Environmental Council leads effort to connect Michigan coast to coast with rail

Grand Rapids entrepreneurs catch the morning train to a meeting in Lansing and update their business plan on the ride home. A couple boards in Ypsilanti for dinner and a show with friends in Detroit. Michigan State students hop a train for a Saturday at the beach in Holland.

These scenarios are just glimpses of how a Coast-to-Coast Rail service could knit together Michigan’s largest population centers and reconnect our coasts. By meshing existing train tracks with local transit options and intercity coach services, the route would extend possibilities well beyond its station stops and allow comfortable travel across Michigan without a car.
The Coast-to-Coast would:

• Ignite innovation by providing a conduit for new partnerships between the world-class medical centers and over a dozen colleges and universities along its tracks.
• Provide workers access to jobs along the corridor and make their commutes more pleasant and productive.
• Breathe new life into our centers of arts and entertainment by giving out-of-town visitors a reliable and relaxing way to reach new cultural experiences.
• Help Michigan attract and retain more of the talented workers the state needs to prosper in the future.

The economic impact of these new opportunities is huge. For instance, passenger rail service on the Wolverine Corridor brings more than $45 million in community benefits to towns along the route each year. Amtrak invests millions of dollars in Michigan companies for goods and services to keep its trains running.

And demand for convenient rail travel has never been greater. Amtrak ridership in our state has largely trended upward since the 1990s, serving over between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people and generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year.

There’s already progress toward making the Coast-to-Coast a reality. The Michigan Environmental Council lead an effort in collaboration with member group Michigan Association of Railroad Passengers; the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority; the Michigan Department of Transportation; Metropolitan Planning Organizations along the corridor and a handful of other important stakeholders to complete a Rail Ridership and Cost Estimate Study funded by a federal grant and local match contributions from organizations along the corridor.

The Coast-to-Coast Rail study

Transportation Economics Management Systems, Inc. was hired to complete the study, which was finalized in 2016. The Michigan By Rail team, a coalition of organizations working to advance passenger rail in Michigan led by the Environmental Council, managed the public engagement portion of the study and spent the summer and fall of 2015, hosting 16 public meetings in communities across the corridor.

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