by Tadman
Agreed, and this is what's dangerous about pushing rail travel back to "the good old days".
Some travel patterns and cities have changed. Some cities never ever developed in the direction people thought they would. Unintended consequences of this include Buffalo Central, Michigan Central Station, Kansas City Airport, etc... If Detroit never really moved a heavy concentration of offices to Corktown, why push commuter trains there now? It wasn't the best idea in 1920.
That doesn't mean I'm against Ford redeveloping the station, but I think this might be one of the places a study is truly useful. Where is the best station location in Detroit? MCS? New Center (current)? Brush Street (GTW/Ren Cen)? The airport? Should there be connections to Pontiac, Windsor, Toronto, Toledo, will there be regional or commuter or international service?
There are a lot of questions here.
Some travel patterns and cities have changed. Some cities never ever developed in the direction people thought they would. Unintended consequences of this include Buffalo Central, Michigan Central Station, Kansas City Airport, etc... If Detroit never really moved a heavy concentration of offices to Corktown, why push commuter trains there now? It wasn't the best idea in 1920.
That doesn't mean I'm against Ford redeveloping the station, but I think this might be one of the places a study is truly useful. Where is the best station location in Detroit? MCS? New Center (current)? Brush Street (GTW/Ren Cen)? The airport? Should there be connections to Pontiac, Windsor, Toronto, Toledo, will there be regional or commuter or international service?
There are a lot of questions here.
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