Parts of every big urban city have parts and sections that look like Detroit. Detroit is just on the bleeding edge of societal devolution!
Posted on 07/25/2014 10:28:15 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
A $137 million three-mile train is coming to a nearly deserted avenue in a bankrupt city.
Growing up in the 1940s, Robert Fogelson remembers banging on the typewriter and peering out the window at his father’s office in a Manhattan skyscraper. Then "[my dad] would take us for lunch to a nearby Schraft’s, a chain of restaurants that was popular with housewives like my mother, who regularly went downtown to shop…to socialize ...or to meet my father for a play or a movie." Fogelson hadn’t decided yet what he would do with his life, "[b]ut I took it for granted," he writes, “whatever I did, I would do downtown."
As much a concept as a physical location, "downtown" was "the most powerful and widely recognized symbol of the American industrial metropolis," wrote historian Sam Bass Warner Jr., and it evokes sentimentality even in those of us who grew up long after flagship stores and corporate headquarters had relocated to the outskirts, leaving urban commercial districts empty and decrepit. Tourists still pack Times Square in New York City, where they can revel in a Disneyland-like recreation of downtown’s bright lights and crowded sidewalks. Fogelson never became a denizen of a towering skyscraper; he’s an urban historian at MIT and the author of Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, an examination of how center cities have shaped pubic policy.
Fogelson’s story ends in the middle of the last century, but downtown’s allure is an ongoing distraction from what’s actually important for the health of cities. It explains in part the twisted logic behind one of the most confounding urban development projects of our time, a $137 million 3.3-mile light rail line that breaks ground in Detroit next week. How else could sane people think a bankrupt city should build a wildly expensive rail line on a partially deserted avenue in a neighborhood awash in cheap parking?
Let's consider what the new light rail line will mean for the people who live and work in the Motor City. Today, the suburbanites who commute to downtown Detroit might be frustrated by their limited lunch options—vacant storefronts don’t facilitate much culinary variety—but at least they get to enjoy a congestion-free drive to the office. Under-utilized lots and garages occupy almost 40 percent of the land in downtown Detroit, so the walk from the car to the cube takes just a few minutes.
What if Dan Gilbert, the billionaire co-founder of Quicken Loans and the puppet master behind so many recent efforts to revitalize downtown Detroit, were to mandate that his employees utilize the new light rail line in their daily commutes after it opens in 2016? (Gilbert relocated Quicken's headquarters to downtown Detroit four years ago to inject life into the neighborhood.) That would mean rather than drive straight to the office they’d have to drive within three miles of the office, park their cars in a lot somewhere along Woodward Avenue, wait 7-10 minutes for a train to come, and hand over $1.50 for the inconvenience.
How will the light rail line serve the 26 percent of Detroit households that don’t own cars and depend on the city’s dreadful bus service? Detroit has a 139-square mile footprint, but the light rail line will serve only those travelers who happen to be going from one spot to another along one three-mile stretch on Woodward. Buses, on the other hand, have the capacity to weave through neighborhoods, giving commuters what they most desire, which is to move as quickly as possible from one location to another with the least amount of hassle. Buses are also orders of magnitude cheaper to operate and maintain, which is why Detroit shut down its last street rail line in 1956, when the city’s population was almost three times its current size.
In a 2010 interview with Reason TV, Detroit journalist Charlie LeDuff compared the light rail line to building “swimming pools” in a city that has so many broken ambulances that calling 911 is like scheduling an appointment with a cable repairman. If every train car were to end up packed with riders, the light rail line’s proposed $1.50 fare still wouldn’t come close to paying the system's operating expenses, so it’s destined to become yet another drain on taxpayers—just like downtown Detroit’s existing rail line, the "People Mover,” a.k.a. the “horizontal elevator to nowhere,” which has been burning city cash running empty rail cars in a three-mile loop since it opened in 1987.
Still, the federal government saw fit to hand over $41 million in subsidies to build more light rail in Detroit (that’s $25 million in cash and $16 million through a tax gimmick). The Detroit News editorial page recently applauded the project, calling the federal commitment “pocket change” compared to what the government spends overall on infrastructure. Tell that to the public sector retirees facing a haircut on their pension benefits; in a city embroiled in chapter 9 bankruptcy, every dollar counts. Detroit is so cash strapped it's now cutting off water service to scofflaw elderly residents. (Light rail’s backers recently begged the feds for an additional $12 million in funding; the money hasn’t materialized yet, but they’re pushing ahead with the project anyway.)
