  Bjl7997 Member Username: Bjl7997 Post Number: 120 Registered: 03-2005 |
Does anyone know the bus routes for the following below Hubbell Meyers Woodrow Wilson Burt Lahser | ||
Transitrider Member Username: Transitrider Post Number: 39 Registered: 01-2007 |
Check http://detroittransithistory.i nfo/ | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1857 Registered: 07-2004 |
What's great about discontinuing bus service is there are no rails to take up. Bus service can be pulled more easily because you're less heavily invested in providing service. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what BRT advocates mean when they talk about "flexibility". | ||
Rugbyman Member Username: Rugbyman Post Number: 235 Registered: 06-2005 |
On the other hand, it's that sense of permanency that spurs development. No one's going to want to sink development money in a place where DDOT could turn around next week and discontinue the service. | ||
Bob Member Username: Bob Post Number: 1671 Registered: 11-2003 |
Just look at how people try to incorporate the DPM station into their development, or at least try to be by stations. I thought I remember reading somewhere about how development was up near where LA put the new light rail stations/lines. But that was a few years ago. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 5012 Registered: 10-2003 |
Danindc has a good example of development around rail lines. Maybe if you ask nice, he'll post it again. Of course, this is bordering on threadjack already.  | ||
Rugbyman Member Username: Rugbyman Post Number: 236 Registered: 06-2005 |
Yeah, sorry 'bout that. | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1082 Registered: 12-2006 |
It won't give you scheduled bus times for the routes on his list - no buses run on those routes any longer. The last Meyers and Lahser buses ran in 2006; the other routes died earlier than that. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5116 Registered: 10-2004 |
quote: quote:Duh! Detroit is further contracting in population and in taxpayers, and somebody is pissed that the Woodrow Wilson ghetto street (among other ghettos) doesn't have rail service??? (Message edited by LivernoisYard on February 11, 2008) | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1863 Registered: 07-2004 |
No. As usual, Livernoisyard, you refuse to understand that light rail has been shown to DRIVE URBAN INVESTMENT in a way buses can't. So, what we're really upset about is the way rail service was pulled, helping turn thoroughfares like Woodrow Wilson into ghetto streets. Disinvestment makes its own results. Pull services, real estate values fall, people with means move away. Then what's the argument for providing services after all that happens? I know this doesn't line up with your view of how the world works. And I don't care about that. When it comes to rapid-transit issues, few of us here on this forum care what you say anymore. Don't go away mad, Livernois. Just go away. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5117 Registered: 10-2004 |
Investment in the public sector means [government] spending of other people's [taxpayers'] money. A major corruption of that once honorable concept. BTW, I ain't going anywhere and am not angry--merely bemused by the prattle and clueless blather emanating from those with entitlement mindsets and DPS-like educations, Pal. So, live with it. Why not run a few bake sales and get light rail installed? Do something... But remember: HO gage doesn't count. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1864 Registered: 07-2004 |
Yawn ... next | ||
Bob Member Username: Bob Post Number: 1672 Registered: 11-2003 |
LY does make a point. There is really no money for light rail at this current moment. And with our country wasting so much money on building up a country (Iraq) that is blowing up everything as soon as we build it, we will not be getting money from the feds anytime soon. Throw is the fact that Detroit's tax base is (as LY points out) shrinking, and that does does not leave lots of extra funds for things like light rail. The best hope we have of proving rail will work in our area is the AA to Detroit line that appears to be on the way to happening eventually. If this proves to be a success, then maybe we can then start investing more in transit. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1865 Registered: 07-2004 |
Yawn ... next. | ||
Figebornu Member Username: Figebornu Post Number: 40 Registered: 01-2008 |
Detroit and it's surrounding communities will remain 2nd and 3rd tier due to, amongst other things, it not having a regional mass transit system. Sometimes, I think Detroit is an experiment. So sad, this place. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1866 Registered: 07-2004 |
Don't you understand? We can't afford to spend money on the things that are reviving other cities! We have to spend the money on things that have been proven not to work elsewhere! Detroit is different! | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1083 Registered: 12-2006 |
Has anyone got any information relevant to the question that started the thread? I have a little. The Detroit Transit History web site has a map of the Woodrow Wilson route, which I will try to attach, but nothing about the Meyers or Lahser routes. It doesn't even admit a Hubbell or Burt route ever existed.  LY, you or I ought to start a general-purpose "arguing about the relative merits and costs of transit" so all of us with an interest can just bang heads there instead of us all threadjacking innocent-question posts like in this thread. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1867 Registered: 07-2004 |
