LANSING – Plans to create a Regional Transit Authority for Detroit and its surrounding counties are one major step closer to fruition after the Senate on Tuesday passed a package of bills laying the foundation for it to do so on a bipartisan vote over mostly GOP opposition.
It was a cold day last winter when Sen. Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, visited Detroit and waited for a bus to arrive 45 minutes past its scheduled time, he said.
“I want some bragging rights because I outlasted Senator Johnson by 30 seconds before we were heading for the door,” said Mr. Casperson, referring to Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park). “We wanted to go and stand in the places where folks would have to stand for these buses. In the one case … we waited for 45 minutes beyond what time the bus was supposed to be there and we didn’t have shelter, we didn’t have any way of protecting ourselves from the environment. It was cold.”
SB 909 , the primary piece of legislation in the package first passed by a 22-16 vote, with 11 Republicans joining all Democrats except Sen. Coleman Young II (D-Detroit) in support of the bill. The vote was later reconsidered, at which time Sen. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) and Sen. John Pappageorge (R-Troy) changed their votes to support the bill, which passed on a 24-14 vote.
SB 909 would maintain the authority board structure in the committee-approved version – one member each appointed by the governor and Detroit mayor and two members each appointed by Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne counties, though Washtenaw County is still on the fence about whether or not it wants to be involved, Casperson confirmed.
“We really need them to weigh in and say they want in or they want out,” he said. “That’s okay one way or another, but just let us know that, when we’re moving forward and going to the House now.”
The administration of President Barack Obama is dangling millions of federal money to entice the Detroit area to do something that has proven politically impossible for decades since the city shuttered its old street car system – build a reliable public transit operation. The Detroit Department of Transportation, which handles the bus system in the city, is generally considered a wreck with an aging fleet, routinely late buses and residents without a motor vehicle needing hours to get to and from work.
The Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation handles buses in the suburbs and while considered more reliable than DDOT, the two systems suffer from a notorious lack of cooperation and coordination.
The new regional transit authority sidesteps the thorny issue of merging the systems and would instead oversee a new line of rolling rapid transit buses along the region’s major business corridors and be in charge of coordinating SMART and DDOT routes. The authority also would receive the federal funding.
Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R-Lowell) won an amendment to SB 909 that would require the vote of the region on to be in November, noting that “more people are engaged in the (election) process,” then, he said.
Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland) offered an amendment that would change the composition of the board to include an individual appointed by the county executive of qualifying counties and another appointed by the board of commissioners in that county, but it was easily defeated.
Also part of the package, SB 911 passed by a vote of 22-15 (subscribers please note: a News Update incorrectly stated the vote tally of this bill), and SB 912 , SB 967 and SB 445 passed 23-15.
After months of struggle, Casperson was relieved to see the bills make their way out of the Senate, but acknowledged that many of his Republican colleagues were not exactly on the same page. Indeed, it is fairly rare for the caucus to proceed with a high-profile issue when a majority is not in favor of it.
“This has been a very passionate issue. There’s been good arguments on both sides of it,” he said. “Some of my colleagues didn’t really care for it … They were valid concerns, but I think there needs to be a regional transit authority set up, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen down in Detroit.”
He said some of the concerns were the revenue part of the legislation, where the region in the authority would have to vote to agree to pay for a special assessment that would fund the transit system, though not all payers of the assessment would necessarily benefit from it. One provision of the bills mandates that 85 percent of what is taken in a particular area must be given back in spending. Another option is to levy a supplemental fee on motor vehicle registrations to fund operations.
“Those were some of the reasons behind that – kind of level the playing field so everyone feels like they’re being treated fairly in their particular region,” Casperson said. “I don’t know that you could ever make something like that perfect, but we tried to do the best we could because of those concerns.”
Sen. Jack Brandenburg (R-Harrison Township) very much echoed this sentiment in his opposition to the bills.
“I think it’s bad policy. I think it’s bad politics. People in my district will not use this because really no one wants to go down to Detroit because there’s nothing there,” Brandenburg said in a phone interview. “There’s no commercialism. I don’t think there’s a name-brand grocery store in the city.”
Brandenburg pointed to the city’s loss of 275,000 between 2000 and 2010, the city’s image as being one of the most violent in the United States per crime index ratings by the FBI, and “junk bond status”-type credit rating as multiple reasons why he did not feel rapid transit was what the city of Detroit needed, he said.
“The city is ready to financially implode at any time,” he said. “It’s not like you’re stepping on the ‘L’ train in Chicago to visit a marvelous city.”
He also said that, to his knowledge, no traffic congestion studies had been done to evaluate how much the transit could affect traffic and that when he asked how much the project would cost (approximately $490 million at least, he said), he thought “the money could be used in much better ways for Detroit.”
Brandenburg called the legislation “a mistake” and said he plans to inform voters in his district about said “mistake” come election time.
Sen. Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), also an opponent to each piece of legislation, agreed that transit is not exactly what the city needs to make it better.
“As you examine that market right now, is mass transit the highest use of any resources? And in my opinion, it wasn’t,” he said in a phone interview. “We heard that, number one, it’s an undefined cost. There will clearly be either registration fees or some form of revenue to be applied by residents of not only Wayne County but also Macomb or Oakland County.”
But Casperson said some of the legislation will help with organization, particularly that the federal government will “know who they were going to be dealing with” when it decides to award grants and evaluate the use of those grants.
In all, he reflected on his experience in Detroit and remembering a woman with two children waiting out in the cold to catch a bus as part of the motivation behind moving the legislation.
“There’s got to be something in place to fix what they’ve got going on down there, and I hope the RTA is one of the mechanisms to get them started,” he said. “I think they deserve a system that runs on time and is efficient and when people get on it they know where they’re going and when they’re going to get there.”
Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park), praised passage of the bills.
“We are finally moving forward as a region and a state by taking this step toward the creation of an RTA,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement. “After decades of stalled attempts, characterized by bitter partisanship and territorial disputes, I am pleased to say we are closer than ever to achieving the goal of building a functional mass transit system, competing for federal transit dollars and bringing southeastern Michigan into the 21st Century.”
He said southeast Michigan is among the 41 largest metropolitan regions in the nation lacking a comprehensive regional transit system, making federal transit funds unavailable to areas without such an authority.
“As we’ve seen in communities across the country, building an RTA will be a catalyst for job creation, private investment and economic growth,” he said. “It is the best example of government creating an atmosphere that supports job creation rather than endeavoring to create jobs itself. This system will meet the needs of our citizens and expand business opportunities.”
The Michigan Environmental Council also applauded the passage of the long-awaited legislation.
“A regional transit authority is an essential step in providing a higher level of coordinated transit service in Southeast Michigan,” Chris Kolb, MEC president, said in a statement. “This is a critical tool to increase the region’s capacity to compete with other Midwest states and big cities as well as to leverage federal transportation money for the Detroit Metropolitan area.”
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