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The Engineering dean was one of many who spoke at a hearing took yesterday at SEMCOG in the Buhl Building.
Pro Detroit organizer woman asked the republican led Senate transportation committee why they didn't publicize the event on the sides of buses.
She's on the 3rd audio clip at this link.
http://www.michigannow.org/2012/02/2...pling-detroit/
I agree with her whole heartedly...
I would say worse than 3rd world. I have been to poorer countries where you can still get around very cheaply and with little hassle comprared to the Detroit and Detroit metro area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaiko
It's kind of a silly comment, because developing world cities obviously have good transit, by necessity.
Even in Sub-Saharan Africa, or wherever, there's frequent and comprehensive transit of some sort, though it may be dirty, rudimentary, etc. If 90% of the households don't own cars, there will be transit, even if we're talking hard core poverty. Usually privatized, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
True, and by that logic Detroit should have frequent and comprehensive transit. Some 30% of Detroit households don't have a car, and I imagine over half the population drives dangerous, unreliable shitboxes they have to share with their whole families..
You might add that the second world and first world also have better transit. We're really one of the only places in the world who don't see transit as a priority. One of the many reasons company don't want to invest here and people don't want to live here.
That U-D professor social know-it-all calls Detroit public transit system a "3rd world". That's were are creating and whine to leaders about it. At least D-DOT got some new 1st classes buss than SMART.
Sounds about right.
So Detroit's transit is worse than third world then?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
At the heart of this is the problem inherent when you have two classes at opposite ends of the polar opposite scale living with each other.
If this was a true 3rd world country, Bham1982 is right. We would have private operators driving man- or horse-drawn carriages. And it would be fine.
The problem is when 3rd world people are living in a 1st world country, requiring them to meet 1st world expectations, which they can't, and preventing them from 3rd world strategies to survive.
Did I just call some people in Detroit "3rd world people"? Yes. I'm referring to the severely impoverished. That group which boasts 10% literacy at an 9th-12th grade level. That group that has household income under $25,000 with 3 children and a single mom.
What is the solution for this? I have no idea. But even the least intelligent can do manual labor, can farm, can hunt. The problem is that in an industrialized world, those roles simply no longer exist and these people have been left behind. Who is to blame is irrelevant. We are all paying the price for having very poor, very uneducated try to live in a highly industrialized, highly educated world.
This is not me advocating for socialism.
Whether or not you think public transit in Detroit is 3rd world is irrelevant. The overarching problem is what do you do with large numbers of the very poor and very uneducated trying to survive in a world that left them behind 50 years ago?
If you think that the greater good is served by giving those people opportunities to advance, then public services will have to be a part of the conversation. And if we fail to do it, I would argue that those trucks slamming into gas stations to steal ATMs won't stop at 8 mile.
On the flipside, I still say that the people who have the money should get to control how it's spent. They just need to be educated -- and educate their electorate -- that this isn't "charity" spending. Funding these services for the poor is in the interest of the rich, IMHO. The poor might not be your problem right now, but when they're eventually living on the streets in your neighborhood it will be.
Definitely, though emphasis on the word transit.Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Detroit's mobility is comparatively excellent, though transit is horrible.
I don't live in Metro Detroit anymore, but I would love to move back one day. This is a very importnant issue for Detroit, Suburbs, and Michigan. I hope the citizens really back this up. I'm glad to see Synder is pushing for this. I remember reading somewhere Patterson not wanting to play the "build it and they'll come" game with Transit. Does he not realize how many people left because it was never built. Maybe If they build it they'll stay or come back. I hope Mass Transit can succeed!
The two biggest problems in Detroit are Transit and Education. The lack of safety and the lack of job opportunities are directly tied to both of these issues. In a city with crushing poverty, why are people FORCED to purchase automobiles to get to work? [[and then pay redlined insurance premiums?) In a city with massive spatial segregation, why do our transit policies INCREASE the level of segregation, even when it means sacrificing our entire region's economic health?