One pointer on hunting for discontinued bus routes: They were called "COACH" routes for a long time, at least until the 1950s. Hope it helps ... | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5118 Registered: 10-2004 |
If DDOT is indeed again belt-tightening as it did four years ago when it eliminated a fair number of underutilized bus routes, then so be it. I could have taken the toy bus DDOT ran to Green Street instead of the 49, but I never did. Obviously, it would be hard to miss something (the toy bus) I never used or ever wanted. Seriously, Detroit shouldn't undertake any major, expensive projects until Detroit comes under state receivership because otherwise the cabal of union thugs, crooks, and cronies will siphon off too many funds. Any new transit project without proper oversight will be another Cobo Hall boondongle. Going over the costs for what Ficano wants built shows that some form of corruption is already planned due to their ridiculously high costs. There are too many still left over from the crooked McNamara days. The main reason why many conventions aren't held at Cobo is because those running conventions are quite aware of the rackets going on there and they don't want to get rolled by them (again?). | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1084 Registered: 12-2006 |
They (convention organizers) don't care about the rackets per se, LY, so much as the fact the rackets cost them more money than in other cities. Cobo is not competitive, price-wise, with other convention centers. But we digress. Transit usage is based on a combination of things, a big one of which is service frequency. One of the more heavily used DDOT routes, and not one of the most well known, is the Dexter which runs every 12 minutes most of the day. The routes that only run roughly hourly are not going to be used much because nobody wants to stand outside (especially on a day like this) for an hour waiting for a bus. The last round of cuts took them from 52 to 45 bus routes, I believe. That's about a 13% decrease in routes. Imagine how your town or city would look if the city fathers decided to save money on maintenance, patrols and so on by closing and tearing out the least used 13% of streets? Unthinkable, but done with buses all the time. But again, I threadjack (hence my earlier suggestion). | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1085 Registered: 12-2006 |
For those in the know - Jjaba, chime in - was there ever a Burt or Hubbell bus? Meyers and Lahser I know at least existed at some point. | ||
Bearinabox Member Username: Bearinabox Post Number: 532 Registered: 04-2006 |
Hubbell seems like a strange place to run a bus. It's a residential side street for most of its length, isn't it? | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1869 Registered: 07-2004 |
Some "coach" lines were put in to bring people out of low-density areas to high-density corridors, where the commodious and regular streetcar service to could finish the journey. Not a bad idea to use buses for "feeder routes" in the lower density areas of the city, I guess. Only problem is they took out the one mode of transportation that could accommodate multiple feeder routes: the streetcar. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5120 Registered: 10-2004 |
UoD is a commuter school, much as is Marquette in Milwaukee. The Dexter bus is UoD's DDOT connector to the SMART bus routes out of town. It's probably your own escape route. If it weren't for UoD, the headways for Dexter would be more like thirty minutes--like the 49 Vernor. Because a typical college campus resembles a ghost town after 2 or 3 PM (kids like to take only morning classes), Dexter's headways probably increase around then. And Americans have no absolute right to public transit just because they might live in an urban environment. The vast percentage of the US land mass has no public transportation of any kind, including intercity buses. Those interurban (bus) routes that Greyhound might have run were dropped long ago (1950s and 1960s, for many). I do not believe in a sacred-cow class of urbanites. NYC did not build their subways and such in order to lure passengers. Primarily because the private firms that earlier owned and ran those systems quickly found out that the probability of making a profit was close to zero percent. So, those routes were built to satisfy a pretty assured (pent-up) demand. Detroit has no such track history for having a critical mass of transit ridership. I don't care to hear that some routes are experiencing "record" ridership because that's essentially either total BS or that almost nobody rode it before and getting a few extra warm bodies to ride doesn't really mean anything. SEMCOG was being fairly honest about it when they presented their estimates. The only bone I have with them was that they could have done the fourth-grade arithmetic using their own data that showed that an average AA/Detroit ride along that proposed route would cost around $150 per rider (one way). Had SEMCOG presented that cost figure, nobody would even think of approving that commuter-rail run when close to $140 or so subsidy would be needed per rider, based on their own study's ridership figures. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 1870 Registered: 07-2004 |
