Economic Equity: Why Ann Arbor's Station Should be by University Medical Center

County-wide perspective

Housing in Washtenaw County is becoming increasingly disparate in value. Seeing the signs of this clearly reflected in contrasting communities like Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County commissioned a study by czb which produced a report in 2015 titled, "Housing Affordability and Economic Equity - Analysis". The headline conclusion:

The imbalance in income, education and opportunity between the jurisdictions along with the segregation that goes with it will hamper the regional economic growth potential of the area. Regions that experience strong and more stable growth are typically more equitable, have less segregation and better balanced workforce skills within them. (All links at end of this post)

This is very relevant to the Ann Arbor station's location. The University of Michigan Medical Center, with approximately 20,000 employees and growing by 700 jobs per year, is the largest job center in the county. This is nearly double the number of jobs available in downtown Ann Arbor. If this center is within a five-minute walk of the station, many people will benefit. On the other hand, if the station is located at Depot Street and Broadway, there is a very real possibility that the housing disparity will be worsened.

Ann Arbor is a victim of its own success. Housing prices are rising steeply as traffic congestion worsens. The largest contributor to this problem is the University of Michigan, especially its Medical Center.

Employees come from all points of the compass, but the largest number come from Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. Together with those arriving from north and south on U.S. 23, they fill all east-west arteries leading to the Medical Center every morning, and again every afternoon. Every artery, with the exception of one: the state-owned east-west railroad.

Meanwhile, communities on the eastern edge of Washtenaw County are experiencing fiscal distress. Those who work as support staff at the University Hospital and Central Campus can't afford to live in Ann Arbor, so many live in the Ypsilanti area. But their commute - whether by car or by bus - is growing longer and more arduous as congestion increases. No relief is in sight for these struggling communities or their residents, because roads cannot be expanded, and even bus rapid transit, which has been proposed by the Regional Transit Authority, cannot be given any dedicated lanes due to space and capacity constraints.

The University of Michigan is actively seeking to take more land near the Medical Center for parking.

Because of the growth that we've been able to enjoy at the medical center, bringing about additional jobs and employment opportunities, as well as expanded service that comes with that growth, obviously we have a demand from the university employees to be able to provide more parking to address their needs as well, [Jim Kosteva, quoted in The Ann Arbor News, October 10, 2017] said.

Even with robust area and university bus systems, automobiles still flood the area, causing concern to residents, according to interviews in The Ann Arbor News, October 10, 2017. The University could have located a medical facility on the land in question. Instead, every new parking facility not only takes land off the City of Ann Arbor tax rolls, but also out of productive use, forcing the University to decentralize medical services to multiple sites. Sharing expert medical staff between dispersed facilities reduces the productivity of highly specialized staff whose time is extremely valuable.

So City, County, University, and staff will immediately benefit if rail service is offered between the Medical Center and other points in the county. This is especially true between Ypsilanti and the Medical Center, because it would dramatically raise the value of housing in areas surrounding the Ypsilanti depot. This is true of both the City and the Township of Ypsilanti, since the depot is in the City, but only a few blocks from the Township. Using census data from 2013, I've analyzed commuter flows in the Detroit Metro area; the largest flow into Ann Arbor is from Ypsilanti Township (8,038), which together with the City of Ypsilanti (3,046) contributed 11,084 daily commuters in 2013.

Rail service, especially if offered as a shuttle, would reduce commuting time from roughly 30 minutes during rush hour to just under 15 minutes. Compared to other options, such as building an elevated transit guideway over Washtenaw Avenue, a rail shuttle is remarkably inexpensive.

Wouldn't this work just as well if the station is at Depot Street?

No.

First because the Depot Street location is within a five-minute walk of well under 5,000 jobs. A station within five minutes walk of 20,000 existing jobs attracts many more riders than a station within 20 minutes walk of those jobs. True, Depot Street is within 10-15 minutes walk of 11,000 jobs in downtown Ann Arbor, and 15-20 minutes of the University's Central Campus. On a beautiful spring or autumn day, it would be a pleasant way to get to work, but there's also summer and winter, rain, snow, and ice. Traffic and parking problems would be right back to haunt everyone during bad weather. Capacity to handle bad weather would be the determining factor for transportation capacity.

