Over Labor Day weekend this year, I decided to take the bus downtown so I wouldn’t have to deal with any parking hassles during the crowded Detroit Jazz Festival.

I used the Transit app to find out when the next bus would be arriving and how long it would take to get me downtown. During my five minute walk to the stop, I purchased a four-hour pass using the Dart app—$2 plus a 15 cent surcharge for using the app.

The bus arrived exactly when the app said it would. I activated the ticket on my phone and a four-hour timer started ticking down. I showed it to the driver, who nodded.

I sat down in the clean, air-conditioned bus and logged-in to the free Wi-Fi—this was one of the new buses purchased for the 24-hour ConnectTen routes. Less than 20 minutes later, I was dropped off at the Rosa Park Transit Center.

More or less the same things happened when I rode home later that night.

This extremely pleasant public transit experience made me realize that it hasn’t been this easy to ride the bus in Detroit in probably a decade. I only take the bus a couple of times a month. And surely not every ride is as smooth as mine were a couple weekends ago. But bus service has undeniably been improving in convenience, as evidenced by the 24-hour routes and unified fare system, as well as in reliability.

It’s had to come a long way. Prior to filing for bankruptcy in 2013, the city of Detroit cut DDOT’s budget by about half, forcing the department to lay off drivers and discontinue late night service.

Service suffered terribly. As recently as 2011, the transit advocacy organization Transportation Riders United (TRU) gave the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) an ‘F’ grade on their report card. Only 50 percent of buses arrived on time back then, if they showed up at all.

TRU executive director Megan Owens says that reliability in recent years has gotten “substantially better.”

“DDOT is frequently re-evaluating routes and figuring out how to better serve people,” she says. “They are actively recruiting more drivers so they can fill in when one is absent, and there are fewer missed routes. Their on-time performance has continued to improve.”

What grade would she give DDOT today? “I have high expectations, so probably a C+.”

According to DDOT, on-time performance has indeed been improving, from 72 percent in 2018 to 76 percent in 2019 so far. It also says ridership has been gradually increasing, from 23.5 million to 24.8 million over the past two fiscal years. In fact, Detroit is one of the few cities in the country where ridership has grown.

Angelica Jones, interim director of DDOT, says a lot of that has been the result of a back-to-basics approach. She points to things like optimizing routes and adding more buses to decrease headway. “What we’re doing now is implementing service that customers need,” she says.

DDOT has also made riding a more pleasant experience. The new buses purchased in August 2018 have air-conditioning, free Wi-Fi, and a skylight. The new DDOT logo and green color scheme signal to riders that things are changing for the better. Transit police have helped decrease crime—Jones says there’s “maybe” one assault per month on Detroit buses.

“We’ve made significant changes to the way buses look, the way buses feel, the way drivers interact,” Jones says. “So give us a try and let us take away that negative perception you might have of riding the bus in Detroit.”

The department has more improvements planned for the near future—it will hire another 40 to 50 drivers and roll out more service changes in November.

Public transit in the region, however, is still severely underfunded. Metro Detroit spends around $69 per capita on transit each year. Nearby Cleveland spends $177; Seattle $471.

In order to get a ‘B’ or ‘A’ grade, Owens says DDOT will need to increase frequency and speed. In cities like San Francisco, buses arrive every 5 to 10 minutes at certain times of day. And in cities like Cleveland, they’ve instituted single priority or dedicated lanes.

“If you look at truly a great transit service, it’s there when you want it, and it provides a real benefit,” Owens says.

Unfortunately that will take more money. Which means it will in part take more people riding. So, as Jones says, why not give the bus a try? Especially if you haven’t in a while.