Haha. LY just makes up this shit as he goes along. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5121 Registered: 10-2004 |
quote:. If anybody with a fourth-grade math ability cares to crunch the SEMCOG data, have at it. Otherwise, keep the bull shit more internal. | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1086 Registered: 12-2006 |
U of D is one of the facilities that drives ridership on the Dexter, but Northland Mall, the hospital at Curtis and Schaefer, and Providence Hospital put butts in the seats as well. Actually the headways maintain until about 6 p.m. inbound and 7 p.m. or so outbound. (U of D and WSU, both on the Dexter line, have plenty of adults taking evening classes.) Actually, LY, it depends - if I'm at U of D going downtown I'll take the Linwood if the timing is right, because it's a shorter ride and not as crowded. Dexter much of the day is SRO in midtown. But the Dexter bus comes more often. Only other points: all of the City transit was once privately owned and profitable; government investment in roads and the availability of cheap cars made it unprofitable. That taken far enough leads to the shrinking of Greyhound to where it serves very few places today. | ||
Bc_n_dtown Member Username: Bc_n_dtown Post Number: 50 Registered: 09-2006 |
quote: Bjl7997, you didn't mention how far back in time you wanted to go with this, whether more recent (last 20 years or so) or back to the early DSR years, like the 1920's. Anyway, I hope this helps..... HUBBELL The only records I could find on a "Hubbell" bus line was a short little route that ran in 1929, operating from Wyoming and Puritan, via Puritan and Hubbell to Fenkell. It actually traveled further along Puritan than Hubbell and only ran from April to July of that year. There was, however, bus service along Hubbell during the early 1960's. According to my 1963 DSR Service Map, there was a "Cooley High" line that operated along Hubbell. Here's a quote from that 1963 DSR service map... COOLEY HIGH—North—Schoolcraft at Grand River via Schoolcraft, Hubbell to Seven Mile. Return via Hubbell, Grand River to Schoolcraft, On school days ONLY. MEYERS The Meyers line actually began as a short little shuttle route way back in 1927, but later became part of a combined Wyoming-Meyers line in 1940. After the two routes were split in 1949, Meyers became a single bus line again. It followed the route seen in the route map below during most of its service life between 1949 and 1973.  In 1973 it was combined with the small Northlawn line, becoming Meyers-Northlawn. That service was discontinued in Sept, 1988. The Meyers line was resurrected by DDOT in March, 1999, after the opening of the Super K-mart store on Meyers and Severn Mile. The service was later discontinued in April of 2005. WOODROW WILSON The Woodrow Wilson line is the only line on your list that I have so far included on my "DetroitTransitHistory" web-site. Professorscott has included the map above, the link to the web-page is: http://www.detroittransithistory.info/Routes/WoodrowWilson.html BURT There is no record of a Burt Road bus line. However, the Lahser bus route did operate along Burt Road (see below) LAHSER The Lahser bus line began back in 1940. During most of its service life it operated only during peak hours. Service as a single bus line was discontinued in June of 1973, but then operated as school service attached to the Grand River line. It was later restored as a separate bus line by DDOT during the 1990's, but only operated during the "School Open" service schedules. It too was discontinued by DDOT in April of 2005. Here's a map of the Lahser line during the DSR years....  | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 5123 Registered: 10-2004 |
There was a time when public-sector employees got paid less but had job security. Back during the LBJ administration, the public sector began to pay their employees higher than the private sector and also made it pretty near impossible to ever fire or discipline any of them. And add Cadillac health-care and pensions costs to the mix. Then add hefty pay and benefit increases every so many years. Now it's easy to see how dysfunctional cities such as Detroit literally screwed that pooch. DDOT's employees had and still have high absenteeism. KK himself publicly said that DDOT's absentee rate was 30% four years ago. That's the major problem concerning city employees: they're overpaid and their benefits are too generous. Eventually, those 14,000 employees will help push Detroit faster into receivership. DPS also has around 14,000 such employees. (Message edited by LivernoisYard on February 11, 2008) | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1087 Registered: 12-2006 |
Bc_n_dtown, thanks for the great post and the excellent web site. I would love to know, during the peak of transit service in Detroit (whenever that was), what was the level of service? How many routes, operating with what frequencies? I realize, though, it takes quite a lot of work to compile that much info. Also, apparently from this thread and other things I've seen, DSR had at least a few "feeder lines" delivering people to and from the Grand River streetcar. Did the other major streetcar lines also have feeder-service bus routes? Great info, thanks for it. Prof. Scott |
