Quote Originally Posted by Hermod View Post
Jefferson was really more of a radial route from downtown. Fort and Kercheval were connected as a crosstown route running through downtown. The main crosstown line was the Warren line and was called "Crosstown". The other cross town line was the Charlevoix line.

The heavily-used Baker route was a bit of an odd duck making a long north-south jog on its way from Van Dyke and Nevada to the Ford Rouge plant. The track was so bad on the Baker line that they couldn't run the PCC cars because they would damage their wheel casings where the track dipped but the pavement didn't. The Baker line used the old Peter Witts up until conversion to motor bus in 1952

None of the streetcar lines served the purpose of the Davison Expressway.
The Davison is still the quickest way from the east side to the west side. It's true. Although, I'm not quite sure why folks from Hamtramck want to go to Dexter-Davison.

Anyway, just because Detroit never had a good system of crosstown mass transit doesn't mean it can't. If we can bulldoze a block here or there to put join Myrtle to Woodward and call it MLK, we can do the same with light rail technology. There just has to be a will to do it. It's not something that is car-dependent or bust.