Gridlock grows with commutes between burbs

[Allan]

Construction worker Steve Prain of Washington Township says traveling to job sites can take 90 minutes.

Gridlock grows with commutes between burbs

Metro highways lead to Detroit, but most work in Oakland

DEARBORN

[Allan]

[ClevelandNO!]

Silvers imagines a future of double-decker freeways.

[Allan]

Yeah, well he's just another one of those dumb metro drivers. People just don't think about such things. More lanes = more congestion. Planners have known this for years, but most people are too stupid to figure it out.

The thing that gets me was that there was not a single mention of mass transit. Everyone knows that Detroit needs mass transit, but nobody can agree on it, and nobody wants to fund it.

[BrandonTO416]

Detroit is only home to 12% of jobs in metropolitan Detroit overall?? I wonder if that is comparable to other metro areas, if so then we have terribly weak CBD's and central cities in this country.

[Allan]

Yep. Detroit is the most decentralized metro in the country.

[G W North]

Build a decent network of train lines going into downtown Detroit. Over time, companies can choose to re-locate (or locate in the first place) downtown. If they CHOOSE to remain in the suburbs, commuters can continue to get stuck in that traffic. At least they'll have a choice.

Making it easier to go from suburb-to-suburb is the worst thing they could possibly do.

[Allan]

Ok, that would work, execpt companies need incentives to move downtown. The cost of running a business out of downtown Detroit is much higher than the cost of running that same business out of some crappy 1970s office building in Troy or Southfield or something. Also, most suburbanites look negatively on the city of Detroit. If the negative imaged changed, it might have a better chace of occuring.

There actually used to be commuter rail between Pontiac and Downtown Detroit, but the service stopped because of the low demand. There has been talk of restarting the service, which would cost very little money, but nothing has been done so far.

[G W North]

The point is that they would have an OPTION. If they chose not to exercise that option, than they CHOOSE to be stuck in suburban gridlock.

[monsoon]

[ClevelandNO!]

There actually used to be commuter rail between Pontiac and Downtown Detroit, but the service stopped because of the low demand. There has been talk of restarting the service, which would cost very little money, but nothing has been done so far.

that's still a pretty tough sell considering that the train station is neither downtown nor midtown nor new center......

[Allan]

It's my understanding that if the servie was restarted, the commuter rail would run from Pontiac to New Center, and then light rail would run from New Center to downtown. Or at least that's the last proposal I heard about. It would involve building new stations...although I'm not real sure where they plan on getting the money for any of this.

[ClevelandNO!]

^i've got a few bucks lying around......

[Allan]

Haha. If everyone pitched in a few bucks we could get the service restarted. I still can't find the article detailing how much all of this would cost. I do remember that the figure is less than the widening of I-75 will cost. Widening I-75 is sure a waste of taxpayer dollars. $10B to widen it. That would buy a pretty nice LRT system if you ask me.