Detroit’s light rail line could be written off as a typical government pork fest, if only a large share of the construction funds weren’t coming from private sources. The biggest contributor besides the federal government is the nonprofit Kresge Foundation, which has pledged about $35 million. A key figure behind the project is Gilbert, a downtown nostalgic extraordinaire. Hanging in his offices, there's a 1917 photo depicting downtown Detroit as a dreamy wonderland, with pristine streets, Model Ts, ladies promenading in fine dresses, businessmen in top hats, and, of course, shinny rail cars running down Woodward. In 1917, Detroit was a magnet for the nation’s brightest minds—the Silicon Valley of its day—and Gilbert wants to turn back time. He’s buying up empty office buildings on a bet that downtown can become a linchpin for the city’s revival.
"'People my age, we would hear from our parents and grandparents who were raised in Detroit about how great this city was, from 1900 to the 60s,'” Gilbert told The New York Times last year. "'As I started visiting [other] great American cities, it hit me—man, how did we blow this so badly?'"
Gilbert's downtown investments are harmless as long as he’s spending his own money, but the light rail line is mostly a play to leverage the public dollars required to fund its operations over the long term. Gilbert and Rip Rapson, the president and CEO of Kresge, would do a lot more good using the same money to replace Detroit’s aging bus fleet, which is an everyday drag on the quality of life in Detroit. (Lifting the city’s ban on private jitneys would be even more fruitful.)
But bus philanthropy wouldn't yield any downtown monuments or splashy groundbreaking ceremonies, like the one I expect we’ll be subjected to next week, including all the tiresome bromides about the city’s comeback. Detroit’s best hope lies with concerned citizens and entrepreneurs making less heralded investments in the city's residential neighborhoods, like those featured in "Anarchy in Detroit," Zach Weissmueller’s recent Reason TV series. Public dollars should focus exclusively on improving core services, such as helping the Detroit police build on its recent success in crime reduction.
Light rail is destined to become another monument in Detroit’s graveyard of failed renewal projects. It's time to cede our downtown nostalgia to the theme park operators.
You win post of the day. ;o)
IMAGINE!
Next time you drive past a light rail train, imagine 3 things;
1. Each light rail passenger in a full size car instead of the train car.
2. Driving on paved over light rail track line.
3. All the empty space between those cars being used by cars on your road.
—
Think of how much faster your own travel would be with an emptier road!
I would normally too. But I would avoid them just like I avoid the private “short buses” that “compete” with New Jersey Transit (and that includes my avoidance of NJT on top of that). And DBC’s look conjures a certain urban “ethos” that is utterly at odds with what I believe in.
In addition, DBC uses some Obama-esque slogan words, such as “Change”. Highly visible on their website.
Whatever.
LOL! I wonder if the Blight Rail will go to Blight-more.
Nope. CT’s $60 million dollar a mile busway is.
Parts of every big urban city have parts and sections that look like Detroit. Detroit is just on the bleeding edge of societal devolution!
I can see exactly one use for “light rail”: connecting an outlying airport with a city center and population centers or secondary-business cores on the far side of the city. The El’s blue line in Chicago, the Seattle light rail system (one line just as I described), SEPTA’s train to Philadelphia International,. . . all get a great deal of ridership just as airport links, and I suspect, between that and their ridership as public transit for locals would all be profitable as stand-alone rail lines (unlike most public transit).
Chicago has a good system. It takes you to where you want to go (including both airports and most stadiums). It doesn’t drop you off in the middle of nowhere.
Light rail will be obsolete with the first self driving vehicle. Why started this now?
Or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4eEVhoohtI
If they’re using the slogans of the left and adopt the urban decay look of left-wing rule, it’s a bit beyond “whatever”. Just my observation.
Well, no, but there are plenty of other reasons to oppose government boondoggles.
“Thanks for reading.”
No. Thank you for writing that.
Like I said, whatever.
“Nevermore!”
Houston owns the trademark on the term Boondoggle associated with a light rail transportation system.
the 34-mile Sounder north line, which links Seattle to Everett, is costing much more and being used far less than anybody expected. It was originally proposed as a six-train commuter service, on the existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway tracks, with six stops. But as costs shot up to $368 million from a projected $132 million, the agency cut back to four trains and four stations. About 1,100 riders use the line every weekday, far below the original forecast of 2,400–3,200 riders, for an average cost of $330,000 per rider.
And than this.........
By contrast, the Sounder south route, from Seattle to Tacoma, cost $55,000 per average weekday rider$135,000 per rider for its new commuter line.
To be sure, unforeseen circumstances, including the recent recession, have contributed to reduced ridership and lower revenues, but poor negotiations are also part of the problem. Sound Transit originally estimated it would have to pay $65 million to use BNSF’s right-of-way for the Seattle-Everett route. The agency ended up paying $258 million for those rights. /q>
Sound Transit states that they have no thoughts of shutting down the Money Pit that is the North line. That the people there want it. And they have started a marketing campaign to increase ridership.
Idiots
Ed
I thought that was the Train of Death!
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