I think that the excuse of "car culture" to cover up massive institutional racism and class-ism has run its course. No one ever said that having effective mass transit would destroy our identity as a car-oriented metropolis. We have something worse than third-world transit. We have one of the richest metropolitan areas in the USA and the manpower to fix our systems, but wealthy people in the region repeatedly oppose efforts to regionalize and tax for a system. We have segregation just as bad as most third-world cities. The slums are just in the interior of our city.
Hell, even Baghdad has a metro.
I've been to Kolkata [[Calcutta) India twice and that is one of the poorest cities in the world. Much of the populace is illiterate.Quote:
Originally Posted by corktownyuppie
India has a very service-driven economy. There are millions of people who find something to sell somewhere or some task to perform to get the money they need to support a family. Everything in India is made by hand because people need something to do. It's a nation of entrepreneurs, even if these people have absolutely no education.
Kolkata also has an extensive bus system, tram system, and subway [[which they are still building onto) in addition to all the forms of private transport [[car, rickshaw, autorickshaw, taxi, etc.) So it is far better than Detroit for getting around.
On the flip side, there are also a lot of middle class and wealthy people in Kolkata and it has many of the amenities of any major western city.
How can you have mobility without transit?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
I felt kind of hopeful after listening to the first two clips and then I listened to the third and thought to myself, "It's not going to ever become better." Her rant was disingenuous. People don't care who runs it, they just want it to work! And she could tell by looking at the crowd that nobody there was from Detroit!
is SEMCOG still mainly pushing for road-improvement? when it comes to their voting members, how many votes are allotted per member community?
Quote:
The two biggest problems in Detroit are Transit and Education. The lack of safety and the lack of job opportunities are directly tied to both of these issues. In a city with crushing poverty, why are people FORCED to purchase automobiles to get to work? [[and then pay redlined insurance premiums?) In a city with massive spatial segregation, why do our transit policies INCREASE the level of segregation, even when it means sacrificing our entire region's economic health?
I think that the excuse of "car culture" to cover up massive institutional racism and class-ism has run its course. No one ever said that having effective mass transit would destroy our identity as a car-oriented metropolis. We have something worse than third-world transit. We have one of the richest metropolitan areas in the USA and the manpower to fix our systems, but wealthy people in the region repeatedly oppose efforts to regionalize and tax for a system. We have segregation just as bad as most third-world cities. The slums are just in the interior of our city.
When 95% of households have private automobiles.Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
For 95% of the region, mobility is fantastic. There are probably few [[if any) metros of similar size with such easy mobility. Freeways are extremely numerous and generally uncongested.
Of course, it sucks for the carless 5%, and IMO there's a moral obligation to see that they have significantly improved options.
Same shit, differerent thread. Move along, now. Nothing to see here. Detroit is perfect the way it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
MAN 1: When 95 percent of households have cars, you have 95 percent mobility and don’t need transit. After all, who can’t drive a car?Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
WOMAN 1: The elderly.
MAN 1: Oh, yeah, yeah the elderly can’t drive. Yeah. That’s true.
MAN 2: And the children!
MAN 1: Oh, yes … children can’t drive. All right, I’ll grant you that the elderly and children can’t drive. But other than that, who can’t drive a car?
WOMAN 2: The blind.
MAN 1: [sharply] Well, yes, obviously, the blind. The blind go without saying. But apart from the elderly, the children, the blind.
MAN 3: The poor.
MAN 1: [impatient] Naturally, poor people can’t afford to have a car, but, really, getting back to the point.
MAN 4: Certain kinds of handicapped people can’t drive.
WOMAN 3: And what if I don’t want to own a car?
WOMAN 4: And then there’s insurance, and gas and oil and the mechanic … it’s a lot of money I wish I could spend on something else.
MAN 1: Yes, all right … fair enough.
MAN 5: And if you’ve been to the bar for a few drinks!
WOMAN 4: Yes, then you can’t drive legally.
[more general murmurs of agreement]
MAN 1: [very angry] All right, but apart from the elderly, children, the blind, the poor, certain kinds of handicapped people, people who don’t like driving, and people who may be intoxicated, who won’t drive a car?
WOMAN 2: The Amish.
MAN 1: Oh, the Amish. Shut up!
