Originally Posted by
KnnNike
Oh geez, conspiracy much? Are you a trained transportation engineer or other transit professional? Didn't think so.
QLine "works" as a downtown/midtown "hop on-off" shuttle service. That's how it was intended by Dan Gilbert and other stakeholders who wanted to use it to strengthen their business interests in the area...and ultimately, they financed it, so what they said went.
The problem was that they didn't do anything to discourage the view that it would become the backbone of a regional rail transit system...after all, why would they? They got more support for their project, and after it gets built, there's not much that can be done.
This wasn't some conspiracy by big government; it was simply business interests winning out on something that they were ultimately paying for.
Now is it fixable? Actually, yes. The "fix" would be to shut down the shoulder lanes on Woodward to all automobile traffic, and make these dedicated transit lanes. That would alleviate many of the congestion-related issues that plague the system. You could go one step further and allow buses to continue running in these lanes; then you'd have a win for all transit.
Unfortunately, this is an MDOT road, and time and again history has shown that MDOT doesn't give a flying fuck about Detroit - just look how badly they've let roads like Gratiot [[M3) and Fort [[M85) get. So I don't see that happening any time soon.