Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
M1 is insisting on curb running, right? I guess if they're paying, they get to decide... but the alignment choice will mean slower travel times end to end. This will pose a problem if the line is ever to be extended to the city line at 8 Mile or beyond.
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It wouldn't really be that big a problem. When M-1 was wrangingly with DDOT's Woodward LRT, the very first iteration of the project had the line being a side-running streetcar from downtown to New Center, and then switching alignments to center-running up the rest of the way. The city then got M-1 to compromise to just having it side-running in the actual CBD (south of I-75/Fisher). So, the part through the central touristy areas (Downtown and/or Midtown and/or New Center) was always going to at least partially be a slow running streetcar and more a commuter kind of alignment north of the "old city." The three-mile portion through the inner/old city is really kind of a circulator, if seems, a kind of people mover expansion without actually expanding that actual system.
BTW, something often missed in the discussion of the rail (commuter and light) is that New Center will be the hub of the system. It's where they are looking to demolish the current Amtrak station and built an intermodal station that'll serve the future high-speed, commuter, and Amtrak services, bus services, and whatever ends up running (LRT or BRT) up and down Woodward to get people to and from the airport via the heavy rail.