Of course, a fleet of buses could be run to take people from Depot Street to Medical and Central Campus, but it would be much quicker and less expensive to take people where most of them need to go in the first place. And buses would need to run from Depot Street to downtown as well, since it's uphill, and in bad weather most people will not want to walk there either.

What about Transit Oriented Development Potential?

Depot Street has greater potential for TOD than the Hospital site, and I'm all in favor of TOD. But as Clark Charnetsky points out, "Why not Development-Oriented Transit?" In other words, the development has already taken place at the Medical Center, so let's bring transportation to it.

Does Ann Arbor really want more intensive development of the Depot/Broadway area? Will further development not raise land values and housing costs even more? It would seem to exacerbate the existing housing disparity rather than resolve it.

But it's a Park!

Some Ann Arborites are very focused on the parkland issue, to the exclusion of many other relevant considerations. As I have pointed out before, there is already plenty of parkland in the vicinity of the Medical Center. The proposed station would reduce the amount of parkland within 3/4 of a mile by about 1.8%. (See calculations of this in the Wake Up Washtenaw White Paper. Ann Arbor Station Location, linked below.)

While those with the means to live in the City of Ann Arbor are concerned about their parks, those in surrounding communities are concerned about their livelihood. People and communities are being financially squeezed by the growing prosperity of Ann Arbor. As is so often the case, one city's prosperity depends on the labor of people who cannot afford to live in a prosperous community.

I'd like to suggest that 1.8% of a prosperous community's parkland is a small sacrifice for the prosperity brought, in part, by the labor of less fortunate neighbors.

But it's not just to help out the neighbors, either. Which is Ann Arbor’s bigger environmental problem: lack of parkland, or too much parking land? According to The Ann Arbor News (October 10, 2017),

UM currently has more than 27,000 spaces in Ann Arbor spread out among 16 parking structures and more than 200 parking over approximately 253 acres of land.

That number is ominously close to the 339 acres of park and recreational land within 3/4 mile of the proposed station site, and does not include any of the Ann Arbor DDA's many parking facilities. So let's find as many ways as possible to reduce the need for parking, and that certainly includes locating a rail station as close as possible to the University of Michigan Medical Center.

To learn more:

• Ann Arbor, City. Train Station Alternatives Analysis Phase II Report Now Available.
• Ann Arbor News, October 10, 2017. University of Michigan seeks input on parking garage planned near hospital.
• Krieg, L. Analysis of Commuter Data in the RTA District.
• Wake Up Washtenaw. White Paper. Ann Arbor Station Location. (PDF)
• Washtenaw County, Office of Economic and Community Development. Housing Affordability and Economic Equity.

An Open Letter on a Contentious Issue

My friend Susan Pollay and I find ourselves on oposite sides of an important question: where should the new Ann Arbor railroad station be located?

I used to favor the Depot Street site, or more precisely a site just a little west of Depot Street on North Main. A few years ago, I reluctantly admitted that wasn't practical, and acknowledged that Fuller Road by the U of M Medical Center made the most sense. Since then, I've put quite a bit of thought into the matter, and advocated publicly for the Medical Center site.

Last night, Susan and I were at a public meeting regarding the station location, at which the announcement was made that the Medical Center location was recommended. Susan voiced her strong disagreement with that decision, requesting more study focused on the development possibilities at Depot Street and the potential impact of connected and autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing services, and other changes in the way automobiles are used. She also left several copies of written comment backing up her (necessarily) brief statement. I am responding to this statement in the open letter which follows:

Dear Susan,

It was good seeing you briefly last night at the Public Meeting on station location. We find ourselves (unusually!) on different sides of this issue, and I'd like to comment in response to some of the points you made in your written statement.

You begin very clearly opposing the location: "I STRONGLY believe that the train station should remain on Depot Street. The City's choice is not sound for many reasons." You dive into the issues discussing the parking recommendation.