Her rant was pretty impressive in that it was well written and delivered very effectively, but her repeated reminders that she is the editor of Voice of Detroit, including once where she plugged her website by saying the web address, made me kick her down a few notches on the genuine meter.Quote:
Originally Posted by ordinary
Her overall message captures two major points that RTA critics repeat over and over that demonstrate to me that they are in the wrong state of mind for an open discussion about improving transit for Detroit residents.
First, the message of "this will make Detroit riders second-class transit users." To me this implies that the service, coverage, and quality of transit available to transport city residents will be downgraded. Clearly they either [[a) don't actually use the bus to know the total lack of reliability and service quality, and/or [[b) are just scared of the City not controlling everything. The mayor has been at the helm while the City's own funding has dropped from over $80 Million to what will soon be $40 Million, and has implied pretty clearly that ANY transit subsidy from the City's general fund is unsustainable. The City therefore has made transit riders second-class citizens by default, openly planning to eliminate the city's funding of it's transit system. So I would argue that this means that it CANNOT get any worse under a regional system. On top of that slam-dunk statement, the interests of the region are actually better aligned with a regional system than Detroit's interests separately. This is because suburban businesses need City residents to work for them and City businesses need [[at least a good number) of suburban residents to work for them. This means that the priorities of any regional body making decisions on transit service would inherently be better for everyone than a city system that just gets people around the city and to the borders and a suburban system that has to tell people that they aren't allowed to get on or off along city stretches because they would cannibalize ridership from DDOT. This is not a takeover - this is a resuce plan that is necessary to continue any level of transit service, including to the 120,000 Detroiters who ride DDOT daily.
Second, the complaining about DDOT and SMART not listening to people who come to the public hearings when they plead their life story that relies on service to be changed/cut. To blame the transit providers primarily for the impacts of these cuts is to blankly ignore the fact that these cuts are necessary [[resulting from funding cuts) to move ahead as a functioning entity due to funding reductions that are 100% out of their control. The City cuts $10M from DDOT, property millage revenue goes down 22% for SMART. At least for SMART, they are already running at top efficiecny, having gone through administrative staff reductions and cutbacks more than once prior to finally having to trim service due to the gaping hole in the funding stream. The RTA provides at least some possibility of a new funding stream to help fund transit in general, which is a huge improvement over the current slide downward.
Yeah, under perfect driving and weather conditions, with no road construction or accidents, and no car trouble, I can get from my house in Detroit to Waterford [[which is somehow still 'Detroit' to many people here) in only 1 hour! What a mobile region! How fortunate we are!Quote:
Originally Posted by Detroitnerd
Business travelers and tourists must also be astounded by how mobile we are when they land at DTW and are completely stranded there and must rent a car to navigate our region.
Our answer to congestion? If you sprawl outward endlessly you'll cut down on congestion. Also it helps to not have transit and make your state less appealing to young people or those with college degrees. Less people and less jobs means less traffic and EVEN MORE MOBILITY, as we have seen over the last ten years.
The great news is that the people who are still living in this paradise often get to live extremely far from where they work [[after all, you're underwater for life with that McMansion! You're not going anywhere!) So they get to dedicate a great deal of their time being mobile. Yep, just you and the wide open road for hours every day. Time that you could be spent doing something else, say, with your family, you can spend in your car. Normally in a train or a bus you can do other things as well - say, read, or do work on your tech gizmo - but here you get to be totally dedicated to being mobile - and over a lifetime - probably months!
There is an established process for implementing service changes, which DDOT has always followed in the past, and it involves soliciting public comments and then modifying the proposed changes to take those comments into account. This time, DDOT started printing new schedules before the public hearings even took place, which made a mockery of the public involvement process and rightfully pissed a lot of people off.Quote:
Originally Posted by cramerro
Argue with the Census if you don't like the facts. Obviously the elderly, blind, and others are included in decennial Census data.Quote:
Originally Posted by Detroitnerd
And special needs populations probably have better transit in the U.S than almost anywhere else.
Dial-a-ride and other door-to-door services are pretty rare outside the U.S. State-sponsored home-to-school transit is similarly rare abroad. No school bus in France or wherever, and students hitch a ride with parents, walk/bike or take public transit.
