Good transit options are a requirement for Amazon HQ2.

That's spurring local leaders to talk about going back to voters in 2018.

RTA ballot issue failed last year when Macomb County voted strongly against it.

The race to position metro Detroit for Amazon's second headquarters has injected a new sense of urgency into addressing the region's disjointed public transportation systems as leaders contemplate going back to voters next year with a different regional transit proposal.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the leaders of Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and Macomb counties had already been in talks for months about how to revise the regional transit proposal that voters narrowly defeated last November.

And then online retail behemoth Amazon dropped its request for proposals that said access to mass transit options and connections to an international airport were critical components to its plans to plant up to 50,000 workers in a city outside of its hometown of Seattle.

"What Amazon has proposed is a reminder that any major site location in our region which adds a good number of employees requires better public transit than we have," said Paul Hillegonds, chairman of the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan. "We're simply not well-connected. And growth, which we all want, will require better connections."

As Duggan tapped Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert to lead a Super Bowl-like bid for Amazon, discussion at last week's Detroit Homecoming gathering of business leaders and former Detroiters centered on how the city could overcome long-shot odds of being the winning city.

"The prospect of the Amazon headquarters underscores the reason regional transit has to be addressed," said Jim Martinez, spokesman for Wayne County Executive Warren Evans.

Duggan said there will be a transit team within Gilbert's committee tasked with addressing how Amazon employees would get around.

"Everyone recognizes that our challenges in regional transit are one of the key hurdles to overcome," said Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber.

Baruah, who is playing a supporting role in the bid for Amazon, said there could be "creative solutions" to existing mass transit shortcomings detailed in the Amazon proposal.

"Dan and the mayor have a plan for this, and I don't want to step on them," Baruah said.

In an interview at Detroit Homecoming, Duggan declined to say how Detroit and the region might address its mass transit issues in the Amazon proposal, which is due Oct. 19.

But as the Amazon proposal gets written, Duggan and the four county leaders have hired transportation consulting firm HNTB Corp. to present options by October for revising the 20-year, $4.6 billion transit plan that was defeated last year by about 18,000 votes.

One option on the table is ask the Legislature to change the state law to narrow the footprint of the RTA to only served densely-populated areas of the four counties, Hillegonds said.

"It gets a little complicated splitting up Macomb," he said.

The regional leaders want the consultant's report by next month because a change in law would likely need to be passed before the 2018 election year schedule in Lansing sets in.

"I believe we have a very narrow window to seek any change in statute, which would be this fall legislative session," said Hillegonds, a former speaker of the Michigan House.