Cost per ride for public transit is almost always at a loss, but the measurement doesn't include economic impact and the reduction of traffic through ride sharing. Most of those press releases are designed to reduce confidence in public transit.
Noticed some other construction projects on the map at the Public Service website for the year.
Most of Walnut and Pine, two major north-south downtown streets, are getting milled and resurfaced.
Can't remembered if we talked about this, but apparently the entire section of Grand River through Northtown and Old Town, specifically between Cleveland Street on the east end and North Street on the north and west end, is being "reconfigured." No details are given, but the only thing I can think of is that maybe they are putting bike accomodations on some parts of the street? I can't imagine them removing the parking through Old Town.
They are adding a sidewalk on the east side of the street along Aurelius between Cavanaugh to the south and Provincial House to the north starting in Spring sometime. Sidewalks will also be installed on Dunckel between Jolly and Trappers Cove. So excited to see these. This area of the city has always been pretty bad for pedestrians even more so than cyclist who have sometimes been given the shoulder of these roads to use.
Quite a bit of the original main line of the River Trail is getting repaved.
Those are all great news! The Dunckel turn is such a high speed and seemingly dangerous corner. I wouldn't want to bike on the street in that section so a sidewalk there will be a tremendous help for anyone who isn't feeling confident with the traffic there.
Good to hear that the river trail will get the maintenance that is due. It's not enough to expand when we also need to maintain what we already have.
It is really great that they are repaving Walnut and Pine streets. I wish they would just go up and down every street downtown with that milling machine. Capitol Ave is really bad from one end to the other.
This may sound unlikely but I wonder if the city of Lansing could sponsor some sort of raffle to help fund the road work that needs to be done. Maybe they could get GM to donate some vehicles as prizes. When I read that the Mayor was putting $150,000 into the road repair budget and that this is a small amount of the $250 million they would need to keep the road at their current level [poor] I think it's time to start thinking of ways to find that money. It seems like the Feds. and the State is doling out an amount of money that will not be near enough to fix our roads, so we need to do it ourselves. Maybe some sort of contest with prizes could raise money without raising taxes. My other thought is perhaps the city could get businesses and neighborhood associations to sponsor the streets leading to their businesses and neighborhoods, and help pay for repairing and maintenance of those streets.
I feel so pessimistic about this situation with the quality of our roads. The raffle would just be another form of a tax (like the lottery). Sponsored roads just mean that the richer areas of the city have a better quality of life. This is what our taxes are already supposed to be for.
Sorry, I just can't help but continue to point out that this should really be a solved issue. We may need to vacate some roads with population decline, but otherwise with proper leadership in the Capital then we should have been able to keep these roads up to par over the years
I agree with Jared that roads should have never fallen into the disrepair that they're in now, the fact that other states with similar climates can manage to have much better roads makes any excuses by Michigan's leaders hard to swallow. The situation now is bad, it seems likely it will take a long time to bring our roads up to par.
On another note, I'm really glad to see Pine St in particular being repaved, it's in really rough shape south of the Capitol Complex.
Has anybody heard much about the Eastside Connector?
My mom saw this today on the Nextdoor website:
Eastside Connector Project
The City of Lansing is proposing a non-motorized project from Grand Avenue in downtown Lansing to the east side of the Frandor area. The project, which we are referring to as the Eastside Connector, would consist of a combination of bike lanes, pathways, and a signed bike route.
The facilities would serve students and residents living on the east side of Lansing traveling to/from the schools within the project area (Fairview, Pattengill, Eastern, Resurrection, Lansing Catholic and Lansing Community College) and those traveling to/from downtown or Frandor.
The bike lanes and bike routes would serve cyclists while the pathways would serve pedestrians and cyclists.
The City has met with representatives of the Lansing School District, Lansing Catholic Central High School, Gillespie Group (owner of the Armory and Sears property in Frandor), and the Michigan Department of Transportation regarding this project. Close to $500,000 in federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) has been approved for construction of this project (80% of the construction cost) in federal fiscal years 2018 and 2020. Approval to utilize the Armory property and Vine Street extended has been given by Gillespie Group and MOOT has approved of the reconfiguration of the intersections of Shiawassee Streets at Cedar and Larch Streets, which took place this year when the City repaved this block.
The City is seeking approval from the Lansing School District to construct the remainder of the pathway on District property, including the Eastern High School fields and Pattengill (future Eastern High School) properties.
If all approvals are obtained from property owners, the construction would be done in conjunction with the work planned for Pattengill (new Eastern High School) and the Eastern High School fields. The graphics on the following pages show the current draft alignment of the proposed project.
Wow!!! Very cool. It would be great to see this linked up to Downtown East Lansing via the GR bike lanes, perhaps routed up Valley Court to Albert St., and to campus maybe via the proposed Harrison "road diet", or perhaps down Beal to the Beal St. campus entrance.
I think I recall them talking about this at least as far back as when the BRT was proposed. It's good to see they have route identified. The good thing is that most of it appears to either by bike lanes or pathways, and the stretch through the far-eastside is on a residential street, so even the part that shares the road should be fairly pleasant/safe.
