Detroit City Council narrowly approves placing deputies on buses

Detroit MI - In a narrow 5 to 4 margin, Detroit City Council voted Thursday to approve the expenditure for placing Wayne County Sheriff Deputies on board the city buses.

As I predicted the other day, there were plenty of council members that voted against this. I have not found any news story as of yet which tells why 4 of the council members voted against this measure. I can make an educated guess however and that is that these council members were afraid that it would pull money from the pet projects they have in motion in their voting districts.

This is not a political issue yet the Detroit City Council has made it one. The issue at hand is and always has been the safety of the drivers and ridership, in other words, their constituents. The claim of needing clarification on liability issues does not take that long to resolve and this was simply foot dragging by the City Council.

For the record, the Detroit City Council Members that voted against putting the safety of the drivers and transit riders above politics in Thursday's vote were JoAnn Watson, Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, Brenda Jones and Shelia Cockrel.

Detroit operators walk out

Detroit MI - In response to Detroit City Council's foot dragging on the issue of placing sheriff deputies on the buses, Detroit's bus drivers walked out Wednesday. This move has been long in coming as the violence issue on Detroit's buses has been increasing for years yet the city has been reluctant to address the situation.

I have seen walk outs for ridiculous issues over the years at various transit systems but this is a serious issue and one that I do support the transit union on. City Council's lack of action for well over a year (a story I located in an archive search indicated the problem went back much further than that) spurred this move and perhaps it will motivate them to address the issue.

Then again, perhaps not. The procrastinating City Council immediately got on it's high horse and talked of intimidation by the union. "There is a way to lobby" stated Detroit Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins. Well Ms. Collins, they did lobby for well over a year and the City Council wouldn't listen.

A temporary fix went in to get the drivers back starting on Thursday. The fix is a one time deployment of the sheriff's deputies for 24 hours to "give Council the time to discuss the matter". There is no guarantee that the City Council will vote in favor of permanently placing deputies on the buses and I feel safe in saying that if there is actually a vote tomorrow on the issue, there will be plenty of council members that will want more time to drag their heels so they don't have to address the problem.

The drivers did what they had to do in this situation. The number of driver and passenger assaults is continuing to rise yet the politicians want to stall. Why? Most likely because the money used to pay for security will have to come from their pet projects and bus security won't generate the face time that pet community projects will.

Public transit needs to be based on reality

Detroit MI - An editorial out of the Detroit Free Press states well what is needed all across North America. Transit needs to be based on reality. While looking at the public transportation issues of Detroit, this editorial could easily apply to almost any city.

From a paper that is usually rather Liberal in its views, they took a rather Conservative stance on the public transportation needs of Detroit. Calling for buses rather than expensive rail lines as well as taking a swipe at the union and at the Democrats, this editorial clearly states what needs to be done to improve public transit in the region.

A few things in the editorial stood out to me. One was that the lie of the "heavy ridership that will result if a transit project is built" was exposed, much to the chagrin of the pro-rail crowd. One look at the Detroit People Mover, the futuristic transit project that was to turn Detroit into a world-class city, shows how wrong these projected ridership figures can be. The People Mover should be 75,000 riders a day but in reality it is lucky it hauls 8,000 a day and I'm willing to bet that 8,000 figure has been tweaked to the high side.

Another point that stood out was that the editorial writer worries about government and transit planners being seduced by glamorous rail system. Well it's too late, they have been. There is even a contest going on currently to design the future of transportation in Detroit where they specify it has to be rail oriented. The winners of this contest will have their expensive rail plan pushed at the expense of a far more economical and flexible bus operation.

If public transit is to survive, it must be viewed realistically. It must run efficiently and effectively. Planning needs to be done in the form of considering that people are not going to want to give up their cars. Even glamorous rail systems can't pull people away from their cars.

Currently, planning is done using hopes and dreams of what it could be like in a Utopian society. In other words, gambling taxpayer money that they'll get a royal flush rather than a pair of 2's. This is not creating an effective or efficient operation.

Let's face it, it's a well known and proven fact that public transit is expensive and becoming more expensive every day. Transit systems need to become more effective and efficient if they are to survive. The politicians and so-called transit loving activists need to wake up to reality that rail isn't the answer to the problems. A well run bus system is much more effective and efficient but few want to promote this. They'd rather gamble billions of taxpayer dollars on expensive toys in the hope it will entice people to use it in addition to the development factor that many cities also gamble our money on. Then they cry when fares go up and routes get cut to pay for the toy they wanted.

Yes, public transit needs to be based on reality. The future of it depends on proper planning to create an effective and efficient operation. If things keep going in the direction they are headed, public transit will become a dismal footnote in the annals of time.