Detroit's mass transit woes

I know there is many threads that addresses Bing and Snyder killing the light-rail on Woodward but I want to go back in time to the 70's. According to this piece in last week's story, there was an attempt to get a real transportation system in Metro Detroit.

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Supporters said the light-rail project had been the region’s best chance at a rail-based transit system since the late 1970s, when the city was promised $600 million in federal funding but lost the money when Oakland and Macomb county leaders wouldn’t go along with the plan.

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Now I was a kid in the late 70's so I had no idea back then that the region could have laid the tracks for mass transit but it's a damn shame that the leaders of the region could have came to some form of compromise. I can only imagine what were the factors in this deal being killed.

Suburbanites in fear of Black hoodlums coming in droves in their communities using the rails.

Detroiters in fear that they would lose one of their jewels to the suburbs.

The Big Three didn't want a dip in sales in their home market.

For the older posters maybe you have explained this before but what was the attitude during that time?

Finally, imagine if they would built the damn thing, how would Metro Detroit had turned out?

Well I guess 600 million was a nice enough sum to get things going back in the mid to late seventies. The cost of construction nowadays is very high in regard to the value of property and
all other variables in the economy. We are at a time when all the highways that were built in the sixties are in need of overhauls and that adds pressure to transit infrastructure costs. The demand is high, so the costs are high.

I think that whatever had been invested then would have profited the city and burbs in the long run. Mobility equals opportunity and diversity. If you take suburban trains or subways in a big city; you are in relation with multiracial, multi-class people. You become aware of what makes the city tick, there is less fear and loathing than if you are riding solo over miles of city in your car, whether you are low or high income. Detroit missed opportunities, and the only way to progress is for the region to adopt another way of seeing the city as a place of human exchange. Anything short of that will kill it slowly and inexorably.

But the good news is the slate is relatively clean, and new transit systems, better urban planning are available, and therefore, a more modern city can arise. That is why the Snyders of this world are way off the mark if they look at Michigan as undeserving of the best transit available.

Why are places like India and China and Brazil that were looked upon as third world 20 years ago leading the world in the use of new technology? Why should Detroit stay the way it is when a hundred years ago it had one of the best tramway systems anywhere, more cars and buses than probably any other metropolis in the world per capita? Detroit is the turnaround city I am keeping my eyes on.

As I indicated in previous posts on the other threads there have been other fits and starts...in recent history [[40 years or so) Oakland county has always been the skunk at the garden party when it came to regional plans with L Brooks being the most identifiable head skunk. Macomb huffed and puffed but Oakland has led the way.

Detroit got the money. They built the People Mover with the money, and we're all the better for it.

Maybe Detroit got some of the money, but the People Mover didn't cost anything like $600 million dollars. I believe it was roughly $200 million, which it still wasn't worth, and I say that as someone who kind of likes it.

I think the main reason that there hasn't been any significant investment in transit in Detroit in the past 50 years is not any particular person, but rather that the vast majority of the area's population doesn't see it as having any benefit to them. The Detroit area, rather than trying to deal with traffic by diverting trips to other modes and encouraging denser development patterns, built as many highways as possible. In places where there is real transit, even if most people don't use it, it still provides obvious benefits to people who don't use it. For instance, in Boston the traffic is so horrendous, and not just in the center city, that if people who take the T had to drive instead, commuting times would probably at least double. That really isn't the case in Detroit, where everything is spread out all over the place.

There are two main arguments for transit in the Detroit area. One is to provide mobility to people who for whatever reason [[youth, old age, drinking problems, disability, poverty) can't drive, and the other is facilitate the creation of some portion of the urban area which could appeal to that portion of the population which wants pedestrian-friendly development. Unfortunately, neither of these has been adequately compelling to get it done over the past half-century.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

I think the main reason that there hasn't been any significant investment in transit in Detroit in the past 50 years is not any particular person, but rather that the vast majority of the area's population doesn't see it as having any benefit to them.

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Bingo.

The problem is exacerbated because of some on the Detroit side feel entitled to political and financial support from the suburban counties. Now that attitude may stem from feeling of past unjust treatment, it may come from valid complaints about how they've been burned by bad policy, or it may come from ignorance.

But you add a group of people who don't think they'll benefit + a group that feels slighted for not being given what they feel they're owed...you have the molotov cocktail of nothing getting anything done.

In another thread, I said something about the suburbs, stating that, "Well, we need the suburbs more than they need us right now." [[Us being Detroit).

I'm sure that may have offended some and been overly blunt, if not overly simplistic. But the reality is that we Detroiters need to sell our wealthier brethren about how supporting such a system will be better for THEM in the long run. That might a direct benefit, such as service to their specific municipalities or a disproportionate share of the revenues...or it may be an indirect benefit, showing how making a healthier urban center results in regional economic growth.

Either way, instead of complaining about why "x won't do this" or "y won't do that"...we need to find a better way to sell the idea that "doing x will help us, but also look at how it can help you".

For some reason, this is a difficult attitude to take with many Detroiters, because to do so is perceived as bowing to the someone more powerful.

Well, like it or not, they are the ones who hold the power. So if you don't want to admit that publicly, then just shut up and step aside so that someone else can try to get a deal done.

Or, we can start rehearsing "Onward Christian Soldiers" in 4-pt harmony.