As a native Detroiter one of the saddest things to me was that the city never got a subway. I don't believe you can have a truly world class city without a subway.
There were multiple efforts to create a Detroit subway starting in 1910 but each one fell short. Finally in late 1928 the subway was approved! Two stations were built but construction stopped with the great depression. Today sadly no one even knows the location of the two stations.
Here's the winner of a dream subway contest for Detroit:
I don't know the detailed history at all, but in an intuitive & oversimplified way, I wouldn't think big transit projects ever had much of a chance in the home of the auto industry. Seems like they would want to demonstrate what an automobile utopia looks like.
Well the auto industry did fight the subway which is why despite overwhelming support it took so long.
Detroit did have an extensive trolley system. I found out that when the trolley's were secretly purchased and discontinued by GM in 1956 that 25% of Detroit families didn't have a car. The majority switched over to the bus lines which were expanded. Course the buses were made by GM ;<).
Well my dad was called a conspiracy theorist and worse for advocating that GM bought up Detroit's trolley line. I am just glad that he lived long enough to see the truth come out and be proven right.
It happened in a lot of cities nationwide, from what I understand. Didn't know about Detroit, but am not surprised. I think possibly the fact has even been established that it was the result of a, well I'm tempted to use the word conspiracy, but let's say "effort," of Standard Oil, Firestone Tires and Ford, but don't quote me on that.
A lot of places felt the need to take the suspiciously over-enthusiastic step of burning the trolley cars... ostensibly to strip the wood & recover the scrap metal.
That makes sense to me? Buses are environmentally equivalent to trolleys, cheaper, both have to deal with traffic, etc. In most cases the fact that buses are more flexible is good but inflexibility can sometimes be useful in terms for getting people to believe you're really going to stick with a new route and therefore it makes sense to start a business on it.
Now if they were replacing subways or light rail with buses that would be horrible.
Having a dedicated line to travel on helps and preference at traffic lights helps a bunch. I think you underestimate the amount of delays buses have to deal with when they also have to be in traffic.
Both trolleys and buses can have dedicated lines of travel or you can force them to share their lanes with other traffic. And both both buses and trolleys can be given light priority or they can wait with everybody else. The issues you're raising are totally orthogonal to bus versus trolley. Cities with good bus or trolley systems do these and cities with worse but cheaper systems don't. And another good way to speed up buses or trolleys is not forcing them to pull out of traffic when they stop to pick up customers by having special islands or having the curb extend into what would otherwise be parking spaces.
It probably does depend on the infrastructure choices the city implements. I don't see a lot of buses systems that have isolated islands, dedicated lanes, etc. I do see them frequently for street trolleys.
I'm curious as to why neither the Cadillac line nor the Michigan/Woodward lines extend up into the Pointes, yet St. Claire Shores has a major hub. Grosse Pointe Park in particular is quite walkable, especially in the older areas that were build primarily for house servants.
There were multiple efforts to create a Detroit subway starting in 1910 but each one fell short. Finally in late 1928 the subway was approved! Two stations were built but construction stopped with the great depression. Today sadly no one even knows the location of the two stations.
Here's the winner of a dream subway contest for Detroit:
http://jackson-woods.net/transit/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/...