Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Transit and bike activists are creative folks. More and more young, car-eschewing millennials are making their case in amateur music videos. The result is funnier and more imaginative than anything you’ll find on basic cable.

Check out this one from the University of Michigan. Production value, casting, script — this video is almost too good. Extra points for creative use of puppets and originality in drawing on the tradition of the Broadway musical:

More than Broadway, however, the active transportation advocacy music video genre tends to draw its inspiration from hip hop. Who could forget this Legoman rap video promoting center-running light rail for Detroit? This was also produced by some wildly talented folks at the University of Michigan.

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Last month it looked like Southeast Michigan would be the site of yet another embarrassing transit failure, after City Council of Detroit suburb Troy voted to reject $8.5 million in federal funds for a transit center, citing Tea Party talking points.

But this near-disaster now has a happy ending thanks to a smart compromise and admirable leadership by the local business community. Troy’s City Council last night voted 4-3 to continue the project, in reduced, $6.2-million form.

Credit is due to Troy’s Chamber of Commerce, a strong, consistent supporter of the project, which helped negotiate the compromise to draw down costs by about $2 million while maintaining the station’s status as a “gateway” center. The chamber even went so far as to assume operating costs for the center, which will serve an Amtrak line, the suburban bus system, taxis, and will even include bike infrastructure.

Michele Hodges, president of the Troy Chamber of Commerce, said, political considerations aside, the transit center was important to her members. Businesses in Troy, one of metro Detroit’s most important job centers, believe the project will help retain young professionals, improve employee mobility, create jobs and attract investment. Chamber businesses, Hodges added, view the transit line, which is undergoing improvements to shorten trips to Chicago, as the transportation corridor of the future — this century’s Interstate-75, she said.

“We’re not looking at this through a political lens,” said Hodges. “Really change the dialogue to one of productive problem solving.”

When the transit center funding was struck down in a 4-3 vote last month, the chamber was immediately critical. But it didn’t let a “no” vote, which was thought to be the final word on the project, end its campaign.

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Troy, Michigan is down one transit center, $8.5 million in investment and an unknown number of jobs this week after City Council voted 4-3 Monday to reject a federal grant aimed at improving rail transit in metro Detroit.

The decision, backed by Tea Party Mayor Janice Daniels and the National Review Online, caused a swift and immediate backlash from the affluent Detroit suburb’s business community — which was a strong supporter of the project.

“We are already experiencing some fallout and disinvestment in Troy, and we need to preclude that from happening,” Troy Chamber of Commerce President Michele Hodges told the Detroit News yesterday.

Leading the disinvestment wave was Magna International, an auto parts maker that employs 1,000 people in the city. The company’s Frank W. Ervin III wrote a letter to the Chamber that was widely publicized in the press saying that as a result of the decision, he would recommend the company reduce employment in the city.

It is also sad to see that the City of Troy has a Mayor who is not there to advocate for the future growth of the city and the betterment of the resident but who[se] narrow view only speaks to her personal agenda and discriminatory practices, I am drafting a memo to all Magna group presidents and our Magna corporate executives strongly recommending that Magna International no longer consider the City of Troy for future site considerations, expansions or new job creation. I have also recommended that where ever and when ever possible we reduce our footprint and employment level in Troy in favor or communities who act in the best interest of both the residents and business and not simply use their public position to advance their own private agenda.

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As disappointing as it’s been to see Detroit’s light rail plans being squashed, it’s been pretty exciting watching what has been taking shape in its place.

The Motor City’s plans to shift some $500 million from a 9-mile light rail system to bus rapid transit system could go a long way toward remedying the crushing mobility problems experienced by the city’s transit-dependent population. Detroit BRT, the Free Press reports, will cover three counties — serving as a crucial connection to the region’s largely suburbanized job centers.

The new system will cover a total of 110 miles with dedicated lanes. That would make it by far the country’s largest BRT system, says Stephanie Lotshaw, at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. The existing BRT systems in the country are all under 20 miles, she said.

More good news: it could be operating within three to five years.

Ridership estimates, at this point, are uncertain, according to the Wall Street Journal. But the need for better transit options is dire. The paper, this morning, profiled a Detroit janitor who leaves his house five hours before he has to be at work — just to be on the safe side.

