State could be forced to pay new Detroit officials' salaries
Under the consent agreement with the state, the city of Detroit will have to appoint new officials to lead the city out of its financial crisis. Who will pay the salaries for these new officials is a new bone of contention according to Jonathan Oosting at MLive:
The [consent] agreement... requires the formation of a nine-member Financial Advisory Board to oversee city budgets and hiring of a Program Management Director to oversee implementation of key initiatives.
The deal calls for the city and state to split the salaries of advisory board members, who each will make $25,000 a year, while the city is required to cover the full salary of the PMD, expected to earn triple figures.
Some council members feel the Headlee Act prevents the state from mandating new services without compensating the city for those services.
Oosting reports Detroit City Council is expected to meet in a closed door session with the city's law department this afternoon.
U.S. Attorney General says violence in Detroit is "unacceptable"
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told thousands of people gathered at an NAACP fundraising dinner that violence in Detroit is "unacceptable."
He told the crowd last night in Detroit that his administration is directing "unprecedented" resources nationally in order to reduce young people's exposure to crime.
Holder said an average of two young black men get killed each week in Detroit. He called the statistic "shocking."
Higher train speeds between Detroit and Chicago
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says Michigan, Illinois and Indiana are each contributing $200,000 for a study looking into the creation of a high-speed rail corridor between Chicago and Detroit.
LaHood says the study will seek ways to cut Amtrak passenger train times between the cities and to more efficiently move goods.
The Department of Transportation says the study will build on the progress that Michigan has made in achieving 110 mile per hour service between Kalamazoo and Porter, Indiana.
Update 3:15 p.m. - Workers hope to reopen rail line tomorrow
10 people were injured today when an Amtrak train collided with a semi-truck between Ann Arbor and Jackson. None of the injuries were life-threatening.
The accident derailed the train’s engine and two passenger cars. The collision also heavily damaged the tracks and the crossing.
But a company spokesman says they hope to reopen the line by tomorrow morning.
David Pidgeon is a spokesman for Norfolk-Southern, which owns and operates the railroad that runs across southern Michigan.
“Six passenger trains a day use that particular line…and another four to five trains of freight (a day) also use that line," says Pidgeon, "So we need to get that line open…as safely and efficiently as possible.”
While the section of track is being repaired, passengers are making part of their trip by bus.
2:17 p.m. - 10 injured
MLive.com reports that "a total of 10 people were injured" in this morning's Amtrak derailment in Leoni Township.
A westbound Amtrak train collided with a truck this morning between Jackson and Ann Arbor.
There were no life-threatening injuries. The collision left the train’s engine on its side and knocked two passenger cars off the tracks.
Marc Magliari is an Amtrak spokesman. He says Amtrak will bus passengers around the crash site while repairs are under way.
“Passengers who are ticketed …let’s say eastbound passed Jackson…would be taken by chartered motorcoach…to the Ann Arbor station where they’ll meet another train and continue on," says Magliari.
It’s unclear how long it will take to remove the derailed train and repair the damage done to the rails.
About a half million passengers rode on Amtrak’s Wolverine line last year.
Here's video from the Jackson Citizen Patriot speaking with Blackman-Leoni Township Public Safety Director Mike Jester:
According to a report by Simon A. Thalmann with the Kalamazoo Gazette, a freight train derailed this morning in Kalamazoo when it encountered a damaged section of track, but Grand Elk Railroad officials say all rail cars remained upright and nothing was spilled as a result of the accident.
Thalmann reports:
"It gets cold and the rail gets brittle," a Grand Elk official said of the section of rail that broke. "The circumstances were right."
A section of rail about 60 feet long broke, with one rail protruding upward and the other snapped and lying in snow.
The train was carrying liquid clay to Graphic Packaging when it derailed at around 10 a.m., according to railroad officials.
Photos of the derailment by the Gazette's Fritz Klug can be found here.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in Michigan for high speed higher speed rail.
For that, we'll get trains that can travel 110 m.p.h. for much of the Detroit to Chicago trip.
A modest boost in speed is about as much as we can ask for given the state of our infrastructure (over the summer, some passenger trains in Michigan were ordered to travel at 25 m.p.h. because of the sorry state of the tracks).
One drawback to train travel is the number of stops along the way. Detroit to Chicago has stops in Dowagiac, Niles, and New Buffalo, Michigan.
What if the train could just slow down around those stops?
Behold the "Moving Platforms" concept from Paul Priestman of the English design group Priestmangoode (bob head while watching):
O.k. - this pie-in-the-sky idea has been around for awhile. New Scientist magazine writes that they first featured an article about a similar idea in 1969.
Priestman told CNN that its valuable to throw off the chains and think big:
While Priestman admits that it will be some time before his vision could be implemented, he says the time has come to rethink how we travel.
"This idea is a far-future thought but wouldn't it be brilliant to just re-evaluate and just re-think the whole process?" he says.
The 135 miles of rail line from Dearborn to Kalamazoo will be owned by the state of Michigan. The state is purchasing the line from Norfolk Southern Railway with the help of federal stimulus money. Once completed, the upgraded line will increase speeds.
Most of the upgrades are happening along the Detroit to Chicago route. That's because this line was designated as a high speed rail corridor by the federal government back in 1992.
With that designation comes federal grant dollars.
And recently, it has meant hundreds of millions of federal stimulus dollars.
The state is very close to finalizing a deal to buy almost 140 miles of railway that would complete a high-speed connection for passengers traveling between Detroit and Chicago.
The state could announce a bargain with the Norfolk Southern Railroad as soon as this week.
The cost will be about one million dollars per mile of rail. Most of the money will come from the federal government.
Hugh McDiarmid is with the Michigan Environmental Council, one of the groups supporting the project. He said the rail line could be the first leg of an eventual statewide rapid transit network.
"Right now, someone from Traverse City would have to drive down to Kalamazoo or Detroit or something to hop a train to Chicago and that’s not very convenient," said McDiarmid. "But this is moving us a little bit closer to the day when hopefully we’ll connecting Traverse City to Detroit; we’ll be connecting Kalamazoo to Traverse City to Chicago."
Once the purchase is wrapped up, the state will go to work on upgrades that will allow trains to travel at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour between Dearborn and Kalamazoo. The Kalmazoo-to-Chicago stretch is already upgraded.
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