Forget what Brooks says: Regional transit has life in metro Detroit

I admit it's hard to be an optimist about public transportation in metro Detroit.

It's not just that efforts to create more regional transit have mostly failed for 40 years. It's that t oday's suburban leadership takes pride in blocking the latest efforts.

Witness Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson's latest mean-spirited remarks to journalist Charlie LeDuff as reported recently in Deadline Detroit. Fueled, as LeDuff makes clear, by a tumbler of whiskey, Patterson derided Mayor Mike Duggan as a "creep," allowed himself to be photographed giving the finger to, well, whomever, and counted himself a firm "no" on transit.

"The collegiality is gone because Mike's on the muscle and I'm not going to give him the money. Screw you," Patterson said, as quoted by LeDuff.

Then, too, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel has taken a more measured but equally negative approach on regional transit. Fix the roads and attract talent, he said, and forget regional transit for now.

Both Patterson and Hackel last week urged voters to say "yes" to the SMART bus millage on an upcoming ballot, but both reiterated their opposition to a broader regional transit plan.

Despite such intransigence, I cling to the belief — not just the hope, but the belief — that Southeast Michigan will yet embrace and create more public transit options.

I make no predictions as to how or when. I hold no brief for any particular version of a regional transit plan.

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But it seems to me that the forces calling for more regional transit options are growing stronger and may soon prove unstoppable.

Among those is DTE Energy CEO Gerry Anderson, who recently pulled together a Who's Who of top corporate leaders to call for more public transportation in this region. Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans, Christopher Ilitch of Ilitch Holdings, Dan Loeppp of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Mary Barra of General Motors all signed on, as did many others.

And beyond those traditional corporate leaders who form the old guard here, there's a whole new crop of players coming to town who strike me as the type to demand more transit options.

Companies like Microsoft and Google and WeWork are bringing urban-oriented workers to downtown — thousands of them. Those companies understand the needs and desires of their mostly younger, tech-savvy workforces, and they try hard to give them the best urban amenities to keep them happy.

Then there's the Ann Arbor connection. The hometown of the University of Michigan is filling up with tech startups like Duo Security, the rapidly growing digital security firm that recently opened an office in downtown Detroit. The Ann Arbor-Detroit corridor running past Detroit Metro Airport seems a natural route for a rail line with stops at the airport and Ford country in Dearborn — and voters in those communities are likely to vote for it.

Indeed, it's been said that a majority of voters south of M-59 favor more public transit while those living north of it oppose it. The current regional transit setup approved by lawmakers in Lansing calls for buy-in by the counties. But perhaps there's some way to allow the broad swath of communities that want more transit to get it.

At any rate, that's what I see happening at some point.

It's hard to say whether the experience of the QLINE will help or hurt the cause. The less-than-robust ridership in the QLINE's first year once the service started charging might be interpreted to say that support for transit is lukewarm.

And the rather theatrical nature of the QLINE, with its brightly colored cars running along downtown's main Woodward corridor, may have created a notion that pubic transit is more of a toy than a service, something available to the few rather than the many.

Real public transit is more of an everyday affair, with better buses running on regular routes, and options available even in poorer neighborhoods. And it includes a mix of local and express buses, light rail, commuter rail, shuttle buses, bike lanes and more.

And it's available to everyone. In any modern urban region, mobility should be considered a civic right.

We're a long way from achieving such a comprehensive system in metro Detroit. I doubt that we'll ever see it in northern Oakland County or perhaps in Macomb.

But all the fulminations by Brooks Patterson to the contrary, public transit still has a future in metro Detroit. I hope it happens soon.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.