On Monday, top transit leaders from the Obama Administration and from Portland, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City came to Detroit to share their experience and offer tips for developing a successful transit system. 
The invitation-only audience included city, suburban, county, state, and congressional officials, M-1 Rail funders, a few media and transit advocates including TRU.
As reported in the Free Press:
Acknowledging the region’s chronic inability to cooperate on public transportation, Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff sounded an optimistic tone, saying other cities have overcome similar obstacles to building regional transit.
"A rail and expanded-transit footprint for Detroit has been talked about for decades," Rogoff said. "We want to be instrumental in helping turn that talk into real progress, a real project and real prosperity that comes with that project."
Bill Shea’s blog in Crain’s added:
The theme from the panelists was clear: Any system has to be part of a larger vision, not just running tracks from point A to B. . . .
The executives also warned that getting the first piece of the system right is absolutely critical because the public and anyone interested in investing along the line has to have buy-in for ridership and economic development to grow.