It’s 2021 — where is quality public transit in Southeast Michigan?
Anti-regionalism, rooted in deep-seated racism, is still holding the region back
In 2016 there was a story that took Detroit and its Metro area by storm. Originally reported in the Detroit Free Press, the narrative centered around the “Walking Man,” James Robertson, an individual who walked 21 miles to work each day because local public transit couldn’t get him all the way there. The story gained so much traction that a GoFundMe page was set up in his honor, whereafter Robertson accrued over $300,000 in donations and a free Ford Taurus.
The resulting sentiment was meant to be a feel-good: look at the hard work paying off for this man, who walked an ungodly amount each day, and notice the generous Michigan residents who put an end to it. But even though Robertson’s woes were tempered, he was quick to admit that there are others just like him. That is, solving his problem didn’t solve much at all. What the region really needed, he advocated, was an efficient regional public transit system, allowing people from the city and its neighboring suburbs to more cheaply and quickly reach their destination.
Although often noted that the Big Three auto companies — Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler — were the plight of public transit due to effective lobbying efforts in the early 20th century, the truth may be more bottom-up — and more insidious. While it’s true that the Big Three bullied a federal subcommittee dedicated to public transit for a greater share of federal dollars, that’s not the only thing that’s halted more expansive public transit in the middle of the century.
According to a University of Michigan thesis by Mario Goetz, not only were cars the economic engine of the region, they were also appreciated for their individuation. That is, in addition to the 1950s federal investment pouring in for private transport, “cars and highway systems promised insulation from crowds and the perceived hostile urban environment,” helping whites create segregated spaces for themselves in wealthier suburbs, sequestered away from Detroit. The goal was clear: create walled off neighborhoods that separate nearly everything — income, wealth, education, healthcare — from Black residents, who mostly lived in the city proper. It turns out that a rapid public transit system would be added to the list of things not shared.
But even after midcentury projects stalled, more creative public transit concepts continued to manifest in the 1970s, as state lawmakers created the Southeast Michigan Transit Authority (SEMTA), and the governor of the time pushed for a rapid transit line running down Woodward (the main avenue that connects the Detroit epicenter with the northern city of Pontiac) and permeating to six outer Detroit suburbs. But despite the excitement, particularly from the most powerful representative in Michigan, public support and funding wasn’t sufficient to create the project.
In short, SEMTA couldn’t raise its own taxes and borrow effectively because it couldn’t operate regionally. Divided interests separated by adjacent municipal lines — most of which was rooted in animosity suburbanites held for Detroiters — killed prospects for rapid public transit by the early 1980s. From the standpoint of the early 1960s, there was hope that transit operations would be completed by 1976. Its first riders were meant to be seen gliding from downtown Detroit to the first ring of the city’s suburbs along Eight Mile in just 13 minutes. Within a decade, none of it existed.
History Does More Than Rhyme
Still, representatives and local advocates continued to push for something better than meager public transit options, including a paralyzingly slow bus system. In 2012, the state legislature passed Act 387, creating the new Regional Transit Authority (RTA), allowing leaders in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Washtenaw counties to decide the fate of mass transit in southeast Michigan. The policy was supposed to create something that the area has long lacked: regional cooperation.
Although a 2015 University of Detroit Mercy survey found that the majority of southeastern residents supported bolstering mass transit — including additional local taxes to pay for it — the RTA couldn’t get enough votes to pass a 2016 rapid mass transit millage, which would have allowed for the organization to implement its vision of connecting the suburbs with the city.
The 2016 millage only passed in Washtenaw and the city of Detroit, with its greater area of Wayne County and several other counties failing to attain majorities. Macomb County, the most conservative of the tri-county area, voted against mass transit by a margin of 75,000 votes. The story in Oakland County, the wealthiest county in Michigan, was slightly different, though, as its residents voted against the measure by just over 1,000 votes.
In 2018 the RTA decided against placing a potential milage on the ballot at all since there was not enough yay votes to be gained from Macomb or Oakland, with most of the transit animus stemming from Macomb. County residents at the time claimed they were being “taxed to death,” even though homeowners would pay about $100 annually in taxes if the millage was brought to the ballot and passed.
The greater concern — impacting all but expressed most vociferously by those living in the northern Macomb and Oakland suburbs — lies in historic sentiments that are as odious as they are old: anti-Black racism and classism culminating in anti-Detroit rhetoric. Even today, such ugly rhetoric, the quiet part, is sometimes said aloud, as happened last year during a primary election in Macomb. As is always true, history is not really the past, and change is hard to come by, especially by those who ironically admit to being “closet racists.”
The Problem Lives
Transportation remains a significant issue in the southeastern region, both for poorer people who live in the city and for those in Detroit’s suburbs alike. People complain of not being able to meet their obligations, like getting to school or work. Some wind up incarcerated for longer periods because they don’t have the transportation needed to help them pay bail or other court fees.
Private transit costs city residents a disproportionate amount of their income, as Michigan and Detroit insurance rates are some of the highest in the country. Many give up on the prospect of owning a car at all, as an estimated 34% of residents didn’t have one as of 2017. In general, there are few options. A recent University of Michigan study found that 40% of impoverished households in southeast Michigan are beyond a 30-minute transit trip to supermarket and 65% of homes with seniors in the area are beyond a 30-minute trip to a healthcare facility.
In short, a lack of rapid public transit drives poverty. Its creation does the opposite, even expanding economic returns as it creates a variety of job opportunities near train and bus stops. A dearth of efficient public transit has already contracted economic possibilities. Lack of fast regional transportation prevented large companiesfrom relocating to the area, which otherwise help to grow the local economy and add needed, higher paying jobs.
A Different Future?
If racial divisions are the thing that’s holding Michigan back, hope may lie in a more diverse future. In the last 20 years, Michigan has become less white, as the population of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native individuals have all increased by at least a few percentage points. The number of foreign-born residents has also increased in the last 10 years, with most of those individuals concentrated in southeast Michigan.
Interestingly, a lot of nonwhite people are, maybe surprisingly, flocking to Macomb — a place that needs more pro-public transit votes than any other. Although mostly white in the northern county, Macomb now has larger numbers of Arab and Black residents than ever before (despite a lack of local proportional political representation). That’s coming in part from Black Detroiters who are leaving the city for something closer to a middle-class lifestyle.
One of those Macomb cities of note includes Eastpoint, which is becoming more integrated than it’s ever been. As Aaron Foley wrote in Blac Magazine:
“Drive through brick bungalow-lined streets and you’ll see young Black boys playing ball with young white ones, or girls of all ethnicities standing in line at the walk-up Dairy Queen on Nine Mile Road. Black customers are greeted heartily at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Gratiot — another sight that would have been unheard of in the Macomb County of old.”
Despite these demographic shifts, the RTA doesn’t yet have a current millage proposal lined up. The organization is hosting listening sessions with different localities, likely to get a better understanding of what southeasterners want, and what can feasibly pass. But as new demographics take shape in Michigan’s southeastern suburbs, so too, likely, will its local powerholders. Their disposition toward regionalism is unknown, but maybe they will be better prepared to share in a more integrated future, where public spaces are seen as a common goods, meant to be experienced by city residents and suburban neighbors alike.
