[animatedmartian]

Those are only small details in the overall picture. At this point, everyone is at least aware of the benefits of transit and TOD. At worse, it just means a lot of new developments will still have to be accompanied by multistory parking garages or parking lots in farther out suburbs. But in a lot of places mentioned in that article, as well as some not mentioned, have already set up zoning and planning for the possibility of transit.

The new goal for a lot of municipalities around SE Michigan is to become more walkable and appealing for yuppies. Some suburbs will pull this off better than others (the Southfield fiasco seems to be the worse so far) but generally it's in a good direction.

It would actually probably be more problematic if we were in a boom growth stage because then those setbacks would have bigger impacts as there would be a flurry of developments built without any consideration for the eventual transit that'd come. So really, we're lucky to be in a slow growing economy if you look at it that way. Although it is true that transit can't be delayed for too long before the economy continues to pick back up and TOD really starts to become important.