by Passenger
Also, buses are easier to sell off when the town goes bankrupt.
Railroad Forums
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U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this morning praised Detroit leaders and Michigan lawmakers for creating a regional transit authority and raising funds to build a 3.3-mile light-rail project along the city’s Woodward Avenue corridor.He is expected to return Friday and to officially deliver $25 million.
Passenger wrote:How much rail transport does $25 million buy these days?About 2 miles, give or take, of street-running light rail (based on figures of 10-15 million per mile from recent systems like Portland).
The EGE wrote:It would be interesting to see how that figure varies in Detroit. The cost of labor, land, and probably construction materials is fairly low in southeast Michigan, but there is no electrical or physical infrastructure for light rail in place.Passenger wrote:How much rail transport does $25 million buy these days?About 2 miles, give or take, of street-running light rail (based on figures of 10-15 million per mile from recent systems like Portland).
jpasson wrote:Was a subway ever proposed for detroit in its historyApparently not anything serious.
Passenger wrote:How much rail transport does $25 million buy these days?The 3.4-mile streetcar route's capital cost estimate for the downtown run on Woodward is now pegged at $137 million. [I reckon that does not include the typical 40% cost overrun. Time will tell...]
He [Lahood] is expected to return Friday and to officially deliver $25 million.Actually, that $25 million was originally budgeted and set aside by the Feds well over a year ago--to be spent on studying whether to extend the now-aborted 9.3-mile streetcar project into Southern Oakland County, which very few Oaklanders really wanted anyway, BTW.
Looks like that project might go ahead after all.
The Federal Transit Administration has given the M1 Rail streetcar project its required environmental clearance to build the $137 million, 3.3-mile loop on Detroit's Woodward Avenue, the project's organizers said today. ...
M1 said it expects to begin construction south of Adams Street this year, and construction north of Adams will begin in 2014.
lpetrich wrote:Detroit streetcar construction contract awarded - Railway GazetteShould be ready around the same time the population goes down to zero.
Groundbreaking should happen in the next few months, and it should open in late 2015.
“This is a start,” Duggan said. “We ultimately need to build this rail line not just to Grand Boulevard but out to Eight Mile and out to Pontiac. But for today this is a very exciting beginning.”From downtown Detroit in Woodward Ave., it's 9 mi to Eight Mile Rd. and 25 mi to the center of Pontiac. That may be a bit far for a modern streetcar, but it may be OK for a longer-range LRV.