Grand River Project, Expanding Live Downtown along Grand River

Grand River Project, Expanding Live Downtown along Grand River

The goal of expanding development outside of downtown and increasing the connection between downtown and the rest of the city can be accomplished by expanding the Live Downtown program to areas out side its current boundary. The live downtown program was set up by several of the large corporations downtown to encourage their employees to live in the area. The program is an incentive that gives employees who opt in either a lump sum to purchase a home or a monthly allowance which can be used for rent.

The city’s Downtown area is filling up fast as demand for house downtown is far out pacing supply; driving rental prices above $2.00 per square foot as of Fall 2014. Midtown and Corktown are not far behind Downtown in pricing. Spreading the Live Downtown incentives program outside of the Downtown corridor can both relieve the pressure on the city’s core and spread development to the outer areas of the city. The Grand River Corridor represents the best option for that as it covers the most area of the city among the roads that lead to downtown.  

Grand River Project, Bulk Corporate Ticket Sales

Funding for a BRT line could be achieved by the sale of bulk bus tickets along the line to the large businesses downtown.  The idea is that instead of employing private shuttles to transport employees between distant parking structures and their offices downtown, they would use city buses.

This would save the firms money and it would increase ridership on city buses. These tickets sold in bulk to large firms would be offered at a discount yet would still bring in a large amount of revenue. Buses cost roughly the same to run whether they are empty or full, so increasing ridership on buses through these discounted bulk tickets would increase revenue without increasing cost. 

Such tickets could be used on any DDOT bus and would be most beneficial to employees who live in the city with near a route that leads to downtown. Such employees would not need a parking space in a company owned parking structure and would provide the company even more savings.

Having employees of downtown firms using public buses instead of private shuttles would also have the effect of increased interaction between them and city residents. There is a perception, and a reality that employees who work downtown are in large part isolated from the city and that downtown has become a corporate office park. Switching from private shuttles to public buses can foster a greater sense of community and help to heal the divide between downtown and the rest of the city.

It will take more than use of public buses by downtown employees to heal such divide. The next post will deal with an idea to address that more specifically. 

Grand River Project, BRT

Grand River Project, BRT 

Grand River Ave the longest spoke in terms of its path through the city of Detroit and thus represents the road that would benefit the most from improved mass transit as it would cover more of the city. BRT or Rapid Bus Transit is the cheapest, quickest way to introduce to a road. It involves dedicated bus lanes and preferential traffic lighting at intersections, thus speeding the transit time for the buses on the line. It is cheaper than a light rail line, requiring less construction and can be done more quickly. 

The plan is to set up such a line on Grand River Ave from 8 Mile down to where it intersects with Woodward in Downtown. The goal is to use such a line to extend Downtown’s development into the city’s west side where the bulk of the population lives. Such a line has the potential to relieve the pressure of residential demand on the city’s downtown area by simple, affordable, and faster way to get from neighborhoods on the city’s west side to downtown. This is important because residential demand on the city’s downtown is far outpacing the available supply.

As cheap as BRT lines tend to be, they usually require physical separation from the other lanes of traffic via a barrier. Construction of such physical barrier over such a long line can represent a prohibitive expenditure for a cash strapped city like Detroit. One way to reduce the cost of such a line is to simple paint the barrier on the road. Painted lines are often used of bike lines and could be an effective way to reduce both cost and construction time in setting up such a BRT line. The lines would most likely be set on the side of the road as opposed to the middle to provide the most accessibility to riders.  

Buses that use this line would have to be outfitted with the necessary switch mechanism to activate the traffic signals in their favor.  These switches would have to be placed on all public buses that travel Grand River and represent the other major cost in setting up such a system.  

Ways of acquiring funding to cover costs of implementing such a line will be covered in the next installment of this Grand River Project series. The point of this is the emphasis on the cost effectiveness and speed that such a line could be set up when compared to other possible lines of transportation.        

I created a Blog for some Ideas I have for Detroit

I live in Metro Detroit and I have way too much time on my hands. I spend a lot of this time thinking about ways that I would make Detroit better. After about a decade of thinking, I decided to try a blog to get some of these ideas into words on a page (or a screen, in this case).

Most of my ideas are little more than unstructured thoughts that have not jelled into a vision. A few have, and I hope to put those ones into a understandable and view able  format with this blog.

It will take a while for me to get the first one started as this is my first attempt at blogging. I hope it is worth the wait.

Brian