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Detroit streetcar project to continue despite $12 million funding gap
Giving $ to Detroit?, They are broke, cant keep manufacturers, can’t the pay pension fund, squander 100’s of millions of dollars, Dozens of square mile bulldozed over, Detroit is broke and broken. Why the heck build a streetcar? who the heck would ride it?, this waste is EXACTLY how Detroit came to despair in the first place, what an incredibly stupid way to waste money! GD there is a lot of stupid people out there.
This city is bankrupt and disintegrating at an accelerated rate. It has no way to fund completion of what boils down to a few miles of light rail line. Continue this project based on a loan with no collateral? They are selling art out of their museums for cash to pay their bills now. It appears to say the least it was stillborn and ill conceived as a priority. What sort of spiked Kool-Aide are they drinking in Detroit these days?
Another obsolete boondoggle. Enjoy your continuing bankruptcy, Detroit.
A lot of ignorant comments here. No artwork is being sold. I go there a couple times a year on business and have seen quite a change for the better in the last four years.
I’ve walked the route. It’s NOT broken. It ties several neighborhoods together. It has a university and many public attractions along the way: theaters, stadiums, museums, restaurants and actual real live people living there. The street is broad and perfectly suited to a streetcar line. The bus I tried to take on the return was FULL.
I’ve walked the route. It’s NOT broken. It ties several neighborhoods together. It has a university and many public attractions along the way: theaters, stadiums, museums, restaurants and actual real live people living there. The street is broad and perfectly suited to a streetcar line. The bus I tried to take on the return was FULL.
The nation needs to start thinking of the wholesale elimination of funding nice to haves in order to protect the MUST haves.
Compare Detroit to Portland? Absurd ! If you have been there, and if you think light rail is the answer to an area of urban jungle warfare zone and think the yuppies just cannot wait for a trolley? You must join the Alice in Wonderland world of cocaine induced dimentia.
It appears a lot of folks get their information from ‘news’ reports in this age of a dearth of journalism regarding Detroit. I’m certainly not a supporter of the trolley system nor a fan of Detroit but the lack of facts in opinions expressed here is troubling.
Streetcars add value. They proved that in Portland. The entire country is full of projects to re-introduce the things.
The naysayers here are being impossibly short sighted: if you’re bankrupt, you don’t make things worse, you fix things that are broken. Economy broken? Look for ways to fix it. Good, high quality, transit is one fix to look at.
Defunding the streetcar because Detroit is bankrupt is like refusing to donate blood to a victim of a car crash because he’s lost a lot of blood in the crash.
Detroit is broke because of absent landlords who abandoned homes and buildings and left the city with millions of dollars of delinquent property taxes. In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a lot of old shabby buildings are being torn down, but the city still has a long way to go. A couple of the above comments spoke positively about where the streetcar would runs and what would be along its route. That’s fine as long as they don’t serve the caSINos which have done nothing to help Detroit except sink it further into debt.
@DR HOWARD B FINE - The only person who’s mentioned Portland is me. I assume your snide attack therefore presuming drug use was against me.
My comment didn’t compare Portland to Detroit. It said, completely 100% correctly, that Portland proved that Streetcars add value.
If you interpreted that as meaning Portland=Detroit, then I suggest your insult should be directed back at you.
In the mean time, if others want the address the issue I made - that Portland proved Streetcars add value, and therefore it’s right to use a streetcar as part of a process to heal Detroit’s recovery, I’m all ears. But your argument better not be “Detroit != Portland”, instead you need to focus either on how (somehow) streetcars don’t add value, despite the evidence, or on how Detroit is a booming city that doesn’t need help, again, despite the evidence.
Everyone thinks spending money is good. Its good for Detroit also. I wish yuppies would move to Detroits inter city.
Everyone thinks spending money is good. Its good for Detroit also. I wish yuppies would move to Detroits inter city.