> http://www.beiassociates.com/news_detail_T7_R3.html
> http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20090817/FREE/908179982
> http://www.masstransitmag.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=8129&pageNum=2

Any transit investment in either city comes with the baggage of heretofore inevitable massive population decline. Since 1950, Detroit’s lost over 1.2 million people. That’s Dallas. Cleveland’s lost at least 500,000–that’s Fort Worth. This part of the country–from Saginaw down to at least New Kensington PA–is still densely populated by national standards, but is in horrible shape. It could be a major test for the power of rail to help regenerate very degraded urban areas.

Detroit was once seriously considering massive wholesale demolition–just clearing out square miles of nearly-empty wasteland. The proposed Woodward line isn’t exempt. Take a look on Google Maps, from downtown Detroit up to 8 Mile. It’s barren and ugly and damn near terrifying. That’s a kind description of most of the rest of the city. I don’t doubt that a rail line down Woodward still has potential, but it has to come with some very difficult choices. Maybe first of those is that the city has to start pruning its dead areas. No more pretending that infill will fix things. It won’t. If anything, if the city doesn’t act in the next few years, it (like Cleveland) will start to face major problems with all aspects of infrastructure. If 60-plus percent of your population is gone, you need to get rid of at least a quarter of your streets, streetlights, sewers and water lines. What’s left had better be equal to or greater in density than what was there 40 years ago, which isn’t impossible in the Woodward corridor. There’s already a market for urban living. It just can’t be the pseudo-urban crap you see at a “lifestyle center”–urban facade with LOTS of free parking. The Woodward line could be one part of a large-scale experiment in stabilizing an imploding city, and for that reason alone could merit allowing private money to cover the local share under FTA guidelines.

This option isn’t totally beyond prior FTA parameters. Remember that the Metrolink r/w through the center of St Louis was the old Wabash r/w, and was purchased for $1. The FTA agreed to accept that r/w as St Louis city’s local contribution to the project, which I seem to recall was valued at something like $125 mill. In Detroit, allowing the private money as part or all of the local share should be combined with something else. The city (in cooperation with Wayne County) should be required to start closing off abandoned areas, and paying people (and possibly paying to move their houses) to complete clearance. No way in hell can you justify building a streetcar line if the population density along the line is dropping to 1000/sq mi or lower. Again, the Woodward corridor has potential, but it has to be regarded as something more like postwar reconstruction than some simple augmentation of a functioning city. Detroit isn’t a functioning city.

How bad are Detroit and Cleveland? Two years ago, before the crash, there were large parts of both cities where you couldn’t be away from your house for more than a few days, or thieves would break in and steal EVERY bit of copper piping in the house–and you’d come home to a flooded basement, because thieves don’t bother to shut off the water. I spoke to a woman in Detroit who told me about a commercial AC unit being stolen from the roof of a small office building, for the scrap metal. In order for the Woodward proposal to move forward, Detroit is going to have to explain how it’s going to move beyond a half-century of incompetent governance.

Finally, when outsiders start talking about the spacing of streetcar stops being too close, Detroiters need to take those outsiders on a nice, demonstration, half-mile walk along Woodward, preferably right after a snowstorm, and when the wind is nice and brisk from the west. And COLD. Detroit isn’t as wet as Cleveland, but part of the reason for the station spacing is that a half-mile walk into blinding horizontal snow (which we have every winter on the Great Lakes, from as early as October to as late as May) is miserable, which would have the impact of limiting ridership. Imposing Portland or San Francisco standards would be counterproductive. Go ahead with this proposal, but force Detroit to start cutting off the urban gangrene.

Detroit may have been more dense prior to the population losses, but you can say that about most cities, too.

That being said, this is a wholly legitimate project. There is a good reason to be conspicuous of private involvement, but I believe the bottom line is only part of the business’s interest. They realize LRT will attract investment, and they don’t won’t to be left in the dust.