Can the greater Detroit region afford to spend a billion dollars subsidizing another quarter-century of outward sprawl?

And can the leaders of Oakland and Macomb County justify their opposition to investment in regional transit when they’re willing to put massive road widening in outlying townships over the needs of their counties’ older, often poorer communities?

These are the questions raised by the recent release of the draft regional transportation plan assembled by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), the seven-county metro Detroit region’s regional planning agency.

The plan, which must be renewed every 5 years, is up for approval by SEMCOG’s General Assembly at its meeting at Cobo Hall on March 14. The current draft calls for the region to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on highway widening over the next 25 years, perhaps as much as a billion dollars.

Some of these proposals are being pushed by the Michigan Department of Transportation: the massive I-94 and I-75 projects, for example.

The I-75 project, already underway, will rebuild and widen I-75 in Oakland County from 8 Mile to Pontiac. Opposed by many mayors in southern Oakland County, it’s a pet project of Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who famously said of sprawl: “I love it. I promote it. Oakland County can’t get enough of it.”

The I-94 rebuild and widening through Detroit has no such champion in the city, but it’s been a state priority for two decades, despite pushback from residents along the corridor, who have charged that it may only worsen congestion and air pollution in the long run. The cost of the I-75 project is estimated at $1.4 billion; I-94, roughly $3 billion.

Other projects in the plan are backed by the Oakland County and Macomb County leadership, as well as some of the cities in these counties.

Oakland County has submitted a total of $325.5 million in road “capacity” (widening) projects, mostly in the fast-developing areas of Novi and South Lyon. (The current chair of SEMCOG, Oakland County Commissioner Phil Weipert, represents the South Lyon area.) Macomb County has submitted a total of $243.3 million in proposed capacity projects, including the widening of Mound Road from 17 Mile to M-59 and a host of road widenings in Macomb Township and Shelby Township.

The cost figures for these “capacity” projects also include the cost of reconstructing the existing roadway, so from the plan, it’s impossible to say exactly what proportion of the money is being allocated for the widening portion alone.

But with a combined $559 million budgeted for these capacity projects, and another $4 billion-plus for the I-94 and I-75 projects, it’s safe to say that the total cost of road widening in the 2045 regional plan amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars, and perhaps as much as a billion.

The geographic distribution of road widening projects (above) shows that the political leaders of the region are of two minds when it comes to transportation. Oakland and Macomb County are the only counties whose leaders are proposing major investments in road widening. These are also the counties whose County Executives blocked a ballot measure for regional transit last year. By contrast, there are no capacity projects proposed in Wayne or Washtenaw County, whose leaders have repeatedly urged Oakland and Macomb to get behind regional transit.

Regional plan or rubber stamp?

Although the federal government requires the existence of “metropolitan planning organizations” like SEMCOG, most people have never heard of them. In part, that’s because these agencies don’t have a lot of authority outside the realm of transportation planning.

They also try to steer clear of angering powerful elected officials, like Oakland County’s Brooks Patterson.

The transportation planning authority of MPOs derives from the fact that almost all major transportation projects make use of federal funds. SEMCOG’s General Assembly, composed of local elected officials from around the seven-county metropolitan area, is required by the feds to approve a 25-year regional transportation plan every 5 years, including a list of the transportation projects proposed to be funded. The General Assembly’s vote on the 2045 regional plan is scheduled for March 14.

In theory, the General Assembly could use its authority to reject the proposed regional transportation plan, or offer amendments to it. Indeed, back in 2013, when SEMCOG’s 2040 regional plan was up for approval, some members of the General Assembly tried to do just that, encouraged by advocates (like this author) who argued that the proposed I-94 and I-75 widenings would spur more sprawl, fail to relieve traffic congestion, and harm the health of people along the corridor.

In 2013, these amendments failed to gain majority support. A number of delegates, mostly local elected officials from Detroit, Wayne County and Washtenaw County, did vote to remove the I-94 and I-75 widening elements from the plan.

But representatives from the Michigan Department of Transportation warned of dire consequences if the amendments passed, and a memo circulated by SEMCOG staff to attendees warned that “removal of I-94 and I-75 from the plan potentially puts the whole transportation plan in limbo until air quality conformity can be reevaluated.”

Most delegates probably hadn’t given much thought to the I-94 and I-75 widenings before the meeting, and despite hours of public comment urging them to reconsider the projects, they opted to vote as they were told by SEMCOG and MDOT staff.

SEMCOG’s Regional Development Initative

A quarter-century ago, SEMCOG staff members were trying to push the region in a different direction.

Reviewing the data on suburban sprawl and central-city disinvestment, longtime SEMCOG director John Amberger decided the time had come for the region to have a serious conversation about its future.

Convening a planning process called the Regional Development Initiative (RDI), SEMCOG warned that if current policies continued, the region would continue to sprawl outward, even as its total population failed to grow, and the city of Detroit and older suburbs emptied out. Thousands of acres of land would be consumed by development. The region would have to spend billions to build new roads and water infrastructure in the suburbs. And racial and economic inequality would deepen.

Instead, SEMCOG concluded, the region should consider measures to rein in suburban development, and reinvest in its older cities and suburbs. The RDI’s reports called for investment in transit as a key priority.

Amberger had involved a number of sympathetic suburban elected officials in the RDI process. But when the Initiative was published in 1990, others reacted with outrage. The Oakland County Board of Commissioners grilled SEMCOG staff for weeks, and threatened to pull out of the organization, jeopardizing its survival. “I was lucky to survive as Executive Director,” Amberger later told the Detroit Free Press. He retired in 1998.

We still have a choice

But today, the balance of power in the region is changing. And we can still make a choice about the future of our region.

Brooks Patterson still rules Oakland County. Yet his grip on power is slipping. This past November, the Oakland County Board of Commissioners flipped to Democratic control for the first time in decades. The Democrats represent the more urbanized, southeastern parts of the county, places that stand to lose from further sprawl. And the new chair, Dave Woodward of Royal Oak, has signaled he’s ready to take on Brooks, and partner with Detroit, over issues like public transit. (Democrat Andy Meisner, now Oakland County Treasurer, just formally announced that he’ll be running for County Executive in 2020.)

If elected officials in Detroit partner with allies in the suburbs, they could help turn the tide and shift the region’s transportation planning in a better direction: towards an emphasis on fixing our existing roads and investing in the public transit systems we’ve so badly neglected, instead of subsidizing new greenfield development that cannibalizes existing communities.

If we’d managed to do that decades ago, our region might be much more prosperous, and more equitable, than it is today. But we’ve got to start somewhere, and a debate about the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan would be a good place to begin.

The SEMCOG General Assembly meets Thursday, March 14, at downtown Detroit’s Cobo Center, at 4:30 pm. There will be time for public comment.

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