The City's study used Amtrak's formula for computing the number of spaces needed. It's good to question that formula: quite possibly it is not appropriate for emerging transportation modalities. And I agree that Amtrak's total lack of parking management is partly responsible for the overcrowding of their lot. Your comparison with the AirRide parking arrangement is insightful and helpful. (Though I have used the free Amtrak parking lot for many long trips, and have often been thankful for whoever is responsible for keeping it free!)

But I have to take exception to this bald assertion: "Fuller Road is an unwalkable location..." Unwalkable? How do you figure that? I've walked there many times, and I'm reasonably confident that hundreds of people walk and bike there every day. Perhaps you mean that it's too far to walk there? Well, that depends on where you expect people to walk to and from. If you're one of the 20,000 or so people who works at the medical complex, it's very walkable. Or perhaps you mean the traffic is so congested on Fuller that it's difficult to cross? With the current traffic signal at Fuller and Emergency Drive, crossing is safe and accomplished daily by hundreds of people - though the wait can be long. I'm a bit more concerned about the safety of pedestrians at the proposed roundabout, but without seeing the plans one can't be specific.

In the next section, you claim that "we learned last year the Connector isn't going happen...". Wait a minute - that's not what I learned! My understanding is that the Connector is being re-evaluated by the University. OK, the light rail plan is looking more ambitious than the City and University expected, but the option of doing nothing is looking just as bad as it did when the plan was first conceived. Something has to be done to better connect the northeast with main campus and downtown. We just don't know what it will look like, except that linking Depot Street with improved connectivity will be more expensive simply because of the geography.

"The report authors must not realize that it's an easy 10 minute walk to/from the Kerrytown District and the Old Fourth Ward and 5 minutes from Lowertown." First, it's not such an easy walk to Kerrytown and especially Old Fourth Ward if you're pulling any amount of luggage. It's uphill. I know. I've done it quite a few times. Try it in winter, with snow cleared imperfectly. It's not for the faint of heart, let alone those with difficulty walking or outright disabilities. Lowertown is a much easier walk, but it's actually just as close to Fuller Road as to Depot Street.

Kerrytown and Old Fourth Ward are popular, quaint neighborhoods, but compared with the number of people employed at the Medical Center and the number of people who visit it daily, they don't have anywhere close to the number of potential passengers. Lowertown is certainly a potential source of station users, but we don't know what will actually emerge there, and as I mentioned, Lowertown is practically equidistant from both sites.

"Yet, there are virtually no humans living within the same radius of the proposed Fuller location." People living near a station may occasionally use the train. People working near a station or visiting near it are far more likely to use the train, especially when regional/commuter service begins. That medical complex is the 800-pound gorilla in Washtenaw County: nowhere else is there such a large number of jobs and visitors in such a compact area.

"Only a very small percentage of UM hospital employees live convenient to the Amtrak rail corridor, so the likelihood of many using the train to commute is slim." Here again you speak with a certainty that that's difficult to support. You also speak as if the future is static, and will look like the present. But you know as well as I do that transportation options shape the development of communities. When Southeast Michigan finally wakes up and gets commuter rail going, the real estate landscape will change, just as it has in regions like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Portland.

My own public comment at the meeting focused on housing disparity between eastern and central Washtenaw County. I want to expand on that elsewhere, but I will point out that several thousand University employees commute daily from eastern Washtenaw to the U of M Medical and Central campuses. This creates a flow of cars and buses that the road system is already incapbable of handling effectively. Ten years ago, the SEMCOG study of the Detroit-Ann Arbor corridor predicted that the Ypsilanti-to-Ann Arbor segment would see the heaviest ridership on the corridor. Today's traffic congestion and bus ridership are demonstrating the validity of that prediction and the need to provide better alternatives.

In short, while the Depot Street options provide potential, the Fuller Road site provides actual riders who seriously need alternatives. That's why I reluctantly had to change my own preference for the Depot Street/North Main location to Fuller Road. I think you'll see the need for locating at Fuller if you step back and look at the needs more holistically.

Your friend,

Larry Krieg

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