Why Did Execs in Oakland and Macomb Counties Derail Transit Plan? Tell Us

METRO DETROIT, MI — In an op-ed Sunday, Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson suggests the reasons given by Oakland and Macomb County Executives L. Brooks Patterson and Mark Hackel for their opposition to a funding mechanism for a regional transit plan were disingenuous and strengthens old walls of racial divide.

"This was the very conceit behind the massive building of housing and infrastructure in Oakland and Macomb counties," Henderson said. "Financed by federal dollars, including from places like Detroit, exclusive of blacks and others deemed unworthy, the growth of population and wealth in Detroit’s suburbs opened up a racial chasm that we’ve managed to fill with one of the nation’s most plentiful supplies of hatred and resentment."

The Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan has only a few days to resolve differences to get the funding proposal before voters in the Nov. 8 general election. The $4.65 billion regional transit plan would add more bus lines, connect Detroit and Ann Arbor with rail and improve airport access.

Patterson and Hackel have said taxpayers in their counties are shortchanged under the funding plan. Hackel said he is "willing to compromise on every other issue" except a governance structure that requires a supermajority or a unanimous vote to make major funding changes, which he said treats all counties equitably. Patterson said all county taxpayers would help pay for it, but leaves out 40 communities.

Tell Us

• What do you think about this? Do you support the executives' arguments against the funding plan? Do you think the vote has racial underpinnings?

"The inherent problem is the way he defines 'left out,' " Henderson wrote. "It assumes transit is like garbage pickup or something, a service that is about individuals more than communities. Truth is, the RTA master plan would provide enormous benefits to everyone by making it easier to get around. Ultimately there’ll be connectors and other hyper-local transit tools to reach, literally, every community.

"Meantime, the plan now gets transit going in a bigger sense — making it easier for people to get to work, education and entertainment without a car. You can’t do that now — and that visits most harshly on the poor, who are locked away from opportunity by our lousy, selfishly configured current public transit.
Patterson certainly understands that — he just doesn’t think it’s his problem, or his voters’, which is where he’s dead wrong. The region can thrive on more inclusive economic growth if poor people in the city and other jurisdictions can better get to the region’s job centers, which are mostly in the suburbs, and especially in Oakland County."

Read Stephen Henderson's op-ed here.

Image: Public domain via Flickr