N. Michigan Looks to Expand Public Rail System
http://www.9and10news.com/Category/Story/?id=241850&cID=1
Posted: 7/22/2010
Roughly 80 people gathered in Cadillac to ride a passenger train into Traverse City.
Those people included state representatives, local policy, business and community leaders.
This group, along with the public, is looking into Michigan’s freight and passenger rail system and the possibility of expanding it.
Many think a public rail system would not only be good for the region, but for the entire state.
“Transportation drives development, it’s not the other way around,” said Kimberly Pontius, Executive Vice President of the Traverse Area Association of Realtors. “If we hope to see this region grow in a sophisticated way, I think it’s going to be based on the transportation systems and the accessibility.”
Jennifer Profitt and Photojournalist Justin Deprekel have more on the possibility of public train transit.
Michigan By Rail 
Dear Sirs:
Sorry that I missed the meeting at the Civic Center, but I am dedicated to the re-introduction of rail around the world, including here in Northwest Michigan. Please see my website at http://www.greenmillennium.eu for my own projects that include 100% sustainable, high-tech rail proposals that solve more of our looming problems, including food and energy production without petroleum, and energy production without the catastrophic results for global climate change that we are now experiencing!
I am more than happy to contribute to your own efforts, and feel that we must make enormous progress in a very short time, for our children’s sake!
Thank you very much for all that you do!
Yours sincerely,
Kim Gyr
I have always said that we would be very sorry for abandoning most of our railroad right-of-ways and yes, I am talking about the abandonment of the right of way between Traverse City and wherever it goes to along M-22 North. I feel that eventually we in the United States will eventually get the high speed trains they have in Europe and when that happens we will really be sorry that we have abandoned so many railroad right-of-ways.