The roads in this area get really beat up due to all the heavy trucks coming and going to the cement plants and the landfill, a haul road to the landfill and past the plants to take the trucks out of the retail areas would be another good idea. A truck route using Old 27/N East Street, then east on the north side of the whole Eastwood area.
The annual CATA community report came in the mail today. The biggest piece of news is the purchases of new buses. CATA regularly replaces old buses, but for the first time in many years they will not be buying the New Flyer models. They are purchasing 19 40-foot buses and four 60-foot buses from... Nova Bus.
Nova Bus is a Canadian company, so a lot of Canadian transit agencies use them. But they've been used by multiple American transit agencies since 2009 when New York City's MTA bought a bunch of them.
Aesthetically? I'm not sure what I think about them. The fronts look better than the New Flyers with the bigger front window, but I'm not sure how I feel about the bodies.
They seem quite similar to the busses we have now maybe with rounded edges. The last time I remember a big change in bus design that I thought was cool and futuristic was when CATA went from the old 60's style chrome paneled buses to the sleek all white buses in the late 70's. I wonder if there are current bus models that would be more remarkable than this one? Really cool looking buses could help ridership.
On a side note, I find it so frustrating that they have torn up the only section of W. Mt. Hope that had been repaved just two years ago. This looks like a fairly large project that must have been planned for a while, they could have repaved the next six blocks up the street if they knew this same six block was all going to be torn up. With only 9% of our street in good condition, it seems short-sighted and wasteful to pave and repave the same six blocks three times in two years.
Or just held off the reconstruction until after the sewer project. While it's getting better now, the problem has always been spreading around finite resources. Paving another six blocks isn't cheap when a dozen other roads and neighborhoods are fighting for the same funding. Six blocks is a lot of road funds if you're doing a full reconstruction.
Speaking of CATA, a friend of mine works for there and mentioned that in a meeting they were talking about redesigning the CATA logo and possibly advertising on bus shelters and/or the exterior of the buses. He said they were talking about those new buses at the same meeting, apparently they're ditching the hybrid designs.
I have been reading about a plan for high-speed rail service between Ann Arbor and Traverse City. This sounds like a great idea but the planned route bypasses Lansing to the east. It seems like Durand is the place this new route will cross the CN tracks and the Amtrak Blue Water service. I guess there would be several trains a day on the new route but Lansing's one eastbound train gets to Durand around 9 pm so I do not see this a popular transfer point for train riders from Lansing. I could see another line from Jackson to Mt. Pleasant via Lansing connecting with the AA/TC route in Mt Pleasent and the Wolverine Amtrak service in Jackson. I am not sure why it seems like Ann Arbor is making all these plans for rail transit and we can not even build a 4-mile long bus lane here in Greater Lansing. Let's get with the 21 century already!
The Ann Arbor to Traverse City line doesn't make any sense to me when we should be pushing for a Detroit-Ann Arbor-Lansing-Grand Rapids line first. Until we can connect our major metropolitan areas then we shouldn't be trying to plan a much longer route with much less population density along the way.
To be sure, this was initiated by the business community in Traverse City because it connects along most of the existing route of the previous iternation of the Ann Arbor Railroad. It's not something the state government is concentrating on. In fact, the only active rail project sponsored by the state is the continued work on the Amtrak/MDOT Michigan Line to continue to increase speeds and reduce bottlenecks. We'll get to see what they take up next with what will hopefully be a more favorable administration as it relates to transit. Hopefully, it will bt the Coast to Coast line that'll connect the state's three largest metro areas.
I agree that this route seems not right, they could call this train route "The Hipster" service from fancy Ann Arbor to fancy Traverse City/Petoskey! I bet Governor Snyder would be on the first train.
This route reminds me of the roads up there, they are generally really great! All the different routes I take on State and County roads have had some or all of the route repaved in the past few years. To me, it is evident that rural and northern areas of the state benefit from the current road funding scheme over our urban centers. So I hope things will change and rail routes will include Lansing and areas where mass transit will get the most use. Also, that urban streets will be as well funded as our rural area's. I am going to vote for people who will help see that change takes place.
A lot of it is rather mundane, but I think the biggest news is that they are going to reduce the curve of the Trowbridge exit, which can be nothing but good news. I can count on my hands the times I've ever exited Trowbridge on this ramp, but it's just obvious looking at it that that curve could be far more smooth.
Another thing I suggest is to change back their road markings just north of of here on the northbound side where the US-127 and I-496 split happens. I have no idea why they did it, but there is a solid white line - which implies continuation of one freeway (US-27) - where a striped lie should be about halfway through the curve. It was like this until fairly recently. It seperates the most southern/western through lanes to continue on 496 from the two lanes to the north/east. In actuality, the middle lane is also for continuing through to 496. I can get why they did it, but I'm still not used to it. I'd move the seperation line to the north/east side of the middle lane.
