And Yet Again, the Suburbs/State Screw Detroit Over

[313WX]

This is, of course, in addition to the crap about a supposedly finanacially turbulent DPS being forced to loan money to a privatized school system its competing with for students.

And yet people wonder why Detroiters are so critical of help from the suburbs/state of Michigan.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...text|FRONTPAGE

SEMCOG shifts $7M from Detroit bus service to suburbs

Detroit — Mayor Dave Bing unsuccessfully made an impassioned plea Friday for preserving $7 million in federal funds for his beleaguered Detroit Department of Transportation, but a regional group of local governments approved shifting the money to the suburban bus system.

The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments' 50-member executive committee voted to approve a change in the formula for distributing $41.2 million in federal capital allocations for bus upgrades to a 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent split favoring SMART from 65 percent to 35 percent in Detroit's favor .

[Wesley Mouch]

Like most of these 'news lite' articles, very little substance. Does say that this is 'federal capital allocation'. So the goal is to fund 'capital' -- mostly that means 'buy busses'.

If SMART has older busses than DDOT, then there is logic.

Not every program's money is allocated to the worst and most inefficient operations.

[Eber Brock Ward]

Like most of these 'news lite' articles, very little substance. Does say that this is 'federal capital allocation'. So the goal is to fund 'capital' -- mostly that means 'buy busses'.

If SMART has older busses than DDOT, then there is logic.

Not every program's money is allocated to the worst and most inefficient operations.

Agreed. And they could have funded by population, which would have been even worse.

[brizee]

I don't usually agree with Stephen Henderson, but he was completely right, this was a double cross.

DDOT has 3 times the ridership, I don't care how much more population the suburbs have.

Transit money should go to transit.

I talked up how regional transit was really going help Detroit to my skeptical family/friends. They've already made a fool of me.

But then you have that ghoul Patterson threatening to pull out of the regional chamber because they won't push to build hospital space the region doesn't need in Oakland County.

I truly hate this fucking place.

[rex]

DDOT really has 3X the ridership?
There are a lot of city residents unable to contribute much. I feel like the new strategy is to chase them out of town. Take away the services they need. I disapprove

[Cliffy]

Can't blame them. Its like you have a drug addicted relative and you give them money for food, you know they will end up buying more drugs. Giving money to Detroit in this stage is useless because it will be eaten by the sharks of Detroit. Wait until they clean up this mess and then Detroit can have access to money. Right now its basically burning your money.

[MSUguy]

Can't blame them. Its like you have a drug addicted relative and you give them money for food, you know they will end up buying more drugs. Giving money to Detroit in this stage is useless because it will be eaten by the sharks of Detroit. Wait until they clean up this mess and then Detroit can have access to money. Right now its basically burning your money.

WTF does have with changing transit funding? Far fewer Detroiters have access to car, which mean less access to jobs. But let me guess you're probably one of those suburbanites who complain about lazy Detroiters on welfare taking your tax dollars?

.http://www.freep.com/article/2013041...gs-Institution

[gnome]

This was not the suburbs or State screwing Detroit, this was the Federal Government. The Feds are headed by Mr. Obama and Detroit's Representatives are Mr. Peters and Mr. Conyers.

michigan also has two Senators, one lives in Lafayette Park and was a former Detroit City Councilman, Carl Levin.

[313WX]

DDOT really has 3X the ridership?
There are a lot of city residents unable to contribute much. I feel like the new strategy is to chase them out of town. Take away the services they need. I disapprove

Agreed. Maybe that's the plan.

In any event, since we're talking about federal dollars [[just like how cities with the larger population typically gets the largest of the federal grant money), logic would dictate that the transit system with the highest ridership would get its fair share of the funds.

[313WX]

This was not the suburbs or State screwing Detroit, this was the Federal Government. The Feds are headed by Mr. Obama and Detroit's Representatives are Mr. Peters and Mr. Conyers.

I guess you missed this part in the article...

The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments' 50-member executive committee

voted to approve a change in the formula for distributing $41.2 million in federal capital allocations for bus upgrades to a 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent split favoring SMART from 65 percent to 35 percent in Detroit's favor.

[Gistok]

Agreed. Maybe that's the plan.

In any event, since we're talking about federal dollars [[just like how cities with the larger population typically gets the largest of the federal grant money), logic would dictate that the transit system with the highest ridership would get its fair share of the funds.

Rather than play the blame gaime people should get involved...

http://www.youtube.com/user/semcog

Looking at some of the statistics about DDOT... check the graphs...

http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/d...10-26-2011.pdf

Does a substandard maintenance record of existing buses deserve to be rewarded by more new buses? Are the SMART buses older because they do better maintenance, and don't require replacing as often?

