25.7 million in economic benefits to local businesses and a comparable amount to state residents, Carper said, pointing to a 2009 Grand Valley State University study.

“That’s something that’s lost on a lot of folks,” Carper said, “that the cost of supporting the service is money spent and then it goes away, but that just doesn’t happen.”

Carper applauded state officials for working to purchase a strip of Norfolk Southern railroad between Kalamazoo and Dearborn, which, if successful, would be attached to Amtrak’s 110-mph stretch between Porter, Ind., and Kalamazoo.

Problematically, though, track conditions and safety concerns led Norfolk Southern to recently downgrade speeds on that Kalamazoo-Dearborn stretch to 25-30 mph from the 79 mph trains had been traveling.

Still, in terms of high-speed rail, the 110-mph plan is “very important thing, a very important thing when it comes to what Amtrak brings to the table in Michigan,” Carper said.

Elsewhere, Carper lauded the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which funneled $1 billion-plus in stimulus funds to Amtrak for train and service upgrades.

Carper said the stimulus dollars also helped create the equivalent of more than 1,000 rail service jobs.

“The administration has supported passenger rail not just with words but with money,” Carper said.

He added federal authorities are working to funnel money to the so-called Englewood Flyer in Chicago, a bypass meant to alleviate freight and passenger train congestion that Carper said would improve on-time performance between Michigan and the city.

“There is good investment in the city of Chicago that’s going to help your service,” Carper said.

Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/03/amtrak_board_chief_touts_high-.html

From The Grand Rapids Press:

Work is expected to begin in May on the new, $3.8 million Amtrak station slated to be built near The Rapid’s Central Station.

The station — which will be named for former West Michigan congressman Vern Ehlers — will be situated just south of Central Station and the Wealthy Street overpass.

It will be several blocks east of the existing Amtrak station on Market Avenue and Wealthy Street.

As an intermodal facility, the station will integrate bus and rail transit by allowing passengers to board and detrain on one side of the station and hop on a bus on the other.

Construction was expected to begin sooner, but Rapid CEO Peter Varga last month said a property dispute with CSX rail had caused delay.

Officials previously held a ground-breaking ceremony for the station in October 2011.

The station is being funded through a $3.8 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration, earmarked by Ehlers in a 2009 federal transportation spending bill.

Ehlers later voted against the bill that contained the earmark.

The earmark was leveraged using an $850,000 funding boost from the Grand Rapids Downtown Development Authority, which in 2010 disbursed the money to help The Rapid and the Michigan Department of Transportation purchase the land on which the station will sit.

Follow this link: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/03/work_on_new_grand_rapids_amtra.html

From AnnArbor.com:

 http://www.annarbor.com/news/airride-shuttle-service-from-ann-arbor-to-detroit-metro-airport-to-start-monday/

U.S. Rep. John Dingell and the director of the Michigan Department of Transportation will be in Ann Arbor on Friday to celebrate the launch of a new airport shuttle service.

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority is launching the AirRide service, which will provide 12 daily roundtrips from Ann Arbor to the Detroit Metro Airport.

From WBEZ 91.5 FM:

Chicago’s Union Station is old, storied and surprisingly busy. Completed in 1925 on the site of some of the city’s earliest train stations, the rail hub is the third busiest in the country: According to one estimate, in 2009 it clocked in nearly 31.6 million Metra and Amtrak passenger trips, dwarfing the 8.5 million trips by plane at Midway Airport that same year.

But the vitality of this commuter rail hub is undermined by a few distinct problems. It’s not just things like train emissions (in February, Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin called on the new owners of the old post office, which is adjacent to the station, to fix ventilation systems that were contributing to the buildup of noxious train fumes). There are bigger structural problems, too.

The station is congested and near capacity. And with corporations like Sarah Lee relocating a portion of its headquarters downtown, commuting demands are expected to grow. Congestion already results in what Luann Hamilton, deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, calls “street conflicts.” Cabs, private shuttles, pedestrians and cyclists all jockey for street and sidewalk space outside the station, especially since the taxi courts there were shut down after 9/11. More passengers won’t help, especially since Union is not what planners call a fully integrated station: You have to leave the building to make connections with CTA trains or buses, which is less efficient for travelers.

The city has long been aware of these problems, and issued a master plan study in 2011 with a list of proposed changes. Officials hope to expand the station’s capacity by transforming old baggage platforms into pedestrian platforms, building an off-street CTA bus terminal, launching bus rapid transit service between Union Station and Navy Pier and reconfiguring Canal Street to ease conflicts between pedestrians, motorists and cyclists.

Sounds good to many, but some critics see these promises echoed among other pie-in-the-sky renovation visions the city has touted for Union Station over the years. For example, after this latest plan was announced, the Tribune’s John Hilkevitch wrote: “Extravagant proposals to transform Union Station … from a 1920s passenger depot into a modern transportation center have come and gone like passing trains.”

He continued:

Chicago-area residents who have been around awhile have heard those unfulfilled promises before. Remember architect Helmut Jahn’s proposal for a separate high-speed rail station east of the old post office? Or the original Daniel Burnham proposal for Union Station with an office tower? Union Station has seen more deconstruction, like the demolition of the original concourse building in 1968.

So how can the city make sure it gets it right this time? For starters, it’s looking to other municipalities with thriving transportation hubs. CDOT’s Hamilton cites Atlanta, San Francisco and Denver among the cities Chicago is looking to for examples.

Earlier this month CDOT officials also heard advice from Washington, D.C., about what is working at its Union Station. At an event sponsored by the Metropolitan Planning Council, Tom Downs, who served as Amtrak’s president from 1993 to ’98 and now sits on the D.C. Metro’s Board of Directors, touted the success of renovation efforts at the District’s rail hub.

Downs describes himself as “a believer” in the power of public transit, and says that improvements in D.C. have made Union Station a destination, not just a throughway, and have sparked lucrative development projects in neighborhoods surrounding the station.

During his talk, Downs cited Chicago’s history as the country’s main transportation hub, and emphasized the importance of getting these questions right. In the audio above, you can hear him explain what he thinks Chicago has going for it when it comes to fixing problems at Union Station, what it has working against it and what the city can do about it.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Tom Downs spoke at an event presented by the Metropolitan Planning Council in March. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.