The state of Michigan has awarded $65-million in grants, spread across 15 counties, to expand public transit.
Many of the grants are for rural counties. Roscommon County will receive a three-year, $3,371,763 grant to extend its on-demand, door-to-door system to neighboring Oscoda County, which has no public transit option of its own.
Steve Dubois is head of the Roscommon County Transportation Authority. He says the system also will pick people up from hospitals in Traverse City, which is more than an hour away from most places in the two counties.
"We have no hospitals in the counties whatsoever," Dubois said. "For emergent medical, everyone is transported out of county. If you don't have someone living with you or nearby or a neighbor you can rely on, how are you going to get home after that happens? So when they need medical attention in the middle of the night, and they get released at 1 a.m. from Traverse City, because that's where they ended up ultimately, we can go pick them up and bring them back home."
Other grants include:
- $10 million to replace nine aging rail cars used by the Detroit People Mover
- $5,986,000 for the U.P's Delta County to expand the Delta Area Transit Authority into a countywide public transportation network serving all of Delta County
- $6,371,000 to unify Berrien County's public transit system, bringing the county’s four fragmented urban and rural transit systems into a coordinated regional network.
- $6,600,000 to establish a high-capacity transit connection along one of the heaviest used routes between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor
- $9,980,000 to expand Genesee County's public transit system with a technology-enabled, on demand microtransit service, using smaller vehicles and a mobile app to provide rides within designated areas.
- $571,000 to create a four-county regional transit network connecting the Mass Transportation Authority (MTA), Saginaw Transit Authority Regional Services (STARS), Greater Lapeer Transportation Authority (GLTA) and Shiawassee Area Transportation Agency (SATA)
- $94,750 to study a redesign of Benzie County's public transportation system to include microtransit, enhanced demand response, and scheduled connections, as well as assess possible connections to neighboring counties and transit systems across the northwest Lower Peninsula
- $1,069,000 for an an app-based, shared on-demand microtransit service designed to provide reliable and safe transportation across Michigan State University’s campus when fixed-route service is reduced or unavailable
- $1,110,000 to add three accessible vehicles and two new weekday routes to Ionia County’s countywide microtransit service
- $621,047 to support proposed service enhancements in northwest Ottawa County, extending hours to help residents who have difficulty finding transportation in the evening
- $587,478 to Saginaw Transit Authority Regional Services to support a four a day, Monday through Thursday regional transit connection linking Midland, Delta College, Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) and MBS International Airport.
- $2 million for the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan's to plan and engineer potential transit improvements in downtown Detroit.
- $6 million for The Rapid to add transit service during major events in downtown Grand Rapids, addressing spikes in travel demand associated with the Acrisure Amphitheater, the planned Amway Soccer Stadium, Van Andel Arena, DeVos Place and DeVos Performance Hall.
- $678,366 for Thunder Bay Transportation Authority to establish on-demand service in Montmorency County, basing vehicles and drivers locally to address travel distances associated with dispatching vehicles from Alpena, and shorten response times and reduce miles traveled without passengers.
The full list of grants can be seen here.
