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Try Trains for Healthy Cities
If you are the child or spouse of
someone who has gone through quadruple bypass surgery, you know how frustrating
it is to watch your loved one start eating hamburgers and fries again.
You know that if they exercised and ate healthier, they could vastly decrease
the chances of another costly heart surgery or an early death.
The same is true in the case of Michigan's blocked transportation arteries.
The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to keep
people and goods moving by widening roads and building new highways. Yet
these costly operations are only short-term fixes because all the new
cars that come with increasing amounts of pavement and sprawl act like
cholesterol to quickly clog roads again.
But citizens do not have to stand by and suffer the state's waste of time
and money, according to the cover package of articles in this issue of
the Great Lakes Bulletin. The section by Kelly Thayer, the Michigan
Land Use Institute's transportation project coordinator, examines the
critical condition of America's congested highways and airports, how other
cities are enjoying a new lease on life by adding passenger rail to their
transportation menus, and how Michigan's metropolitan areas can, too.
Our recommendation that Detroit and other Michigan cities add rail to
their transportation systems could seem futile to those who have given
up on the Motor City or on Michigan's auto-dependent political leadership.
But here at the Institute, we believe common sense and people power will
prevail. If Michigan's metropolitan areas do not start planning for rail
now, they will be as behind the times in 20 years — and behind the
competition — as are those businesses that still haven't started
using computers.
We make it our business, in the Great Lakes Bulletin and in articles
the Institute publishes in the state's newspapers and on our Web site,
to remind readers that it's really up to them, the body politic, how Michigan
uses its valuable land and limited tax revenues. The Institute is especially
proud of the Great Lakes Bulletin, which started out five years
ago as a small newsletter and has become, under the passionate and talented
leadership of former editor Florence Barone, an impressive force for land
use reform in Michigan. We will continue striving for excellence, which
means making the Bulletin ever more interesting and useful for
you. 
Rail is Energizing Cities Coast to Coast
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