Detroit’s plan to spend $550 million building a nine-mile light-rail line on Woodward Avenue would be laughable if it weren’t wasting so much money that could actually do something useful if spent on something else. Detroit leaders have convinced themselves that light rail is world-class transportation, that it will be the lynchpin of Detroit’s recovery, and that it will keep young people in the city.
A shadowy group of so-called private investors known as the M-1 Rail group have actually agreed to put up $100 million of the cost of the project. They aren’t expecting any financial return on this money; more than a third of this amount is coming from the S. H. Kresge Foundation and is being donated as an act of charity. Strangely, the arrangement almost foundered on the seemingly trivial question of whether the tracks should go down the middle of Woodward Avenue (as local residents preferred) or be in the curbside lane (as the M1 group preferred). One pundit went so far as to call this the “Lincoln-Douglas debate of our time.” So serious is this debate that one more transit agency leader has lost his job over rail transit.
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Somebody in Detroit should ask some more serious questions about light rail. If light rail can help urban revival, why did Portland need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing development along its light-rail lines? If light rail keeps young people in the city, why does Portland need an urban-growth boundary to do the same? Except for the claim that light rail is far more expensive than buses, about all the other claims for light rail are a bunch of lies aimed at draining the taxpayers (and, in Detroit’s case, some gullible foundation directors) of their money.
The idea that a transit scheme will revitalize Detroit is rather absurd. If Detroit’s recovery is presumably automotive based I’m confused as to how a train is going to help.
It really is not fair to pick on Detroit. At least New Orleans had a hurricane to pass blame upon. I hope the current cohort of planning students learn some lessons from Detroit.
Oh Antiplanner, don’t you see – it’s not important that the light rail actually work – In a Keynesian world, it’s only truly important that money is spent and people get paid wages, so they can buy stuff.
Yes, yes, I know that it would be more efficient to just give the money to poor people; But that doesn’t create the kind of lasting legacy to my awesomeness as a politician. Only a huge, guaranteed-to-fail infrastructure project will give me the kind of infamy I need to feed my ego!
I agree with LazyR. I agree even if the argument is ‘light rail can be a viable component of the plan to revitalize Day-twa’. I’m sure if my dad were still around he’d be laughing very loud at the idea, and letting me know exactly who was pocketing the money.
DS
The Antiplanner wrote:
Detroit’s plan to spend $550 million building a nine-mile light-rail line on Woodward Avenue would be laughable if it weren’t wasting so much money that could actually do something useful if spent on something else.
I am not enthused about new light rail projects in Detroit or elsewhere in the United States.
But more than my dislike of new passenger rail lines, I wonder if such a line along Woodward Avenue would disrupt or damage something that brings people to that part of Detroit (and presumably helps the tax base somewhat) – that being the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise, which takes place “each year on the third Saturday in August.”
Of course, one-day and short-term events have been used in other cities as reasons to build expensive rail lines, though it seems that a rail line would be pretty incompatible with this event.
The idea that a transit scheme will revitalize Detroit is rather absurd. If Detroit’s recovery is presumably automotive based I’m confused as to how a train is going to help.
Could not have said it better myself. But the parties interested in building light rail (planners, contractors, and ideologues) have imbued light rail and streetcars with an almost magical ability to drive development and restore blighted areas. All of which is false, of course. It is the huge subsidies that “drive” developments, or more accurately, shift developments from elsewhere in the area, where they might have occurred without subsidies.
Putting back the tracks on Woodward Avenue isn’t going to prevent any one from driving their car on the street!
Had to go to downtown Buffalo yesterday. Stood outside on Main Street waiting for my appointment and watched the trains run up and down. Light rail has been a figure on Main Street for nearly 30 years, now; and it’s still a retail-free, pedestrian-free, nightlife-free wasteland. That’s not entirely surprising, given New York State’s high taxes and regulations; but it does put the lie to the claim that light rail spurs development.
Some might say that Buffalo’s Main Street might be worse were it not for light rail, but it couldn’t be. They haven’t been down there. Light rail, justified by claims of economic development, is a lie.
but it does put the lie to the claim that light rail spurs development.
Just curious, what’s the evidence for, say, LR slowing the standard, typical downtown flight? That is: the people who actually live there and study it – has LR slowed the flight of binesses to cheaper land and suburban towns’ subsidies? Thank you in advance for numbers, as I know very little about BUF, except for the Sabez.
DS
At the very time the city of Detroit is nearly imploding from their struggle to cover the costs of their vast, underutilized infrastructure they are building even more infrastructure?
Detroit is a place that is consolidating, though there also seems to rebirth going on to closer to the core.