An article in Crains Detroit Business noted that a study indicated that Ann Arbor to Detroit commuter rail would cost about $70 per ride to provide. [link]
So your dream price of $10 per ticket would require a huge subsidy. Even with Vivienne’s $30 ticket, the passenger would be paying less than half of the cost.

Ann Arbor should not be spending its local transit funds for what needs to be a regional plan. The Governor’s regional transit plan seems to acknowledge the high price of trains by focusing instead on Bus Rapid Transit for commuter service. Time will tell if we ever will be able to identify a funding mechanism for high priced rail service.

“We don’t…” Who is “we”? “We shouldn’t…” Why not? If those individuals (groups?) are part of the community, they’ll speak for themselves, right? Are you saying the majority shouldn’t rule?

Lots of (mostly rhetorical, partly intellectually interesting) questions that I actually don’t really care about the answers to because of the overarching influence of money on all such things, which makes them mostly moot.

@16: “getting behind the wheel to drive back and forth to Detroit for a meeting costs me close to $100 every time I do it.”

I’m reading The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain, by Daniel Gardner, which references the relative mortality risk of driving versus flying (much lower). Anyone know what it is in relative terms for rail transport (not to mention the subsequent localized decrease, if any, due to fewer cars on local expressways)? It’s a valid part of the investment calculus. Odd that it hasn’t been discussed. But then, we’re (AA, SE MI, USA) at a mostly feeling level in our public policy development.

As far as including students in our political discourse, I wholeheartedly agree. As I have pointed out elsewhere, I worked to elect a UM student to the City Council in 2009. My neighborhood supported him in greater percentages and in greater numbers than did the student precincts. I wish students were more involved in our local politics.

If you have any substantial number of passengers getting on, it simply takes time for them all to mount the steps and get settled. Depends on a lot of things, including how many doors are opened. Those old cars they are refurbishing do have steps, instead of grade-level boarding. The model for fare collection could matter too. Tickets can be collected after passengers are seated but if people are buying tickets on board it could complicate things. I have no idea how many of those logistics have even been discussed.

[link]

Note the couple lines out to A2/Ypsi — A2 is geographically approximate to Joliet, IL. Those are Metra, which does run on tracks shared with freight (many of the lines are named things like “Union Pacific-North”) as well as Amtrak, and does face rail congestion issues sometimes. It looks like the “Heritage Corridor” has 4-5 intermediate stops between Joliet and Union Station, and takes about 1 hr 5 mins end to end. The Greater Chicago and Detroit areas aren’t completely analogous, but it’s not a terrible comparison.

Last time estimates I saw for A2-Detroit commuter were more like 50 mins, with new Ypsi and DTW transfer stops, which is pretty close to what it takes to drive just from downtown Ypsi to downtown Detroit during peak hours. At 50 cents a mile, plus the time cost of my attention, plus parking, getting behind the wheel to drive back and forth to Detroit for a meeting costs me close to $100 every time I do it. That’s clearly the upper end of the cost estimate, but if a commuter rail ticket cost me $6-10, it’d be a clear win, even if I needed a transfer on the Detroit end.

As far as your concerns in (7), Vivienne — I’m not sure why number of passengers would delay the train: I don’t think any commuter system I’ve been on works like an AATA bus, sitting there until everybody passes the farebox one by one. Can you clarify? And, the way you schedule a train that takes both Ann Arbor commuters to Detroit (or Dearborn, or Ypsi) and also brings commuters into Ann Arbor…is to have trains start at both ends and pass partway along. (The NS tracks are not double-tracked within Ann Arbor, but a large chuck of the route between Ypsi and Dearborn is double-tracked, and the HSR-funded work in Dearborn includes filling in some gaps in the double-trackage.)

We don’t (or shouldn’t) make public policy for individuals, after all: we make it for communities. A community that has a significant number of students or renters (or low-income residents, or non-English speakers, or…) shouldn’t discount those citizens’ interests just because they haven’t owned a home for ten years, or otherwise don’t meet our idea of “premium” citizens.

Of course, as Vivienne notes, I’ve held forth on this before, once or twice. :)

Yes, City Council should attend to the interests both of long-term residents of the city and to the interests of the substantial part of the population that only lives here for 2-5 years before leaving. To do otherwise is to pretend that this is not a college town.

Really? Should City Council develop public policy based on the opinions of those who have few or even transient ties to the town?

So some college students decide that Ann Arbor should not prohibit porch couches because that suits their interest while living here. But we remain in town long enough to see a fatality related to a burning porch couch.

Or perhaps, some utopian planners come to town and stay just long enough to turn our classic mid-western downtown into some sort of high density, high rise urban center. And the long term residents get to stay and pay for the expensive underground parking (etc.) and watch the various foreclosures on condo and student housing projects.

I don’t know Bill Merrill, but I’m sure he is a wonderful person. He is not leaving because this town lacks something that he has found elsewhere. He is leaving because he feels no ties to the community and he plans to try out a series of other cities in search of something that might anchor him. Good for him.

Those of us who have settled here, by chance or by choice, have established ties to the community that should give us the basis for making long term public policy choices. We will be here to pay the bills and enjoy the fruits of our civic engagement.