Dave Gifford
@DE_Gifford
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Promoting public transit in Detroit at @TransitGuideDET . Husband, father, foster parent, musician, advocate for safer streets.
Warren, MI
Joined September 2017
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The transportation hierarchy of needs. We should put less emphasis on the top of the pyramid until the first four are fully funded & available to all.
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Wow. Buildings lost to highways & parking lots in Detroit.
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I'll accept that transit should be 100% funded by fares when all highways & roads are self funded by tolls.
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I feel like these would sell like crazy if they made these here. I with the US would make & sell quirky vehicles like this instead of supersized, hulking trucks.
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Hot take: Every new subdivision should be designed like a small town with minimal car use, have a central meeting house, tavern, coffee shop, grocery store, park, playground and postal kiosk.
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How did commuting this far by car every day became normalized?
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I think about this image a lot. When a state barely grows population over 40 years but develops 50% more land (including paving roads & widening them), it needs more money to maintain them all. Problem is, no one wants to pay more.
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Looking up Hastings Street before & after they built I-75 in the late 1960's. Helps really give a sense of how much was lost to the highway & urban renewal.
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Then: "We know all our neighbors."
Now: "We hardly know any of our neighbors."
What changed?
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Ford: "With all these strikes, we'll be forced to import our European vehicles."
Me: "Don't threaten me with a good time."
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Let's play a game called "what's a better investment?"
On the left it shows $5 Billion invested in rapid bus, commuter rail and airport bus routes. On the right it shows $3 Billion to add lanes & repair bridges on a 7 mile stretch of highway.
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I'll still never understood why we allowed cities to demolish heavily lined retail districts to widen roads. Here's Michigan Ave looking towards downtown. When you remove the places people shop, you kill the area.
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Okay Twitter, what is this? There was one on the bathroom and one in the broom closet of our Airbnb in Chicago. My 6 year old says it is a fart catcher. It does not go through the ceiling. It is made of plastic.
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Indiana just banned dedicated bus lanes, basically killing the Blue Line project in Indy, a 24 mile bus rapid transit line connecting the airport to downtown & beyond. Thanks
@IndyGOP
for providing me with one more reason not to move back to my family's hometown.
The amendment passes 8-4. The bill will only impact Indianapolis now.
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Scooter companies use geofencing to limit how fast & how far their scooters can operate. It’s time we made automakers do the same thing.
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For those who don't know, the service drive to the left was Hastings Street, which was the heart of Detroit's Black community until the late 50's/early 60's. The city used eminent domain to build a highway over this dense business & residential corridor. They plan to widen it.
I-75 in Detroit. What it looks like today vs what the Michigan DOT plans to transform it into using the funds from the “Reconnecting Communities” grant.
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Brightline is opening a new station at Orlando International Airport. Trains run 7-days a week almost hourly. Could you image service like this in Michigan, connecting DTW to Detroit, Royal Oak & Pontiac but also to Ann Arbor, Lansing & Grand Rapids?
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Another reason Americans can't imagine biking home with a week's worth of groceries is because their grocery stores look like this (👈) and the infrastructure to get there looks like this (👉)
“Try cycling home a week’s worth of groceries”, is the refrain we hear from folks who falsely equate building bike lanes with banning all cars.
The point, of course, isn’t that everyone must feed their family with two wheels instead of four. It’s that they can if they so choose.
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Has anyone thought about building places people want to move to that aren't single family home suburbs that orbit around Target/Kohls plazas?
Michigan faces population crossroads after decades of slow growth, aging
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Today's American dream involves a $400K house, an $80K SUV and a bigger garage for that SUV. Somehow spending $5,000 on a cargo bike to get around is viewed as extravagant & entitled. Weird.
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One of the unsung reasons behind Detroit's population loss was highway building.
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@DFR_Economics
@Forbes
@GWUEconomics
"Cities are being hollowed out... with commerce for residents moving outside the centers of town, leaving the quaint city streets for tourists. Locals need not visit." You are 100% describing what happened to most American cities (1950-present). Cities are for people, not cars.
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A train. All we want is a train. That would be useful to far more people now than an EV corridor will be anytime soon.
NEWS:
@GovWhitmer
Joins U.S. Transportation
@SecretaryPete
Buttigieg,
#Detroit
@MayorMikeDuggan
, and Canadian Minister of Transport
@OmarAlghabra
to Announce First U.S.-Canada Electric Vehicle Corridor
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What kind of city code requires 46 parking spaces at this Burger King??
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Been seeing more of these little trucks for sale on FB Marketplace. If the US ever legalized importing these, it would be game over for the big three truck monopoly.
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Why can we build 4-8 lane highways crisscrossing the entire state, but not enough train track side-by-side to prevent Amtrak from pulling over for freight trains?
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When someone says "no one is forcing people to buy SUVs or trucks." They're not paying attention. The auto industry has artificially created demand by stacking the supply only with bloated, expensive vehicles. They even have our government hooked on them.
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No
@Amtrak
, replacing our train to Chicago with a bus is not acceptable.
