Quote Originally Posted by Dexlin View Post
There is like a half-dozen threads on this exact issue since I've been here, and I haven't even been here that long. It comes down to one simple thing: Metro Detroit spends less on mass transit than any other large metropolitan area in the country. Competence and such are issues, but first and foremost it's lack of money, and more particularly, an unwillingness by the area as a whole to adequately pay for and fund the things that it wants. You pay for a Walmart bus system, you get a Walmart bus system, and really, that's kind of unfair to Walmart because at least they recognize economies of scale.

BTW, SMART would be no more capable of runnng service in Detroit than DDOT. The only reason SMART "works" -- and I put it in quotes because it barely does -- is that they don't have to run nearly same-sized operation as Detroit. DDOT carries more than twice the daily ridership of SMART along different kind of routes. It's apples and oranges. As for merging the two, who in the right mind would want to take on either of these two's debt in a merged system, particularly DDOT's?
Your words says it all. For decades, the leaders of Metro Detroit talked about public transportation but they would let the talk just die out.

In regards to DDOT and SMART, we have to understand that one service is teetering on death while the other one is barely holding on. We know that these are two failing systems but if both die the region has nothing so I wonder if one should die to give the other a fighting chance?