Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is second-guessing the placement of tracks for the QLine, contending the streetcar service should have a dedicated lane on Woodward Avenue to cut down on delays caused by motor vehicles.

"If I had been mayor about a year earlier, it would have been a dedicated lane down the middle the street," Duggan said Thursday at a news conference announcing streamlined fares and passes for the DDOT and SMART buses.

Duggan took office in 2014, about six months after M-1 Rail had hired construction firms and began finalizing a design for the streetcar to go down the center of Woodward on the north end in New Center and then shift to the far-right lanes in Midtown.

The streetcar project was designed to spur development along the 3.3-mile stretch from downtown to New Center, with streetside retail stores, restaurants and entertainment venues benefiting from riders being able to easily jump on and off the cars.

But the QLine's service has been plagued at times by vehicles blocking the tracks in Midtown.

Duggan suggested last week that at some point, the tracks may need to be moved.

"I would not do this weaving, in and out of traffic," he said. "We're going to have to get that kind of cleaned up."

If funding were available to extend the QLine north from New Center toward Ferndale, Duggan said he would push for running the streetcar in a dedicated lane in the center of Woodward.

"And then maybe we'd start to make some modifications at a later point," Duggan said of the existing track.

Duggan envisions having a second streetcar running east from downtown along Jefferson Avenue — a project that would likely require tens of millions of dollars. The QLine cost $187 million to construct and was mostly funded by corporate and philanthropic donors.

"Someday I'd like to see us build one down the center of Jefferson," Duggan said. "Those are all things that we're working on."

M-1 Rail has been advocating “for months” for a dedicated transit lane on parts of Woodward Avenue for the QLine streetcars and DDOT and SMART lanes, spokesman Dan Lijana said.

The proposal calls for dedicating portions of Woodward between Congress Street and I-75 and I-75 and I-94 to transit, Lijana said.

“It’s a concrete achievable solution that could be implemented very quickly and would benefit all transit and that’s what we should be focused on providing,” he said.

During Red Wings and Pistons games, the southbound lane in front of Little Caesars Arena is already temporarily dedicated to the QLine to keep the streetcars moving during pre- and post-game traffic congestion.