Your definition of mobility means that you're mobile so long as you're of driving age, legally able to drive, affluent enough to own a motor vehicle, and do not have any health conditions that would preclude you from operating a motor vehicle. Then if you satisfy all of that you also must love to drive because you will be doing a lot of it to have any respectable quality of life!Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
Automobile ownership is not the same thing as mobility. Not sure why you're even trying to equate the two. Mobility means that a person of most any means can get around, period. No asterisk saying that she or he must own a car. A car might be part of the discussion but it cannot be the only mode available or you will always leave a huge segment of the population immobile.
So my question is what can a metropolis as big as Detroit offer that any dust bucket town in middle-of-nowhere America cannot? All middle-of-nowhere towns can offer you a road to traverse in your own private vehicle. So if not for the services of civilization, a major one being that you have mobility, why live in Detroit? Or invest there? Or start a business there?
There is no form of fixed public transit in existence that would get you faster from downtown Detroit to a house in Waterford. You could build a vast high speed suburban rail network, and you would still probably have a longer commute time.Quote:
Originally Posted by poobert
There are many advantages to public transit, but, in an relatively non-congested area, speed wouldn't be one of them.
I am not arguing. I am amusing myself by paraphrasing one of my favorite comedies. You're just bone-dry, aren't ya, Bham?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
I think we should all pitch in and get you a gold-plated signed copy of Joel Garreau's "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier." ;)
But who the hell wants to live in Waterford?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
That's all true, but that definition apparently applies to a vast majority of households in the region.Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Your debate is with the Census, not me. The Census reports the vast majority of households with at least one vehicle. Those without a vehicle aren't a "huge" segment of the population, either locally or nationwide.Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
And yeah, obviously there are always limitations, exceptions and inadequacies, even if had Switzerland-style transit coverage.
If we built a subway under every major surface road in the metro area, we would still have millions of folks not within easy walking distance of a stop. We would still have the handicapped who couldn't make it to the subway stop. There would still be bored suburban kids relying on Mom to give them cash and a ride to the subway stop.
I agree wholeheartedly, but that was the scenario presented.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
Most folks live in the "Waterfords" of the region, which is to say they're not living directly on major corridors, and so fixed transit isn't convenient, and they would probably have to drive to and from a transit stop.
See, here's the problem, which I'm not even sure if you recognize or not. You might very well be pleased with "a vast majority" of people being able to get around Southeastern Michigan. You might even be willing to accept the two-thirds of Detroiters that have access to a car.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
The rub is, the regions with which Detroit competes, EVERYONE is able to get around. Not just "a vast majority", but EVERYONE. There are other cities where one-third of the people are not excluded from the economy just because they are poor. There are cities where people are not excluded from the economy because they are old, or blind, or young, or disabled.
Right off the bat, you limit the economic productivity of the City of Detroit to 67% of its potential. By any measuring stick, that's SHITTY. And you're okay with that. It's precisely that willingness to settle for mediocrity that keeps Detroit the economic laughingstock of the nation.
Highway construction & repair-- federal subsidies [[60% from user fees and taxes)-- 1.9 trillion dollars between 1971 and 2002. That's just federal money, and it is over 60 times the amount Amtrak got. Highway subsidies are invisible to the end user, so we hear complaints that all transit systems lose money and have to be subsidized. But, without the highway subsidies, you wouldn't be able to use your car. I don't hear the Troy mayor turning down federal bucks for her roads. Don't get me wrong-- I have two cars and use both of them. The bus system is useless for me, because it is a terrible system, but I'd LIKE to be able to use it. I'd like some balance in the way things are funded.
Bham 1982
In a way I admire your ability to maintain an opposing argument. Birmingham is a real town with a sense of community. When Chris Leinberger wrote the Next Slum for the Atlantic in 2007, he said Birmingham would be one of the few places in Michigan that would avoid the ravages of the pattern of build and abandon.
But I grew up there too. It's still a small, snobby, parochial place of white people who are uncomfortable around blacks, poorer whites, and most foreigners. The people there are not worldly. Most of them can not appreciate the value of being around people that are not like them. They are not interested in being within breathing or underarm smelling distance of the other. Birmingham lawyer Lex Kuhne says metro Detroit's main problem is the absence of common experiences. Kuhne would prefer being able to risk the odors and be closer to others on a train.
