February 11, 2012 - 10:04pm
Officials cancel plans for Fuller Road station
BY TAYLOR WIZNER
The City of Ann Arbor and the University announced in a press release today that construction of the Fuller Road Intermodal station “as presently designed” will not continue due to complications with federal funding.
The University will continue to build a parking structure, but not necessarily in the space intended for the station. The parking facilities will be built somewhere on the medical campus.
The station was part of a $2.8 million project bringing together the University, Ann Arbor Transit Authority, the Michigan Department of Transportation, AMTRAK and the Federal Rail Administration. MDOT has already acquired commuter trains for Fuller and other projects.
The project formed in 2008 when the University recognized that with the continued expansion and opening of the new Mott Children’s Hospital and the Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital there would be a need for additional parking, Jim Kosteva, the University's director of community relations, said.
Originally, the University had collaborated with the City of Ann Arbor to design a facility that would involve an additional parking structure on Wall Street near the Kellogg Ice Center. However, after some resistance from the neighboring Riverside Park Place condominium during public meetings, the University decided to reconsider the parking location.
The group in charge of the task formed an intermodal project, which would incorporate parking for UMHS as well as serve as a depot for commuter rail, Kosteva said. The group chose Fuller Road.
“We realized that the site of the existing train station – off of Depot Street – isn’t serviced by any buses,” Kosteva said. “Depot Street does not on any active bus lines, compared with Fuller, which has all the University busses moving from Central to North Campus.”
The multi-transport station would have had a covered first floor with a bus stop, close to 900 parking spaces, and a platform for trains, Kosteva said.
“There are 20,000 people that work within a quarter mile radius,” Kosteva said. “There probably isn’t a location along any other major rail line that will have a concentration of that many employees. This way you can serve hundreds or thousands of people who might otherwise drive their individual cars into the medical center.”
Kosteva said the complications with federal funds stemmed from issues with a funding match requirement.
“The federal government will aid us in this project if it is deemed a local match, in which case they would give us 80 percent (aid) and we would have to contribute 20 percent,” Kosteva said. “But before we can get the money to start development, there are a few things that need to happen.”
To qualify for the match, an environmental analysis needs to be completed and the federal rail association must sanction the plan, Kosteva said.
“(The environmental analysis) is an 18-month process at a minimum,” Kosteva said. “Then you can start the clock applying for the funds for the station construction platforms and other improvements. So we, at the University, are sitting here and we look at this as an almost an indefinite period of time.”
Because of the over 500 positions added at the newly-erected hospitals, as well as additional beds, patients and visitors, Kosteva said the demand is too large to wait the period for the federal funds to be assigned.
“As much as we have alternative forms of transportation, some people still need to rely on individual transportation and we need to give them a place to park at a reasonable proximity of their place of work,” Kosteva said. “The phone is literally ringing off the hook with concern.”
One concern the University faces is possibility of losing employees who choose to move to another hospital with easier parking arrangements, Kosteva said.
“These are individuals that now have to come to work 45 minutes or an hour and a half or so early because they have to park, and take a shuttle ride to their place of work,” Kosteva said. “This is another 45 minutes or an hour of time added up that they cannot spend with their families.”
Kosteva said that should the funds come in, the Fuller Road station would still be built but with less parking, Kosteva said.
“We are still committed to the vision, we still see the value to us and to our sustainable transportation objectives,” Kosteva said. “But, we also have some dramatic and immediate needs with parking for the medical center.”
—Daily News Editor Adam Rubenfire contributed to this report.
—This is a developing story. Check michigandaily.com for updates.
