The Mount Pleasant City Commission this week called “all aboard” to a committee designed to take a closer look at bringing passenger rail service to town.

In a unanimous vote Monday night, the board gave its blessing to the formation of a new Passenger Rail Service Advisory Committee. The group is part of a broader North-South Rail Project partnership aimed at studying the viability of an alternative connection between Northern and Southern Michigan.

“A rail line would profoundly impact our community,” an excited Commissioner Boomer Wingard said, following the vote. “I think in other communities, it’s looked at as a vacation rail line, but it would have a profound impact on the populations of communities here in our area, because it would open up that resource.”

The passenger line has been spearheaded by the Traverse City-based Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities. According to the organization’s website, the plan envisions passenger service from Ann Arbor to Petoskey with possible stops in Alma, Mount Pleasant and Clare.

In 2018,Groundwork partnered with the Michigan Department of Transportation and Bay Area Transportation Authority on a feasibility study that found the state already owned nearly all of the track needed to for the passenger line, in the form of freight railroads.

And while there would be capital costs associated with bringing the lines up to speed, the study projected as many as 36.1 million trips could generate up to $113 million per year by 2050.

Although COVID slowed the process a bit, city documentation shows it continued chugging along and even picked up speed recently, thanks to a $1.3 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant and funding from the state Department of Labor & Economic Opportunity.

The project is now in phase two, which involves studying detailed aspects of the route, such as track conditions, proposed schedules, cost estimations and potential station locations.

Mount Pleasant’s committee – comprised of City Manager Aaron DeSentz, Downtown Development Director Michelle Sponseller and City Engineer Stacie Tewari – will be tasked with, among other things:

· Examining ridership data, possible station spots and associated infrastructure needs

· Looking at the governance of the passenger rail service and

· Providing info and recommendations to support the development of the rail service.

Committee members will serve a two-year term, according to the city documentation. A larger group or stakeholders, which could include members of the community, will be formed at a later date, and a public update is expected this fall.

Commissioner Maureen Eke, a Central Michigan University professor of English, said passenger rail service would have a local impact beyond getting from one spot to another

“If we’re thinking about … economic sustainability and also growth in our community, this is needed,” she said. “It is a needed resource not just for the people in our community, but also for our students.

“I hope the community will support this, and I hope that we work toward making this a reality because it will open up our community to a whole lot of things.”