A growing percentage of Birmingham and other suburban kids grow up and never come back. Every one from L. Brooks' crowd now has a son or daughter in New York City. By the 1990's, even those kids realized that the 1950's automobile based lifestyles should not be preserved at all costs.
I saw a Mad Max movie once that was supposed to be futuristic. Driving around Detroit at high speed, using our precious dollars so a single person be protected in 3,000 pounds of metal, glimpsing a few human faces but being in position only to suspect them of something, makes me think of that movie. I makes me think of Charleton Heston's[[from St. Helen, Mi) 1973 movie Omega Man. It makes me think of Thomas Hobbes' book, The Leviathan. We will kill each other to protect our rights to private property and our rights to drive around. I wonder sometimes, with all our anger, fear, failure and lack of ability to keep acquiring material things, why Woodward, 275, 16 Mile or 38 Mile don't descend into public demolition derbies.
Brooks, as many people have pointed out on this forum better than I, has invested metro Detroit's future in the 1950's. He has done the bidding for a demographic of perhaps 1-2 million white men and women who live in fear of blacks coming up over 8 mile road.
Governor Snyder's director of strategy and brain trust of the administration, Bill Rustem, asked publicly before he worked for Snyder, when Brooks & Co will stop campaigning against Detroit in order to get elected in Oakland County. Brooks and or that mentality is holding us hostage. We are all poorer because of it.
Your writing here makes you appear to be an apologist for sprawl and perhaps racism. I hate to think that of anybody. Both ideologies are sad.
The answers and solutions for Michigan won't come from the suburbs. The seeds of self-destruction still grow there.
I presume you have a series of arguments to refute Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis.
^^^
Wow, damn impressive!
Stromberg2
This report from Brookings highlights what we all know is a serious problem in Detroit. Our dysfunctional transit system disconnects those households without a car from job opportunity. Compare Detroit to San Jose, which Bham1982 has used in the past as an example of successful suburban sprawl. In the San Jose metro area, 98% of households without vehicles live in locations that have access to transit. That helps give the metro area a "job access" rate of 64%, 4th highest in the country. In Detroit, 85% of households without vehicles have access to transit. But the Detroit metro area has a "job access" rate of 26%. The job access rate is based on reaching a job within 90 minutes of travel time via transit. Those numbers highlight how poorly transit functions in Detroit and why places like San Jose can tap into a much larger work force by providing transit to people who need it and taking them to the places where there are jobs.
To put things into perspective, chaotic, diffused/multi-nodular, dirt-ass poor Lagos, Nigeria is currently constructing two light rail lines and constructed a BRT line back in 2008. Metropolitan Lagos is about twice as populous as Southeast Michigan, but the latter has a gross metropolitan product over 7 times that of Metropolitan Lagos.
So, yeah, this is definitely about political will.
In 1999 and 2000, I had a Honda 900 that i had bought in Bay City. I rode it in several places including Lagos. My pregnant wife and I were pulled from a taxi there and robbed in the daylight.
In 1994, various military authorities detained me for 9 days in offices and an army base in Lagos.
When I'm feeling really pessimistic about Detroit, the comparisons to Lagos, Nigeria and Kinshasa, Congo come back to me.
Our problems mainly come from racism and lack of political will.
I'm not saying the stats are incorrect. I'm saying that the metric doesn't properly represent mobility.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
Even knowing that a household owns a car doesn't suggest 100% mobility for that household. What if there is only one car at the disposal of a household with multiple adults? Two adults depending on a single car with no other transit alternative means that at least one adult in the household goes a significant amount of time with limited mobility. That same household doesn't have the same problem if they live in New York, all other things being equal.
However, that is no reason not to have a system at all. We're talking about the difference between 50% of the people not living in proximity to transit, which might be their own preference, versus 100% of the people not having access to transit because of a failure of the local leadership to provide a basic service of modern civilization.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bham1982
I remember growing up in Detroit's suburbs thinking that Detroit was the third world. The common saying was "demolish it and start over." Which, interestingly, is sort of happening.
