Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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See, although I agree with nearly all of your comments here, Gilbert is probably looking at this from the perspective of a sports team owner. They wanted side-running trams because could you imagine what it would be like for an entire 2-car unit evacuating at a stadium if the line ran down the center? How many people fit into two cars? 150 people crossing the road at once on the main artery of the city? Mark my words, the only reason these business owners want this system is to pipe people in for games. Leave their cars upstream and trolly them in. The land downtown will get much too valuable for surface lot parking if the business leaders get what they want, so they need a system to safeguard their investments, particularly their sports teams.