
By Hariharan Murugesan
Marlon Williams, a 28-year-old blue-collar worker in Benton Harbor, in southwest Michigan, never considers taking a bus to work, even though it would save him a lot of money. There are only two short bus lines in his town, and they don’t come very often. “Sometimes you just wanna go, go, go, instead of wait,” he said.
Residents in Benton Harbor, Detroit, Ann Arbor and other Michigan cities share Williams’s disappointment with the public transit system.
Research shows that people between 24 and 44 years old view transit convenience as the most important criteria for deciding where to live. Michigan is one of the slowest growing states in the country. And state data shows the trend is likely to continue, and even result in an overall population decline of 1.3 percent between 2022 and 2050.
“Lack of public transportation is one of the reasons people don’t want to live here,” said Assad Turfe, deputy county executive of Wayne County, which includes Detroit.

A study conducted by the University of Michigan found that among Detroiters without a vehicle, four in ten had missed some sort of appointment, work commitment or a simple outing. And that affects a significant percentage of the population. “Thirty-three percent of adult Detroiters don’t have access to a vehicle,” said Antoine Bryant, director of planning and development for the city of Detroit.
Without a train system beyond the 3.3-mile-long streetcar known as the Q Line, Detroit is trying to invest in buses. In 2016, a ballot initiative to create a rapid and reliable regional-transportation system failed to pass, but Turfe said another ballot initiative is being proposed for 2026. It would improve existing services while attempting to implement other rapid transit corridors to connect Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties. “We are going to do this,” said Turfe.
Another challenge has been a shortage of bus drivers. In an effort to hire more drivers, Bryant explained, the city of Detroit just increased the hourly wage for drivers to $22, from $15, and he hopes to have a total of 180 drivers by the summer. He said the goal is to restore faith in buses after many years of neglect, as well as a strike last year that disrupted service.

Detroit also has a bike-sharing program called Detroit’s MoGo, run by a nonprofit. It serves about 100,000 riders a year, but many stations are in need of repair. The bad condition of roads doesn’t make biking easy either. Back in 2018, Governor Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads,” promising to repair the numerous potholes on Michigan streets.
In March, Whitmer announced 17 villages and cities across the state with a population of less than 10,000 will receive road-funding grants totaling $3.1 million.
Many fixes are still underway. “We joke that the orange barrel is the state flower now because they are all over,” said Jennifer Conlin, Democratic state representative for District 48, which includes Ann Arbor. “We’re just fixing as much as we can, but we just need more and more and more money.”
Cities built for cars
The lack of a strong public transit system in Detroit and in other cities in Michigan is a direct result of the fact that the state is home to the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler. Jerry Davis, a professor of business administration and sociology at the University of Michigan, called Michigan “the most car-friendly state of them all.”
Conlin agreed that Michigan has historically been an automotive place, but she believed things need to change. “Young people don’t want to move here unless they can take public transport,” she said.

Several Republican lawmakers don’t support the idea of more investment in mass transit. Mark Tisdel, the Republican state representative for District 55, which includes the city of Rochester and part of Oakland Township, said Michigan’s cities don’t have the density needed to make public transportation cost effective, he explained, drawing a contrast with places like Manhattan in New York City, where the population triples during the workday.
Sarah Lightner, the Republican state representative for District 45, which includes many rural areas in Calhoun, Jackson and Kalamazoo counties, said she is hesitant to support public transit because it can’t become self-sufficient. “They always ask for more money, more money, more money,” she said.
In southwest Michigan, the cities of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph are now discussing a regional bus service that would integrate both cities. St. Joe also has been working on a ferry system.
The nonprofit organization Cornerstone Alliance has been subsidizing a free water taxi program for the last two years, but it’s still unclear if it will be viable. “We couldn’t find people to pay for it,” said Christina Frank, vice president of external affairs at Cornerstone Alliance.
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Melani Bonilla contributed reporting.