Detroit People Mover

[140 Southshore]

The Detroit People Mover is a circular loop around downtown Detroit. Opened in 1987, it uses the same technology as the Skytrain and the Scarborough RT.

Anyways, one of their trains derailed yesterday.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/01/22/detroit-people-mover-derails/22198605/

A Detroit People Mover car jumped a rail and hit a platform tonight, closing down the elevated downtown rail service, officials said.

No injuries were reported. It wasn't immediately clear how the rail car left the track just after 10 p.m. near the Rosa Parks Transit Center.

[TheAverageJoe]

The Detroit People Mover is a circular loop around downtown Detroit. Opened in 1987, it uses the same technology as the Skytrain and the Scarborough RT.

Anyways, one of their trains derailed yesterday.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/01/22/detroit-people-mover-derails/22198605/

Wonder if it picked the switch that leads to the shop track?

[140 Southshore]

Wonder if it picked the switch that leads to the shop track?

I don't know, but I know it didn't collide with any other trains, which would be impossible anyway without using the switch you mentioned.

[Oc4526]

I think he ment Jumped the switch

[TheAverageJoe]

I think he ment Jumped the switch

Yes

[140 Southshore]

The People Mover will close tomorrow for major track maintenance. It will reopen on the 26th.

http://www.thepeoplemover.com/about-dpm/news-center/june-12-24-closure-information-read-here/

[140 Southshore]

It appears that the death of a man who was run over by a People Mover train has turned out to be worse than what had been thought. According to his family, "he was dragged for 14 minutes through eight different stops."

http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/159497482-story

[140 Southshore]

Both cars in one of the consists are currently wrapped for Sprint.

I had just missed riding that train, but it runs frequently anyways. Here's the one I ended up boarding:

The brakes sounded horrible, even more so when it rounded a curve. That goes to show you how to leave a train unmaintained since 1987!

[140 Southshore]

And yet another update about last May's death. Looks like a lawsuit is looming despite security system updates...

http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/video-safety-upgrades-lawsuit-reveal-how-mans-death-on-people-mover-could-have-been-prevented

[140 Southshore]

Here's what a ride was like in 1991, with the original announcements. Things certainly were different back then!

 

[ShadowFoxNixill]

The DPM is enjoying early starting hours, beginning operation at 5:30am daily through Saturday, due to the FIRST Championship.

[ShadowFoxNixill]

Now on weekends, and permanently starting in March, the People Mover will run counter-clockwise again.

[dtwtransit]

I've been on the DPM frequently this summer, and didn't think to post any updates here until now, so here's a digest of People Mover events since the May 20th reopening:

I've only seen five cars in service since the reopening in May: #6, 7, 9, 10, and 11. One might assume the other six are out of commission from the flood that delayed the reopening from summer 2021.

The former four have been in service since reopening. #6-7 reentered with the Shipt livery (this pair ran the first service out of Mich Ave on the first day) but currently bears a special one for Connect Marketplace Detroit, and #9-10 reentered with the NIO livery but now bear a special livery from Herbalife Extravaganza in July. #11 has run with the Fishbones livery since reentering the week of June 24th.

#6, 7, 9, and 10 were all briefly wrapped with a special livery for Hermes's opening at Somerset during the weekend of Motor City Pride. I'm frankly impressed with the speed with which the Hermes branding appeared and disappeared, lol. The Shipt livery retained the white cab ends from Hermes (as can be seen in the picture I put up on the system's Wikipedia page) until they were redone for Connect Detroit.

For most of the summer, the previous Winter-Spring 2020 Station to Station guides were on the trains - they were removed for a couple of weeks and replaced with "Art in the Stations" pamphlets (which I believe are from 2006) but later returned. I nabbed a couple of 2008 S2S guides that got mixed in with those. The trains don't currently have literature on board (a DTC employee says they're waiting on a shipment of new S2S guides) but there are still some 2020 guides in the RenCen station lobby, as well as a handful of copies of an older guide with a KPMG-liveried train on the cover. A few art guides are still available in the DTC headquarters lobby on the 4th floor of the Buhl Building.

