The first round of Metro Detroit’s transportation stimulus checks are in the mail and some are for major bike projects.

This funding is mostly from 3% transportation enhancements sub-allocation, which is $25.4 million for all of Michigan.

I-275 Bike Path (MDOT)

The original $10 million request to recontruct the bike path was reduced to two requests. The first is for $4 million. The second is for $5 million and will only be available if Michigan can recover unused road funds from other states.

Clinton River Trail Bridge (Pontiac)

This bridge at Telegraph and Orchard Lake Road has been long awaited. It will connect the two developed rail-trail segments on both sides of Telegraph. The funding amount is $2.1 million.

Midtown Loop (Detroit)

This $2.3 million in funding is going towards Phase I of the Midtown Loop, a 2-mile walking and (casual) biking loop through Wayne State and cultural center. It’s expected that this stimulus money will push previously secured funding into the second phase and possibly help fund the connector between this project and the Dequindre Cut.

Streetscaping

These projects are aimed at making a road more pedestrian and bicyclist friendly. For example, the Woodward project includes “sidewalks, tree planting, street lights, trash receptacles, bike racks.”

• Woodward in Detroit between I-94 and Euclid (MDOT)
• Monroe and Brush Streets in Greektown, Detroit
• Michigan Avenue in Detroit between Cass and Woodward
• Shelby Street in Detroit between State and Griswold

Transit-Related Projects

Both DDOT and SMART are receiving funds to improve/build bus shelters and related amenities. We’ll contact both to determine whether these projects include bike racks. DDOT has been pursuing bike racks for their bus shelters as well as their buses.

Other Detroit Road Work

We checked and none of MDOT’s Detroit stimulus road work coincides with the city’s non-motorized plan. However MDOT is replacing some bridge decks over I-96 which may coincide with the plan.

Wayne County is receiving funds to reconstruct sections of 7 Mile and Fenkel Roads. Both should have bike lanes. We will contact both Wayne County and the city officials to make sure this is known.

The city of Detroit is receiving over $14.4 million for major street repair. Once we learn which roads those involve we’ll cross check them with the non-motorized plan to see if they are scheduled for bike lanes.

This should clearly show the value of having non-motorized plans in place for cities.

All of MDOT’s Metro Region stimulus projects are available on-line. SEMCOG also has a list of all accepted project requests within their seven-county area.

Not much has been posted on m-bike this past week. Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. That means I’ve been spending more time doing bike advocacy and have no free time to blog about it.

So, now that it’s the weekend, there’s time to provide updates on some local non-motorized planning efforts.

Royal Oak Task Force

As we reported earlier, a group of cyclists went before Royal Oak’s City Commission to ask for improved biking and walking facilities. As a result, the Commission formed a Task Force to work with city staff to develop some proposals.

That has happened.

The Task Force has held many meetings and it seemed that near the beginning there was consensus that we needed to develop a non-motorized plan – a prerequisite for receiving construction grant funding for biking and walking facilities. We also concluded that such a plan would need to be developed by a planning firm that is experienced in developing such plans.

Of course means we would need money to pay for that planning. Most of our Task Force discussions revolved around finding money to pay for this planning. In fact, Royal Oak put this planning project on their economic stimulus request list. However, it did not make the final cut.

But, Royal Oak is getting economic stimulus money for road construction which frees up about $300K in road funds.

Our Task Force will be going before the City Commission on April 6^th to ask that $40K from that $300K be spent on hiring a planner to develop a non-motorized plan.

Troy Non-Motorized Plan

The city of Troy has hired two top-notch planning consultants, Hamilton-Anderson and The Greenway Collaboration. The city and consultants hosted a kickoff meeting on Wednesday. The proposed schedule promises prompt results, so stay tuned for updates over the next few months.

Stimulus Funding for the I-275 Bike Path

If you haven’t already contacted your legislator about this, please do so. Reports are coming in about legislators on the west side of the state trying to get this worthy project removed from MDOT’s stimulus funding list. Although nothing is official yet, it may have already been significantly downsized.

I-275/M-5 Path Extension

As we noted earlier, there are plans to extend the I-275 bike path north along the M-5 corridor. Initial plans for the segment between 13 Mile and 14 Mile are on-line.

If you missed the recent public meeting on this project, you can still send your comments to the Wade-Trim project manager, Jamie Brown.

Huron Valley Trail Extension

The Spinal Column is reporting that local officials are continuing to meet to discuss an eastward extension of the Huron Valley Trail. This extension would connect the trail with a planned extension of the West Bloomfield Trail.

Wixom City Manager J. Michael Dornan said … CW3 officials used last week’s meeting to discuss applying for grants to purchase the former Coe Railroad property in three of the communities.

B. Allen Brown, president and CEO of Railmark Holdings, Inc., who owns the railroad, has entered into negotiations to sell the railroad property. West Bloomfield, Walled Lake, Wixom, and Commerce Township officials are discussing the viability of collectively purchasing the 8.08 miles of rail corridor to complete the Huron Valley Trail and West Bloomfield Trail.

Chuck Montange of Montoff Transportation, LLC, known for buying up railroads and converting them into trail systems, is the acting intermediary in the talks. The transaction must be handled by a transportation company. Montange has paid for an appraisal and made arrangements with both Brown and a bank.

This is great news for a key east-west connector that would also tie into the M-5/I-275 bike path.

