An FAQ:

These are not questions I've been asked by others, but questions I've asked myself about this thing:

How can you really justify spending a quarter of a billion dollars (or more) on this thing?
Well, it's hard. But I truly believe that if Flint is ever going to redevelop we're going to have to spend a lot of money on projects that make it a more attractive place to live. Flint's got a bad reputation (unfairly, I think) now, people don't want to live there. If it could be made into a trailblazer of 21st Century small-city public transit, wouldn't that be the best way to change that?

So why not just buy more buses and run them more often for 1/10th the price?
There would be more buses to go with FAST. But I believe that there's a mindset change that goes with investing the money and laying the tracks. It brings permanence.

Okay, where do we get this money?
How the heck should I know? This is conceptual at this point and if there's support, I have no doubt we can find the money somewhere.

Why does the route go where it goes? Why does it not serve the North End or Eastside?
A very fair question and the answer is complicated. In short, I believe that the project as it is now is on a buildable scale. Light rail costs somewhere between $20 and $50 million per mile. Personally, I think the FAST system would come in on the low end of that range, but even at $20 million/mile the cost is huge. So, with that said, I chose a route that, I believe, would do the most good for Flint. New bus lines from areas not served directly by FAST would pick up the slack. And if it were successful, the first expansion I have in mind would be a line straight up Sagniaw St. to Pierson Rd. and and an extension from East Village out to Courtland Center.

In addition, the western portion of the route from Genesee Valley to Chevrolet Ave. utilizes an existing abandoned railroad grade, which will make construction there a breeze and keep costs down.

Streetcars go in the street, no? How would this be faster than a bus where it shares the road with cars?
I have something different in mind. I'm not an engineer, but I want FAST to act like a rapid-transit outfit, not a traditional streetcar. Therefore, I'm noodling around ways to keep the FAST's right-of-way as separate as possible from traffic where it shares the street with cars. I will write more about this, and hopefully have some very simple sketches to show you, but basically the idea is that the roads will be reconstructed so that the train has its own lane, and traditional traffic lights protect it when it crosses another street at grade. Thus, it can go faster than traffic and drivers don't have to worry about getting run into by streetcars.

One track or two?
One, in most places. Comptuers can do wonderful things, and most of the line will be single tracked with passing tracks at necessary intervals. As I said, I'm not an engineer, that'll be a detail that would be hammered out some time on.

Why the Downtown Loop? Why drop another $50 million to add two stations?
They're two important stations. The Farmer's Market and Cultural Center are touchstones of Flint's civic life. They need to be directly served. And the downtown loop will allow for people to get around downtown more easily. The idea is that someone could take FAST in on a Saturday morning and spend the day downtown, riding FAST to get around. There would be a train that only ran around the Downtown Loop, which would operate in a circular fashion. This is to say, eastbound FAST trains would go south around the loop (down Saginaw St.), while westbounds would go north (to the Cultural Center).

The Downtown Loop is optional, however. I would advocate for it to be built with the rest of the system, but it could be built later.

What would these trains/streetcars/light rail vehicles look like?
You can get a good general idea from this website.

I'll have more FAQs as I think of them or as people ask me. Please feel free to do so.

Next: A station-by-station examination of the route!