EDITORIAL: The University of Michigan Must Pay For Its Employee Transit Not Ann Arbor Residents

THE CITY’S 2015-2020 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) focuses on projects that city staff suggest will “provide for large, physical improvements that are permanent in nature that are needed for the functioning of the community, including transportation, parks, utilities, and municipal facilities improvements.” In fiscal year 2015, the CIP includes $47 million dollars in spending related to what is now referred to as “The Ann Arbor Station,” a train station —the construction of which—no City Council or public vote has ever approved.

Mayor Hieftje and Council members Briere, Taylor and Teall all support using land belonging to the public for a Fuller Road train station. They have also voted repeatedly to use General Fund money to pay for drawings and other expenses related to the project. A train station on Fuller Road parkland, elected officials have said, would allow University of Michigan employees, particularly  those who work in the hospital complex, to commute to work by train. A train station would also allow patients who seek treatment at the hospital complex to get to appointments more easily.

It is important to convince University of Michigan officials to fund their own alternative transit, if only for environmental reasons. It’s a hard sell: U of M makes millions of dollars each year from both their own employees as well as visitors who use the parking facilities. The University of Michigan withdrew their planned participation in a project to construct a 900 car parking garage on the same parcel of Fuller Road parkland when it became clear there was opposition to using parkland for transit and public money to build a parking garage, the bulk of the spaces in which would have been handed over to U of M via 75 year lease. Unfortunately, U of M is constructing two 600 car parking towers on Maiden Lane, across from the Kellogg Eye Center.

Meanwhile, officials except those at the University of Michigan, whose employees and transit budget stand to benefit the most, continue to push the use of public money to build a train station on the Fuller Road parcel. Ann Arbor’s mayor,  a handful of City Council members, Ann Arbor’s county commissioners and state-level elected officials frame the debate in a variety of ways, including a focus on transit as a social justice issue. It’s important to note that the University of Michigan M PAC, funded by top-level administrators at the University of Michigan Hospital, makes regulars donations to State Senator Rebekah Warren, and has also supported State Representative Jeff Irwin and State Representative Gretchen Driskell.

A train station that materially and primarily benefits the University of Michigan and its employees must be paid for and operated by the University of Michigan and its employees. Fobbing off onto the public the cost of this proposed transportation infrastructure improvement by including it in the city’s 2015-2020 Capital Improvement Plan is totally unacceptable. Using local tax dollars to build a train station for the benefit of the University of Michigan reinforces what has become an unhealthy sycophantic relationship between Ann Arbor’s elected officials and U of M.