The State of Transit: An Advice Letter to SMART

Feb 2, 2023 — Advocacy

Standard disclaimers: I wasn’t paid to write this article, views are my own, etc etc. You know the drill.

For the past thirty years, public transit advocates in Oakland County have been fighting for one thing: County-wide service. No more opt-outs; no more Swiss cheese. And on November 8th, 2022, after months of heavy campaigning, voters made their feelings about you clear, SMART : “We want more.”

Corey (@coreyjrowe)

🚨🚌 OAKLAND COUNTY IS FULLY REPORTING.

Final Results:

Out of 589,198 total transit votes:

YES: 336,473 (57.1%)

NO: 252,725 (42.9%)

IT'S OFFICIAL, OPT-OUTS ARE NO MORE

November 9, 2022 • 6:19 pm

Corey (@coreyjrowe)

🗺️ The final #OaklandTransit vote map. YES votes expanded further into the northeast corner of the county than most of us expected, including a striking tie vote in downtown Lake Orion. Troy was heavily canvassed by oppo but still voted in favor. And s/o to Rochester Hills!!

November 9, 2022 • 6:37 pm

It was a tremendous victory not just for Oakland County, but all of Metro Detroit as Wayne and Macomb voters also showed you strong continued support. But now, as we shift from imagination to implementation, you must ensure a solid foundation is laid for what will be your largest expansion in post-SEMTA history.

SMART, there are two things you must do to make this happen: Secure the personnel necessary to run service at acceptable levels, and maintain an internal vision aligned with the needs of future riders.

It’s Not a Driver Shortage. It’s a Wage Shortage.

Transit agencies nationwide are struggling to recruit operators as they emerge from deep service cuts enacted earlier in the pandemic. You’re no exception, SMART, with cancelled runs and multi-hour waits becoming a regular occurrence as you search for over 100 new drivers.

Meanwhile, just an hour west in Ann Arbor, TheRide has no open positions and is running most routes at pre-pandemic frequencies.

Call this what it is — a wage shortage. Anything under $25/hr is no longer enough and that goes for agencies across America.

That’s it. That’s my ask. Pay your drivers more as part of a fairly negotiated union contract.

Transit Provider or “Mobility Manager?”

It seems like you’ve been going through another crisis over the past several months, SMART: An identity crisis.

At the end of August, you launched a comprehensive rebranding campaign. New logo, new bus design, new commercials, the debut of the LIFE | SMART | YOU motto — the works. In your own words, this new marketing represents a “shift in focus to be the leader in mobility management in southeast Michigan.”

If you continue down this road, your new focus will cause more harm than good.

The best way to explain why is to show, not tell. Let’s compare two commercials: Your old marketing strategy versus new.

The 2018 commercial has:

• Shots of a bus
• Shots of people on a bus
• Shots showing the locations where you can take the bus
• Educational narration which touches on the benefits of riding the bus: "Get on with whatever you'd rather do than drive!"

The cinematography in the 2022 commercial is better, but the message? It has:

• Mostly generic footage entirely unrelated to transit
• No mention of what the commercial is about until the very end
• No explanation of what SMART actually is or what services you offer

See the issue?

SMART, you are not a household name in Metro Detroit. As much as I wish you were, that’s the fact of the matter. Our region is the very epicenter of American car dependency, and as transit advocates we’ve made a commitment to swim against this powerful current with you from day one. Ask a random student in the suburbs if they have a DART pass and chances are good they won’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.

It is imperative that your marketing is educational. It needs to show people what services you offer. Five years ago you had this down, but with this rebrand you seem to have left your teaching efforts behind in favor of a corporate persona that tries too hard to be inoffensive. Questions we’ve asked you on social media — which you once replied to with enthusiasm and sincerity — have gone unanswered for months. You’re showing your new ads inside buses instead of to future riders, the proper audience. It gives off the perception that you’re afraid to promote your services for fear of drawing unwanted attention from municipalities hostile to transit .

Let me tell you a secret, SMART: You’re going to have detractors in our region no matter what you do. Instead of quietly rolling over when communities and business owners want you out of the picture, stand up for us and for yourself. Be proud of who you are and the benefits you provide to the region!

Want some inspiration? Take it from CATA, your peer in Lansing. This was the Chair’s official response when a prominent shopping center attempted to forcibly remove bus service from the premises.