Closed stations are currently announced by "The next station is (silence)," and the following open station is announced as normal but only upon arrival. A new announcement was recorded for Huntington Place following its second renaming, though West Riverfront is still announced as Joe Louis Arena. New signs have been put up on the platforms at both stations, though the signs opposite the track at West Riverfront are still the original JLA signs.

The system shut down unexpectedly from 4:45pm on 8/25 and was on and off for the next couple of days. A train was stopped at Grand Circus with a security guard onboard, who said it was due to a track problem.

DPM ran modified service from 7a-4:45p yesterday (9/15/2022) to avoid Huntington Pl for security reasons during President Biden's visit to the Auto Show. One train (#6/11) ran back and forth between Greektown and Financial District, while another (#9-10) ran back and forth between Greektown and Fort/Cass. Fort/Cass and RenCen reopened yesterday for the first time since the COVID shutdown. They went back to normal service at about 4:45pm (15 minutes ahead of schedule) followed by a very long headway at Greektown (ask me how I know haha). This mode of operation was last used, as far as I know, in 2013 during the construction at Grand Circus Park, with trains running from Times Sq to Millender and Millender to Broadway.

Going into Auto Show week, we'll see if any automaker carries on the tradition of a special livery for NAIAS.

 

[dtwtransit]

On 9/16/2022 at 10:48 PM, dtwtransit said:

Going into Auto Show week, we'll see if any automaker carries on the tradition of a special livery for NAIAS.

Alas, there was not.

There are two new liveries out though:

This one, for KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, was first spotted on a test run on October 23rd, and was in service on cars #6-7 and #9-10 the next day. It keeps the silver ends from Connect Marketplace, and the side color isn't terribly clear from the photo, but it's a blue-to-purple gradient, with blue at the end where it says "DETROIT 2022."

If you ask me this is about as modern and stylish as you'll ever get these old things to look. One of the better liveries in recent years, and it's still running on #6-7 as of today.

 

The other, which just recently appeared on #9-10 (I first saw it today), is for United Wholesale Mortgage. It has a somewhat similar yellow-turquoise-blue gradient on top with a dark blue stripe on the bottom.

With it, the sky blue fleet numbers (from the NIO livery) on this pair, which had stuck around through Herbalife, were replaced with white numbers on the windows to match #6-7.

UWM had previously done an ad wrap years ago under their former name, United Shore, with one car blue and the other orange. It's nice to see that DTC has once again attracted a corporate client, rather than only convention liveries sponsored by the Convention and Visitors' Bureau.

[dtwtransit]

#1-5 and #8 have still not been seen in service since the shutdown.

Also, West Riverfront is now announced as such.

[UnitedTransit]

On 1/16/2023 at 9:21 PM, dtwtransit said:

Alas, there was not.

There are two new liveries out though:

This one, for KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, was first spotted on a test run on October 23rd, and was in service on cars #6-7 and #10-11 the next day. It keeps the silver ends from Connect Marketplace, and the side color isn't terribly clear from the photo, but it's a blue-to-purple gradient, with blue at the end where it says "DETROIT 2022."

If you ask me this is about as modern and stylish as you'll ever get these old things to look. One of the better liveries in recent years, and it's still running on #6-7 as of today.

 

The other, which just recently appeared on #9-10 (I first saw it today), is for United Wholesale Mortgage. It has a somewhat similar yellow-turquoise-blue gradient on top with a dark blue stripe on the bottom.

With it, the sky blue fleet numbers (from the NIO livery) on this pair, which had stuck around through Herbalife, were replaced with white numbers on the windows to match #6-7.

