Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Want to hear a joke?

Regional transit. Southeast Michigan.

Yes, that’s how low we’ve sunk, as a region.

Our mass transit is so shoddy, so full of truck-sized holes and gaps, and so underfunded that the mere words "regional transit" are most likely to evoke laughter, if not bitter tears.

Think about your hours-long commute. Ask why it’s so hard, if not impossible, to get to sports or entertainment events on mass transit — or from the airport to downtown or any suburban hub. Or imagine what it’s like to live in southeast Michigan if you’re poor, and transit is your bridge to opportunity.

All of this is why we cannot blow the opportunity on the Nov. 8 ballot to fund our Regional Transit Authority’s initial rollout of a better way, a more integrated and functional system to serve the area.

The RTA was created in 2012 by state legislation. It was a small step in practical terms, but a huge one for the region’s psyche. Finally, all the players in southeast Michigan agreed to work together on mass transit. Already, there is better coordination between the Detroit Department of Transportation and the suburban system, Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation. And there are some important new bus routes aimed at getting people from isolated residential areas in Detroit to job-rich suburban corridors.

But the RTA plan needs full funding to go further, to really create the foundation for transit that serves everyone in the region — rich or poor, urban or suburban. Money matters — and now is the time for metro Detroit to show that transit can matter in the nation’s one major urban center that doesn’t have it.

Particulars

The first reason to vote “yes” on regional transit is the easy return on investment.

RTA is asking for 1.2 mills per year on property tax bills, or $120 a year on a house assessed at $100,000.

That’ll allow RTA to raise $3 billion locally over the next 20 years, and leverage another $1.7 billion in federal funds.

►Related: Survey shows more support for RTA vote with education

Those sound like big numbers, yes. But it’s only adding $300 million a year to local transit spending, not even enough for the Detroit metro area to crawl far out of last place when it comes to transit funding. Other major metros spend much more — and get much more — to make transit a more integral part of their infrastructure.

What we’ll get for the new money, however, is impressive.

RTA will build rapid bus lines along Woodward, Gratiot and Michigan Avenue; that’s the beginning of a system of long-needed transit spurs. Cross-county routes will run across some of the major mile roads, Telegraph, Grand River, Jefferson and Van Dyke. And local bus routes will be added to augment what DDOT and SMART provide now.

RTA would build a commuter rail line between Detroit and Ann Arbor, and would finally install express bus service between Metro Airport and downtown, something every other major city has had for years.

These are the seeds of a real regional transit system — one that makes it possible for people to actually get around, conveniently, for work, education or pleasure.

And the RTA plan will effectively end much of the transit-desert syndrome that exists now, where entire communities opt out of the suburban transit system, leaving commuters stranded.

A key feature is that several of the routes could be used for people accessing sporting and entertainment events downtown. In other cities, public transportation isn’t just about getting people to work or school, and it isn’t solely about providing options for people who don’t have cars. It’s a convenience for everyone, and middle- and upper-income people use it frequently.

The RTA plan opens the door wider to those possibilities in Detroit.

Disappointingly, the initial RTA plan doesn’t include much transit for the furthest-flung centers in metro Detroit — north Oakland and Macomb counties. That’s partially about how far the transit money will go and prioritization — these are among the least dense areas, and already places that don’t much use transit.

But it’s a fallacy of public policy to say those areas won’t benefit at all. Transit is not a “what’s in it for me” service or utility like lights or garbage. It’s a necessity for the kind of economic growth and stability that metro Detroit wants and needs. When you eliminate the need for a car from the equation for individual opportunity and progress, the benefits spread far and wide beyond those who use public transit.

Everyone in metro Detroit will live in a stronger, more economically viable community if we fund a rational public transit system.

RTA didn’t just dream this plan up. You, citizens of metro Detroit, through hours and hours of public meetings, framed this system by saying what you want transit to look like, and where you want it.

Funding it is the next logical step.

Transit as proxy

The other reason to vote for regional transit isn’t about transit at all — it’s about who we are as a region.

Our transit failures over the last 40 years have been driven by the deep divides that exist between rich and poor, city and suburb, black and white, in our region.

The defining characteristics of the current transit systems — one city, the other suburban, both operated independently — say everything about the lack of cooperation we’ve been able to achieve in so many areas.

Those clefts in our region have deep, abiding roots.

But metro Detroit is a different place today than it was 40 years ago. We cooperate on management of the premier convention center in town, Cobo Center. And the Great Lakes Water Authority is forcing disparate interests in metro Detroit to find common ground on water and sewer services.

None of those is a perfect exercise in selflessness or unfettered cooperation. But imagine if either had gotten started in theory, but then didn’t have funding to carry through on its mission.

They would both be useless, which is what the RTA will be rendered if it doesn’t win funding Nov. 8.

The moral case

There are also strong moral reasons to embrace RTA funding.

The story of James Robertson, who walked 21 miles to work and back each day because the bus couldn’t get him from his Detroit neighborhood to Rochester Hills, tells us of the tremendous cost of ignoring transit in this area.

► Heart and sole: Detroiter walks 21 miles in work commute

Robertson and hundreds of thousands of others have no real way to get to the centers of work that lie so far from their homes.

That’s, in part, a function of the tremendous sprawl we’ve indulged and encouraged in metro Detroit. The city is itself still a center of population, but it’s deeply economically depressed and in need of work opportunities.

But job centers have grown up around suburban corridors. Livonia, for instance, sees 4,300 people a day arriving for work from places like Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck, but the suburban bus system doesn’t really go there. And cities like Livonia, Novi, Plymouth and Wixom have five times the jobs per capita as Detroit.



►Related:Region's transit system can't get many to job centers

So getting to jobs is near impossible for many Detroiters, as well as the growing number of poorer residents in Macomb and Oakland counties.

Our failure to create coherent mass transit — for all the various reasons — amounts to us failing those residents.

Lousy public transit is one of the drivers of sustained, intergenerational poverty, because the literal mobility that leads to economic mobility is frayed and tattered in our region.

You can see the consequences of this all over. In Detroit, it’s the mother who spends three hours a day getting her children across town to school and back on buses that don’t run on time. In the suburbs, it’s the line of workers that appears at bus stops, standing because there are no benches in the shelters, desperately trying to get cross-county to jobs, frustrated by multiple transfers or huge gaps in the system.

Everywhere, it’s suspended opportunity, suppressed growth and caused inexcusable hardship.

We can do better. And we should.

Nov. 8 is our best chance in four decades to begin.