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The media had its eyes on Detroit again. But this time, it was not on its car companies, but its lack of a public transportation system—or a substantial one, at least. On February 8, PBS’s Miles O’Brien broadcasted a special on Detroit’s transportation issues: “Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City.”
This special not only highlighted Detroit’s lack of an efficient public transportation system, but also Detroit’s issues as a microcosm of America’s infrastructure issues. Miles O’Brien argued that turning around transportation in Detroit, the world’s capital in transportation for the last century, could change the direction of America in the twenty-first century.
Detroit’s only semblance of a mass transit system, beyond its bus system, is the People-Mover, built in 1987 after much political debate. Originally, it was intended to connect Detroit to the suburbs, but the project to do so was cut after more highways were built. If this project had gone through, Detroit could have moved in a different, interconnected direction.
But, as one Detroit resident said, “Now we’re building our fifth ring of suburbs because people want to be away from each other.”
Organizers and academics in the city are wary about Detroit’s infrastructure issues, but optimistic about a turnaround for Detroit and America as a whole. Robert Fishman, a University of Michigan professor interviewed in the PBS special, collects postcards of downtown Detroit from past decades “because postcards show the city at its best.”
He believes that understanding what cities have achieved lets us imagine what they can become again.
But first, Detroit needs to confront its issues. As O’Brien said of the end of the century, when nearly half of Detroit’s residents moved to the suburbs, “The capital of transportation was having trouble transporting its own citizens.”
A major issue that has resulted from the mass exodus from the city is a lack of connectivity. Once populated neighborhoods are now barren, with the exception of one or two houses, making it an expensive enterprise for the city to provide transportation issues, as well as electricity and utilities. The bus system, which is theoretically essential in the city because many neighborhoods lack grocery stores and proper healthcare, is far too sparse.
Movements are slowly moving towards providing proper and essential transit to Detroit’s residents, although the process is halted by the mess of politics in the city. As one man who grew up in Detroit and is now a member of the Vanguard Community Development Corporation stated, “Growing up here in the north end, our family did not have a lot of money, so we relied a lot on public transportation…that is why this project here is near and dear to my heart.”
The documentary compared the transportation system in the United States to that of Spain, who became a leader in transportation after its development of a high-speed train system. What used to be a 24-hour trip from Seville to Madrid is now 2.5 hours.
Robian Boyle, a professor at Wayne State University, says, “We are a generation behind other places.”
According to Tom Umberg, of California Rail, which is advocating high-speed trains in California, “We can take lessons from the Spaniards.”
Originally, similar to the debates in the United States, many protested the creation of a high-speed train system because of financial issues. Today, however, no one would question the decision. According to the documentary, every single high-speed train system started with a debt, but ended up a success.
This is what many advocate in America. As O’Brien concluded, “When we talk about rebuilding
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