Usually, before Black Label Detroit dares to criticize our current regional ruling class, we'd ease into it by using favorable analogies, language, and a bit of sarcasm to set the tone for the information that follows our introductions in our reports.
But, when discussing the state of public transit planning in Metro Detroit and beyond, there really is no reason for us to restrain ourselves from expressing the proper amount of contempt and disgust with the obvious games that are being played right in front of the public's faces.
To put things as bluntly as possible: Our current Political Class isn't just inept at advocating for the type of transit that the region needs in order to grow as fast as possible when the climate refugees come, but they're also complicit in a certain type of grift that sees the possibility of Metro Detroit becoming the next "big" transit city as compatible with keeping the auto industry as the region's main sector of employment, and, In our editorial opinion, this charade is getting old.
This publication can suggest this simply based on the words that have come out of the mouths of our current regional Political Class and their lapdogs in our tortured "transit advocacy" field, which, has been willingly disclosed to Black Label Detroit in past interviews. And thankfully, the current state of the 2025 Detroit Mayoral Race has shattered any illusion that this region has transit advocates working within the best interests of current transit riders and potential riders who could be added in the future.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we must illustrate exactly WHY this publication holds so many people in charge in contempt when coming to this discussion from the place of a non-transit rider: For both transit riders and those who get around by car, if you're tapped into local news and regional issues like we are, you could probably already tell that this publication is talking about the organization "Transit Riders United", or TRU for short.
Their self-stated goal is to: "advocate for public transit within Metro Detroit", "engage with the public and transit users" and "hear from the voices of transit riders" (as was said during TRU's "State of Transit" held on January 28th of this year).
Unfortunately for transit lovers here in Metro Detroit, TRU seems to be a group that likes to talk a good game, yet, their so called "advocacy" rarely does anything meaningful for our region's most needy people. For those fortunate enough to not have to rely on TRU's constant capitulation to our regional auto oligarchy, some of you might be reading this report, and thinking to yourselves:
"Oh great, yet another brain dead Leftist trying to shit on an opposing union just because they're not as radical as they would like them to be".
This publication would like to offer this in response: "Transit Riders United" might sound like the name of a grassroots, citizen-led advocacy group that is made up of everyday people and owes their loyalty to the public. However, we're going to burst that bubble pretty quickly since it's the furthest thing from what TRU actually is and does.
TRU isn't even a genuine Union, it's a federally recognized 501(c)(3), which means that any and all donations made to TRU as well as the money that TRU spends on staff, are tax deductible. For TRU to be a genuine working class Union, who's main goal is to promote social welfare for the neediest among us, it'd have to be classified as a 501(c)(4). Basically, "Transit Riders United" is essentially just a cog within the larger nonprofit industrial complex that leeches off of municipalities in the region.
With this in mind, let's take a look at some of the people that absolutely no one the collective people have elevated up to TRU's board of directors:
There's Nicole Brown, (who is a member of Detroit Future City, yet another cog within the larger non-profit industrial complex with their main goal being selling the people of Detroit Austerity Urbanism, which was discussed in a previous report). They also have Mitchell Montey (who's a member of PR firm Shift Digital, in a region where we're drowning in PR firms). Then there's Gilian Gainsly (who's from EGLE, the infamous organization that fucked over the rights of residents in Flint regarding their mass poisoning, and is currently allowing heavy industrial polluters to do whatever they want with Detroit's air). Continuing, we have Issac Douglas (who's a member of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, which is a private entity that coordinates all the business activities in Detroit's Central Business District, a group, whom, has almost every powerful local company as a sponsor). And finally, there's Christopher LeFlore (who's from the Kresge Foundation, a major group that assisted in the "grand bargain" during Detroit's bankruptcy).
There's also some better representation of community based interest groups on TRU's board of directors, but, the majority of the group's board members come from these politically "untouchable" institutions, so, one can have more than an assertion that TRU's campaigns can be nudged along with the influence of these Capitocratic interests.
Despite these clear conflicts of interest, there may be someone from TRU combing through this report right now with their colleagues who'd suggest that our criticisms were just "unhelpful purity testing" and also say that "TRU has done nothing other than elevate the voices of transit users who live in a transit-needy area". Yet, this rebuttal, too, will fall flat one we at Black Label Detroit bring up the events of September 5th 2024:
It was an event that the head-honchos within TRU marketed as a 1 on 1 Q&A session one of Youtube's most recognizable Urbanism advocates, who is Ray Delahanty (aka CityNerd), with a audience packed to capacity to interact with him, the organizers of the night passed around index cards which gave us the idea that we would be able to directly ask CityNerd questions and have him give an honest take on what ever question he had to answer. Yet, when the event was almost in progress, Assad Turfe, the deputy Wayne County executive, Scott Benson the current city councilman for Detroit's 3rd district, and a representative from the RTA, the governing body of regional transit in Metro Detroit, all got on the stage with him (all of whom weren't mentioned on any promo material) and then proceeded to steer the conversation solely towards implementing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) despite the fact that a sizable chunk of Metro Detroit having the density and infrastructure to run rail based transit.