All good questions...

[Wesley Mouch]

...Looking at some of the statistics about DDOT... check the graphs...

Thank you Gistok. Sobering statistics. I was struck by the last line in the report:

Detroit 1 of only 2 major cities that manages its own bus system

[Wheels]

Does it really matter if it's SMART or DDOT who gets the most money. Who rides the bus? The suburbs couldn't give a rats ass if the bus was shut down completely.
Livonia shut it down and never looked back. In the end its all to benefit Detroit anyway!

[313WX]

Rather than play the blame gaime people should get involved...

http://www.youtube.com/user/semcog

Looking at some of the statistics about DDOT... check the graphs...

http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/d...10-26-2011.pdf

Does a substandard maintenance record of existing buses deserve to be rewarded by more new buses? Are the SMART buses older because they do better maintenance, and don't require replacing as often?

All good questions...

Ok, so DDOT isn't the most well-managed system.

Does that necessarily mean LESS money will make things better?

If you say yes, then let's look at the ENTIRE city of Detroit today.

[antongast]

Does a substandard maintenance record of existing buses deserve to be rewarded by more new buses? Are the SMART buses older because they do better maintenance, and don't require replacing as often?

Is this a morality play, or are we trying to get bus service that works? DDOT's issues with vehicle maintenance are well known, but if your solution is to cut their funding until they figure out how to address them, that's just going to hurt the riders when there aren't enough working buses available to service the routes. Who exactly do you think is "undeserving" here? [[It's worth noting, by the way, that the purpose of the presentation you linked was to make the case for outsourcing management to a consultant. Outsourcing happened, and over a year later it doesn't appear to have solved the problem).

Anyway, IIRC buses are supposed to be on a replacement cycle of something like 12 years or a certain number of miles. I would think DDOT's buses are newer on average because they happen to have replaced a bunch of buses last year when they ran up against the replacement cycle. Does DDOT consistently have newer buses than SMART, or is this just a snapshot in time?

[313WX]

Does it really matter if it's SMART or DDOT who gets the most money. Who rides the bus? The suburbs couldn't give a rats ass if the bus was shut down completely.
Livonia shut it down and never looked back. In the end its all to benefit Detroit anyway!

SMART doesn't have regular service in/out of Detroit anymore.

[antongast]

Does it really matter if it's SMART or DDOT who gets the most money. Who rides the bus? The suburbs couldn't give a rats ass if the bus was shut down completely.
Livonia shut it down and never looked back. In the end its all to benefit Detroit anyway!

No, it's to benefit people. It's a public service. Buses don't exist for the purpose of benefiting this or the other political entity, they exist to transport people from one place to another, regardless of where they live. Just because a majority of people in Livonia decided they didn't need SMART service doesn't mean that the lack of it has no adverse effect on anyone who lives there.

It's also to benefit employers, who want to locate in the boondocks and pay shit wages that don't allow their employees to afford cars, but then can't figure out why nobody wants to work there. Must be Obama's fault!

[Gorath]

Is age of the bus in years the right measurement of when a bus need to be replaced? Or is how many miles/hours on the odometer the measurement that should be considered. Based on that I don't know which system truly need their buses replaced. And maybe it is SMART.

To be fair, as has been said, the feds only provide money for capital expenses. Such as new buses, buildings, etc. And Detroit is getting additional funding for M1.

[Cliffy]

WTF does have with changing transit funding? Far fewer Detroiters have access to car, which mean less access to jobs. But let me guess you're probably one of those suburbanites who complain about lazy Detroiters on welfare taking your tax dollars?

.http://www.freep.com/article/2013041...gs-Institution

You don't get it. DDOT like the rest of the city departments is beyond corrupt. At least you know when you're giving money to SMART, it will be used somewhat properly. You give it to Detroit and someone is stealing it and hiring their family and then the whole family is getting 50 hours of OT a week. Clean up the corruption in Detroit and then give the city money. Like I said, giving DDOT who has twice the maintenance cost of any other city per mile is a losing cause. Inexcusable.

[Wesley Mouch]

Is this a morality play, or are we trying to get bus service that works? DDOT's issues with vehicle maintenance are well known, but if your solution is to cut their funding until they figure out how to address them, that's just going to hurt the riders when there aren't enough working buses available to service the routes. Who exactly do you think is "undeserving" here? [[It's worth noting, by the way, that the purpose of the presentation you linked was to make the case for outsourcing management to a consultant. Outsourcing happened, and over a year later it doesn't appear to have solved the problem).

