By Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor 12:29 a.m. EST February 2, 2015
When we talk about the stalwart, hard-nosed relentlessness that ignites Detroiters' souls,
it's hard to think of a better example than James Robertson.
His story is so outlandish it seems certain to be apocryphal: His home is in Detroit, but his work is in Rochester Hills. He has no car, and our public transit system is a joke that's played daily to brutal effect on people like Robertson. That means he hoofs it up to 21 miles per day, through whatever obstacles man or mother nature toss in front of him. Together, Robertson's commute and his shift consume a staggering 20 hours of every day. This has been his life for a decade, since his old car died. Earning just $10.55 an hour, Robertson couldn't save up for another.
Because he's a Detroiter, Robertson doesn't quit. He walks. He works. It's the dictionary definition of resilience.
But helping Robertson on an individual basis,
as hundreds of generous, compassionate people moved by Robertson's story have stepped forward to do, badly misses the larger point.
Robertson's troubles reflect profound policy failures: a pitiful arc of non-action, stretching more than 40 years, that has made this one of the nation's least commuter-friendly metro areas.
This region has been unable -- and unwilling -- to weave together a sensible public transit network. While Robertson's circumstances are extreme, he's but one victim of our collective neglect.
We're home to two under-funded, dysfunctional bus systems -- the Detroit Department of Transportation and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation -- that haven't managed to devise or operate a system that can get someone consistently from Robertson's home in Detroit to Rochester Hills.
That's partially by cruel design. SMART's "opt-out" for municipalities has always sported a sharp cultural edge, because it nudges up against the notion that some communities don't want "those people," be they Detroiters or blacks or bus riders, coming through their locales. But Robertson's story shows how opting out actually makes the entire system non-functional. Because Rochester Hills doesn't participate in SMART, Robertson must walk the last 7 miles of his journey to work -- after taking a SMART bus as far as it can reach into Oakland County.
If the opt-out's cultural noxiousness weren't enough, its practical failures should badly embarrass leaders in every corner of metro Detroit. A bus system that can't get people to where the jobs are is of no use to people who want to work.
But even if SMART did away with the opt-out tomorrow, we'd still have enough transit insufficiencies and oddities to keep us a national laughing stock.
The dual system itself is ludicrous, an anachronistic throwback to the forced separate development of Detroit's suburbs and the antagonism that grew along side that development.
If the opt-out's cultural noxiousness weren't enough, its practical failures should badly embarrass leaders in every corner of metro Detroit. A bus system that can't get people to where the jobs are is of no use to people who want to work.
But even if SMART did away with the opt-out tomorrow, we'd still have enough transit insufficiencies and oddities to keep us a national laughing stock.
The dual system itself is ludicrous, an anachronistic throwback to the forced separate development of Detroit's suburbs and the antagonism that grew along side that development.
One of my favorite examples of how poorly this dual system is managed cropped up a few years ago, when the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments -- which was assigned to bring a regional approach to funding allocations for the two systems, actually altered the formula so that SMART, which doesn't have half the riders of the Detroit system, would get the lion's share of federal dollars.
You really couldn't make this stuff up.
A few years ago, the state Legislature created a third transit entity, the Regional Transit Authority, to inspire more coordination. That body has been
meeting and planning, but still has no funding to make its voice powerful or its plans more than ink on paper. It will need to convince local voters -- most of whom already subsidize Detroit's transit system or SMART -- to pull more out of their pockets. For what? The promise is for bus rapid transit or, maybe someday, a rail system. But it will be a tough sell in a region that has just become accustomed to the idea that public transit doesn't work.
And the big problem, frankly, is the disconnect between individual sensibilities and policy.
Robertson, for instance, has elicited a tremendous outpouring of support. People in this region respect hard work, and perseverance. They identify with it. They want to help someone who seems to need it, but isn't really asking.
But how many of those willing to help Robertson have voted to opt their communities out of SMART? How many would support a new tax to create a coordinated, regional system that could get people all over the place from where they live to where they work?
It's also fair to examine the actions and attitudes of regional elected officials who've connived for the power to allow communities to opt out of SMART. It's a dangerous fiction – the idea that the region can thrive if we lack mass transit, that separating people and jobs is reasonable policy, and indulging these politics means a tacit nod to race-baiting.
The tide against transit has grown strong enough to virtually make it a dirty word -- synonymous with big government, or poverty, or any other cynically disfavored political notion.
Transit, though, is the solution. Not just for people like Robertson, but for hundreds of thousands who commute long distances and interminable hours. Even if you don't believe we should subsidize a ubiquitous system the way some cities have, there's no question we need a competent, rationally planned and funded system that gets people where they need to go. We need it to provide opportunity. We need it to grow businesses and wages and opportunity.
It's a basic in nearly every other major metro area. Here, it's a pipe dream.
Robertson won't suffer anymore -- not after the region gives him a lift, both literally and metaphorically.
But until that sentiment transfers to a more compassionate and reasonable view of the importance transit holds for everyone in the region, Robertson's story will serve as proxy for thousands of others who rely on their feet and resilience, waiting for the day southeast Michigan comes to its senses.
Transportation Center by Phoenix Center & Ottawa Towers
Original Designs in "Environmental Analysis of a Central Business Area" for the "Project" which became Phoenix Center.
Lawrence Technological University Design Charrette on Transit System - "Design for Massive Change" Masters in Architecture program, Spring 2011 (Leo Tomkow on Transit)
