Council rips Bing over Detroit bus woes.

http://detnews.com/article/20111018/...troit-bus-woes

Of course while the Mayor and Council are grand-standing, the people are suffering.

people are acting like the bus service was in such perfect, pristine condition before Bing took over !

The biggest thing I take from this is that Bing now has emergency power to use private contracts if necessary to get this done. It's easy to blame him for not doing anything, but until this point, he lacked the power to act unilaterally to fix anything. You could even make the argument that honoring the current contracts would've prevented him from fixing anything.

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Originally Posted by showstoppa

people are acting like the bus service was in such perfect, pristine condition before Bing took over !

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Yes, and the problems become more accute every single year, so you'd expect the complaints to keep continually getting louder because the service is measurable worse than it was. This is not also to mention that Bing has very obviously not seen mass transit as a top priority, service was. Some of the biggest cuts to the system in its history have come in the last two years or three fiscal years. That's just reality.

If I was mayor during these times, the top three priorities would be police, fire and transit, hands down. Human services, lighting and the rest would have to wait. Transit is absolutely essential to making sure this embarrassingly poor city keeps what little tax revenue it has. Because, at the moment, people are losing their suburban jobs because of the bus cuts, and that means less income tax revenue and it means possibly losing residents and families altogether to outside communities. It will have been self-sabotage if the city government doesn't prioritize mass transit. This vicious cycle is finally coming to a breaking point.

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Originally Posted by Dexlin

Yes, and the problems become more accute every single year, so you'd expect the complaints to keep continually getting louder because the service is measurable worse than it was. This is not also to mention that Bing has very obviously not seen mass transit as a top priority, service was. Some of the biggest cuts to the system in its history have come in the last two years or three fiscal years. That's just reality.

If I was mayor during these times, the top three priorities would be police, fire and transit, hands down. Human services, lighting and the rest would have to wait. Transit is absolutely essential to making sure this embarrassingly poor city keeps what little tax revenue it has. Because, at the moment, people are losing their suburban jobs because of the bus cuts, and that means less income tax revenue and it means possibly losing residents and families altogether to outside communities. It will have been self-sabotage if the city government doesn't prioritize mass transit. This vicious cycle is finally coming to a breaking point.

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That is the kind of insight that Mayor Bing completely lacks.

"people are acting like the bus service was in such perfect, pristine condition before Bing took over ! "

The bus service has been crappy for over a generation or so, but talk to anyone who rides and they will tell you it has basically ceased to function in the past six months. While buses used to run late, scheduled times basically have no meaning anymore.

I don't know what Bing's priorities are. Detroit Works? Er..um..how is that working out? Are we slowly rightsizing the entire city's population to zero?

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Originally Posted by DetroitPole

That is the kind of insight that Mayor Bing completely lacks.

"people are acting like the bus service was in such perfect, pristine condition before Bing took over ! "

The bus service has been crappy for over a generation or so, but talk to anyone who rides and they will tell you it has basically ceased to function in the past six months. While buses used to run late, scheduled times basically have no meaning anymore.

I don't know what Bing's priorities are. Detroit Works? Er..um..how is that working out? Are we slowly rightsizing the entire city's population to zero?

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I was taking the buses last year and I have to say that following schedules no longer applies in Detroit. In fact, transportation in Detroit is horrible. There was times when I wanted to catch a cab and that was an adventure. There was a time in the "D" when if were on 7Mile you could raise up your arm to signal a cab. Not any more.

I remember last year when getting off the bus, I walked into the store and there was a flyer calling for the recall of Dave Bing and the primary reason listed on the flyer was that he proposed to cut DDOT routes that would prevent Detroiters from getting to work and doing things like going to the doctor's office. I wonder how those Detroiters feel now.