INTRO: By Christmas, Governor Granholm is expected to sign a bill allowing a light rail project in Detroit. The city’s most prominent businessmen are ready to pay more than $100 million of their own to bring trains to Woodward Ave. They haven’t had a place to park their money. The new law will now let them find one. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
TRX1: Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert said this in May:
AX1: “The trains are coming. That’s all I’m going to say. There’s no way this region can compete period, end of story without trains. And they’re gonna come.”
TRX2: No one with any power has indicated the trains won’t come. Gilbert, Roger Penske, Peter Karmonos and Mike Ilitch have convinced state lawmakers to help. Within the next week or 10 days the legislature is likely to pass a law allowing these men to spend their money on light rail. Highland Park’s Bert Johnson got his bills passed in the house.
AX2: “For every dollar that we invest in a rail line we experience and the national average is 4-8 dollars reinvestment or return back into the community.”
TRX3: Johnson waves out at Woodward Ave. He stands in the Model T plaza mall parking lot with the McDonald’s in it. Henry Ford’s huge factory looms above. And The Albert Kahn designed administration building sits next door waiting to be saved from scrappers or the wrecking ball.
AX3: “So if you can imagine all along this corridor where we will have an eventual railway we will have small businesses cropping up and that will pump money into the economy. Additionally, we’ll have people who will be able to locate jobs out in suburbia who perhaps live in the inner cities who will get on the train and move up and down these corridors in and out each day earning a paycheck bringing it back home.”
TRX4: White suburbanites were happy to see Kwame Kilpatrick leave the mayor’s office. Black Detroiter’s were thrilled to see Barack Obama elected President. Suburbanites have been the main obstacle to mass transit since the 1950′s. Johnson says political events might have changed their minds.
AX4: “you know the history of this region, you know how racism has pervaded both south and north of 8 mile. Folks traditionally haven’t gotten together. I’m phenomenally surprised and satisfied at the manner in which people have come together to have a conversation and say it’s time to put some of those differences aside. Some of them historical and dying out. And I hope with what we just experienced in our presidential election that we’re starting to put some of that stuff to bed.”
TRX5: State government will pay almost nothing for the first leg of light rail. The wealthy donors are coming up with almost all of it. But they need an organization to send their money to. So the state is setting the rules for how private public street railways can receive money and then operate trains. Mike Bishop is a republican from Rochester Hills. He’s also the senate majority leader.
AX5: “I think the investment itself pays dramatic dividends and it’s an investment that we’d be crazy not to make.”
AX6: “It’s not as though members don’t want to find a way to create a local transit system. It’s just that we haven’t been presented with a proposal yet that works. This one is the first step in the right direction in that it’s a limited proposal. I think it might open up opportunities for further discussion with regard to regional transportation.”
TRX6: Wayne County officials testified in Lansing on something called tax increment financing authorities. TIFA’s allow local governments to get extra tax money that a mass transit system might create. A dial a ride official from Mt. Pleasant testified that money for city transit might take away money from rural transit. Yet lawmakers maintain the new laws will allow for regional rail transit networks to be built anywhere in Michigan. Even Bert Johnson says he’d be happy to ride by train from Detroit to Lansing and Grand Rapids.
AX7: “I’m proud of this thing. It’s what everybody’s been talking about. In 23 tries we’ve never been successful. We’re now getting close.”
TRX7: It does appear that a majority of Michiganders hope a 24th try won’t be needed. For Michigan Now, I’m Chris McCarus