For a century, the lack of clear vision or political courage have been decisive limiting factors in the ongoing quest to build meaningful and reliable public transportation in Southeast Michigan. Ambitious plans to establish a subway in the 1920s were quenched when Mayor James Couzens, who ran on a platform of replacing the Detroit United Railway (DUR) with a city owned and operated streetcar system,
vetoed a bond issue for the city to finance a subway in collaboration with the DUR. In the 1970s, the failure to establish a regional agency that could receive federal funds during the ‘Great Societies’ era that built Atlanta’s MARTA and DC’s Metro caused Detroit to miss out on one of the greatest transit-building eras in the nation’s history. More recently, a 2016 ballot measure to establish bus rapid transit, commuter rail, and a solid funding base for the Regional Transportation Authority failed during a time of general political upheaval in Michigan. Since these notable missed opportunities, regional powers have floundered on fostering the cooperation and investment necessary to establish meaningful, fixed-route public transportation service. The absence of progress continues to jeopardize Southeast Michigan’s future and competitiveness with other regions. It is a key pushing factor impacting population retention and attractiveness.
Meaningful investment in fixed-route public transportation has the potential to transform Michigan into a state where car access no longer determines life outcomes and economic destiny. Here are some of the ways transit can help improve lives: Better transit can be leveraged to revitalize communities across the state that have been culturally, economically, and socially confined by sprawl and an overreliance on cars by incentivizing and zoning for transit oriented infill, embracing sprawl repair, and building more holistic and balanced communities that support Michigan’s future. A truly connected Michigan would empower our growing population of seniors to continue to live full lives after they’ve lost their ability to drive and give our children better access to school, community activities, and parks before they can learn to. A thoughtful network would support regional vibrance by giving safer access to nightlife and major events and offering a crucial safe alternative to driving under the influence - a major cause of Michigan’s crashes, major injuries, and road deaths. Transit access to the region’s hospitals and medical centers would support better public health outcomes and lower one of the major barriers to Michiganders reaching preventative care. It would give Southeast Michiganders with disabilities better access to their daily destinations. A statewide approach to public transit has the potential to boost Pure Michigan tourism by making recreation & leisure destinations more accessible to major population centers, Detroit Metro Airport, and major Amtrak corridors to Toronto, Chicago, and New York.
This map imagines what a connected future of shared mobility and universal access could look like for Metro Detroit. It sets aside traditional assumptions and our current short-sighted approach to regional development and embraces a shift to a more sustainable, shared allocation of resources for transportation. It is lightly based on an
earlier map I produced calling for a reduction in Detroit’s freeway system.
Amtrak expansion
At the base of this vision is a streamlining of the Wolverine line and overall expansion of Amtrak service in Michigan. The Detroit-to-Chicago leg of Amtrak’s Wolverine service would be upgraded, straightened, and electrified to reach maximum speeds. A passenger leaving downtown Detroit would be able to reach friends in Chicago in a little over an hour. While today, Wolverine bends north just short of Michigan Central Station to service Baltimore Station, Royal Oak, Troy, and Pontiac, the new configuration would bring trains to the iconic Michigan Central Station and below the Detroit River through an upgraded international rail tunnel. An eastward expansion of the Wolverine line with two branches would take trains from Detroit to Toronto and from Detroit to New York and the Northeast Corridor via Buffalo. International travelers would clear customs upon deboarding to allow passport-free travel from Chicago to New York through Ontario. This expansion would make Detroit the meeting place of 3 of the most populous and culturally rich metro areas in North America, spurring radical connectivity, opportunity, and link regional assets like Metro Airport and our state universities to the entire Great Lakes Region.
Pere-Marquette Extension
An extension of the Pere-Marquette line from Grand Rapids north to Mackinaw City would help facilitate travel along the coast of Lake Michigan more efficiently and introduce an alternative to overburdening small-town centers with tourists in cars during seasonal peaks.
Proposal: MIRA - Michigan Intercity Rail Authority
Statewide rail would exist as the Michigan Intercity Rail Authority. The authority could be run as a division of MDOT with oversight from a board appointed by the governor, counties, and incorporated cities with rail service and more than 100,000 residents. The network would be made of five lines reaching Port Huron, Traverse City and Grand Rapids via Lansing, and Warren Dunes State Park in Sawyer from their start at Detroit’s Union Terminal and Michigan Central Station. This network would facilitate connectivity and opportunity to urban and rural Michiganders alike with service to our public universities, state and national parks, major events, the state capital, employment centers, and tourist destinations across the Lower Peninsula. The Saginaw-Traverse line, so-named for the Indigenous trail that predates Michigan’s statehood, and the Capital-Grand lines would be prioritized for long-term high speed improvements to decrease travel times between Detroit, Flint, Mid-Michigan, the Pere-Marquette connection in Traverse City, and to facilitate trips from Detroit and Grand Rapids to the state capital in Lansing.
