Wayne County pushes to change transit law

(CBS DETROIT) - Wayne County is working with law makers to make public transit accessible to more people by changing a law. The proposed amendment would allow voters to voice what they want their transit options to look like.

"If you take Detroit out of it, you're still looking at about 400,000 residents [in our] County that have no service at all from any major transit system," Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe said.

"The issue with that public act is that it allows communities to opt out, and currently we have 17 communities in Wayne County that have opted out of SMART transit," he continued.

According to Turfe, this means those municipalities aren't a part of the counties transit system, but if Act 196 of 1986 is changed, voters would be able to decide if the entire county opts into SMART transit, creating additional transit options for nearly a million more residents in a number of cities including Detroit.

On Monday, county leaders had a chance to experience just how inconvenient commuting through parts of the county on a bus can be, riding from Southgate to Trenton where the bus route stops, then walking a mile to their destination in Woodhaven, a community that currently opts out of the County's public transit.

"The experience that we have today by going on the bus, getting off, walking for about 1.1 miles is going to take us about 45 minutes," Turfe said.

An experience lived daily by thousands of commuters. Wayne County Executive Warren Evans says addressing transit is something that must be done.

"If we don't do something about transit," Evans said. "We're wasting money in other areas, and we're not doing what really needs to happen."