Transportation Riders United (TRU)

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Monday, August 24, 2009
Ann Arbor transportation updates

Our friends in Ann Arbor continue to work hard to improve transportation options. Several recent articles in Concentrate (the Washtenaw version of Model D and metromode) highlighted these efforts:

The University of Michigan's Zipcar fleet has grown . . . to a total of 15 automobiles. Those cars range from Ford Focuses to Honda hybrids to Mini Coopers. . . . Zipcar is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in providing car sharing in urban centers. Users pay a small annual fee to be able to rent a car on an hourly basis, which is often cheaper than renting a car for a day from car-rental company. About 1,400 students, faculty and staff at the university utilize its Zipcar fleet. The fleet has a 45 percentage utilization rate over a 24-7 basis, which is considered ideal because it makes sure a car is always available. Downtown Ann Arbor also started its own Zipcar fleet, which now consists of four vehicles.

Mass transit advocates won one and lost one in Ann Arbor this month.

The Canton Express began operation earlier this week, connecting commuters from the Plymouth/Canton area to downtown Ann Arbor. The bus makes two trips from Canton in the morning and returns twice in the afternoon. It makes stops at the University of Michigan, U-M Hospital and downtown.

Gone is The Link downtown bus. The little purple busses connected downtown and far reaches of U-M's campus with a number of stops in between, similar to how The People Mover works in downtown Detroit. The Link, which has been around for most of this decade, never lived up to ridership expectations and was cut so the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority could maintain other bus services.