Category: Maps

Image source

I came across this simplified Glasgow transit map and thought that would be an interesting idea to apply to Detroit’s ultra simple downtown “public transit” system. I choose some highlights of each station stop based on the station guides (no guarantees). The People Mover was constructed in 1987. Detroit was one of four cities selected to receive this “new” transit system as part of the “Downtown People Mover Program,” yet Detroit has one of the two remaining people movers from that program. Last year was the 25th anniversary of the Detroit People Mover.

EDIT: 12/03/13 Lafayette Coney Island added

Boulevard, Avenue, Road, and Street in Detroit

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Over the last three years working as a community health worker in Detroit, I have logged over 80,000 miles on my tiny car with the majority of those miles being from getting around Detroit to meet with clients, families, and community events. After a while I became really interested in street naming.

I first saw this street name mapping idea from Bill Rankin’s work in Vancouver to the Derek Watkins applying a similar effort to the Portland – Seattle area. I was finally given my last push and decided to create this map after following Bostonography. The piece that took the longest was finding a good file of Detroit streets (finally acquired one from my GIS professor this summer).

In order to understand the layout of Detroit “streets” you really have to know Detroit’s history. The different groupings of “street” names shows the development of Detroit and its…

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Detroit Infant Mortality Map 2009 – 2010

Health, Maps

Infant mortality has been a persistent problem in Detroit that accompanies racial health disparities, low income, and environmental factors. This map compares infant mortality rates per 1000 to those of other countries around the world.

The Women Inspired Neighborhood Network (WINN), formerly Sew Up the Safety Net is a collaborative program with the major health systems in Detroit and has had incredible success in educating mothers and improving infant lives in a short time period.

Detroit Transit Alternatives Map: Toward Public – Private Partnerships

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I’ve been thinking about transportation in Detroit and how a number of alternatives to DDOT and public transit have been blossoming. Most recently I was surprised and excited by the University of Michigan (UM) launching a new, free shuttle service between its Ann Arbor campus and the UM Detroit Center in Midtown. The plan will also include shuttle routes to Eastern Market, Cultural Center, Southwest, and Downtown.

Most recently, the city has seen the development of The Detroit Bus Company which launched to “reinvent” how Southeastern Michigan gets around by offering rides to students to get to after school programs and helping suburbanites get into the city without a congested commute. Before there was the Detroit Bus Company, the College of Creative Studies was running a free shuttle for students around the city. A few years ago Wayne State University (WSU) teamed up with DMC and Henry Ford Health System…

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Map of the Week: Slave Populations in 1860

“Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the Southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860. Drawn by E. Hergesheimer. Engr. by Th. Leonhardt.” Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collections.

Thanks to Rebecca Onion at Slate Magazine for finding this map. This is an incredible visualization of our nation’s history and development of slavery as well as the political motivations of the Confederate southern states. This map could also give a nuanced visualization of the history of disenfranchised populations in the US and how that relates to present day disparities.

An Intelligent Transit Center for Detroit’s Future

Development, Maps

I won’t claim to be an expert on Detroit transit history, but public transit is a major issue in Detroit that no one living in or visiting Detroit can ignore. I just took my wife and my best friend for the first time on the Detroit People Mover (DPM). We parked near Cobo to avoid a Tiger’s game and the accompanying traffic/ parking insanity, then we took the DPM to Broadway station to grab dinner at Small Plates. The whole ride I kept thinking about the critical link between the amount of parking available downtown and the lack of reliable public transit.

Want to increase public transit? Get rid of parking!

Parking could be an entire rant of its own, but I want to focus on public transit. Detroit’s most well known piece of industrial “ruin porn” is Michigan Central Station (MCS), originally owned by the New York Central Railroad and built by the same architectural firm that constructed Grand Central Station in New York City. The building was supposed to exude elegance and grandeur, but was marked as an oddity due to the disconnect between the three-story train station against a backdrop of an eighteen-story nondescript office tower.

A Real Public Transit System

The trains arrived in Michigan Central terminal and a passenger could decide to catch a streetcar down Michigan Avenue to downtown or choose to take a horse-drawn carriage (later replaced by taxis). At its peak in 1914, nearly 200 trains left the station each day and in the early 1940s over 4,000 passengers rode the trains daily. Henry Ford even had his own private car that he took between New York and Detroit. During the following years of World War II, streetcars were mandated over buses in order to conserve gasoline and rubber. These were the glory days of public transit in Detroit, when you could catch a regular train to Chicago or New York and had the option to take a working network of streetcars throughout the city. Michigan Central Station was a working transit center for the city. In the 1950s, rail travel dropped off significantly with the rise of the auto industry and the construction of the highways. By 1956, all of the streetcars had been converted into Ford coach buses. In 1975, MCS was sold to the newly formed Amtrak, but they couldn’t maintain the costs associated with the massive building with so few passengers and again sold MCS in 1985. With less than a dozen trains a day, the last train left for Chicago from MCS in 1988. Now the building sits on the historic registry, but is unsalvageable and unfeasible as a transit center any longer.

