Transportation Riders United is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this month, and what a decade it has been for transit since TRU came on the scene.
"The attitude has changed dramatically," says Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United. "The public and public officials' attitude toward transit has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. In 1999, transit wasn't even on the radar of public officials and if it was, it was for buses for poor people."
Today Metro Detroit is on the precipice of approving a regional plan (and even an authority) for mass transit. Plans for a streetcar along Woodward are on the verge of materializing. A commuter rail line connecting Detroit, Metro Airport, Dearborn, Ypsilanti, and Ann Arbor is even closer. That's a long way from the everybody-drives-their-own SUV culture of the late 1990s.
That's not to say TRU is primarily responsible for this change in perception, but the mass transit advocacy non-profit has certainly played a major role in making it happen. Owens sees potential for even more change in the next couple of years that could literally redefine how Metro Detroiters view and use mass transit.
"The next couple of years have the potential so we can really see the rails hit the road," Owens says.
Ten years from now, she sees not only the current projects up and running but expanded, so the Woodward light rail stretches as far north as Royal Oak and the commuter rail line also swings up to Birmingham and Pontiac. Other possibilities include expanding these lines into Macomb County and the Downriver area, plus a much more effective and comprehensive bus system across southeast Michigan.
This is not about maps, tracks, and technology," Owens says. "It's about making people's lives more convenient."
TRU's 10-year anniversary celebration will be held at 6 p.m. Nov. 16 in the Majestic Theater in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. For information, click here or call (313) 963-8872.
Source: Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United
Writer: Jon Zemke
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