Last Friday, at about 1:30 PM, a train on Amtrak’s Wolverine line stopped on its way from Chicago to Detroit to pick up passengers in Ypsilanti. While it’s true that, back in late May of 2010, the President of Amtrak disembarked from a train in Depot Town and met with elected officials to discuss the future of regional rail, this, as I understand it, was the first time since 1984, when Ypsi lost its Amtrak stop, that a passenger train has actually stopped and picked up local folks in Depot Town… and, as I just happened to be one of the lucky ones who got to take the ride, I thought that I’d tell you about it.
Before we get into what it was like to ride from Ypsi to Detroit and back on the train, though, I think it would probably be good for me to preface this conversation by saying, “Don’t get your hopes up.” As longtime readers of this site know, we’ve been down this road before… Here, to give you some sense of what I’m talking about, is an excerpt from something I posted almost eight years ago, in January of 2010. The post was titled Update on the Ann Arbor – Detroit rail line.
…Remember the East – West commuter rail line that’s supposed to connect Ann Arbor and Detroit, with stops in Ypsi and Dearborn? Remember how the Governor said that it will happen before October 25, 2010, when her term comes to an end? Well, acording to a report issued today by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), they’re on schedule to see it happen…
Well, guess what? It didn’t happen by the end of Granholm’s tenure as governor. Efforts, however, did continue. And, in May of 2010, I posted here that we might see our first stop by 2012, which, as you know, also didn’t happen. Here’s a clip.
…(I)t looks as though even the scaled-back Ann Arbor-Detroit line isn’t likely to start rolling until 2012, at the earliest. Or, at least that’s Councilman Murdock’s assessment. And I know that I’ve said it before, but we really need to establish a grass roots lobbying effort to keep the pressure on our elected officials. There are tens of thousands of people that would benefit from a rail line connecting Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Dearborn, and Detroit, and we should start organizing. This is too good of an idea to let die…
And, to our credit, the idea didn’t just die. In spite of opposition at the state level, where elected Republicans did what they could to kill anything related to mass transit, especially if it had anything to do with the Obama administration, local folks kept pushing. And, slowly, over time, things got done, albeit not fast enough as some of us would have liked. Amtrak was able to buy back the tracks from the freight companies that owned them, opening the door to increased passenger rail options. Federal funding helped improve both tracks and crossings. And Dearborn, after having built a new station, got their stop. And, here at home, volunteers worked to get our Freighthouse reopened, as discussions began about where we’d build our platform… For those of you who would like to dive deeper into the history, here are links to just a few of the many conversation we had bak in 2010 and 2011, when talk of the possibility of a local train stop first started to heat up.
High-speed bus system to link Ann Arbor and Detroit, as precursor to passenger rail
One step closer to the Ann Arbor – Detroit rail line
Ann Arbor – Detroit passenger rail… Can Dingell deliver?
Should there be a Depot Town stop on the Amtrak line to Chicago?
And these conversations have continued over the past half dozen years… Not too long ago, on episode 46 of the Saturday Six Pack, for instance, we discussed the release of the regional transit master plan authored by the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan (RTA), which, among other things, called for a Detroit-Ann Arbor rail line with a stop in Ypsilanti, and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) between Ann Arbor and Ypsi.
This has, in short, been a long time coming. And we’ve still got quite a ways to go. According to the most optimistic projection I’ve heard, Ypsilanti, assuming we don’t hit any delays, won’t have an operational platform in Depot Town for about two years, as we still need to conduct an assessment of the platform site, finalize plans for construction, raise the necessary funds, and build the damn thing. The good news is, though, once the platform is built, the train will stop. At least that’s what Derrick James, Amtrak’s senior manager for government affairs, told me on the train, as we made our way toward Detroit. And that, I think, demonstrates that we’ve at least made some progress from the early 200s, when no one at Amtrak was talking about an Ypsi stop.
One more thing… When the train does finally stop in Ypsilanti, at least at first, it will just be the Wolverine line, meaning that it’ll be relatively useless for commuting into Detroit or Ann Arbor, going to see baseball games, etc. As of right now, according to a friend of mine who knows such things, the eastbound Wolverine line passes through Ypsilanti daily at approximately 1:15 PM, 6:30 PM, and 11:30 PM, on the way to Detroit. And, if you’re in Detroit, headed this way, trains depart at 6:30 AM, 11:20 AM, and 6:20 PM. [This past Friday, for instance, I caught the 1:15 train to Detroit, and got the 6:20 train back from Detroit.] So, you could go to Detroit for a while to check out a museum, have lunch, or maybe see an afternoon baseball game, but the schedule wouldn’t work for most jobs, and it wouldn’t allow for you to do anything in the evening, at least if you wanted to make it back to Ypsi afterward. That, however, is the ultimate goal… The ultimate goal is commuter rail, with multiple trains running back and forth over the course of each day, starting early in the morning, and running late into the night, connecting not only Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Ypsilanti and Detroit, but also Metro Airport, which would be incredibly cool.
