From the Detroit Free Press:

There are a lot of misconceptions about public transit, despite its critical role in getting people around.

It’s a $55-billion industry in the U.S. and a system that has been stretched by record-high gas prices and ridership levels not seen since the 1950s even as a troubled economy reduces funding nationwide.

The American Public Transportation Association says the long-term trend is clear: Ridership on the nation’s buses, subways, commuter rail lines and other transit systems grew 34% in 1995-2009, outpacing 23% growth in the number of vehicle miles driven on highways in that period. The number of workers who rely on transit regularly grew by a million, to nearly 7 million nationwide, in 2005-09.

As state and local leaders explore setting up a regional public transportation system to help stabilize and ultimately improve service in southeast Michigan, they’ll have to battle misunderstandings about public transportation:

Transit should pay for itself.

No big-city transit system in the U.S. is self-sustaining.

Chicago’s three main transit systems are among the best at it, with revenue from fares, advertising on rail and buses and investments bringing in about 50% of operating costs, as Illinois state law requires.

Nationwide, transit is subsidized by federal, state and local governments because it’s efficient and provides reliable, safe transportation that in itself can be considered an attraction to living in a place, like New York’s subways. It’s far friendlier to the environment than cars and, when well run and reliable, can lead to less traffic congestion by providing a low-cost alternative to commuting by car, encouraging people who own cars not to drive them to work daily.

Unlike transit, highways aren’t subsidized.

Only if you don’t factor in things like Michigan’s tax of 19 cents per gallon of regular gasoline you pay at the pump, and the 18.4-cent federal tax.

True, that same pot of money pays for both road building and maintenance and for building and operating transit. But a U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) report in January debunked the notion that those taxes — often called “user fees” by advocates of road spending — are adequate. By PIRG’s estimate, the U.S. has spent $600 billion more on highways since the system was built than what “user fees” such as gas taxes and vehicle registration fees paid for, and today those fees cover only about half of the cost of building and maintaining roads.

It’s also true that metro Detroit has some of the nation’s highest rates of people who commute alone by car, clearly indicating a preference. But about 160,000 people ride metro Detroit’s bus system daily, and more would use it if better service were guaranteed.

Metro Detroiters aren’t willing to pay for transit.

Detroit subsidizes its Department of Transportation buses to the tune of $53 million a year, and property owners in 70 suburbs pay a tax that supports suburban bus service.

Fifty-three other suburban communities eligible to be part of SMART instead opt out of the system and avoid paying a .59 mill property tax that provides about 42% of SMART’s budget.

SMART covers all of Macomb County and 50 communities in Wayne and Oakland counties, where voters renewed SMART’s millage overwhelmingly — 70% in favor — in 2010.

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20111211/NEWS05/112110542/Debunking-public-transportation-myths

From the Detroit Free Press:

SMART will make the most dramatic service cuts in its history Monday as it deals with huge funding losses caused by metro Detroit’s battered real estate values.

The suburban bus system will eliminate 15 routes across the metro area, including service to Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn and Grosse Pointe schools. On some of SMART’s busiest routes — Woodward, Gratiot, Fort-Eureka, Van Dyke and Kercheval/Harter — city-bound riders outside of peak morning and evening weekday hours will be dropped off at Detroit’s borders to pick up another bus provided by the Detroit Department of Transportation.

“I understand times are hard, but this just seems to add insult to the already very injured — the disabled, the poor, those who not only rely on the buses but who choose to ride,” said rider Dwight Anderson, 43, of Warren, who is on disability. “There should have been a better way to go about this.”

Mary Jean Smith, 67, of Southfield, a retired nurse assistant who relies on buses to get to doctors appointments at the Detroit Medical Center, said, “It’s going to be devastating.”

Megan Owens, executive director of the Detroit-based transit advocacy group Transportation Riders United, said some riders who have cars but take the bus by choice will stop taking transit. An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 additional daily riders will have to board DDOT’s crowded buses to finish their trips, an increase that Detroit’s strapped bus system doesn’t have the capacity to handle amid layoffs and buses idled by a lack of resources for repairs.

“There are more people who want to ride the service than they can handle,” Owens said.

SMART announced in October that it was cutting service by 22% and laying off 123 drivers, mechanics and other employees. Revenues from the 0.59-mill property tax that provides the biggest share of SMART’s funding have plummeted amid metro Detroit’s real estate decline. The system services about 40,000 riders daily.

SMART General Manager John Hertel said the agency did all it could do in recent years to avoid serious service cuts — laying off administrative staff, raising fares, slashing pay and benefits for nonunion employees. Even concessions SMART unsuccessfully sought from its unionized work force would have only been a temporary reprieve for the service.