Comments
The roads in this area get really beat up due to all the heavy trucks coming and going to the cement plants and the landfill, a haul road to the landfill and past the plants to take the trucks out of the retail areas would be another good idea. A truck route using Old 27/N East Street, then east on the north side of the whole Eastwood area.
The annual CATA community report came in the mail today. The biggest piece of news is the purchases of new buses. CATA regularly replaces old buses, but for the first time in many years they will not be buying the New Flyer models. They are purchasing 19 40-foot buses and four 60-foot buses from... Nova Bus.
Nova Bus is a Canadian company, so a lot of Canadian transit agencies use them. But they've been used by multiple American transit agencies since 2009 when New York City's MTA bought a bunch of them.
Aesthetically? I'm not sure what I think about them. The fronts look better than the New Flyers with the bigger front window, but I'm not sure how I feel about the bodies.
They seem quite similar to the busses we have now maybe with rounded edges. The last time I remember a big change in bus design that I thought was cool and futuristic was when CATA went from the old 60's style chrome paneled buses to the sleek all white buses in the late 70's. I wonder if there are current bus models that would be more remarkable than this one? Really cool looking buses could help ridership.
On a side note, I find it so frustrating that they have torn up the only section of W. Mt. Hope that had been repaved just two years ago. This looks like a fairly large project that must have been planned for a while, they could have repaved the next six blocks up the street if they knew this same six block was all going to be torn up. With only 9% of our street in good condition, it seems short-sighted and wasteful to pave and repave the same six blocks three times in two years.
Or just held off the reconstruction until after the sewer project. While it's getting better now, the problem has always been spreading around finite resources. Paving another six blocks isn't cheap when a dozen other roads and neighborhoods are fighting for the same funding. Six blocks is a lot of road funds if you're doing a full reconstruction.
Speaking of CATA, a friend of mine works for there and mentioned that in a meeting they were talking about redesigning the CATA logo and possibly advertising on bus shelters and/or the exterior of the buses. He said they were talking about those new buses at the same meeting, apparently they're ditching the hybrid designs.
I have been reading about a plan for high-speed rail service between Ann Arbor and Traverse City. This sounds like a great idea but the planned route bypasses Lansing to the east. It seems like Durand is the place this new route will cross the CN tracks and the Amtrak Blue Water service. I guess there would be several trains a day on the new route but Lansing's one eastbound train gets to Durand around 9 pm so I do not see this a popular transfer point for train riders from Lansing. I could see another line from Jackson to Mt. Pleasant via Lansing connecting with the AA/TC route in Mt Pleasent and the Wolverine Amtrak service in Jackson. I am not sure why it seems like Ann Arbor is making all these plans for rail transit and we can not even build a 4-mile long bus lane here in Greater Lansing. Let's get with the 21 century already!
The Ann Arbor to Traverse City line doesn't make any sense to me when we should be pushing for a Detroit-Ann Arbor-Lansing-Grand Rapids line first. Until we can connect our major metropolitan areas then we shouldn't be trying to plan a much longer route with much less population density along the way.
To be sure, this was initiated by the business community in Traverse City because it connects along most of the existing route of the previous iternation of the Ann Arbor Railroad. It's not something the state government is concentrating on. In fact, the only active rail project sponsored by the state is the continued work on the Amtrak/MDOT Michigan Line to continue to increase speeds and reduce bottlenecks. We'll get to see what they take up next with what will hopefully be a more favorable administration as it relates to transit. Hopefully, it will bt the Coast to Coast line that'll connect the state's three largest metro areas.
I agree that this route seems not right, they could call this train route "The Hipster" service from fancy Ann Arbor to fancy Traverse City/Petoskey! I bet Governor Snyder would be on the first train.
This route reminds me of the roads up there, they are generally really great! All the different routes I take on State and County roads have had some or all of the route repaved in the past few years. To me, it is evident that rural and northern areas of the state benefit from the current road funding scheme over our urban centers. So I hope things will change and rail routes will include Lansing and areas where mass transit will get the most use. Also, that urban streets will be as well funded as our rural area's. I am going to vote for people who will help see that change takes place.
WLNS has a story about improvements planned for the US-127/I-496 interchange.
https://www.wlns.com/news/mdot-considers-improvements-to-us-127i-496-interchange/1528998113
A lot of it is rather mundane, but I think the biggest news is that they are going to reduce the curve of the Trowbridge exit, which can be nothing but good news. I can count on my hands the times I've ever exited Trowbridge on this ramp, but it's just obvious looking at it that that curve could be far more smooth.
Another thing I suggest is to change back their road markings just north of of here on the northbound side where the US-127 and I-496 split happens. I have no idea why they did it, but there is a solid white line - which implies continuation of one freeway (US-27) - where a striped lie should be about halfway through the curve. It was like this until fairly recently. It seperates the most southern/western through lanes to continue on 496 from the two lanes to the north/east. In actuality, the middle lane is also for continuing through to 496. I can get why they did it, but I'm still not used to it. I'd move the seperation line to the north/east side of the middle lane.