Oh, and for commuter rail to work, not only would the trains have to run more often, but they’d also have to run on time, which, as of right now, isn’t always the case. For instance, the train taking us to Detroit this past Friday was about 20 minutes late, whereas the one bringing us back was about 30 minutes late. While this wasn’t a big deal for me, as I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be at a certain time, delays like this would doom a commuter service, or one that people were depending on to get them to the airport in time for a flight.
And, I should also add, in no scenarios that I’ve heard thus far would there be a “high-speed rail” stop in Ypsi, as we’re too close to the considerably larger stop in Ann Arbor. So you’re likely not going to be able to jump on a train in Depot Town and be in Chicago in two hours. You may, however, be able to get the commuter train to Ann Arbor at some point in the future, and then jump onto a high-speed train for Chicago.
So, now that I’ve tempered your optimism and enthusiasm a bit, let me tell you about last Friday’s trip to Detroit, which was absolutely incredible. Granted, the train was a bit late each way, as I mentioned above, but it was great to just sit and look out the window, not worrying at all about traffic, and then just stepping off the train on Woodward Avenue, in downtown Detroit. [I didn’t ride the QLINE, which runs up and down Woodward, but there’s a stop just across the street from the train station, on Baltimore Street.] While I didn’t time the trip out, my sense is that it was less than half an hour, from the time we walked on, to the time we got off, including the time we spent partied at the Dearborn station, as people got on and off. I did, however, time the trip back, and it took 37 minutes. [My sense, and I could be wrong, is that the train runs slower after dark due to visibility issues.] At any rate, it was faster than my car ride into Detroit the night before, and a lot less stressful. And, if we could make this a regular thing, I’d love it. I cannot express to you how right it felt to walk to Depot Town from my house, step onto a train, and be whisked downtown. It was really, truly incredible…
And, when we got back to Ypsi, and stepped off the train in front of Sidetrack – and I’m not exaggerating – there was electricity in the air. People were literally getting out of their cars, and coming out of restaurants, asking us what was going on. A young guy came up to me and asked me explain what was happening, and, after I told him, he said, “Who do I need to call to get this platform built?” People were seriously enthusiastic in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time.
Here, speaking of enthusiasm, is our State Rep Ronnie Peterson calling “all aboard” as the train rolled into Depot Town to pick us up.
State Rep Ronnie Peterson calling “all aboard” as Amtrak stops in Ypsilanti for the first time since ‘84, taking us to Detroit in less than half an hour. pic.twitter.com/YAOPuFI8gy
— Mark Maynard (@MarkAMaynard) December 2, 2017
If you can’t tell from the above video, almost everyone who took the trip was a politician. Joining State Rep Ronnie Peterson, were State Reps Yousef Rabhi, Adam Zemke, and Jewell Jones, who, I’m pretty sure, is the only one of the four to have been written up Teen Vogue. In addition to State Reps, we also had the Mayor of Dearborn, and a bunch of elected officials from the surrounding Townships, like Brenda Stumbo. And Ypsilanti was also well represented by City Council members Lois Richardson and Beth Bashert, Economic Development Director Beth Ernat, and Washtenaw County Commissioner Ricky Jefferson. [County Commissioner Andy LaBarre and Ypsi City Councilperson Pete Murdock were at the reception, before the train rolled into town, but weren’t able to take the trip with us.] And, in addition to all of the political folks, there were also local commuter rail advocates like my friends Bill Kinley and Linda French, as well as representatives from Eastern Michigan University, the AAATA, and Washtenaw Community College, and several business owners from the the Ypsi-Arbor Visitor and Convention Bureau board.
I don’t know who exactly was involved in putting the whole thing together, but my sense is that, in large part, we had Ronnie Peterson, Mary Kerr, the President of the Visitor and Convention Bureau, and Sean Duval, the President of Golden Limousine, to thank. [Kerr, among other things, organized a quick tour of Detroit for us, for which Duval provided the busses.] Peterson, however, was clearly the one running the show, publicly acknowledging everyone who had gathered for the event, and playfully reminding each one in turn that, when the time comes, they’d better be ready to invest in the Ypsilanti stop.
So, now what? Now that all of these elected officials and community leaders have spent an afternoon with representatives from Amtrak, traveling to Detroit and back, what’s the next step? How do we keep the momentum up, and ensure that we not only get a stop, but that we eventually get commuter rail in Ypsilanti? As much as I wanted this to happen before, I’m even more excited by the prospect now that I’ve experienced what it would be like firsthand. And I’m ready to fight to make it happen.
