A more productive direction for Detroit transit?

[Junjie]

Everyone loves to talk about BRT, light rail, M-1, etc. And those things are great and necessary - both rapid transit in the form of real BRT or LRT, and a streetcar downtown to act as a pedestrian accelerator that ties together downtown and midtown [[swing it out to Corktown or Belle Isle next, please!). But those things also require millions of dollars, new dedicated revenue streams, functional regional governing bodies and a shared mindset supporting the development of new, high-quality transit for the area despite the high cost. High barriers.

On the other hand, I saw this piece the other day on Jarrett Walker's blog and was struck by what a large difference a similar move could make for Detroit [[or virtually any city in the US). Here's the nutshell summary:

1. Deals with the existing bus system in Houston.
2. Costs nothing. [[Well, presumably some cost for the planning process, new maps and so on. But no additional operating cost compared to the old system.)
3. Vastly increases the quality of public transit by focusing on frequency of service and a grid pattern of routes, even if doing so causes a few people on the edges to lose convenient access to the bus.

Basically, make it so that almost anywhere in the city, somebody in Houston can count on a bus coming on the major roads every 15 minutes or better, 15 hours of the day. Outside of Woodward I don't know if any single route in SE Michigan meets that standard.

Anyway, here's the blog post. The maps are quite striking: http://www.humantransit.org/2014/05/...eimagined.html There's also a more recent post on that site with a similar plan for Columbus.

Edit: I don't intend to set up a false either-or between new rapid transit and a good bus system. Both are badly needed. It's just to say that this might be an achievable near-term reform that could build momentum and also make a very large difference for relatively little cost.

Thoughts?