You can foster this power too, SMART! Lots of advocates across Metro Detroit are in your corner — you need only activate us, and we’ll fight for you as we always have on our own.

The amazing transportation services that you run are fully capable of selling themselves, so long as your public outreach actually shows how they work. FAST. Connector. ADA curbside service.

And even your newest service, Flex… but we have to talk about this one.

Micromobility Creep: Too Much of a Good Thing

Listen, I get it: Metro Detroit is absolutely massive, and no, your current spread of fixed routes doesn’t get people everywhere they want to go. You turned to Via in search of a last-mile solution to fill these gaps.

Flex is your answer to an increased demand for curb-to-curb transit . It’s a powerful tool; however, I urge you not to fall into the trap of over-reliance.

“Contrary to almost all “microtransit” marketing, ridership is the death of flexible service.”

— Jarrett Walker, Human Transit

Flex is capable of inflicting irreversible parasitic damage upon your service network if misused. If rumblings of your plans to eliminate low-frequency fixed routes in favor of Flex come to fruition, we could see the beginning of a death spiral in which you no longer offer regularly scheduled service to most suburban destinations. You might say that this won’t happen, but it’s exactly what’s happening elsewhere . Other transit advocates have warned of the dangers .

“I don’t think it’s wise for us to view microtransit as the solution to our transit woes. It’s time to stop thinking it’s the solution to declining ridership and a lack of transit coverage. If we want transit to thrive, we need to stop looking for flashy tech solutions and get back to the basics.”

— Monica Mallon , transit advocate and rider in Santa Clara County, California

Demand-response transit will never be capable of scaling to meet increased demand like a fixed-route. See this article by Jarrett Walker of Human Transit for a full explanation. We’re already close to hitting the service ceiling in your more popular zones such as Pontiac / Auburn Hills, where wait times are regularly skyrocketing to 30 minutes or more as demand far outpaces vehicle availability.

Even when Flex works as intended, it has shortcomings.

• It’s unpredictable. It won’t come until it’s called, and we have no idea how long we’ll wait. Connecting between a fixed route and Flex is effectively impossible.
• It’s unreliable. Flex drivers are not your own employees; they’re non-union contractors, most of whom are not locals. The algorithm snaps our pickup locations to the closest intersection which regularly forces us to call the driver, explain where we’re actually waiting, and hope they understand. If a driver’s never been in our neighborhood before, it can lead to unnecessary delays and stress.
• It’s unsafe. As mentioned above, the algorithm favors driver convenience; in an area as overbuilt as Metro Detroit, this also means it has a reckless disregard for our safety while on foot. Are we waiting at the entrance to a store? Guess what, the van is across a six-lane road without a protected crosswalk and leaves in two minutes. Carrying an armful of groceries because you weren’t expecting that? Good luck!

When you write a schedule for your fixed-route buses, you’re making a promise — a bus will be here, at this precise purpose-built location, at this time. Microtransit solutions like Flex offer no such promise.

Via often tries to take the social equity angle . But if they didn’t have a pool of low-wage, non-union drivers to rely upon, their entire service model would crumble. That isn’t equity. It’s exploitation, and it’s unsustainable.

The proper use for Flex? Don’t use it as a replacement for low-frequency routes; use it to determine where fixed routes should go and then adjust your service patterns to match that demand. Frequency is the true driver of ridership and the hallmark of a reliable fixed-route system. Frequency is freedom; build your system around this ideal.

That Flex ridership milestone you just reached? It’s not a sign of a healthy network that your last-mile solution is this popular. Drill into this data, because I’m confident you’ll see some clear destination pairs emerge. Mold your fixed-route network to match where people want to go. Reconstruct it, if you have to . This is how you will ensure ridership increases in a sustainable fashion, not just in the short term.

The Bottom Line: Help Us Help You

We want you to succeed, SMART. Many Metro Detroiters rely on you today, but many more still have yet to learn about you. It’s a turbulent time, there’s no question — but to wrap up my thoughts in one line, please look to current and future riders for guidance during this expansion. And do listen to a variety of voices. Listen to workers. Listen to students and tourists. Listen to disabled riders telling you about accessibility shortcomings in your system, and be sure past mistakes aren’t repeated. If you work with us and show you value us, we will continue to work with you.

We’re looking to the future with excitement. We’ve got one shot to build the system that riders will use for decades — let’s get it done right.