102nd Legislature, Week 5: Toll Road Study, Governor's Recommended Budget
Toll Road Study
On Tuesday, February 7th, the Senate Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure heard a presentation from HNTB, an infrastructure design firm, on the statewide tolling feasibility study and implementation plan.
A map from the Michigan Statewide Tolling Study .
The Governor's Recommended Budget
Governor Whitmer’s recommended 2023 transportation budget earmarks $160M for capital investment and $62.3M in ongoing support for transit and rail programs. Additionally, the Executive recommendation earmarks a $15M increase for Local Bus Operations .
Food for thought: A capital investment Amtrak advocates have long asked for in Michigan is station upgrades, particularly level boarding platforms such as the one seen in Ann Arbor . I’m no expert on this topic, but napkin math says the cost to retrofit the rest of our stations would be roughly $40M in 2015 dollars.
As highlighted by MDOT Rail , $62.3M will be allocated to "protect and enhance" the transit and rail programs that make up our multimodal state network.
This "Setback Level Boarding Platform Prototype" (as the 2015 FRA grant calls it) cost $1.9M to install and was made permanent following a two-year pilot period. Installing this in the remaining 22 stations would cost $40M. We'd have $20M to spare. View original Tweet