That’s what the Michigan Land Use Institute has in mind for WALLY– aka the Washtenaw and Livingston Line. Alternative transit advocates have been trying to launch commuter rail service between Ann Arbor and Howell for nearly ten years. Now the nonprofit advocacy group envisions WALLY as the first leg in a longer journey: it’s proposing a rail service that would extend all the way to Traverse City.
Starting in Ann Arbor, the envisioned “A2TC” line would stop in Howell, Owosso, Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Cadillac along the way. The line would run on state-owned tracks currently used by the Great Lakes Central Railroad to transport freight.
Great Lakes Central was stung by recent revelations that the Michigan Department of Transportation paid it more than $12 million to refurbish and lease rail cars that have sat idle since 2010. Nevertheless, Hans Voss, executive director of the land use institute, assured attendees at an A2TC pep rally in February in Traverse City that the state is on their side, at least in principle.
“I can tell you that MDOT wants to expand rail service,” said Voss.
When the department held public forums around the state five years ago to develop the Michigan State Rail Plan, the most popular proposal was to connect Ann Arbor and Traverse City.
Attending the February meeting were ex-mayor John Hieftje and Michael Benham, special assistant for strategic planning at the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, along with Tim Fischer from the Woodward Avenue M-1 RAIL project in Detroit.
In a pre-rally interview, Hieftje said about 1,000 people from Ann Arbor travel to Traverse City each weekend. “I can guarantee there’s another group of folks in Ann Arbor who are going to push to make this happen,” he told the crowd of about 200. But, Hieftje cautioned, “It’s gonna take a while: The average rail project takes ten to twelve years [to implement].”
“We’re definitely looking at the WALLY project to see what we can learn from that process,” says Jim Bruckbauer, MLUI policy specialist. “We’re also looking at the M-1 project to see what we can learn from them.”
At the rally, sporting a Canadian Pacific Railway jacket, was lifelong Traverse City resident George Gregory. Gregory is a train buff who once bought a forty-four-ton diesel locomotive for fun, but he questions whether there would be enough ridership to support A2TC, a project he estimated would take millions of dollars to make happen.
Gregory’s daughter Lisa Bausch, an Ann Arbor resident since 1990, is one would-be rider: she said she visits Traverse City at least ten times a year to visit her parents, and they visit her about three times a year.
“It would be easier for them just to come down on the train, stay for a couple of days, and go back,” she said.
Bruckbauer said he intends to host a downstate A2TC rally for Bausch and other Ann Arbor residents this summer. He agreed his project would likely take at least millions of dollars and more than a decade.
Benham told the crowd that a feasibility study is underway for the WALLY commuter line. “If money were no object, if political issues were no object, the project would be up and running now,” he said.
Money will also be the biggest obstacle for A2TC. The state has already spent $16 million upgrading the twenty-seven miles of track between Ann Arbor and Howell. At that rate, repairing the remaining 213 miles to Traverse City would cost $126 million.
