Quote Originally Posted by That Great Guy View Post
Thank for your post

I'm very willing to go on television and state my full name and say that even able bodied people such as myself will not lose SMART bus service should the millage fail. I have physical proof and evidence of this.

Not one single person including SMART employees will lose their job, if a well funded campaign is waged against the Transportation Riders United and SMART.

I publicly and openly challenge Mr. John Hertel and Megan Owens to a debate.

I'm not interested in getting a majority vote of NO, but instead to get the honest leadership most essential to build safe, clean and efficient public bus systems Greater Detroit's taxpayers deserve to have and keep.

There are cases where a transit tax defeat does indeed work to get more funding and better service. That is the case today for next August, unless Mr. Hertel takes my letter and findings very seriously. I'm out to help him out and know and understand exactly what needs to be done and how to do it.

If SMART comes up with a realistic plan to protect all funds in writing with all the facts, not tolerate scare tactics, stop the work of fiction then it is entirely possible we can get a man safely into downtown Detroit at 3 am in 2014. NASA got a man on the moon in 1969 and now we have much more computer power and advanced technology.

I know exactly how to get 24/7 bus service with all full buses and remove 40,000 more cars a day from the monster freeway expansions. I will and can do this and have proven documented abilities to get this done, if Mr. Hertel lets me help him out. I work as a transportation computer technician, thus know how to coordinate all the buses together to maximize our limited tax dollars and put safety first.
You got me. I visited your website. I appreciate vigor of your angle on this problem. However, your whole case is built around [[multiple references) the idea that the Federal anti-discrimination law somehow requires a minimum level of service for public transit. This is simply not true. In fact, the "Feds" explicitly discourage any comparison of even simple service level standards between systems. Furthermore, the entire Federal Transit Administration "Formula" for distributing the lion's share of capital grants ties your share of national funding to your population, ridership, and miles of service... meaning the less you run, the less share of money you get - counter to your claims of Federal requirements for maintaining service hours/frequency. Lastly, and I have said this before, your own materials state: Section 601 -- This section states the general principle that no person in the United States shall be excluded from participation in or otherwise discriminated against on the ground of race, color, or national origin under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. This means that WHERE service IS provided, it must be equally accessible. You can meet the intent of this statement by saying, "we run no service and it is accessible to NObody." The idea that you would encourage people to vote NO so you can test out your unproven, unsound, and un-objective interpretation of a few lines of Federal law is irresponsible and reckless.