@SecretaryPete
we need to fix our damn passenger rail system.
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Here's a visual for reference. For $270M they can create an 8 mile long flex lane or condition hundreds of miles of tracks for 80mph passenger rail service. Guess which one Michigan is prioritizing?
For roughly the same cost as 675 buses or establishing an 80mph train route to Traverse City, MDOT is repaving 8 miles of rural highway & adding X/O signs to designate a flex lane during rush hour. I’m sure it will solve all the congestion problems and have a fantastic ROI /s.
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It should not require a car to:
- Get a COVID test
- Get to work
- Get your kids to school
- Get food
- Run a simple errand
- Reach medical care
- Live
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4 tons of steel & batteries going 0-60 in 3 seconds. A lot of people are going to die.
President Biden floored it behind the wheel of an electric Hummer today in Michigan.
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I promise I'll let this go soon, but here are some examples of placemaking signs done right.
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Here's something to think about. Hudson's was over 2M sq ft and spread out over 32 floors: 25 floors, two half-floors, a mezzanine & four basements. It didn't have parking. Instead there was frequent transit & you simply had big items delivered.
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What if instead of filling in 375 and turning it into a giant road they just trenched it all the way to the river and let the water flow into it creating a big canal? Make it car free on both sides.
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In a country where people regularly buy these $20-30K utility vehicles, which aren't street legal, some farmers are importing these Japanese mini-trucks, which are street legal for much less. Why can't we make them here? You know why.
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Dang. Someone really looked at this and said: "let's build a freeway, through the heart of this." - Detroit 1933.
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Olympia releases concept images for Founders Brewing Building after they acquire it.
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Buildings of Detroit that are now parking lots.
Saturday Night Building.
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Me: "Cars gutted our cities, poisoned the air, killed over 40,000 people a year and cost people over $8,000 a year to own."
Automakers & Government: "We have the perfect solution: More cars! But this time they'll be bigger, faster, more expensive & electric!"
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Car brain is so real that I'm telling myself that $1,900 sounds too expensive for a bicycle, meanwhile I'm over here making $500 monthly overpayments to pay off the car I only use 2X a day to commute to work & back.
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Every year, 1,500 Michigan leaders convene on the state's car free island to discuss how great cars make our state and how to perpetuate its greatness...
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Easy to say when you're a man & will never have to personally risk your life or career to carry a child to term.
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The average car costs $8,000 a year to own, insure & operate. A year's worth of bus passes costs $840.00. Over 20 years you could spend $160,000 on driving or $16,800 on transit. Transit isn't just for those who can't afford a car. Its also for those who want to save money.
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Maybe it wasn't so wise to decimate commercial corridors & their supporting neighborhoods to widen roads & build highways. Just speculating here.
“Developers are seeking to create walkable neighborhoods with less parking; that is a great concept but not totally aligned with the reality the usage,” Hutchings said. “(Residents) are going to have a vehicle, maybe two. We need to recalibrate our expectations about parking.”
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Dear Michigan, I'm looking at living in cities in other states where we can get by with just one vehicle because this ain't it. Driving 20 miles to everything, risking my life daily, insuring & maintaining two cars. Cars are not a symbol of success. They are regional failure.
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@MoDOT_KC
Not your finest hour, evicting 12,000 households so suburban commuters could reach the city faster. Remove the loop. Return the wealth to the city.
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Michigan is going to send a $180 rebate check to every taxpayer, a total of $800M. What else could $800M do?
- Start passenger service between A2 & Traverse City and Detroit to Grand Rapids.
- Build multiple BRT routes
- Fund 1/2 of District Detroit
- Give it to GM
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@urbenist
Officials will say "call a cab or take Uber" but due to our car dependency, we say "I need my car tomorrow day to get to work so I'll chance it" or "I don't want to have to pay for another Uber to go pick up my car tomorrow." 100% a car dependency issue.
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@the_transit_guy
Quite the backstory on this 1926 movie palace that was converted to a parking garage in 1977. "The site of Ford Motor's birthplace replaced by a movie theater, reclaimed by the automobile. A story that could only happen in Detroit."
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How far does $250,000,000 go? It can rebuild & widen 9 miles of one 8-lane wide road or it can recondition 240 miles of track to carry passengers at 80mph.
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Big changes are headed to Corktown Detroit. Estimated at $55 million, supported by a $25 million Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant. Detroit's first Bus Only lanes will also be used to test autonomous vehicles. History 🧵
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"People don't want to buy sedans anymore," says company who doesn't make sedans anymore.
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If you want to know how long ago interurbans used to crisscross they MidWest, look at this beautiful ruin of an interurban bridge outside of Toledo. Never should have shut these down.
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Having to drive 30-45 minutes just to get groceries while paying $1,000 a month for a vehicle that is parked more than it is driven isn't the freedom you think it is.
So funny how people think that a 15 minute city is a communist idea to control the movement of people yet fail to see how a 45 minute suburb, where people's movement is controlled by forcing them to have to use cars to get anywhere (work/food), is actually worse.