Proposal: DAMA - Detroit Area Metro Authority
Regional automated metro, light rail, and bus rapid transit service would operate under the Detroit Area Metro Authority, or DAMA. The authority would operate in collaboration with the Regional Transit Authority and have oversight from the existing RTA board. This network would be focused on high capacity travel across the region at high speeds and frequencies.
Automated Metro
The centerpiece of this network would be the Woodward-Airport Metro 1 line, signed as M1. This fully automated line would connect the region's most significant corridor with Downtown Detroit and the International Riverfront, Michigan Central Station, communities west of downtown, and Metro Airport. The fully automated configuration allows for maximum speed, flexibility, express service that can bypass lower-trafficked stations during peak hours, and dynamic capacity to accommodate major events. Transfers to the region’s BRT network would make up the line’s key stations and the two systems would work together to create a consistent web of transit connectivity.
In this plan, the Detroit People Mover would be expanded and renamed the Downtown People Mover to more accurately reflect its location in the service region. The revised service loop would include new stops at the downtown stadiums, the M1 + Vernor/Van Dyke connection and northwest Downtown near the new UM Innovation Center. The people mover’s train technology, developed by Bombardier, is designed to allow two-way travel with parallel tracks in certain parts of the loop. Adding those two-way segments and making station upgrades would facilitate travel both ways downtown to provide more straightforward connections to regional lines extending from the loop.
Light Rail
Six additional light rail lines could complement the automated metro corridor along Detroit’s other major radial avenues. The light rail corridors would transform the streetscape of Michigan, Ford, Grand River, Van Dyke, Gratiot, Jefferson, and parts of Harper with minimized cross-street conflicts, complementary bike infrastructure, and improved pedestrian amenities. These corridors would be the highest priority for transit oriented development and
sprawl repair and retrofit opportunities across the region. A three-rail configuration would allow express inbound and outbound service to key stations during peak periods, speeding up light rail trips for regional passengers with longer trips. Each line also has connections to the statewide MIRA network.
Bus Rapid Transit
A network of twenty BRT lines that blend the mile road system with Detroit’s river-oriented grid would provide twelve crosstown and eight north-south corridors of connectivity across the region. These BRT corridors would run frequent, fast bus service in lanes fully separated from other traffic. They would be coupled with a grid of protected bike lanes, greenways, parks, and plazas. The land surrounding the intersections of these BRT corridors would be prioritized for walkable, dense infill development of housing and amenities. Crosstown routes bear a shade of rouge to represent their east-west path across the Rouge River while north-south routes are blue to represent their direction towards the Detroit River or Oakland County lakes in the northwest quadrant of the service region. Minor BRT stations would include bypass lanes to facilitate limited-stop service during peak periods. Each BRT line includes at least one connection to the MIRA network.
Proposal: DSTA - Detroit - Suburban Transit Authority
The final component of this vision is the regional network of neighborhood-serving bus service operating as the Detroit Suburban Transit Authority, a merger of current day SMART and DDOT under the Regional Transit Authority. 22 north-south lines and 14 crosstown lines would offer a cohesive grid of connectivity and fill gaps between Metro, LRT, and BRT corridors. Stops would include universal shelters, consistent and visible signage, enhanced lighting, and connections to the regional bike network. This would be the front door of access to transit for neighborhoods across Southeast Michigan that are further away from Metro corridors.
This future is possible with vision, political courage, strategic planning, and long-term commitment. It will require a shift away from poor land use, regional fragmentation, and bureaucratic indifference. We’ll have to change our policy approach to transportation away from car dependency and towards a more balanced transportation system that facilitates freedom of choice and carefree regional mobility, and the time is now.
Paul Jones III is a Detroit native and graduate of University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning. He currently lives in Cambridge, MA where he works as a Community Planner for the U.S. DOT Volpe Center specializing in program development and capacity building. The ideas and views expressed are his own and reflect his ongoing passion for the intersection of history, urbanism, and transportation justice in Detroit.