UWM had previously done an ad wrap years ago under their former name, United Shore, with one car blue and the other orange. It's nice to see that DTC has once again attracted a corporate client, rather than only convention liveries sponsored by the Convention and Visitors' Bureau.

That first one is actually not that bad. Though there were some times, like during Youmacon, an anime convention in Detroit at the Cobo Hall/Huntington Place and the Renaissance Center, that the People Mover looked like it was just business as usual even though there were cosplayers getting to and from the different hotels and the 2 venues the convention was held at. 

[dtwtransit]

I was in attendance at Transportation Riders United's annual State of Transit meeting on Tuesday, in which the DTC's director spoke.

He stated that while the DPM currently runs two trains at a time (which I've discussed at length here), he hopes they'll be able to run four trains at a time with three-minute headways (as was the norm pre-pandemic) by the end of May to prepare for increased crowds during the summer. Four trains means eight cars - given that still only five are known to be operable, that'll mean that if all goes well, we'll finally see at least some of the six missing cars in the coming months. I was nearly convinced those were damaged beyond repair and would never be seen again; I guess the People Mover is about to make a liar out of me.

He also mentioned that the DTC had applied for federal grant funding to replace a portion of the People Mover's fleet. I'm not sure what that would look like, given that the only direct replacement (the INNOVIA Metro Mk III) has only been built with cars much longer than the existing ICTS cars (perhaps they'd shorten them for the DPM), or how the Alstom takeover would affect this.

In addition, it was stated that the two remaining closed stations (Cadillac Center and Times Square) are bogged down by elevator issues, and are slated to reopen once those are resolved, though no timeline was given. There is also talk of a temporary system closure this fall for track repairs, and a potential fare increase to $1 with integration into the Dart system used by SMART and DDOT.

[dtwtransit]

No changes as of this past week - #6-7 and #9-11 are still the only cars being used in service, and all liveries have been the same since January.

[dtwtransit]

Following last week's abrupt shutdown, the DPM had a couple of days in which only one train (#9-10) was in service. That changed today though...

Car #2 was seen in service today, for the first time since the 2020 shutdown!

[dtwtransit]

As of today, the People Mover is now running three trains at a time in regular service, with roughly 5½-minute headways. #6-7 (KubeCon), #9-10 (UWM) and #2/#11 (Fishbone's) were all in service today.

Car #2 still announces West Riverfront as "Joe Louis Arena;" not sure what it does for Huntington Place. The interior has some old pre-pandemic ads.

[dtwtransit]

New livery just rolled out on #6-7 and #9-10 for Priority Waste, a local trash company, cosponsored by the upcoming Detroit Grand Prix.

#2 and #11 are still Fishbones.

[dtwtransit]

Cadillac Center quietly reopened on Tuesday, 5/23. I found this out by accident yesterday, and gave the control room a call to confirm the reopening date. This leaves TSq as the last remaining closed station.

[dtwtransit]

On 2/5/2023 at 5:10 PM, dtwtransit said:

...he hopes they'll be able to run four trains at a time with three-minute headways (as was the norm pre-pandemic) by the end of May to prepare for increased crowds during the summer. Four trains means eight cars - given that still only five are known to be operable, that'll mean that if all goes well, we'll finally see at least some of the six missing cars in the coming months.

They didn't meet their goal: the current operational fleet is still just those six cars: 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11. Only the yellow pairs were running during the Grand Prix, in spite of some major crowds:

[dtwtransit]

New livery is out on #6-7 (first spotted on Sunday) promoting WWE's SummerSlam at Ford Field next weekend.

This one was pasted directly over the Priority Waste livery- you can see lots of exposed yellow if you look closely, plus the outline of its text shows through. They also seem to have printed the wrong dimensions for the windows...

#9-10 have been out for a couple days so we might see this livery on those soon too.

[FlyerD901]

Has there been an actual order to replace the existing fleet. Or it's still in the planning stages?

Too bad they're not investing to rebuild or add a track for travel in both directions instead of a continuous loop.