[LMich]

A bit more info...

- DDOT says this will effect 500 riders, or less than 0.5% of daily ridership, but 6% of daily costs.

- It didn't really make the news, but these cuts are a result of the privatization of DDOT's management, which took place at the beginning of the year. The mayor has made no secret about wanting to end all subsidies to DDOT, so this constant attack on the system isn't any surprise. He's shown many times that he doesn't understand the importance of mass transit in the city, or maybe simply that he doesn't care.

Given the city's decade-long decline, DDOT should have been spun off as a public agency (as opposed to keeping it a city department) supported by a millage long ago. Keeping it as a formal city department, yet not funding it out of the general fund -- in essence a city department that is funded as if it were an agency -- was always setting the department up for a disaster like this in a city with a perpetually shrinking general fund.

What is happening is exactly what everyone knew was going to happen when management was privatized (Parsons Brinckerhoff is the firm, BTW, running the system, now). DDOTs become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where you cut a shoddy system into the bone and then leadership disingenuously asks "why is ridership shrinking (in a city with fewer and fewer auto-owning citizens)?" DDOT's a joke, because the current city administration is a joke when it comes to transit.