As far as Detroit's infrastructure and built environment, I would say the main problem is lack of density coupled with lack non-bus [[rail) transit. These two factors work hand and hand, lack of transit leads to lower density which leads to cuts in transit and so on in a downward spiral.
Similarly, Detroit's economics works the same way -- shrinking tax base leads to cuts in services which leads to an even more shrinking tax base which leads to even more cuts and so on. We see it with transit, schools, libraries, basic services such as lighting.
Detroit is literally shutting down and slated for demolition outside the "green zone" of Greater Downtown/Midtown. This is America.
If you merge all of the areas various transit authorities into one large conglomerate, you just made a lot of high profile and high paying jobs within those authorities redundant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexlin
Yet you want the folks in Waterford to pay for a system which will not come near them.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
Yet the infrastructure in Waterford are subsidized by the people who don't live in Waterford.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermod
Was Dixie highway built to serve Waterford or was it built as a major north-south route through the state? You can't take a tank town along the Union Pacific Railroad and claim that the railroad was built for the tank town and that the cost of building the railroad was an investment in the tank town.Quote:
Originally Posted by Detroitnerd
You're trying to change the terms of the debate. The fact is that the good people of Waterford have their infrastructure subsidized by people who don't live there. They chose to live out there and withhold their resources from the central city, and people in the central city foot the bill for their lifestyle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermod
But I bet that's fair because roads are free and no transit system can run out of a farebox. I know, Hermod, I know. I've heard it all before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
Unfortunately, it always has been America. This is just Detroit's turn to go through the re-structuring. In the 19th Century, New Orleans was the wealthiest city in the whole country. Now it's the murder capital of the USA. In the 20th Century, Las Vegas was a barren desert. Then they were the entertainment capital of the US. Now they're the over-building capital of the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by casscorridor
The problem Detroit is facing is that never since the industrialization period of the 20th century have we ever worked out an effective model for a city to de-densify and to shrink. And God knows the process is painful as hell. Then it doesn't help that Detroit also adds in horrible race relations, a one-track economic model that is disappearing/changing, then corruption.
We will get through this. It will take 10-20 years. Midtown/Downtown will be solid. The surrounding neighborhoods [[Corktown, Woodbridge, Boston/Edison, and others) will become the new "suburbs-of-Downtown-Detroit", and much [[though not all) of the rest of the city will densify in healthy pockets surrounded by vacant land.
Helping the process along will be the retirement [[and then death) of some of the really old guard which fantasizes about the 1950s, along with the bankruptcy of municipalities which will result in more efficient consolidation of power and a more efficient use of scarce resources. Yes, there will be losers through the process, but it's like a train that won't stop.
Who do you know who's gotten rich and famous working as a DDOT schedule analyst or SMART road supervisor? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by cpanagio
Public transit isn't much better over here in Windsor. Blame it on the auto industry or suburbanites who worry about muggers and thieves invading their neighborhood from downtown. Either way, it's not gonna get solved anytime soon.
That's one narrative.Quote:
Originally Posted by Detroitnerd
Another is that the people of Detroit built their infrastructure. Then some moved out to Waterford, and they paid for some of the infrastructure, as did others still in Detroit who hadn't move out to Waterford [[yet). Then those folks moved to Waterford and continued to pay for Waterford's infrastructure [[and for Detroit's infrastructure due to their greater tax contribution per capita).
So the fine citizens of Waterford and the other suburbs have paid twice, for the initial build-out of Detroit's infrastructure and the suburbs' infrastructure, and they continue to pay twice, for the maintenance of Detroit's infrastructure and the suburbs' infrastructure.
You're welcome?
I don't really think that the suburbs are "net donors" to the city. I find it much easier to believe that people who live in a more compact living arrangement that doesn't require as much driving or as much transportation are footing the bill for the sprawlburbs. No, they have withdrawn their support from the central city, but the central city has to pay the taxes that are politically directed by the likes of Patterson and DeRoche to building up the infrastructure of places like Waterford.Quote:
Originally Posted by Det_ard
Actually, it's more like Waterford residents pay a little bit and get a lot of services, whereas city residents pay through the nose and get little in return in way of services.
