[LMich]

The streetcar pick is pretty darned definitive, if you ask me. In fact, before the 9 mile line went off the rails, the biggest contention between the city and the private investors was whether it would be a light rail or a streetcar. The private backers had been pushing for a curb-running streetcar from the very beginning. It was only with the introduction of, and planning primacy of, the Detroit Department of Transportation that we got the plan that included running it like a light rail from the fairgrounds to downtown, and then running it like a streetcar within the immediate CBD.

With the city now taken out of the picture, I don't see how this isn't going to revert back to being an in-traffic tram. Dan Gilbert, who seems to be one of the major spokesmen and backers of this thing, has been dead-set on the beginning about a side-running tram, and this is the problem with the business leaders having so much say. They aren't transit guys, and it's shown in Gilbert's (empirically false) belief that the only way this can be successful is if it picks people up at the curb.