Mass Transit Plan Fails Move Detroit Where?

Mass Transit Plan Fails

Move Detroit Where

By C.D. Woodruff

In 1920, Detroiter William Taylor received national acclaim for his proposed rapid-transit subway system, known as "Taylor's Moving Sidewalk." This system was designed to provide moving platform service under Woodward Avenue from the riverfront to McNichols. Taylor's dream was recorded for posterity but soundly rejected by his contemporaries as "too costly." However, Taylor can be credited for identifying a truly basic need of our city: the need for efficient, dependable mass transportation.

Today, 56 years since the first mass transit system was proposed for this area, the transportation dilemma of Michigan's largest city and its rapidly expanding suburbs remains unsolved. Mass transportation still constitutes the single most urgent and neglected transportation problem facing our state.

The implementation of a comprehensive, balanced transportation system for Southeastern Michigan is only a little closer to reality today than it was in 1920. Why? Because the controversy which smoke-screens mass transit in Michigan involves the intricate issues of public finance, urban government, urban planning, the redevelopment of urban living patterns and the auto industry.

On July 2, the state House of Representatives provided tri-county (Wayne, Oakland and Macomb) residents with a unique Bicentennial keepsake, the overwhelming defeat of compromise legislation designed to provide the $3 million local contribution Michigan needs to qualify for long-term Federal matching grants in transportation. The price tag was apparently "too costly" for legislators currently campaigning for reelection. Despite the added Impetus of fïerce competition for the remaining Federal funds earmarked for transit programs, legislators cast a vote of 65-28 against the compromise legislation. It was the final day of the legislative session before summer adjournment, and the anti-Detroit forces rallied to blockade the measure, which many felt showed preferential treatment for Detroit.

Rep. Kobert Ryan (D-Detroit), Chairman of the House Urban Affairs Committee, blamed the failure on "interjurisdictional hate ... a societal or legislative attitude that prevails here (in the House) that says that anything good for Detroit is wrong."

Organized lobbyists such as the real estate concerns and the Automobile Club of Michigan provided the most vocal opposition to the legislation.

The state's interest in mass transit first took committee form in 1968, when the Joint Legislative Committee on Urban Mass Transportation published a special report. The committee made three basic observations on urban mass transportation: "First, it is a very big business; one is talking in terms of millions, even billions of dollars. Second, it should have the highest priority in both short and long term planning. It is mandatory for any metropolitan area with its aging inner city and fast-growing suburbs to arrange for the mass movement of its people and goods, with speed, economy and efficiency. And third, it cannot be done overnight."

Just what are the transportation needs of a metropolitan area like Detroit, where 64% of the population owns cars? One thing is certain: the greatest transportation problems exist while traveling between work and home. Many residents no longer live in the city, but continue to work there. As a result, the volume of passenger traffic during rush hours in the downtown area is greater than at any other time. Veteran center city drivers average speeds of 6-10 mph during peak hours. Motorists today are not defeated by the number of stops they have to make in their exodus in and out of the center city- what they're really concerned about is being able to find a place to park.

Cities suffer from an overpopulation of motor vehicles. Despite Detroiters' delight in being the home of the auto industry, the reality is that there will never be enough highway and parking facilities to allow all people to freely move in private cars. The mobility modern society has created has in turn created many of the very problems transportation has allowed it to run away from.

In 1967 the Legislature created SEMTA, the SouthEastern Michigan Transportation Authority. SEMTA'S job has been to provide "a workable transportation system to the area in which over half of the state's citizens live."

As SEMTA's work benefits primarily suburban areas, many Detroiters maintain a defensive attitude about those "orange suburban buses" which dart in and out among the familiar green Detroit-DOT buses during peak hour service. Average citizens, when asked about the prospect of rapid transit, strike two major chords: "They can't even run what they have now-rapid transit would only create a bigger mess . . ." and "rapid transit? Oh, you mean service for whites to get in and out of the city even faster than they do now."

