LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder hasn’t been shy about wading into previously intractable issues, and now he’s headed into one of the most infamous: regional public transit for metro Detroit with his announcement Monday of a task force on the issue.
The state of the public busing system in the Detroit area has been lamented for years and yet the bifurcated system persists with the Detroit Department of Transportation running busing in the city and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation handling the suburbs.
For years, riders have described a dysfunctional, uncoordinated system where it takes hours to commute by bus. Those complaints are hitting a new peak in Detroit where riders say buses are showing up horrendously late. Previous efforts to merge the systems have failed.
“We have a legacy here of planning too long and not acting enough,” Snyder said. “There’s lots of plans and research that already have been done. This is not starting from scratch.”
Snyder said he and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing would head the task force. Other participants would come from Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne counties, he said.
Both Bing and Snyder said the task force would quickly produce a plan.
“We don’t want to take a lot of time,” he said. “It’s very important that these two organizations get on the same page.”
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