If your state senator is on this list, it would be extra valuable for you to contact them regarding the below message. They are members of a new senate committee that will be reviewing the stimulus spending:

• Ron JELINEK (R-Three Oaks)
• Jud GILBERT (R-Algonac)
• John PAPPAGEORGE (R-Troy)
• Roger KAHN (R-Saginaw)
• Mark JANSEN (R-Gaines Twp.)
• Mickey SWITALSKI (D-Roseville)
• Deb CHERRY (D-Burton)
• Irma CLARK-COLEMAN (D-Detroit)

From Nancy Krupiarz:

As some of you know, the I-275 Pathway was listed on the MDOT list for federal stimulus dollars. Now that the federal stimulus package has passed, MDOT is wrestling with priorities. The Pathway does rise to the top in terms of priorities. However, there are already constituent letters to legislators from readers who have seen the Pathway on the list and have declared it a waste of money.

Since the final approval of projects will probably end up going through the legislature somehow someway, it is important that the legislators especially with districts along the pathway hear plenty of support from their constituents for this project. This would help a lot in getting these dollars on the ground on the Pathway. So, please contact your state Senator and Representative today. Let them know that:

• This is a major nonmotorized artery for Southeast Michigan, a 43+ mile trail linking up 3 counties and 14 communities. The trail will eventually link up to trails at both the north and south terminus and at several junctures along the way, including Huron Valley Trail, Hines Drive, Canton Township Trails and the Monroe trails.
• This trail is used for commuting to work and school, for recreation, and also serves as a greenbelt along the freeway that is valuable for aesthetics and wildlife habitat.
• It is needed as a framework for active living. As Richard Jackson from the US Center for Disease Control, has said, “It is dishonest to tell our citizens to walk, jog, or bicycle when there is no safe or welcoming place to pursue these life-saving activities.”
• The communities all along the way will be enhanced as they make nonmotorized linkages to this trail. Bikeable/walkable communities are noted as one of the top desired features listed by those seeking homes according the National Association of Homebuilders.

If you don’t know who your legislator is, you can go to http://www.michiganlegislature.org and click on Legislators on the left sidebar. At the bottom of that page, click on Find your representative and Find your senator and fill in your county and zip code and you will get all the information you need.

Thanks for giving your support to the I-275 Pathway!

Nancy Krupiarz
Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance

Little Stimulus Money for Michigan State Parks

Despite the huge backlog in much-needed capital improvements, the Lansing State Journal is reporting that our state parks will not be receiving much economic stimulus funding.

Before all the details of the federal stimulus plan were known, the department put together a wish list of projects it could have ready to go in 90 days. The list included 586 proposals totaling $356.6 million, including more than $200 million and more than 300 projects involving park improvements. So far, only three DNR requests have got to the final round for consideration by federal officials.

Of course the stimulus money is going towards road projects. Our state parks have hundreds of miles of roads, many of which require repairs. However, the state considers these parks roads as “private” and not eligible for funding. These roads don’t even receive funding from the state fuel tax. This is just another fundamental reason why our state park operations are not sustainable.

Best Cars in a Crash (but not the safest)

Auto-centric viewpoints are common. Here’s one that’s often blindy repeated.

Forbes Magazine is reporting on the best cars in a crash and only considers safety from the viewpoint of those inside the car. A quarter of all road fatalities in Metro Detroit are pedestrians and cyclists. Which cars are safer for them? Large SUVs that take more lane width, have larger blind spots, have longer stopping distances, and are less manueverable?

Another problem with this type of article is it assumes a crash is inevitable. In a one-on-one situation, more manueverable, lighter vehicles are more likely to avoid a crash than their heavier counterparts.

This topic was well covered in an older New Yorker article. They review a study of fatalities per million cars which includes drivers, passengers, and the other crash victims. Mid-size cars were in found to cause the least number of fatalities.

Conservative Voice against Sprawl

We’ve spoken up against sprawl largely because it results in auto-centric communities that are often unsafe or impractical to bike or walk in.

Christopher Caldwell has this excellent op-ed in the Financial Times that points out the costly and inefficient economics behind sprawl:

In 1958, the great journalist William Whyte coined the term “sprawl”, in an article for Fortune. He noted with horror that, a mere two years after the Highway Act, already huge patches of once green countryside have been turned into vast, smog-filled deserts that are neither city, suburb, nor country. Developments were concentrated in random political no-man’s-lands near interchanges and exits. Road lobbyists and real estate developers colluded against meaningful regulation and planning, with the result, Whyte wrote, that “development is being left almost entirely in the hands of the speculative builder”.

Whyte warned that sprawl was not just bad aesthetics but bad economics. A subtler and more serious problem than blight was that, for local authorities, the cost of providing utilities and other services was exorbitant. “There is not only the cost of running sewers and water mains and storm drains out to Happy Acres,” Whyte wrote, “but much more road, per family served, has to be paved and maintained.” The infrastructure network that came out of the Highway Act had higher overheads than the one it replaced. It became a bottomless pit of spending.

Of course the Road Commission for Oakland County is paying the price for building a sprawled road network that it can no longer afford to maintain. They did no land use planning. And the Oakland County Commission has regularly selected road commissioners from the county’s sprawling communities, so this outcome is no surprise.

And the article even includes a nod to Detroit: “The encirclement of Detroit’s neighbourhoods by highways is often cited as a primary cause of its decline.”