What's even more damning on TRU's part is the fact that once all of the index cards were collected and brought to the stage, Megan Owens, the current CEO of TRU, sat there and disregarded the audience's questions in favor of asking her own pre-prepared questions to CityNerd from a document she had been holding the whole time.
What's even worse is that while Turfe and Benson were on stage they said certain things like "I don't know if we can do high speed rail here, but we might be able to do [rapid transit] with busses" & "we'll always be the motor city, you'd have to fight tooth and nail to stop that". Saying bullshit like this in front of a seasoned urban Planner and critic of bad urban design was mind-blowing to see in real time and it woke us up to the true intentions of TRU ever since.
It cannot be stressed enough that the organization is headed by individuals who'll literally say anything to appease any audience no matter how contradictory they appear. For example: Black Label Detroit asked Owens why doesn't TRU advocate for more rail-based transit after the Detroit mayoral transit forum wrapped up, and she replied:
"We would love to see more rail, we're actually working on a study looking at what it would take to get there. but, we've mapped out a 'hierarchy of needs' that bus services have to exist & get to everybody. Just like parts of Wayne County has no bus service, we're ensuring that transit gets everywhere & that it's reliable. We can't do everything at once".
(everyone should be mindful to the fact that the opt-out communities in western Wayne County already has rail infrastructure in place, so, if the county finally does vote to opt into the SMART bus network, they'd already have the pieces to use the bus network to support rail services)
Now, compare Owens' response to that of Deborah Freer, whose the assistant director of TRU when asked the same question:
"Rail studies cost a lot of money to do. But then years pass, priorities change, and we start from scratch".
Finally, we'll disclose a select set of questions that this publication asked Megan Owens in an interview so it's fully understood what type of "productive changes" the group is advocating for when it comes to regional mass transit within Metro Detroit:
Why isn't TRU not moving to reform the RTA?
To offer a short rebuttal to the last point before moving on, what Owens said might seem reasonable at first glance, but, once you do a little bit of research, you understand that she's framing the conversation around transit planning in a specific way.
Owens mainly highlights the "spoke roads" within Detroit's municipal boundaries and suggests that they could be stepping stones to a wider footprint of regional transit. However, She fails to include any other major road in the entire metro area, which is basically reinforces the "hub and spoke" model that the RTA failed to sell to the region's voters all the way back in 2016, and, if ignores the impact that WFH trends has had on regional commuting patterns. If the suburbs are going to buy into any transit plan, any proposal would have to include major suburban thoroughfares, or, include a "web" or "grid" of services that would take direct routes North, South, East, and West like all other cities with mass transit do. Right now, they simply think that cutting off entire portions of the region from transit is going to be the best course of action and they genuinely assume that it'll be a productive change.
So, what does TRU's controlled dissent against the auto industry have to do with the Detroit Mayoral race? Well, it has a lot to do with what's going on with our dysfunctional transit system, because they are a fundamentally compromised organization, they can't be expected to hold any specific politician or candidate to account for their stated goals if they're elected into office.
For example, Mary Sheffield & Fred Durhal are some of the only candidates who've advocated for implementing a rail-based rapid transit network within Metro Detroit, and yet, when Mary Sheffield opted to skip the candidate forum that TRU put on for all of the candidates in the mayoral race, Owens refused to use Sheffield's name when telling the crowd that "one candidate couldn't make it to the forum because of scheduling issues" and, to date, has not opted to ask any of the questions to Sheffield, over social media, or anywhere else, to get her take on what all the other candidates were forced to disclose at the forum.
Usually, this would be the part where Black Label Detroit would advocate for it's own specific vision for how transit should be carried out for a more equitable region, but, we'll disclose that plan after the primary is done and dusted. It's not out of fear that someone will "steal our ideas" (if you're serious about change, you actually WANT the establishment to take your ideas, most of the time, during election season anyway), it'd be far easier for Black Label Detroit to put it's thumbs on the scale when the field of candidates dwindles.
All in all, TRU and our Political Class are deeply unserious about what sort of vision they have for the future of Metro Detroit's transit, we need to enable a level of growth that has not been seen since the founding of Detroit over 200 years ago. There is no candidate, nor are there any activists out there who have "big ideas" to combat against the present sense of Austerity Urbanism. To our readers/listeners, Black Label Detroit will take this opportunity to come up with a plan that, while being as practical as possible, will spur the imagination of Radicals that can be used as a rallying cry for advocates who want to see a complete break from the interests of the auto lobby. The time for change is coming, and, it's flying right at us at break-neck pace,
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