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Make pedestrian only lower Woodward permanent.
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AI vision of Detroit with elevated transit, bike lanes & dedicated bus lanes.
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I did not have this on my 2023 Bingo Card. Transit advocates have been begging for a rail line between DTW & Detroit. Thanks to a new proposed line between Cleveland-Detroit-Pontiac, that could actually happen.
@MDOT_Rail
@UrbanizeDetroit
@DTWeetin
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The key to bringing a city "back" is not a mega, taxpayer funded project. Most of those only bring people in for 9-5 office jobs, sporting events or concerts then they drive home. You need 1) affordable places to live 2) amenities for residents & 3) safe public places to exist.
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Hey
@kroger
, if you’re going to sponsor the
@DetroitRedWings
, you could at least build a store or twelve in the city proper.
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This whole repeating pattern of building giant winding subdivisions with zero amenities where everyone has to drive to a major intersection to meet all their needs is just nuts.
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Sometimes I wish that Detroit still had a riverfront district with rail instead of a convention center downtown.
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Looks at a job in Holland, MI. Must relocate. Checks Zillow. Nope. I wonder how much the real estate market is hurting businesses from attracting new employees?
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There's a climate emergency & we have a trillion dollars to spend. What's the best way to spend it?
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If I took $400M in subsidies 10 years ago to build an arena & an entertainment district around it and all I had to show for it was this, I’d have a hard time coming back to ask for $800 million. Don’t given them another dime for District II until District I is finished.
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Was I excited to find a slammed HotWheels bus with a bike on it? Absolutely. It’s called “Ain’t Fare.”
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If you like this Tweet, you'll like this thread. Former Detroit buildings that are now parking lots:
Buildings of Detroit that are now parking lots.
Saturday Night Building.
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This is not a Whitmer problem. This is an overbuilt infrastructure problem that we cannot afford, never could afford and never will afford.
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Metro Detroit basement bar appreciation post.
35615 Briar Ridge Ln, Farmington
28483 Kirkside Ln, Farmington
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Evolution of the Detroit/Windsor Ambassador Bridge plaza on the Michigan side.
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It is a joke that 2 entire city blocks of restaurants & market in downtown Detroit are closed to the public on non-game nights.
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Ford: “We’re restoring the Michigan Central station and designing cars there.”
GM should turn the Renaissance Center into a train station.
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So let me get this straight, for the same price as rebuilding 18 miles of I-75 & adding drainage tunnels & diverging diamonds, we could have 110mph service from Ann Arbor to Traverse City? Sounds like a deal to me.
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Damn shame that
@LCArena_Detroit
doesn’t have a food program to give all the uneaten food to a shelter. Tonight I watched them toss Mahi Mahi, Impossible Burgers, salads, kielbasa, hot dogs, wings, nachos, turkey & beef stroganoff in the trash.
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@WisDOTsoutheast
Look at all that prosperity... I mean empty parking lots, devastated downtown & physical divide from the waterfront. Tear that highway out of downtown. Hopefully the next generation of leaders at WisDOT will be wiser.
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How about we put a happy little road diet right here? Maybe some happy red bus lanes & some green bike lanes. Yeah, that sounds nice.
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We need more than 3 trains a day & more dedicated passenger tracks from Detroit to Chicago. Sold out trains say so.
No
@Amtrak
, replacing our train to Chicago with a bus is not acceptable.
@SecretaryPete
we need to fix our damn passenger rail system.
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A big lesson here is what happens to a big city when it lacks a regional transit system. Detroit purchased the streetcar system from the private interurban system in 1922. We've been trying to build a regional transit system ever since. Meanwhile, downtown became a parking lot.
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Our roads don't make profits but we have no problem spending $270 million on an 11 mile Flex Lane to ease super-commuter traffic. Why then can't we spend that same amount to create a 180 mile passenger rail between DET & Holland that "could make money"?
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Just a quick refresher as to why it floods when it rains. We build homes anywhere & everywhere, cover the whole region in impervious roads & parking lots, bury creeks & streams and so when it rains a lot in a short time, the region floods.
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Jeeze. When your main transportation system is so dangerous that they suggest you not carry any passengers when you drive.
For teen drivers, the risk of a fatal crash increases with each additional teen passenger. Keep teens safe on the road.
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For roughly the same cost as 675 buses or establishing an 80mph train route to Traverse City, MDOT is repaving 8 miles of rural highway & adding X/O signs to designate a flex lane during rush hour. I’m sure it will solve all the congestion problems and have a fantastic ROI /s.
Next phase of I-96 Flex Route construction set to begin early March
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Once upon a walkable city.
Goes against the narrative that "Detroit was built for cars." It was destroyed to accommodate cars. Look at how much land the two highway interchanges use up.
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Why are Detroit's Avenues so wide? They were widened in the 1930's with the idea of running cars & rapid transit on them & subways under them. Instead of subways, they plowed sunken freeways through neighborhoods. These avenues need to be right sized & rapid transit added.
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