Finley: Do we still need mass transit?

It makes sense that when riders get on a bus, it should take them wherever they want to go. So, from that point of view, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans is right to push a ballot proposal that would expand the SMART bus system across all communities in the county.

Evans is working on an initiative for the November election that would ask voters to bring all 43 county municipalities into the suburban bus system.

Currently, 17 Wayne County communities opt out of SMART, the transit authority designed to connect commuters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. The nonparticipants include some of Wayne’s largest suburbs, including Livonia, Canton, Northville and Plymouth.

They dropped SMART for a reason: they didn’t feel it brought value to their residents. Evans faces a tough sell in convincing them that dynamic has changed.

The big question post-pandemic: Do we still need mass transit?

The theory driving the decades-long push to build out a comprehensive transit system is that it will bring knowledge economy jobs and young, creative talent. But it was never certain whether buses, Metro Detroit’s only practical option, would be an acceptable substitute for trains and subways.

The Regional Transit Authority hoped to provide the answer with a network of fast buses that would traverse all the major arteries. Voters rejected funding for the plan in 2016. And then came the pandemic, which made the idea of cramming onto buses with other commuters unthinkable. Yet the dream of mass transit lives on.

The RTA still issues annual master plans and coordinates funding for local transit authorities. But post-COVID, the urgency has waned for creating a sophisticated and seamless mass transit system here, as has the demand.

In 2019, the year before the pandemic, Metro Detroiters took 41 million bus rides. Last year, the total was 21.8 million.

The plunge reflects the fundamental changes in the way we work, and where. More employees are working remotely. The office vacancy rate in southeastern Michigan stands at a nation-leading 25%. Many offices that remain open are only requiring employees to come in two or three times a week.

That translates to fewer commuters on the road. And the hassles of commuting — traffic jams, parking shortages, etc. — have greatly diminished. The mass transit system we already have — our abundance of freeways and major highways — seems to be serving us well.

We should be rethinking our transit plans to reflect how much things have changed. Expanding the system without first determining what transit mix best serves the needs of the new commuter risks wasting resources.

Would it be more efficient, for example, to expand ride share options such as Uber and Lyft to get residents to jobs, doctor appointments and grocery stores? Or to deploy fleets of commuter vans that collect workers employed by the same company and deliver them to their workplace? How does the transition to electric vehicles play into the planning?

There are Metro Detroit residents who lack transportation to get to work and employers throughout the region who require those workers.

The challenge is meeting both those needs without running more empty buses up and down suburban roads.

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