The Ann Arbor Rail Project
The Ann Arbor Rail Project
If you're driving 23 south into Ann Arbor, this Bi-Level Passenger Rail Car could be in your future.
Details are still hard to come by, but more info has come to light about the proposed Ann Arbor rail project.
According to an arcticle in MetroMode,
the plan seems to be to start in the fall with a single train running
between two temporary stations, one in Ann Arbor on Plymouth Rd. and
another at the border between Washtenaw and Livingston counties. The
Great Lakes Central Rail Road, the company that owns these tracks,
would make six trips in the morning and six trips in the evening. A
trip takes 20 minutes from station to station.
Thanks to this MDot Rail Map, you can see the basic train route along the black line from Howell to Ann Arbor.
The train would have three passenger cars, each of which
is a double decker car that can hold somewhere around 500 passengers.
That means each trip, the train could carry around 1500 passengers.
The capacity of the system would then be 9000 commuters a day if every
train was full. That's 9000 one way in the morning and then 9000 back
again in the evening.
Ann Arbor plans to provide bus service to and from the
temporary station. I'm not sure about the other end of the line in
Livingston, possibly that would be more like a park and ride.
Depending on how well the service works, there are plans
to take it farther south into Saline and possibly Monroe and farther
North to Howell.
I had to
stop calling this the Ann Arbor to Howell rail project once I heard the
latest news. I've opted for just calling it the Ann Arbor Rail Project
for now.