In a time when we have machinery rolling over the surface of Mars, you’d think we would be fully utilizing the science that keeps the wheels on public buses going round and round.

But many cities in Michigan seem to be falling behind in perfecting public transport. For example, the city of Warren, the third-largest city in Michigan, according to Michigan.gov, does not have a Michigan Department of Transportation bus service. In Detroit, the biggest city in the state, the buses are not completely reliable, and there is no coordination of services with outlying suburbs.

In fact there are two separate bus services that run in Metro Detroit: the Detroit Department of Transportation buses and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation buses.

Continued – “There needs to be a single regional authority that integrates public transport between these regions,” Joe Grengs, assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, told Michigan Messenger.

But so far the two bus systems have failed to streamline their services to make the commute from the city to the suburbs an easy one. For instance, as of 2004, a transfer from a DDOT bus will get you on a SMART bus, but the two services’ bus stops are inconveniently far from one another. Also, SMART buses have a very limited number of stops in the city.

Much of the problem goes back to age-old racial tension, according to Grengs. “It’s Detroit’s long racial divide that has barred regional cooperation,” he said. “There’s simply no getting around that fact.”

Since Detroit is one of the most segregated cities in the country, DDOT serves a largely black demographic, and SMART serves predominantly white communities in the suburbs. Because of racial tensions that have not died away since the Detroit riots in 1967, the people running these services fail to cooperate fully, experts say.

There is also a great disparity in the quality of service between the two. According to MDOT.com, SMART has 89 more busses in service than DDOT, and DDOT serves almost three times as many passengers.

During a series of interviews with Michigan Messenger, disgruntled DDOT passengers for the most part agreed that it was not uncommon for buses to break down or overheat.

“I take the SMART bus to work every day, and it’s always on time,” said Cornell Williams, who lives in Detroit but works in Troy. “Anyone who takes a DDOT bus other than the Woodward bus or a main street [bus route] knows you can’t count on it to be on time, or it might break down, or, if you’re handicapped, half the lifts don’t work.”

“It sucks,” a man waiting at a bus stop on Grand River said. “They’re never on time. They don’t go by the schedule. Half the time they cheat on their route — like they get to the end, and instead of coming back to where they supposed to come back, they go up another street and come around, and you … missed the bus.” He spoke in a raised voice, very frustrated.

While a lack of sufficient funding may be part of the problem, it is not the main reason that the Detroit area’s public transport is not reliable, according to Grengs. “”It’s not just a funding issue. It’s more of a political issue,” he said. “It [DDOT] probably does need more money, but I hesitate to say money is the most important barrier.”

He named cities such as San Diego, Dallas and Portland, Ore., which have thriving public transit systems with funding similar to Detroit’s.
“All of these are places that most people think would not support public transit, but have been able to successfully create a reliable transport system,” he said. Detroit faces a more difficult problem on the race front, as the other cities that have overcome the barriers of sprawling metro areas and lower funding don’t have racial disparity like Detroit’s. Grengs said poor management may also handicap the DDOT and SMART systems.

The public transportation problem is not unique to Detroit. Other cities in Michigan face funding issues and racial barriers that hurt the growth of public transit. “I wouldn’t be surprised if systems across the state face similar barriers,” said Grengs, though he said his research is mostly concentrated in Detroit. One Flint bus passenger said the bus service was mostly reliable, but the buses tended to be late. And in Flint, like Detroit, integration with the surrounding areas came to be a problem.

But in Lansing, the Capital Area Transportation Authority bus system was named the best transit system of its size in North America by the American Public Transportation Association in 2007. To be sure, CATA does have a considerably smaller community to serve than Detroit or Flint.

Despite the low public opinion of the DDOT buses, more people have been taking the bus over the past year, city statistics show. There was an 8.6-percent increase in passengers from April of last year until this April, according to Rivella Philips, public relations and communications manager for DDOT. As for complaints, she said they are something DDOT takes very seriously. “We’re constantly on that problem,” she said.

For passengers who need to move faster, Philips said an express service that began June 16 now travels all cross-town routes with not nearly so many stops.

Every week, approximately 1.7 million people use the DDOT bus system, a number that is increasing, Philips said.

She encouraged passengers to file complaints formally at 313-933-1300, “so that they can be taken care of.”

Meanwhile, there are still efforts in place geared at fixing the Metro Detroit public transport system, according to Jon Kreeger, public relations specialist for the Detroit Area Regional Transportation Authority. “We’re constantly working to improve the quality of service and get better coordination between SMART and DDOT buses,” he said.

But don’t hold your breath. Racial tension doesn’t go away overnight, and neither will the struggle to coordinate the city and the suburbs. But if there is a high enough demand, anything is possible. Grengs said he believes he has seen improvements over the past years and that there are people working very hard to fix the problems — especially former state Sen. John Hertel, CEO of the Regional Transportation Coordination Council.

With gas prices commonly over $4, a $1.75 bus ticket doesn’t sound all that bad — and that may encourage more Michiganders to use public transport.

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SMART and DDOT  FY 2007 System Data: 
DDOT Total Eligible Expenses: $156,067,037
SMART Total Eligible Expenses:  $93,791,436
DDOT Passengers: 36,435,176
SMART Passengers: 11,414,383
SMART Miles: 17,856,940
DDOT Miles: 17,804,698
DDOT Population Served: 951,270
SMART Population Served: 3,256,233
DDOT Vehicle Hours: 1,467,199
SMART Vehicle Hours: 969,931
DDOT Employees: 1,532
SMART Employees: 906
SMART Total vehicles: 630
DDOT Total vehicles: 541