Clarence Generette, selected a year ago as the first black to serve as SEMTA's General Manager, is slowly but surely dispelling many of the negative views Detroiters hold concerning SEMTA. "People had fears of me taking their buses and running them out to Birmingham," Generette remembers. "Some crazy notion persisted that SEMTA would take away service and serve only white racist suburbanites . . . People even saw me as a white racist," he chuckled, "but it has softened quite a bit. There's no denying that the SEMTA plan was originally designed to benefit the suburbs; my experience has shown me that such plans often work in reverse -in Western Wayne County it could work both ways-and we intend to make it do just that.

"For example," he said, "in Cleveland, Ford Motors built a huge engine plant by the airport and, despite the original objectives, Rapid Transit started hauling blacks from the east side of Cleveland on a 16 mile trip, and those people were given opportunities for employment away from the city." Generette added that "the main job of mass transit is the work trip, not recreation or culture. People do not go to Cobo Hall on the bus."

SEMTA's proposed Transit Action Program (TAP) outlines the transportaron priorities for Southeastern Michigan for the years 1976 through 1980. The five major elements of the TAP program are: ( 1 ) development and expansion of commuter rail service; (2) the construction of a 2.3-mile people-mover system in the Central Business District of Downtown Detroit; (3) the construction and operation of the first segment of the rapidtransit system in the Detroit urbanized area; (4) regional bus expansion; and (5) development of intermediate-level transit, often referred to as rapid bus transit.

The cost of the proposed TAP program is $891 million, 80% of which would be provided by the Federal government and 10% each from the state and local levels. Federal funds are contingent upon the commitment of the 20% from state and local funds, and the completion of an "Alternative Analysis" study by SEMTA for the Urban Mass Transit Administration. The study is to insure that before any money changes hands, the TAP program will provide the most efficient transportation system possible in the Detroit Metropolitan area.

Current plans for rapid transit involve the construction and development of the first segment of the system in Detroit. The initial 10.7 mile system would operate on the Woodward Avenue corridor to Grand Blvd.; on Gratiot as far northeast as the I-94 freeway; to the west on Michigan Avenue along the Penn Central Railroad right of way as far west as Grand Blvd.

Rapid transit is vital to the redevelopment of the downtown Detroit area. Without it there will be little motivation to patronize Detroit's ailing retail businesses. How can center city locations compete with the free parking, easy access, convenient hours and bland attractveness of suburban malls without some major innovations?

Efficient transportation to and from downtown is basic to Detroit's revitalization. Such transit alternatives as the people-mover planned by SEMTA, the Central Business District, and Detroit Renaissance will provide convenient transportation for the pedestrian in a 2.3-mile area in the heart of downtown Detroit. The system hopes to accommodate' 9,000 peak-hour passengers with a full traveltime of 12 minutes.

According to Generette, "The people mover project could have a decision as early as October; by March 1977 the preliminary engineering could be completed; and by the latter part of 1977, dirt could fly on that project."

Until the Legislature designs a financing package which will appease outlying counties, mass transit in Detroit will remain stalled. The seven Southeastern Michigan counties involved in SEMTA's TAP program feel Detroit is the major benefactor in the rapid transit plan, while the Oakland county area would pay the most into the plan under previously proposed tax measures, because there are more registered cars and more valuable properties in Oakland County.

As some residents dream of the prosperity that accompanies the development of a rapid transit system- that is, increased tax revenues to help finance existing state and local programs, increased vitality in the center of the city, etc, others wonder if the rapid-transit system would hasten the demise of Detroit-DOT. Unions fear a merger between SEMTA and Detroit-DOT would kill jobs for Detroit, and they oLten oppose rapid transit on that basis.

A merger between SEMTA and Detroit-DOT would effect a savings of between $3 million and $6 million. "Such a proposal would have to be placed on the ballot for voter approval, and there is only one man in the area who can effect that merger: Mayor Young," Generette said. "He has to sell the idea to the people, and they have to perceive the advantage of such a merger to them."

A long-time supporter or rapid transit in Detroit, Mayor Young apparently awaits the commitment for rapid transit in the Legislature before beginning a public campaign for ballot approval. Young, who is reportedly in close contact with Federal Transportation officials, is still optimistic in the wake of the recent Legislative defeat. He looks to the reconvening of the Legislature confidently ; "September might not be too late," he has said.