The inevitable clash of car manufacturing and comprehensive mass transit in Detroit.

[Hermod]

Late 1940s-early 1950s, the Detroit bus fleet was a mix of Macks and Twin Coaches [[GMC) for the large buses on the high density routes and Fords for the smaller buses on the lower density routes.

[erikd]

I meant less than you think I meant

I don't mean to say that the idea of a bedroom suburb is unsustainable - just that an entire metropolitan area built to the density of bedroom suburbs is unsustainable, and that's what a car culture only kind of environment gets you.

Thumbnail calculation. Imagine two neighborhoods, each housing 56 families. One urban neighborhood with duplexes [[two-story, one family per story), 24 x 60 homes butted up right next to each other with a small yard and alley behind. Another, think Troy style, with single family homes on 80 x 160 foot lots, curved streets, no alleys.

In the first example each household has to support about 16' of electrical lines, and about 9 feet each of road, sidewalk, water, sewer and gas lines. In the second example, each household has to support about 88' of electrical lines and 52' of the other items.

Now if you have lots of people living in urban-style housing, and lots of other people living in the 'burbs, averages kick in and you can make the whole thing [[barely) work. But if almost everybody chooses to live out in suburban style homes, the overall cost of maintenance goes way over what anyone is willing to pay.

Look at what it's going to cost for storm water separation from sewer lines in the Oakland County suburbs, and the fact that each household needs to cough up about 5 times as much as if situated in an old-style urban setting starts to make a difference.

So healthy urban areas have a mix. You can have your Bloomfield Hills type estates but also your inner-city multiple-family units, and the whole thing works out OK. But you can't have an urban area with no urban to it; the costs are too high.

Excellent post! Very well explained.

[Detroitnerd]

The problem was that trucks, buses, and cars did those jobs better and could make a profit on it.

Sure, but only once Uncle Sugar is building free roads for you to use.

[Wesley Mouch]

Sure, but only once Uncle Sugar is building free roads for you to use.

Dner, there's no free lunch. Uncle Fed, Uncle State, and Uncle County paid for the road with our tax dollars. It wasn't free.

I agree with you on the unfair subsidies to roads vs. transit -- but you can't call investment in roads 'free'. Roads are a reasonable government investment that benefits all of us. Has it gone too far? Yes. Should we readjust in favor of broader spending on transportation? Yes.

[brizee]

Not a manufacturer but somewhat related.

The airport and downtown hotels are taking the tiniest of steps into looking into affordable shuttle service from the airport to downtown.

So of course the taxi and limo businesses are trying to kill it in the womb.

More things change the more they stay the same.

[Hypestyles]

the bankruptcy will probably make things worse for public transit options.. ddot is sure to suffer.. SMART will not increase any pick-up routes in the suburbs.. and probably not do much route coordination with DDOT..

[Hermod]

Not a manufacturer but somewhat related.

The airport and downtown hotels are taking the tiniest of steps into looking into affordable shuttle service from the airport to downtown.

So of course the taxi and limo businesses are trying to kill it in the womb.

More things change the more they stay the same.

If you have guys who have been making a living rowing people across a river in small boats, they will protest and obstruct any efforts to build a bridge over the river.

[professorscott]

the bankruptcy will probably make things worse for public transit options.. ddot is sure to suffer.. SMART will not increase any pick-up routes in the suburbs.. and probably not do much route coordination with DDOT..

SMART, I agree, can't pick up any slack because of its funding crisis [[brought on by falling property values primarily). The RTA, once it gets up and running, has a tiny little stick to use to try to encourage route coordination, but that isn't going to improve in any huge way short-term.

DDOT, however, is very likely to improve. Once there are reasonable contracts in place that will no longer allow some of the abusive practices of the past, then you will have more reliability in terms of employees showing up, and once the vendors see that they will in fact get paid if they ship parts with which to fix buses, they will resume shipping such parts.

One of DDOT's huge problems, reported in a recent op-ed piece in the WSJ [[and which the kindly old Professor has seen at first hand) is that broken-down buses sit in the yard awaiting parts which never come because the vendors know City Council doesn't consider such parts critical and won't pay for them. Mr. Orr understands that this is idiotic and won't put up with it.

