According to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, there will be light rail running between Ann Arbor and Detroit in less than 23 months. A report by the Michigan Messenger today says that Carmine Palombo, the director of transportation at South East Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), while not officially having approved the project yet, supports it, and believes that it can be accomplished by the Governor’s deadline.

As I understand it, most of the major, non-budgetary hurdles have been cleared. The big problem at this point just appears to be money. According to Palombo and others, the line will most likely qualify for federal funds, but those funds would not be available until the route has been active for three years, carrying over 1,000 people per day. The question is, how do we pay for it now.

Hopefully, someone out there can explain this to me… As I recall, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, during her recent campaign, took credit for acquiring $100 million in federal grants to establish an east-west passenger rail line connecting Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Metro Airport, Dearborn and Detroit. Has that money already been spent? And, if so, how much more are we talking about? Is it millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions?

Another question I have involves a comment made by John B O’Reilley, the Mayor of Dearborn, during a recent presentation about the line. O’Reilley stated that, at the outset, the train may only run four times a day. First off, I’m not sure if that’s four one-way trips, or four round trips. Second, either way, it seems to me that it would be near impossible to get 1,000 commuters hooked with such a limited schedule. Would a thousand people take the train to work knowing that, later in the day, there would only be one or two trains headed back home? Would people take the train knowing that if they missed that train back, for whatever reason, they’d be sleeping at the Detroit train station? That seems like a deal killer to me. And, unless some folks like arriving at the airport four hours prior to their flight, I can’t really see it working for people flying out of Metro Airport… But maybe I’m missing something… Here’s the video.

[note: We’ve discussed the Detroit / Ann Arbor line here before.]

The New York Times has an article today on William Clay Ford Jr., and his work behind the scenes to transition the American automotive industry away from oil, and toward a more sustainable future. Here’s a clip:

…William C. Ford Jr., the executive chairman and scion of the founding family of the Ford Motor Company, has been preparing for a bigger role in the industry’s plan for survival.
While General Motors and Chrysler plead to Congress for a bailout, Mr. Ford has reached out to President-elect Barack Obama in hopes that his company can benefit from the administration’s longer-term strategies for the auto industry.

Mr. Ford has been working behind the scenes, meeting one-on-one with Mr. Obama in August, conferring with his senior economic advisers, and teaming up with Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan to push a vision of a leaner, greener auto industry.

With Detroit on the brink of disaster, the great-grandson of Henry Ford could play a critical role in how the Obama administration decides to assist the companies financially and shape broader energy policies…

It’s not mentioned in the article, but Ford, through the Detroit Economic Club, which he’s chairman of, is presently planning a “National Summit” on Technology, Energy, Environment and Manufacturing. The event, which is intended to bring together leaders from industry, government and academia, is scheduled too take place June 15-17 at Ford Field.

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s trying to bring everyone together like this. When I heard Ford speak in late 2007, he stressed that it had taken a meeting like this in Europe for all parties concerned to 1) decide that clean diesel would become the standard, and, then, 2) put incentives and infrastructure in place to make it happen. Clearly, Ford thinks it’s possible to do something similar here — to get all the vested parties together, and, for the sake of the country, to come to an agreement as to what America’s transportation future will look like… One just hopes that next June isn’t too far off.

Oh, one last thing that I found interesting… In the New York Times article, Ford points out that we’re woefully behind in our capacity to manufacture the kinds of battery systems that will be required by electric vehicles. Here’s a clip:

…”One of the things we need to sort out as a country is batteries,” Mr. Ford said. “We really don’t want to trade one foreign dependency, oil, for another foreign dependency, batteries.” The main producers of batteries are Asian manufacturers…

Ford, for what it’s worth, is also a proponent of a gas tax, or at least he was. Like David Cole, who I’ve quoted here before, he’s seen promising alternative energy projects scrapped in the past when the price of fuel dropped and he doesn’t want to see it happen again… One imagines both increased funding for next generation battery systems, and the setting of a floor on the price of gasoline will be among those things discussed in June.

update: Since I posted this a few days ago, the Detroit Economic Club has launched a website for the National Summit.