From The Flint Journal

One year after a water pipe burst and threatened to destroy hundred of historical documents and pictures, the Durand Union Station may just be better than ever. 

“We were actually very very fortunate,” Don Westcott, board president for the station said. “Because we had insurance we were able to take advantage and do some redecorating. We needed it.” 

But it took a lot more than insurance money to get the job done. Dozens of volunteers, ranging from local senior citizens to students from Durand Area High School put in their time to save the damaged items. The Sloan Museum and Henry Ford Museum also helped by offering information and advice on how to go about preserving the damaged documents. 

The work began, Westcott said, within minutes of an alarm going off after an attic water pipe froze and burst in January of 2009. 

Read more:
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/02/durand_union_station_getting_a.html

From The Holland Sentinel

For years, keeping the Pere Marquette Amtrak line has been a battle.

In 2010 the fight revolves around Michigan’s budget woes and Washington’s recent interest in high-speed rails.

Michigan Department of Transportation officials proposed rerouting the Pere Marquette around a dozen years ago. Instead of coming up the Lake Michigan coast through Holland to Grand Rapids, it would go to Kalamazoo, north to Grand Rapids and then west to Holland.

If a high-speed rail is built between Chicago and Detroit, the latter route could actually be faster. But coastal communities don’t want to lose what they consider a lifeline to Chicago tourists.

State Rep. Bob Genetski, R-Saugatuck, and five other lakeshore legislators asked MDOT officials to spare the route Thursday after a meeting Wednesday in St. Joseph.

Read more:
http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x1595500511/Local-legislators-to-MDOT-Spare-our-Amtrak-route

From the South Bend Tribune

Shoreline areas will lose rail service if line’s eliminated, he says.

State Rep. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, said Thursday he’s on board with efforts to continue Amtrak’s Pere Marquette rail service between Grand Rapids and Chicago.

The line, featuring a stop in St. Joseph-Benton Harbor, has been proposed for elimination by the Michigan Department of Transportation, Proos said. In place of it, MDOT has proposed re-routing the line to eliminate shoreline areas, he added.

“This would be devastating to shoreline communities,” he said.

Read more:
http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100226/News01/2260375/-1/googleNews

From Hour Detroit magazine

On the evening of Oct. 24, 1998, downtown Detroit was quite literally ground zero. Breathless reporters were perched on rooftops. Every TV station was live. Video beamed across the country via satellite. And then, at 5:47 p.m., explosions ripped through the 87-year-old J.L. Hudson building, and it collapsed in a plume of dust. While crowds — and Mayor Dennis Archer — cheered, Miles O’Brien, then a rising star at CNN, felt something else entirely. “Oh, I cried. I cried like a baby when they imploded Hudson’s,” he says without a trace of embarrassment. “I’m a fourth-generation Detroiter. … My whole family worked at Hudson’s.”

If these feelings had been festering for years, O’Brien found himself in December 2008 with an unexpected chance to do something about it. Dropped by CNN in budget cuts that claimed the entire science team, O’Brien landed in the world of public television as anchor of Blueprint America, a documentary series about America’s crumbling infrastructure. In the latest installment, Beyond the Motor City (PBS, Feb. 8), O’Brien turns conventional wisdom about Detroit on its head with the hypothesis that his hometown is not only poised for a rebirth, but could once again transform transportation in America.

Read more:
http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/February-2010/Getting-Back-on-Track/