Remember, everybody pays the taxes, but then De Roche demands that road funding go to the exurbs. City residents watch their roads decay or get asphalted at best, while De Roche demands hearings all over the exurbs and outstate one how to spend road funds.
“We need to build roads where people live, work and pay their taxes,” LaRoche said in a press release. “Fixing roads where people used to live, or where we want them to live will only delay projects which will contribute to economic growth and an improved quality of life for Michigan residents.”
In other words, screw Detroit and the older suburbs surrounding it. And that's just what they do: Take the money, expand Hall Road, and never implement anything that would benefit the city as much as, say, light rail.
But go ahead. Believe that the good people of Waterford aren't subsidized at all. Or that they subsidize those poor old welfare addicts down in Detroit. Yeah, that's good and productive: Let's stick to the narrative that we've believed about hardworking suburbanites and shiftless city residents. We've done so well by that mythology for generations now. :rolleyes:
That's also codespeak by LaRoche. He knows that 800000 people live in Detroit, but including "work" and "pay taxes" fits into the welfare narrative on the right- that people in cities are somehow the opposite of the backbone of the American economy. And "where we want them to live" is a particularly ironic portion of that sentence. Does he think that building exurbs during a time of net population loss was purely a market decision?Quote:
Originally Posted by Detroitnerd
First, who is "we"? It is certianly not the workers of Detroit [[the ones who built the city and keep it going), much less "the people." Second, Detroit never had to de-densify, Metro Detroit as a whole has not lost population, but rather remained pretty much the same. Suburbanization, not some sort of de-industrialization, led to de-densification.Quote:
Originally Posted by corktownyuppie
Like I said, the Green Zone. But, I don't share your optimism about the rest of the city. We had the chance to turn things around 20 years ago, and 20 years before that and nothing has changed besides a few yuppies trying to reclaim the city. Overall, I think the city will continue its downward spiral so long as we live in the era of neoliberalism and austerity economics.Quote:
We will get through this. It will take 10-20 years. Midtown/Downtown will be solid. The surrounding neighborhoods [[Corktown, Woodbridge, Boston/Edison, and others) will become the new "suburbs-of-Downtown-Detroit", and much [[though not all) of the rest of the city will densify in healthy pockets surrounded by vacant land.
I don't think any sort of consolidation will actually be a progressive thing, it will likely mean less services overall [[i.e. consolidation of two schools = closing of one, increasing class size in the other). And I think it would be mistaken to think that regionalization would take a Toronto form. If anything, Detroit will loose more power regionally [[i.e. loosing control of water, transit) while suburbs will likely gain more power, as they have over the last few decades and therefor make more cuts to the inner city, further hampering its chances of a revival outside greater Downtown.Quote:
Helping the process along will be the retirement [[and then death) of some of the really old guard which fantasizes about the 1950s, along with the bankruptcy of municipalities which will result in more efficient consolidation of power and a more efficient use of scarce resources. Yes, there will be losers through the process, but it's like a train that won't stop.
"So the fine citizens of Waterford and the other suburbs have paid twice, for the initial build-out of Detroit's infrastructure and the suburbs' infrastructure, and they continue to pay twice, for the maintenance of Detroit's infrastructure and the suburbs' infrastructure."
I'm sure that many in the suburbs believe this to be true. Please clarify for us what infrastructure the fine residents of Waterford are paying for in their community and in Detroit.
The same type of things that the members of this board are always saying that Detroit is paying for the suburbs. Both Waterford and Detroit pay into the common [[state and federal) pots. I would submit that Detroit gets more back from those pots than does Waterford.Quote:
Originally Posted by Novine
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaiko
Well said Zaiko. I also think that the avoidance of human proximity further complicates the problems of Detroit.
I think that the sprawl of the metro and the lack of interracial, and general human interaction that transit tends to promote has had an effect in tearing the social fabric of Detroit. All the stuff that is debated on Dyes over crime, education, suspicion, isolation or ghettoization, and continued lack of concensus building is rooted in the me, me, me reflex.
