Detroit Free Press - Time to Meet Transit Challenge with Regional Millage

Op-Ed

By Rep. Brenda L. Lawrence

As mayor of Southfield for 14 years, I had the honor of leading a city with one of the largest small-business addresses in our state. And, of course, many of our Fortune 500 firms, big box retailers, mom-and-pop and national chain restaurants, temporary employment firms, title insurance companies and light-industrial plants employed thousands of men, women and teenagers who lived along Grand Boulevard in Detroit, on Oak Park Boulevard in the fine city of the same name, and on Martin Luther King Drive in Pontiac.

By now, we know the statistics painfully well: Only 1 in every 3 adult Detroit residents owns a car; similarly, nearly 40% of Motor City residents live below the poverty line, which is about $20,000 a year for a household of three people. The statistics hold true for other communities throughout the region.

The good news is that the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan, or RTA, was created by a bipartisan Legislature in 2012. It features a no opt-out provision for local cities.

The bad news is that the authority has not been funded, and in recent years, 51 metro communities have opted out of the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation system, or SMART. We've been robbed of the opportunity to create bus line continuity. We've been saddled with a patchwork set of bus routes on both sides of 8 Mile.

The authority, on the other hand, is designed to act as an umbrella organization to better coordinate and improve transit in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties and to shelter metro Detroit from a storm of disjointed efforts. Ultimately, we will need a regional millage to fund its efforts.

As a member of the U.S. House, I intend to be a strong advocate for securing federal resources to improve roads and bridges and also regional transit. Because I've been a mayor, I will help bring communities together and provide strategies to create a functional transit authority.

I will respectfully push back against efforts that bunker single communities, stymie job growth and zap regional economic vitality. My goal is to help make 8 Mile a major thoroughfare that is the 50-yard line of the congressional district that I represent, not a line that demarcates the haves and the have-nots.

Simply put, we need a single regional transit authority. One that is seamless. One that bridges both sides of 8 Mile. One that eliminates the 21-mile trek that James Robertson endured each day from his home in Detroit to work in Rochester Hills.

After many decades of trying, and more than 70 years after Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries testified before a congressional committee in hopes of securing federal funds "to get the motorist out of the urban traffic jam," we have a genuine opportunity to create a world-class regional transit system.

We just have to have the will to do it.

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