Detroit’s public transit system has been plagued by issues for years. Transit received a boost in 2005 when the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) announced plans for the Rosa Parks Transit Center, which would run alongside the Michigan Avenue People Mover station. The magnificent tensile roof structure wasn’t awarded a contract until 2007 and was finally completed in 2009. Unfortunately, it seems that the only long term planning that occurred was to place it next to a People Mover station. The Rosa Parks Transit Center is located in an odd section of downtown that does not lend itself to integration with a larger citywide or regional transit system. Detroit’s downtown has an iconic hub-and-spoke street design making it fun to look at on a map, but difficult to maneuver for public transit. Likewise, Rosa Parks Transit Center was not constructed to act like other transit centers in large cities.

In other large cities, which Detroit is arguably no where near similar, transit centers are located roughly an average 2 miles away from the city’s main tourist attractions. New York City is allowed to be different because of its high density and small area.

CITY	TRANSIT	MODES	ATTRACTION	DISTANCE
Chicago	Union Station	Amtrak, Metra Rail, “L” Rail, City Bus, Bike Share	Navy Pier	2.4 mi
Washington D.C.	Union Station	Amtrak, Metro Subway, City Bus, Bike Share	White House	2.4 mi
New York City	Grand Central	Amtrak, Subway, City Bus, Bike Share	Times Square	0.8 mi
Detroit	Rosa Parks	City Bus, People Mover Rail	Comerica Park/ Grand Circus	0.7 mi
PAST
Detroit	Michigan Central	Amtrak, Streetcar Rail, City Bus	Comerica Park/ Grand Circus	2.0 mi
FUTURE
Detroit	New Center	Amtrak, M1-Rail, City Bus, Bike Share	Comerica Park/ Grand Circus	2.5 mi

A good example of the lack of long term planning is the filming of movies downtown (i.e. Transformers 4). The Rosa Parks Transit Center was shutdown during filming due to its proximity to downtown. This begs the question, do we really think nothing else will happen in downtown Detroit that might cause a disruption of transit service? My bet is “No” we hope there will be a myriad of events and happenings downtown that will bring in crowds of people on a regular basis. Then why was a transit center planned in the middle of downtown? There needs to be distance between attractions and transit centers to make public transit systems a viable alternative. The other key factor for a transit center is that they are multi-modal: Amtrak + local rail + bus system + bike-share, etc. Thankfully, Megabus also uses the Rosa Parks Transit Center as a pickup and drop-off point.

A New Transit Center in New Center

This all leads me to my pitch for a new and intelligent transit center for Detroit. The New Center area marked by the Fisher Building is a perfect area to house an intelligent transit center. There is plenty of space for parking, an existing large workforce that needs to commute, and an Amtrak train station – not to mention it will also be situated along the new M1-Rail line, which also meets up with DDOT bus stops. After mashing up transit pathways for DDOT, SMART, DPM, and the new M1-Rail I came to the conclusion that expanding the existing Amtrak station across the tracks would make sense to bring together a multi-modal transit system for the city where you could catch a DDOT bus off the M1-Rail or take the M1-Rail downtown to the People Mover or return to Detroit using the Amtrak and choose how you want to get home.

As I was preparing to write all these ideas down, I came across this video from America2050, which proposed a high-speed rail connecting Chicago and Detroit (developing “megaregions“) and depicted a new fictional transit center located exactly where I had imagined it should be! A new transit center in New Center matches what other large cities have with a multi-modal center located roughly 2.5 miles away from a city’s main attraction. New Center is also a nice way point between the suburbs, offices in New Center, and attractions downtown allowing people to utilize it for multiple reasons.

Working public transit is critical for more than just tourists and businesses. Residents, young people, and especially the working poor rely on public transit to be able to get jobs and keep them. A working public transit system has the potential to increase employment which in turn helps decrease poverty and crime. In an odd way public transit makes urban revitalization benefit people across a city.

Update 10/10/13

I have recently learned that the parking lot where I am proposing a new transit center near New Center is currently managed/ owned by MDOT/ DDOT. This could not be a more perfect scenario. There is no need to obtain the land or convince a business to hand it over for a transit project, it is already owned by the transit authorities.

Map: Obesity and Corner Stores in Detroit

Health, Maps

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The data on enrolled public high school students maps almost exactly with population density, but there is enough of a difference to make it worthwhile to examine the interactions between social and environmental factors. Corner stores (liquor stores, gas stations) were added to demonstrate the prevalence of these food locations in relation to obesity among students, however there is no significant correlation.

Map of Detroit Land Annexation 1806 – 1926

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Source: Detroit Annexation and Land Expansion Map

It is much more interesting to look at Detroit’s land annexations in animated form. You can see how various areas of Detroit were added through the years. Looking at Detroit’s history you can see the slivered expansion northward from the River and then fanning out along the River’s edge, the city’s purchase of Belle Isle in 1879, the glory days of Grand Boulevard in 1891 when the city didn’t extend any further North, and the rapid land acquisition in the 1920s as the auto industry boomed and population swelled. Detroit’s industry, population, and services have changed drastically over the years, but the physical boundaries of the city have remained the same since 1926. Will borders be expanded further in the future to create a cohesive regional Detroit that includes the suburbs?