Around the 40-minute mark of Wednesday night’s singular mayoral debate, there it was: skyTran.

It’s the moment, really, that defined this debate between state Sen. Coleman Young and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, arcing above the jabs and the slurs like a glistening verbal parabola.

It’s hard to know what to make of skyTran, a two-person elevated pod-train-thing that runs on magnetic levitation energy -- it’s kind of a real thing, but not really, is honestly the best assessment I can offer you. Developed at a NASA research facility, skyTran may be under construction in Tel Aviv, or Lagos, or maybe Abu Dhabi, set to open last year, or in 2020. Who knows! The internet is inconclusive.

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Young has proposed skyTran as a solution, on the scale of the automobile, to Detroit’s business development and transportation problems, and while I admire a big thinker, it’s really hard to get behind this one, especially coming from a candidate who’s dismissed the 3.3-mile QLine light rail as an impractical waste of time. skyTran is an idea, not a plan, and Detroit needs fewer of the former and more of the latter.

But that’s the thing about this Detroit mayoral debate -- by the time skyTran showed up, you were actually grateful.

Because this biz was ugly.

Duggan, like all incumbents, is running largely against his own record -- has he done enough, fast enough, for enough people? Challenger Young's job is to poke holes in that record, explaining where Duggan has failed, and how he could do better.

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And there sure was some of that. Duggan has some real accomplishments to point to, and Young has some legitimate criticisms to make. Things haven't moved as fast as all Detroiters would like, but Detroit's problems are decades in the making, and solutions don't come overnight. Young has focused intensely on the city's entrenched poverty, arguing that Duggan's policies have focused on Midtown and downtown at the expense of the folks most in need. Duggan has deflected such attacks by pointing to streetlights he's turned on, more Detroiters back to work, shortened police response times, blighted homes knocked down, neighborhood development projects he's launched (like an ambitious effort to renovate 115 homes in northwest Detroit) and businesses that have sited in communities outside of the city's booming core.

Young has ideas; Duggan has plans. Detroit needs more plans.

But most of that, really, almost anything substantive, got lost in the heated back and forth indulged by both candidates. Young all but called Duggan a crook, pointing to federal investigations of the Detroit Land Bank Authority (ongoing) and the administration of former Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara, where Duggan (who says he was never a target), cut his political teeth. Duggan called Young shameless, and a liar, and was visibly flustered by some of Young's attacks. You really get the feeling that these men would prefer not to share a skyTran pod.

Duggan's done a lot as mayor, but no politician should be free from scrutiny, or a robust re-election campaign. Detroit's 2017 mayoral election -- our first after bankruptcy, the one that will be our course for future financial success or failure -- shouldn't be a cakewalk. Young's doing himself no favors, haring off into conspiracy and mud-slinging instead of offering the cogent criticisms his state Senate work suggest he's capable of.

Duggan took 67% of the votes in Detroit's primary, to Young's 27%. Don't expect this debate to alter next month's electoral outcome much.