Anyway, IIRC buses are supposed to be on a replacement cycle of something like 12 years or a certain number of miles. I would think DDOT's buses are newer on average because they happen to have replaced a bunch of buses last year when they ran up against the replacement cycle. Does DDOT consistently have newer buses than SMART, or is this just a snapshot in time?

There's nearly zero evidence of what will fix the problem. Since it hasn't been fixed. Doesn't mean outsourcing was a bad idea. Doesn't mean it was the magic bullet.

This isn't a morality play. We'd like good bus service. there's zero evidence that this fixes the problem, either.

We should be listening to the message here. Did you read that report Gistok posted? This patient doesn't need money, they need a visit to the ER or to be put down mercifully and replaced.

I agree that what's really needed is bus service. Sounds like the best thing to do here is to kill DDOT and let SMART run it all. If you are interested in better bus service, its an obvious solution. If you really want a reborn city-centric bus department, get in line behind a thousand other dysfunctional city departments. What do you want?

[rb336]

There is only one phrase necessary for this: F* SEMCOG

[Danny]

What folks from SEMCOG found out that 65 percent of the federal dollars went to D-DOT and 35 percent went to SMART. To SEMCOG and SMART, that is unfair. Therefore to offset federal transit dollars to both D-DOT and SMART. Folks from SEMCOG voted to balance the funding to D-DOT and SMART 50-50. Bing and the city council didn't like it and they will have to deal with it. The result of the matter is D-DOT will have to cut some bus services to some routes later on this year. [[ Possible after june 30th when the fiscal year comes.)

[poobert]

You don't get it. DDOT like the rest of the city departments is beyond corrupt. At least you know when you're giving money to SMART, it will be used somewhat properly. You give it to Detroit and someone is stealing it and hiring their family and then the whole family is getting 50 hours of OT a week. Clean up the corruption in Detroit and then give the city money. Like I said, giving DDOT who has twice the maintenance cost of any other city per mile is a losing cause. Inexcusable.

What proof do you have? I'm one of the last people to cry about racial injustice, and I'm white, but I've been around these parts long enough to read between the lines. For you and hundreds of thousands of suburbanites just like you, as long as Detroit and its agencies are run by black people, it will always be "corrupt." So you'll never want to see anything here funded. I can't find anything about DDOT corruption. I've always understood DDOT as the little engine that could, doing what it can for so many with extremely few resources.

This is why I generally couldn't give a shit less about our glorious wonderful suburbs. They're out for their own asses 99% of the time. I don't know why the objective of the city so often is to pander to them. For crumbs?

This pisses me off to no end. All you suburbanites bitch about how Detroiters [[read: blacks) don't want to work and then you take away the means of getting to work. Fuck this region in the ass with a tree trunk.

[louis]

Cliffy, what I'm getting out of your post's are "de-fund city services as an incentive to purge them of corruption". this is wrong for a-couple reasons:
1. De-funding a service won't stop people from stealing from that service; they will instead shift money around so that they still get their elevated pay check
2. If we did de-fund services for corruption, Detroit's budget would be tighter than it already is.
3. Where would this money come from? Do you honestly not believe that the city is low on cash as is?
4. The only thing this could accomplish is pay cuts for the workers [[and that is assuming the unions agree to pay cut) and lessening services the city is already struggling to provide.
Look, corruption sucks I get that, But Even if we managed to eliminate ALL of the corruption in the city how much money would that really give us? Even if it was some ridiculous number like 100 million that would not be enough to fix Detroit's deficit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to get rid of corruption, I'm just saying that I don't like your idea.

[antongast]

There's nearly zero evidence of what will fix the problem. Since it hasn't been fixed. Doesn't mean outsourcing was a bad idea. Doesn't mean it was the magic bullet.

This isn't a morality play. We'd like good bus service. there's zero evidence that this fixes the problem, either.

We should be listening to the message here. Did you read that report Gistok posted? This patient doesn't need money, they need a visit to the ER or to be put down mercifully and replaced.

I agree that what's really needed is bus service. Sounds like the best thing to do here is to kill DDOT and let SMART run it all. If you are interested in better bus service, its an obvious solution. If you really want a reborn city-centric bus department, get in line behind a thousand other dysfunctional city departments. What do you want?

My point about outsourcing is that different management didn't solve the problem. So you acknowledge that point, and then your suggestion is to...replace the management [[with SMART's management, which has its own issues)? I'd say that's pretty far from an "obvious" solution.

[[and yes, I read the report he posted, that's why I commented on it. Most of what was interesting to me about it was the political spin on the findings, which I find is very often the case with reports of this type. The raw data about vehicle maintenance and the like is readily available in public databases in a more complete and up-to-date form than is found in that report; please feel free to seek it out and add your own spin if you want).