Incidentally I'm surprised Mr. Orr has not yet publicly mentioned privatizing DDOT's operations, or disposing of DDOT in some way. I think that is nearly certain to happen, and not too far into the future. Eventually, of course, everything will come under the RTA's umbrella, but that's going to take a couple of years. At least that's how things look in the Professor's slightly fogged-up crystal ball.

[stasu1213]

I don't think groundbreaking for the 3 mile lightrail will happen anytime soon. An excuse will be made explaining why the plans for the groundbreaking had been postponed. There is a conspiracy to stop any form of dependable mass transit from running in this city. Follow the pattern

[stasu1213]

Orr probably want to privatize DDOT but he has his marching orders. If Snyder orders him not to improve public transit he won't improve it. I am one who believe that the big 3 had been instrumental in keeping Detroit for having light rail or any form of dependable public transportation that commuters can use other than the car. I also believe that the big 3 are not the only ones who lobbied or had paid off elected officials to put a monkey wrench in the plans. There are other companies that benefit from keeping Detroit as well as Michigan car dependent. The bicycle culture is well accepted in Detroit for it is not a threat to those who don't want mass transit in Detroit. Everyone does not ride a bicycle especially all year around. I don't think that neither of the big 3 or any auto company should be in charge of building the trolley or train if Detroit finally decide to have light rail. Have a company that specialize it lightrail cars to do it

[mwilbert]

I don't think groundbreaking for the 3 mile lightrail will happen anytime soon. An excuse will be made explaining why the plans for the groundbreaking had been postponed. There is a conspiracy to stop any form of dependable mass transit from running in this city. Follow the pattern

On this particular point, you are not on sound footing.

[Wesley Mouch]

...There is a conspiracy to stop any form of dependable mass transit from running in this city. Follow the pattern

And exactly who is conspiring to keep transit out of Detroit?

[antongast]

SMART, I agree, can't pick up any slack because of its funding crisis [[brought on by falling property values primarily). The RTA, once it gets up and running, has a tiny little stick to use to try to encourage route coordination, but that isn't going to improve in any huge way short-term.

DDOT, however, is very likely to improve. Once there are reasonable contracts in place that will no longer allow some of the abusive practices of the past, then you will have more reliability in terms of employees showing up, and once the vendors see that they will in fact get paid if they ship parts with which to fix buses, they will resume shipping such parts.

One of DDOT's huge problems, reported in a recent op-ed piece in the WSJ [[and which the kindly old Professor has seen at first hand) is that broken-down buses sit in the yard awaiting parts which never come because the vendors know City Council doesn't consider such parts critical and won't pay for them. Mr. Orr understands that this is idiotic and won't put up with it.

Incidentally I'm surprised Mr. Orr has not yet publicly mentioned privatizing DDOT's operations, or disposing of DDOT in some way. I think that is nearly certain to happen, and not too far into the future. Eventually, of course, everything will come under the RTA's umbrella, but that's going to take a couple of years. At least that's how things look in the Professor's slightly fogged-up crystal ball.

Wasn't the author of said op-ed contracted to improve DDOT's performance? Instead he and his fellow Envisurage/TransPro people just slashed bus service [[printing new bus schedules before the public hearings were held, when the law mandates that public comments be reviewed and taken into account before finalizing the service changes), instituted layoffs and demotions, cashed their paychecks, and went home. At the same time Nojay was getting paid to turn around DDOT, he was spending most of his time in New York campaigning for his state assembly seat and broadcasting his whacked-out tea party talk show. He never bothered to improve bus service, he just increased headways, eliminated night service [[which was a crucial lifeline for a lot of folks) and shrank the fleet. I mean, sure, the guy has eyes and ears, and he spent enough time here to formulate some accurate observations about the glaring dysfunction that he and his fat salary did absolutely nothing to fix, but that whole experience makes me extremely skeptical that further privatization is the right solution for DDOT. It should be made more independent of the city government and should eventually have a different funding source, and some of the work rules definitely need to change, but that can be done more productively without handing the system over to for-profit contractors from out of state.