Comments
It is great to see a project actually getting underway.
Noticed some other construction projects on the map at the Public Service website for the year.
Most of Walnut and Pine, two major north-south downtown streets, are getting milled and resurfaced.
Can't remembered if we talked about this, but apparently the entire section of Grand River through Northtown and Old Town, specifically between Cleveland Street on the east end and North Street on the north and west end, is being "reconfigured." No details are given, but the only thing I can think of is that maybe they are putting bike accomodations on some parts of the street? I can't imagine them removing the parking through Old Town.
They are adding a sidewalk on the east side of the street along Aurelius between Cavanaugh to the south and Provincial House to the north starting in Spring sometime. Sidewalks will also be installed on Dunckel between Jolly and Trappers Cove. So excited to see these. This area of the city has always been pretty bad for pedestrians even more so than cyclist who have sometimes been given the shoulder of these roads to use.
Quite a bit of the original main line of the River Trail is getting repaved.
Those are all great news! The Dunckel turn is such a high speed and seemingly dangerous corner. I wouldn't want to bike on the street in that section so a sidewalk there will be a tremendous help for anyone who isn't feeling confident with the traffic there.
Good to hear that the river trail will get the maintenance that is due. It's not enough to expand when we also need to maintain what we already have.
It is really great that they are repaving Walnut and Pine streets. I wish they would just go up and down every street downtown with that milling machine. Capitol Ave is really bad from one end to the other.
This may sound unlikely but I wonder if the city of Lansing could sponsor some sort of raffle to help fund the road work that needs to be done. Maybe they could get GM to donate some vehicles as prizes. When I read that the Mayor was putting $150,000 into the road repair budget and that this is a small amount of the $250 million they would need to keep the road at their current level [poor] I think it's time to start thinking of ways to find that money. It seems like the Feds. and the State is doling out an amount of money that will not be near enough to fix our roads, so we need to do it ourselves. Maybe some sort of contest with prizes could raise money without raising taxes. My other thought is perhaps the city could get businesses and neighborhood associations to sponsor the streets leading to their businesses and neighborhoods, and help pay for repairing and maintenance of those streets.
I feel so pessimistic about this situation with the quality of our roads. The raffle would just be another form of a tax (like the lottery). Sponsored roads just mean that the richer areas of the city have a better quality of life. This is what our taxes are already supposed to be for.
Sorry, I just can't help but continue to point out that this should really be a solved issue. We may need to vacate some roads with population decline, but otherwise with proper leadership in the Capital then we should have been able to keep these roads up to par over the years
I agree with Jared that roads should have never fallen into the disrepair that they're in now, the fact that other states with similar climates can manage to have much better roads makes any excuses by Michigan's leaders hard to swallow. The situation now is bad, it seems likely it will take a long time to bring our roads up to par.
On another note, I'm really glad to see Pine St in particular being repaved, it's in really rough shape south of the Capitol Complex.
Has anybody heard much about the Eastside Connector?
My mom saw this today on the Nextdoor website:
Eastside Connector Project
The City of Lansing is proposing a non-motorized project from Grand Avenue in downtown Lansing to the east side of the Frandor area. The project, which we are referring to as the Eastside Connector, would consist of a combination of bike lanes, pathways, and a signed bike route.
The facilities would serve students and residents living on the east side of Lansing traveling to/from the schools within the project area (Fairview, Pattengill, Eastern, Resurrection, Lansing Catholic and Lansing Community College) and those traveling to/from downtown or Frandor.
The bike lanes and bike routes would serve cyclists while the pathways would serve pedestrians and cyclists.
The City has met with representatives of the Lansing School District, Lansing Catholic Central High School, Gillespie Group (owner of the Armory and Sears property in Frandor), and the Michigan Department of Transportation regarding this project. Close to $500,000 in federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) has been approved for construction of this project (80% of the construction cost) in federal fiscal years 2018 and 2020. Approval to utilize the Armory property and Vine Street extended has been given by Gillespie Group and MOOT has approved of the reconfiguration of the intersections of Shiawassee Streets at Cedar and Larch Streets, which took place this year when the City repaved this block.
The City is seeking approval from the Lansing School District to construct the remainder of the pathway on District property, including the Eastern High School fields and Pattengill (future Eastern High School) properties.
If all approvals are obtained from property owners, the construction would be done in conjunction with the work planned for Pattengill (new Eastern High School) and the Eastern High School fields. The graphics on the following pages show the current draft alignment of the proposed project.
Wow!!! Very cool. It would be great to see this linked up to Downtown East Lansing via the GR bike lanes, perhaps routed up Valley Court to Albert St., and to campus maybe via the proposed Harrison "road diet", or perhaps down Beal to the Beal St. campus entrance.
I think I recall them talking about this at least as far back as when the BRT was proposed. It's good to see they have route identified. The good thing is that most of it appears to either by bike lanes or pathways, and the stretch through the far-eastside is on a residential street, so even the part that shares the road should be fairly pleasant/safe.