From MLive

Transportation Riders United, Michigan Environmental Council along with neighborhood associations, the NAACP, and other groups, began a series of community engagement forums on the proposed M1 Woodward light rail line last night in Palmer Park. Here’s what you need to know about the proposed transit project.

The Plan: The M1 light rail line will begin with two phases. The first phase will go from Hart Plaza to Grand Boulevard. It’s expected to open in 2013. The second phase will extend the line from New Center to the State Fairgrounds transit center by 2016. Transit planners expect further expansions to take the M1 into Oakland County, perhaps as far as Pontiac.

Some detail remain in the planning stages. For instance, planners haven’t decided where trains will stop along the route or if they’ll run in the middle of the street or in the right lanes.

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/02/everything_you_always_wanted_t.html

Englewood flyover project part of $6.8 billion in transportation spending reductions proposed in Congress

From The Chicago Tribune

Funding is in jeopardy for construction of a major rail-bridge system to ease at least some of the freight and passenger train congestion in the Chicago region, officials warned Thursday.

The argument against building the Englewood flyover bridges on Chicago’s South Side at one of the nation’s busiest railroad junctions has nothing to do with the merits of the project.

Instead, the long-planned bridge is among billions of dollars worth of infrastructure improvements that are being threatened by the battle playing out in Congress over the soaring national debt.

Democratic Illinois lawmakers said Thursday they will fight a move by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives that scrapped funding for the Englewood bridges, which are designed to increase rail capacity and eliminate a bottleneck that officials say causes thousands of hours of delays each year for Metra and Amtrak riders as well as bogging down freight traffic. Republicans contend the cuts must be made to slow the growth of the national debt.

“This mindless cut is a clear signal that the House-passed bill is not the product of a thoughtful effort,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said after touring the bridge site with U.S. Reps. Dan Lipinski and Bobby Rush, both Chicago Democrats.

“Yes, we need to cut spending. … (But) we shouldn’t abandon our commitments to creating jobs and economic development in the midst of this recession,” Durbin said.

Last year the Federal Railroad Administration awarded Illinois $133 million to help construct the bridges. The rail-to-rail flyover would be built from 57th Place to 69th Street to carry north-south Metra Rock Island District trains on three tracks over the four-track east-west Norfolk Southern line that is also used by Amtrak.

The project design includes a possible fifth track for higher-speed Amtrak trains. 

Seventy-eight Metra Rock Island trains, 14 Amtrak trains and about 46 Norfolk Southern freight trains inch through the pinch point each day. Separating the tracks is also a step toward reducing delays on Metra’s SouthWest Service line, officials said.

The Englewood flyover would create about 1,450 jobs, the lawmakers said.

But in House legislation, Republicans killed funding for the project, as part of $6.8 billion in transportation spending reductions hitting the states — money that the Obama administration has already promised, according to lawmakers from Illinois.

Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-02-24/news/ct-met-englewood-flyover-20110224_1_amtrak-trains-national-debt-bridge-site

From WXYZ-TV — Detroit 20/20 Project

For Catherine Martin getting around Detroit is an all day ordeal. A quick 10 mile trip from home to the bank downtown takes more than an hour each way.

She says it isn’t easy to get around Detroit…or out of Detroit.. on a bus.

What does she think about the idea of a train that would go all the way down Woodward to Pontiac?  “Yes I’m all for that.”

Light Rail

But, like most Detroiters, Catherine is also skeptical. After all they’ve been talking about some kind of light rail service in Detroit for decades.  She’ll believe it when she sees it. Well, guess what– construction could begin within the year according to Megan Owens with the non-profit transportation riders union.  “It’s really exciting. We’re seeing some strong progress toward bringing light rail to Woodward Avenue as a start of a much broader regional system.”

Megan Owens says the federal government has committed $25 million and private investors $100 million toward the m1 light rail project.

It’s a light rail that will start downtown at the river and glide north 3 ½ miles through midtown, DMC and Wayne State and into New Center.  Phase 2 would take it all the way through Highland Park to a transportation center at Woodward and 8 mile.

But there it hits a psychological barrier. The elephant in the room of the light rail discussion for years:  ” There are some people who are afraid of train systems because they’re afraid that not only will it allow them to get into the city—but it allows the city to get to them. There’s a fear,” Owens says.  “There will always be some barriers, some challenges, some people afraid of mingling with the rest of the region. But I think we can really break down a lot of those threats and misperceptions of threats that just don’t exist.”

So how did Detroit miss the bus on this one—and end up trying to play catch-up in the mass transit game?

After all, there was a time when Detroit was the leader. Our broad boulevards carried a bustling rail and trolley system that was the envy of America’s big cities.

According to Owens, “By the time the 40’s or 50’s came around the auto and oil companies recognized that transit was something of competition and they were a significant part of taking apart the old system. And so by 1956 we had eliminated all of the street cars in Detroit and the region. It’s been 55 years now we’ve been without.”

And now there is an urgency– a need to look past politics, history, race and cost.

Carmine Palombo of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments says, “What I hear now in citizens comments that I get and talking to elected officials is we want jobs, we want economic development, we want ease of travel. We don’t want to have to park. We want to be able to go to red wing games or tiger games with the convenience of just getting on a system and going.

The region has waited a long time for a better way to get around… and Catherine martin—who knows a thing or two about waiting for transportation—couldn’t be happier that the wait may finally be over.

Source: http://detroit2020.com/2011/02/09/light-rail-may-be-just-a-few-stops-away/