SMART’s 2012 operating budget is $114 million. Its revenues from the suburban millage were down about $5 million, or 12%, from the 2011 fiscal year.”We’ve never cut back on routes or services, and the only reason we’re doing it now is we’ve run out of options,” Hertel said. “I’m left with no choices, or else we run out of cash.”

These are perilous times for transit in metro Detroit.

Detroit’s bus system, insufficient in better financial times, has struggled with labor strife and a repair backlog that idled as much as half its fleet this summer. Mayor Dave Bing eliminated furlough days for unionized mechanics and restored slashed overtime pay for them to tackle the logjam over the next few months.

Hertel and Owens said SMART’s problems underscore the urgent need for metro Detroit to set up a regional transit authority to coordinate public transportation service and seek a more reliable funding source, likely a regional sales tax.

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20111210/NEWS05/112100357/Crowded-Detroit-bus-system-offers-alternative-some-suburban-riders-SMART-scales-back-service

From the Detroit Free Press:

Troy’s embattled Mayor Janice Daniels said Friday she’d had a tough week.

So tough in fact that she called off her weekly Saturday walk of Troy’s neighborhoods when she meets and greets all who answer her knock.

“I’m very tired and I don’t feel well,” Daniels said.

Daniels was excoriated for the comment she posted in June on her Facebook page that included a slam at gay marriage. At first, the loudest critics were gay people and high school students. But by week’s end, the Internet calls to boycott holiday shopping in Troy and the upscale Somerset Collection in particular — led by the Facebook page De-Occupy Somerset — were taking a toll on business leaders.

Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20111211/NEWS05/112110526/Troy-mayor-lies-low-after-Facebook-backlash-businesses-face-boycotts–

By Larry Sobczak
The Michigan Passenger Editor

The Troy City Council listened to public comments Dec. 5 whether to proceed with the Multimodal Transit Center to be located near Maple and Coolidge roads.

More than a dozen people from Troy and nearby areas expressed their support or opposition to the $8.4 million transit center proposed to service Amtrak trains, SMART  buses, a rental car agency and a taxi stand as well as more than 100 parking spaces for station users. Planners envision future commuter rail serving the station.

The transit center is planned along the Canadian National Railroad tracks just southeast of the existing Plexiglas bus shelter/station in Birmingham. The city received the grant from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) last year to fund the entire cost of the project.

The city council must go through the normally routine step of picking architectural and construction firms by Dec. 19 after it had entered into a construction agreement with the Michigan Department of Transportation to build the station in September. However, in the meantime, a new mayor and two new councilmen were elected in November.

Newly-elected Mayor Janice Daniels questioned the wisdom of the transit center when the federal government is experiencing record deficits and had asked the city council to reopen discussion of the station at her first city council meeting in November. Daniels is a co-founder of the Troy Area Tea Party and ran on a campaign against government deficit spending.

“I can assure that the funding source for this grant has been identified and the funds are properly appropriated,” said Troy Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michelle Hodges during the public comment section of the council meeting. “This is not deficit spending.”

Hodges said her 725-member organization is overwhelmingly in support of the transit center with Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T and Magna giving individual endorsements to the project.

The council did not act on the contracts at the Dec. 5 council meeting and did not apporive it as a council discussion item at the meeting. If  council fails to pick the architect and construction firm by Dec. 19, the grant will be reclaimed by the FRA.

Daniels had asked the city council to allow allow David Wisz, who is against the project, to give a PowerPoint presentation with his opinions as a regular council agenda item and to exceed the usual five minute limit allotted speakers.

In a procedural snub to the new mayor, the council denied her request by a vote of 4-3 and instead relegated Wisz to the public comment section of the meeting with a five–minute speaking limit with no access to the council’s audio-visusal equipment.

An usually large crowd was on hand, mostly to criticize Daniels for her an anti-gay slur she had made on her Facebook page which made it difficult for Wisz to speak. When he began to allege conspiracies from transit groups and others, the crowd began to purposely drown out Wisz‘s voice and laugh at him.

Wisz also made several allegations about crimes at transit stations and when he called the train service between Detroit and Troy a “heroin express,” the crowd began to shout and boo at Wisz.

Wisz alleged that public transportation has been in decline but did not cite the source of his statistics.

Amtrak Spokesman Charlie MontVerde rebutted Wisz’s comments about ridership in the public comment section. He said that number of people using public transporation last year exceeded the prior record set in 1957 and expects continued growth well into the future. He stated Amtrak has carried a record 30 million passengers last year and has seen ridership increase by 46 percent over the past 11 years.

“We can attribute some of those increases to the transformation of stations into multi modal stations like the one proposed here,” MontVerde said.

None of the public comments addressed the architectureal and construction contacts which the council must approve in the next two weeks. Instead, most public comments were about planning issues such as traffic, crime and overall need which have been covered during the prior ten years of meetings and planning sessions for the station..

The Troy City Council’s next scheduled meeting is 7:30 p.m., Dec. 19.