“As long as I have a job, I’m good,” he said. “I just need them to run tomorrow so I still have one.”

Without a strong transit system, it was difficult for the city to justify the addition of light rail.

“People are losing jobs because they can’t reach them,” Mayor Bing told the WSJ.

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There was a lot riding on light rail plans for the city of Detroit.

Four years of planning, for one. Almost $100 million in private commitments, for another. But the most important consideration — by far — was the promise of a revitalized Woodward Avenue through the heart of the city’s up-and-coming Midtown neighborhood.

Suddenly, yesterday, everything changed. Officials announced that despite all that — plus $25 million promised by USDOT — the city was abandoning light rail plans for a system of bus rapid transit.

According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, USDOT officials met with Mayor Dave Bing recently and outlined concerns that the city, which is in danger of being handed over to an emergency fiscal manager, would have trouble providing the operating funding for the nine-mile line.

This comes amid drastic service cuts at both Detroit’s urban and suburban transit systems — cuts that have led to reports of bus riders stranded at stops waiting three hours for a bus. The Free Press article also noted that among Detroit residents who depend on the bus to get to work, almost 60 percent travel to jobs in the suburbs, a symptom of crippling job sprawl.

News reports yesterday did not have details on BRT plans, except to say that buses would have a dedicated lanes from downtown to and through the suburbs possibly along Gratiot, Woodward and Michigan avenues and M-59.

Reactions to the announcement were mixed. Geralyn Lasher, a spokeswoman for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, told the Free Press that light rail was “out of our lane … We’ve always been more in the line of the rapid bus.”

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I’ll admit it: I love the Chrysler ad campaign “Imported from Detroit,” which debuted in February’s Super Bowl spot starring Eminem.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for hometown pride. I was born about 60 miles downriver from the Motor City in Toledo, Ohio, a town sometimes known affectionately as “Little Detroit.” I remember when it was considered treasonous to drive a foreign car.

That’s the brilliance of these ads. They appeal to our inner urge to root for the underdog, our nostalgia for simpler days. Those flashes of a grand-looking Woodward Avenue. The water tower that proudly shouts “Birmingham, Michigan.”

It’s also very telling, the commodification of Detroit. It says something about Americans’ new-found fascination with cities — the same fascination that has inspired many young entrepreneurs who are working to reinvent Detroit.

But Chrysler is selective about the Detroit it celebrates. Absent is the ruin that now accounts for a large share of the city. Invisible is the crushing poverty, constantly present in the urban landscape. The driver in the most recent installment, traveling out from the center of Detroit to its suburbs, is in control of his fate (thanks to his snappy ride) in a way few in the region really are.

Despite the defiant sentimentality of its ads, Chrysler, as well, is selective about its commitment to the city of Detroit.

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Transit providers in Detroit, Miami, Seattle and Bloomington, Indiana were a few of the many winners in the latest round of Federal Transit Administration capital grants.

On Monday, FTA awarded almost $1 billion to local transit agencies to purchase buses, construct shelters and plan for the future [PDF].

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the grants in Detroit Monday alongside Mayor Dave Bing and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

Transit agencies throughout the state of Michigan were awarded $46 million, including $2 million for Detroit to study expanding its planned Woodward Avenue light rail line into the suburbs past Eight Mile Road.

The city of Detroit’s Department of Transportation was also awarded $6 million to purchase new buses. Meanwhile, Detroit’s suburban bus system, SMART, received $5 million to update its fleet.

“This is a significant investment in Michigan’s future,” said Snyder. “A modern transportation system is key to a stronger economy and enhanced quality of life in our state.”

Elsewhere around the country, Sound Transit in Seattle will receive $5.4 million to buy hybrid buses, and the South Florida Regional Transit Agency will receive $4.5 million to replace its shuttle buses with vehicles that run on alternative fuel. These vehicles link public transportation centers with the airport, hospitals and universities in the Miami-Dade area, according to Environmental News Service.

In one of the smaller grants, Bloomington, Indiana received almost $30,000 to purchase lockers for cyclists at a new downtown transfer station.

