

Leteria Driscoll rides multiple times a day.

Over the past 32 years, the Detroit People Mover -- 2.9 miles long -- has sometimes been the brunt of jokes, a symbol of the limits of city's public transportation offerings.

But the truth is that some folks rely on it daily -- and in some cases multiple times a day -- to get around downtown. Some actually commute from home to work; others park their cars in a downtown lot and hop aboard to get to the office. And still others, including law firm employees, ride it multiple times a day to run errands.

Launched in 1987, the Detroit People Mover was originally supposed to be longer and feed into a greater public transportation system. But the Reagan administration withdrew some funding. So the Coleman A. Young adminitration settled on the 2.9 mile, single-track system with 13 stations. The system, run by the Detroit Transportation Corporation, is funded by city, state and federal dollars. Last year, it had an operational budget of nearly $18 million. It took in short of $2 million in revenue from riders and advertising.

We recently spent a couple days on the Detroit People Mover talking to riders, getting their opinions on the system and other public transporation offerings in the city-- DDOT and the QLine.