This past Monday, the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) rolled out a proposal for the first comprehensive revamp of the Motor City’s bus system in decades, perhaps the most thoroughgoing such overhaul since the city government took over Detroit’s privately owned streetcar monopoly over a century ago. You can check it out for yourself and share your comments with DDOT on this website, and see a detailed route-by-route explanation and video.
Called “DDOT Reimagined,” the proposal lays out a long-term plan for frequent bus service across the entire city, restoring a level of service that most Detroit neighborhoods haven’t had in decades. It eliminates a few routes, merges several others, and tweaks many more, but the centerpiece of the plan is a massive increase in frequency across the system.
More Frequency, More Freedom
Older Detroiters can recall a time when you could catch a bus on Woodward and other primary routes every couple of minutes. Today, just 3 DDOT routes are scheduled to have service every 15 minutes on weekdays, the minimum standard for “frequent service.”
The DDOT Reimagined proposal envisions doubling that number, and then some. In fact, it calls for 6 “Tier 1” routes running every 10 minutes or better, and 11 more “Tier 2” routes running every 15 minutes or better. The “Tier 1” routes are described as eventually becoming “bus rapid transit lite” corridors, although it’s unclear exactly what this means; true “bus rapid transit” requires a dedicated transit-only lane.
Currently, half the routes in the DDOT system run only once an hour. The DDOT Reimagined plan would make that a thing of the past: every route in the system would run at least every half-hour, not just on the weekdays, but on weekends as well. Finally, every route in the system would run from 4 am to 1 am, seven days a week.
The Coverage Conundrum
What’s not to like? Well, riders will surely object to the proposed elimination of several routes (12-Conant, 46-Southfield) as well as large portions of some others. While dramatically increasing service frequency, the proposal significantly reduces coverage in many of Detroit’s East Side neighborhoods, requiring people to travel greater distances to access the bus. (See this handy explainer for the “frequency [or ‘ridership’] vs. coverage” trade-off in transit network design.)
DDOT has made clear this proposal remains a draft at this point, so we hope riders will share concerns in the months to come.
Money (That’s What We Need)
For the most part, however, after almost a century of escalating neglect of public transit in Detroit, this kind of vision for DDOT sounds almost too good to be true. To make it a reality, it will require major public investment, and a much greater commitment to transit from our elected officials.
Exactly how much the plan would cost is still unclear, but this year, the Mayor and City Council allocated just $73 million in City general fund dollars towards DDOT. (TRU and our allies had advocated a modest increase to, at minimum, $80 million.) By comparison, the Detroit Police Department received more than $350 million.
DDOT Reimagined may be a fine blueprint, all things considered, but it’s still only a blueprint at this point. It’s up to riders and our allies to build the political momentum, in the coming years, to make it a reality.