Heck, even Bloomberg the mayor of NYC takes the subway to work on occasion. In Detroit, you have a guy like Ficano chauffered in a luxury by-product of the auto-centric urb. Ficano's chauffeur equals one less bus driver on the streets of Detroit. This movie at theatres near you in glorious Sickorama.
Nice dodge Hermod. But it doesn't answer the question. Waterford is a township. It doesn't maintain its own roads. Those are maintained by the Road Commission. It has its own water system so its residents aren't paying for Detroit's and Detroit's not paying for it. Why is it that people run around making these claims but then can't back up their claims with some facts?
The logic is that the capital cost of building the roads, water systems, utility distribution networks, and the like were borne by all rate payers of the system, back in the day when the system was mostly Detroit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermod
So in, say, 1965, there were few Waterford or Chesterfield residents. Roads were put in place, sewers installed, and utility lines ran -- with the monies coming from city residents.
So the utility rates of Detroit residents were raised to fund bonds to build out the system, and the tax rates and gas taxes were used to build out M-59 -- so therefore these costs were 'paid for' by the 'city'.
There's some logic to this. Perhaps not quite as much as urbanists think -- but some. In truth, most capital costs are carried by bondholders -- based on future revenues. Since those revenues did eventually materialize -- Chesterfield does not pay gas tax and water bills -- you could argue that the costs were borne in the end by the rate payers of those sprawl towns.
If you're a developer, you don't see unfairness. If you're an urbanist, this seems like a subsidy.
Detroit's transit system is 3rd world compared to other big cities. This is a car town and as long as the label still stick Detroit, due to the bough and paid for politicians, will continue to have a 3rd world transit system.
Waterford pays for the road commission through their county taxes. The township taxes are a tiny bite of property taxes and are dwarfed by the taxes of Oakland County and the regional school district.Quote:
Originally Posted by Novine
I would think that the median household in Waterford has a greater input to state fuel and income taxes and federal fuel and income taxes than does the median household in Detroit. These are the taxes that are shared.
"Waterford pays for the road commission through their county taxes."
Not they don't. The Road Commission is funded by gas taxes. That includes gas taxes from communities that fund their own road system. In effect, those won't don't maintain their own roads are subsidized by those who do.
"I would think that the median household in Waterford has a greater input to state fuel and income taxes and federal fuel and income taxes than does the median household in Detroit. These are the taxes that are shared."
Except that taxes paid by Waterford or Detroit or any other community aren't based on median household. It includes all of the taxes paid by businesses, industries, etc. That's why Detroit share of property taxes, even in its depressed state, is larger by a factor of at least 2 than any other community in the state.
But that's not really the point. The subsidy really kicks in when a community out in the boonies gets a new interchange at the cost of $40 - 50 million when there's no way that community ever contributed that amount towards those costs and likely never will. In those cases, Waterford and Detroit are the losers because those dollars are leaving established communities to subsidize sprawl out in the boonies. These days, Waterford has more in common with Detroit than it does with the sprawl neighbors to its north and west.
Uh...what?Quote:
Originally Posted by stasu1213
How many "new interchanges" have been added to I-75 since it was built. Most of the interstates that i have driven on have periodic interchanges built into them as well as more frequent interchanges around an urban area.Quote:
Originally Posted by Novine
I can't speak for I-75. I can tell you that the interchanges at Beck and Wixom Roads were completely rebuilt at a cost of $35 - 45 million each. There was a new interchange added at Franklin Road in Southfield at $20 million. The M-5 extension north of I-96 cost at least $60 million. Redoing the interchange at Adams Road and M-59 was $18 million. I believe M-59 was widened out in Livingston County at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. MDOT is planning on spending $40 million on a new interchange at I-96 and Latson Road, out between Howell and Brighton. Who's paying for all that? The people out in Brighton and Howell?
those buses are more cheap garbage like the rest of the fleet[[get on one and see for yourself). Chicago has first class buses, even their little SMART equivalent offers flat panel televisions when you get bored and wanna watch commercials. These new DDot buses will be run to the ground and non-operational within months, the one I was on yesterday was already filling up with graffiti and garbage from the previous day because I caught the bus very early in the morning.