Transportation Riders United and the Suit against SEMCOG

As many of you know, the TRU board resolved that TRU be a plaintiff in the lawsuit being brought by co-plaintiffs City of Ferndale and MOSES in state court against defendant Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG). The primary goal of the lawsuit is to restructure the voting procedure towards population-weighted voting. An article about the lawsuit is presented here: Detroit News Article.

This is some of the basis for TRU making this action:

What are the reasons for so many of the landmark buildings that Trumembers see from the TRU office on the 28th floor of the the David Stott Building being empty? These include:

Parking lots, either surface lots or structures occupy much of the space not occupied by empty buildings. On the whole, our view of Downtown is not “vibrant” or “exciting.” It doesn't look like a "Cool City."

Why did we throw away our downtown? Why are we now throwing away our close-in suburbs?

SEMCOG, as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the region, has a significant level of responsibility for this disinvestment in Detroit and our established communities. By justifying road expansion projects using the biased SEMCOG 2030 Regional Development Forecast, the forecast becomes reality. By giving transit the short shrift, bad-mouthing the 1997 regional rail study, not funding Phase 2 for the Woodward Corridor transit improvement project, not providing proper public input to SMART and DDOT coordination, allowing a questionable analysis of a transit alternative for the I-75 expansion project through Oakland County, allowing separate transit terminals for SMART and DDOT downtown, not having SMART and DDOT provide a common route map or reasonable signage, never-ever embracing a transit project on rails, and rejecting the Speedlink system as being too expensive, Detroit and the close-in suburbs suffer. Squeezing transit funding helped destroy Downtown Detroit. Detroit and the close-in suburbs were built on the back of transit and they can prosper again, only if we properly invest in transit.

SEMCOG’s actions are totally in line with its biased decision-making structure. Communities at the outskirts of the region have disproportionately-high voting power, while our established communities have learned that they have little say in SEMCOG’s decisions. For explanation, the Executive Committee is the decision making body of SEMCOG. The city of Detroit has 3 votes on the Executive Committee. In contrast, “fast-growing” Livingston County gets 4 votes--more votes than all of Detroit! Livingston County has 8.5 times the voting power per resident than the City of Detroit. St Clair and Monroe Counties also have about 8 times the voting power per resident than Detroit. Outer Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties have higher populations, but still have 2.5 to 3 times the voting power per resident than Detroit. Detroit has about the same population as Oakland County, but only has 3 votes versus Oakland County’s 9 votes. It is no wonder that most of the transportation expansion projects in the region are directed towards those areas that have more voting power, and these expansion projects are all roads.

It sure looks like SEMCOG has pursued exactly the consensus that its structure inevitably would lead too, sprawl, abandonment of the central city (and now older suburbs) and a refusal to push transit or transit funding. Metro Detroit has consumed land at 12 times the rate of population growth over the last 3 decades according to Myron Orfield's recent research. The average of the 25 largest metro areas is 2.5 times land consumption to population growth. As far as other Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), the best models have equally populated Districts (i.e. Minneapolis), with others having weighted votes at the executive committee level and general assembly.

TRU has seen this voting structure permeate SEMCOG’s work even in discussions in SEMCOG committees. When a delegate from Monroe County stated that limiting the size of the urban area would hurt his community, SEMCOG expanded the urban area to meet his needs, even though delegates from dense, urban areas stated that expanding the urban area hurts their communities.
In another example, when a Detroit member of the Executive Committee requested that the bylaws be reviewed, and a member from Oakland County stated that there was no need to review the bylaws, nothing happened.

SEMCOG does have a procedure for population-weighed voting, but it is unworkable and has never been used.

SEMCOG is responsible for planning and funding transportation projects in Metropolitan Detroit. It cannot carry out its responsibility with the badly biased voting structure. It is no wonder that Metropolitan Detroit is using up land 12 times faster than it is growing in population. It is no wonder that Metropolitan Detroit has some of the worst public transit in the country. It is no wonder that smart young people leave the region at record rates. For our region to start to correct these excesses, the voting structure needs to be changed. Otherwise, SEMCOG does not deserve the responsibility of being our Metropolitan Planning Agency and does not deserve to allocate the hundreds of millions of dollars of transportation money that is spent yearly in the region.