QLine, Huntington Place bills get approval in late-night final session in Lansing

[softailrider]

Detroit is just not a mass transit city. It used to be, way before my time but it isn't anymore. Now, it seems like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

[Zacha341]

^ Yep. It's been discussed many times here and elsewhere. Culturally and practically speaking Detroit remains a car town.

Most prefer and will drive as long as possible.

Even if that means driving used and older cars, car-pooiing, and ride sharing.

[ABetterDetroit]

As so many well thought out ideas on how transit should be implemented in metro Detroit over years is discussed, like BRT vs Rail etc… why is the ‘how’ to pay for it NEVER more closely examined in these threads?

Clearly taxing rent ie property taxes has been an abject failure for decades simply because that horse has been bled to death here.

Obviously Michigan and Detroit already have those taxes at a detrimentally high level. What more evidence is needed? Hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes to unsustainably high taxes in Detroit over decades… Check. Virtually no single employer of scale will make a large capital investment without those taxes fully abated…Check. Wealthy home buyers/renters target their housing decision in Detroit to developments where they are abated… Check. Developers building farther and farther from the core where property taxes are the lowest… Check. People fleeing the state for other states in droves where property taxes are a fraction of here… Check. An army of social workers across multiple charities making sure that the financially challenged don’t pay those taxes… Check.

As the slice of businesses and income levels that continue to pay our ever increasing property taxes becomes increasingly smaller because that group cannot afford the Lansing lobbyists and lawyers to get them out from under or the folks who cannot afford to move where the rate is lower… What is the point? Blame who’s left paying some of the highest property taxes in the country for not having transit? It Seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Why is no other alternative ever brought up? Ever? A 3% tax on groceries even for debate? Nobody not on a bridge card starves to death but people get kicked out of there homes for unpaid rent or taxes often in Detroit. Just go for a walk a few times a week through the neighborhoods. The problem is obvious. We have created a slumlords paradise with the current rent/property tax disaster. But maybe somehow someway a few more drops of blood can be squeezed from that horse and to hell with who can’t get out from under… the kids can sleep on the shuttle going back and forth to the airport from downtown if it ever actually happens.

[Henry Whalley]

It's a straight line version of the People Mover!

Having lived in NYC, Boston, post-riot Detroit, and having used mass transit in these and other modern cities, I'd say that traveling by rail or bus is a young man's game, for one who is trained as a Navy Seal, Airborne Ranger, etc., with survival skills.

[stasu1213]

For many of years plans for a serious mass transit system for Detroit as well ad for Southeast Michigan had been derailed. No pun intended. There were plans to use smaller rail cars to travel on the Amtrak rail line in 2005 but the Governor then mothballed that plan. The People Mover was to travel northward up Woodward but just been reduced to just going around in circles. The Qline was supposed to went to 8 mile road but Governor Snyder canceled that plan. The idea of having or improving on mass transit for Michigan never came up in the Gubernatorial debate so it wasn't important enough for Governor Whitmer. It will take an outsider from the East Coast or a new younger mindset to get the mass transit ball rolling

[K-slice]

Detroit is just not a mass transit city. It used to be, way before my time but it isn't anymore. Now, it seems like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

DETROIT could be, as it was built originally, a mass transit city. METRO DETROIT however you are correct. Far too many strodes and low density suburbs. That's the case with every American city though. Toronto has a great network of light rail, but the trains don't extend out to the low density areas.

We have density enough along the main corridors to support mass transit to the inner ring suburbs without question. We also have massively overbuilt car infrastructure that could easily be reallocated to dedicated transit lines.