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There is no better evidence of the sharp social divisions that continue to haunt metro Detroit than the appalling state of its transit system.

When it comes to public transportation, residents of the city of Detroit and suburbanites live in a state of government sanctioned apartheid. They ride fully separate systems, with fully separate sets of maps and noncooperating administrations.

Here, urban-suburban tensions are so intense, multiple tries over decades have failed to produce a unified regional transit system. Instead, the suburbs are served by the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) and the city of Detroit is served by the Detroit Department of Transportation.

And it’s not just a logistical nightmare for riders, it’s a major obstacle to the region’s economy. There is no regional vision for transit, because Detroit — unlike every other major city in the country — still lacks a regional transit system.

But now the federal government is stepping in to help remedy the situation and it’s holding a $300 million bargaining chip. The Federal Transit Administration recently called experts together to brainstorm ways to improve and unify Detroit’s transit system, and Crain’s Detroit reports that FTA chief Peter Rogoff has followed that event up with closed-door meetings to help bring about regional solution. Apparently, the federal government has some concerns about turning over the grant funds needed to realize Detroit’s Woodward Corridor light rail plans with the transit system in its current state.

For one, the light rail line is intended to extend beyond the city limits into some of the northern suburbs.

“[An RTA] has to happen for the project to achieve its broader utility,” Rogoff told Crain’s. Rogoff also told Crain’s he was concerned that Detroit would raid money from bus transit service in order to support the rail expansion, which is prohibited under the terms of the federal transit grants.

Meanwhile, like most transit systems across the country, both of metro Detroit’s are suffering. But the redundancies that are part of Detroit’s two-system solution only worsen the landscape for the region’s carless masses.

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For the last two days, transit experts from around the country have been hunkered down in Detroit to devote their collective expertise to making the Motor City a better city for transit.

The Federal Transit Administration convened the panel, which included current and former transit agency leaders from Salt lake City, Denver, Portland, Atlanta and Dallas. The meeting was to focus on the planned Woodward Avenue light rail project, which received a $25 million TIGER grant, to envision a “bright future” for Detroit transit. Bickering between private donors and public officials over the design of the rail line (curb-running versus center-running trains) and conflict between the primary transit providers in Detroit have created problems for the project, and were likely a reason the feds decided to step in with some assistance from above.

Of course, the leaders that came together to advise Detroit come from very different cities with their own sets of issues, but none with the complex set of challenges besetting Detroit: an unemployment rate triple the national average, the highest foreclosure rate in the country, more than a quarter of its property vacant, a 25 percent drop in population over the past decade, and most of the region’s jobs well outside the city limits, with no public transportation to get there. Can a city like Portland really be of any help?

“Given the current technical capacity, as well as the lack of experience, as well as the extraordinary needs in Detroit, we wanted to treat this project differently, and sort of attack the problems collectively, rather than just wait to see if the city can attack them themselves,” FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff told Streetsblog.

Dan Lijana, a spokesperson for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, said that although Detroit’s transit system will undoubtedly look very different from the other cities’ systems, there were some concrete things they wanted to learn from others’ experience: how to space transit stops, how to design the routes, and, especially, how to foster economic development along the corridor.

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In a move to help buoy crisis-stricken cities, the Obama Administration this week introduced a program designed to provide administrative support to help local government officials “cut through the red tape” and access urgent federal assistance.

“Strong Cities, Strong Communities” will offer expert technical support — but not additional funding — in the areas of jobs, housing, transportation, the environment, education and economic development to cities that are suffering the staggering effects of economic displacement or natural disaster.

Memphis, New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, Fresno and Chester, Pennsylvania were chosen to pilot the program, which begins immediately.

Pilot cities will receive assistance from a team of mid-career federal administrators from a variety of agencies. The goal is to not only help these cities take better advantage of existing federal programs, but also to secure additional investment from the private sector and wider community.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told the Wall Street Journal that the program was inspired by difficulties experienced in the city of Detroit as it struggles to implement its Detroit Works blueprint for revitalization. Federal officials observed that complicated federal regulations and the difficulty of accessing federal officials were a major stumbling block in the city’s recovery efforts.

“We found they had millions in federal block grants that they either were not using or not using in the best way,” Donovan said.

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