What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?
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This is actually a pretty easy question for me to answer. One thing that would improve my city instantly—and I mean my main metropolitan area, not the suburb that I live in—would be real mass transit in Detroit.
I experienced this firsthand on Sunday when Sierra, kid two, and I went to the Detroit Tigers game. Normally, whenever I attend a game at Comerica Park, I have a go-to parking area that I always use regardless of where my seats are. However, Sunday also happened to be the home opener for the Detroit Lions at Ford Field, which is just feet away from Comerica Park. I typically try to avoid these rare, unusual Sundays in September or October when both the Lions and Tigers happen to be home. But between Sierra’s schedule and my schedule, Sunday was really our best option to attend a game together, with kid two in tow.
It was an important outing for another reason, too: I really wanted Sierra to finally meet kid two. After our kayaking trip over the summer, we’ve basically “gone public” on social media, and I figured it was high time for the two of them to properly meet. They hit it off right away, bonding over an unexpected shared love of music—Sierra was genuinely surprised by how extensive kid two’s music knowledge actually is.
Things took a stressful turn, though, when kid two went into full panic mode after accidentally dropping his phone on the QLine. While I worked to keep him calm, it gave Sierra her very first look at me in full “dad mode.” I didn’t think I handled the scramble all that heroically, but she seemed impressed, so I’ll take it.
Thankfully, X2 jumped into action on the back end, managing to trigger the “lost mode” screen with her phone number attached. Miraculously, a guy downtown actually called. He and his wife had found it on the tram and were hanging out at Campus Martius Park. Even though my initial cynical brain briefly ran through a few unfair assumptions, when we drove back down to meet him, he and his wife couldn’t have been nicer. I offered to buy them a drink at one of the park’s pop-up spots, and when he casually said “five dollars would be nice,” the smallest bill I had on me was a twenty, so I handed it over and told them to grab a couple of drinks on me.
It was a powerful reminder of the underlying goodness of people that we so easily forget about in such a cynical world. He could have kept the phone, tossed it, or ignored it entirely—and I had already mentally braced myself not just for replacing it, but for getting grief from X2 about it. Instead, humanity came through.
That little transit scare brings me right back to the subject of today’s response. A few years back, private investors and civic leaders put together a light rail transit system on Woodward Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Detroit. It’s called the QLine, and it runs north and south over a stretch of a little more than three miles. It’s the closest thing the city has to a modern rail system.
Now, Detroit does have bus systems—DDOT operating within the city and SMART handling the suburban connections—but compared to transit systems in other major metropolitan areas, public busing here leaves a lot to be desired.
The QLine, on the other hand, is quick. We parked at Wayne State University on Sunday, hopped on the QLine, and spent about 15 minutes or so on it each way. I figured if I could successfully navigate the ‘L’ on a trip to Wrigley Field last year, I could handle the QLine. And I’m glad I did, because with parking at an absolute premium between the 65,000 fans packing Ford Field, thousands more tailgating, and a solid crowd at Comerica Park, I simply couldn’t rationalize paying north of $50 for a parking spot.
It’s wild to think about how Detroit’s transit landscape got here. Back in the early 1980s, the city got the People Mover—an automated elevated monorail loop running strictly through downtown that many locals viewed as a high-priced boondoggle rather than a functional transit solution. People originally hoped the QLine might eventually integrate with it or spark a wider network, but that integration never happened, and at this point, it never will.
Expanding the QLine further north up Woodward makes theoretical sense, but given how commuter traffic thinned out the further we got from the core stadium district, logistically, I don’t know how realistic major expansion is either. Mass transit in Detroit proper is likely to remain permanently piecemeal.
Even so, standing on a packed QLine car on Sunday afternoon, the need for a larger vision was obvious. Granted, an event like the Tigers and Lions playing simultaneously creates a massive, anomalous surge in traffic. But the truth is, with all the other events, residents, and visitors flooding downtown now, Detroit finally has enough continuous foot traffic to warrant real transit infrastructure.
We are never going to see a massive, multi-line subway magically appear out of thin air today—the costs would be astronomical. But if we could snap our fingers and instantly change one thing about the city, expanding and connecting reliable mass transit would change everything.
Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Having crossed the 1,000-day milestone, I’m now charting the territory beyond. The mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.
Today’s post is inspired by the WordPress Daily Prompt. While I’ve taken the topic in my own direction for the Road beyond 1,000 Days, you can find more responses to today’s prompt HERE.
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The article “Mass Transit in the Motor City: A Game-Day Test Drive” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob
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