[Detroitnerd]

Wasn't the author of said op-ed contracted to improve DDOT's performance? Instead he and his fellow Envisurage/TransPro people just slashed bus service [[printing new bus schedules before the public hearings were held, when the law mandates that public comments be reviewed and taken into account before finalizing the service changes), instituted layoffs and demotions, cashed their paychecks, and went home. At the same time Nojay was getting paid to turn around DDOT, he was spending most of his time in New York campaigning for his state assembly seat and broadcasting his whacked-out tea party talk show. He never bothered to improve bus service, he just increased headways, eliminated night service [[which was a crucial lifeline for a lot of folks) and shrank the fleet. I mean, sure, the guy has eyes and ears, and he spent enough time here to formulate some accurate observations about the glaring dysfunction that he and his fat salary did absolutely nothing to fix, but that whole experience makes me extremely skeptical that further privatization is the right solution for DDOT. It should be made more independent of the city government and should eventually have a different funding source, and some of the work rules definitely need to change, but that can be done more productively without handing the system over to for-profit contractors from out of state.

Yes, yes and yes. This is all true.

[Hypestyles]

I hope that the RTA will actually encourage more expanded routes throughout the region, and where is the master plan for implementing the cross-region 'rapid-transit' buses? http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...iscrimination/

[professorscott]

I hope that the RTA will actually encourage more expanded routes throughout the region, and where is the master plan for implementing the cross-region 'rapid-transit' buses?

There is not yet anything you could legitimately call a "master plan", just some concept-level papers, for a good reason. The RTA's first job is to try to develop some kind of long-term, stable funding mechanism that will be sufficient to pay for reasonably good transit, and then sell that funding mechanism to the public, since the public will have to vote on it.

Until that is done, nobody knows how much money will be available to spend for operations, and it would be mightly peculiar to plan for a system when you don't have a clue about the budget.

[professorscott]

Saying that the contractors slashed bus service is silly. They simply printed schedules that were a more accurate reflection of the bus service that was actually being provided at the time.

By the way, I never said anything about the author of the article, good or bad, and I don't care. His observations are damning, and accurate. The Lord God Himself would strain to run a reasonable bus system under the idiotic constraints that have plagued every manager over the last few decades.

[antongast]

Saying that the contractors slashed bus service is silly. They simply printed schedules that were a more accurate reflection of the bus service that was actually being provided at the time.

I just don't see how that could be correct. Levels of service decreased, the fleet shrank, and schedule adherence is still terrible. Maybe schedule adherence marginally improved [[sure doesn't seem like it on the ground), but if it did it wasn't enough to offset service reductions. I don't remember noticing particular concentrations of no-shows on the late-night trips that were eliminated, or on the evening and weekend trips that were hardest-hit by the cuts. There's some truth to what you're saying, but it isn't anywhere near the whole truth.

It's probably unfair to blame the cuts entirely on the contractors. The service reductions were a policy decision by the Bing administration, and they were part of what looked like a broader policy of indiscriminate citywide service-slashing in a last-ditch effort to patch up the budget. But DDOT staff regularly implemented administration-mandated service cuts before the contractors came in, and the contractors didn't do anything particularly new or innovative to justify the money spent to hire them. All they seem to have done differently was to ham-handedly circumvent public input requirements, and I still have no idea how they got away with that.

By the way, I never said anything about the author of the article, good or bad, and I don't care. His observations are damning, and accurate. The Lord God Himself would strain to run a reasonable bus system under the idiotic constraints that have plagued every manager over the last few decades.

Well, I could nitpick some of his observations [[how can he say with a straight face that he was unable to fire anyone when in fact there are actual people walking around who were fired from DDOT during his tenure?) but that isn't really my point. My point is that DDOT's past experiences with privatization have not had results that should make Detroiters enthusiastic about doubling down on that policy. Some people I've encountered, both online and in meatspace, seem to think that the supposed accuracy of Mr. Nojay's observations [[and most of them are pretty accurate to the best of my knowledge) somehow vindicates his tenure at DDOT and by extension the larger push toward privatization. I'm trying to push back against that point of view, which I believe to be misguided. I have no idea whether you personally share that point of view, I'm just using your posts as a springboard to make a point that's been simmering in my head without an outlet ever since that editorial came out.