Troy Transit Center

The transit center is located in the southwest corner of Troy at 1201 Doyle Drive. It is about southwest of the former Birmingham Station and is situated behind the Midtown Square shopping center. The Oakland/Troy Airport is located just a few blocks away, on the east side of Coolidge Highway. The transit center has fairly easy access from both I-75 and Woodward Avenue (M-1). Designed by local architectural firm Neumann/Smith, the one story, brick building includes a waiting room and restrooms, as well as large expanses of glass that allow natural light to flood the interior. There are 124 spaces for both long and short term free parking. A pedestrian bridge over the tracks allows access to the western platform and protects passengers from inclement weather. There is no ticketing, nor even a Quik-Trak kiosk, and baggage cannot be checked. Station hours are midnight to 2:00 am, 5:00 am to 6:30 am, 10:00 am to 11:30 am, and 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm daily. The station has an elevation of . There is a bus stand in front of the station and, according to the Troy Chamber of Commerce, there would be an estimated 18,200 SMART passengers stopping adjacent to the new transit center annually (about 50 per day). However, SMART buses were banned from the station in December 2016 as part of a long-running issues with the former owner of the land on which the station sits. Of the 22 Michigan stations regularly served by Amtrak, Troy was the thirteenth-busiest in the Fiscal Year 2015, boarding or detraining an average of approximately 64 passengers daily. Although the Troy Transit Center replaced Birmingham station in early October 2014, the ridership for remained consistent following the change of stations. ==History==

In 2000 a real estate developer, Grand/Sakwa Properties, LLC, gave the city of Troy title to land on which to build a new station near the former Birmingham station. However, title to the land was given with the express provision that funding for a transit center be secured within not more than ten years. In 2011, the cities of Birmingham and Troy were awarded a federal grant to assist in replacing the station with a new, multimodal transit center across the tracks in Troy. However, the city of Birmingham backed out of the project in 2008 and the mayor of Troy, Janice Daniels, rejected the funding on ideological grounds, thus terminating the project. The $6.3 million (equivalent to $ million in ) project was resurrected by a subsequent Troy city administration, with a groundbreaking on November 27, 2012 and final completion in October 2013. However, a legal dispute over title to the land under the transit center kept it from opening for another year. with the nearby Birmingham station having permanently closed the day before. Notwithstanding, the initial settlement to acquire the land, it took nearly another year before a final settlement was reached between the City of Troy and Grand/Sakwa Properties, LLC. The final settlement required an additional payment of $3.1 million (equivalent to $ million in ) to Grand/Sakwa Properties, LLC. ==Notes==