Making Michigan Move/Chapter 3

by Bill Kulsea and Tom Shawver

III

TACKLING TOTAL TRANSPORTATION

The 1970’s throbbed with new ideas and innovations. More than ever, transportation was established as the fourth necessity of life, along with food, shelter and clothing. They were money-lean, money-rich, turbulent years, a decade that inaugurated a new age of mass transit and total transportation for Michigan.

These were major milestones:

• Highway user tax revenues leveled off twice and had to be replenished, then went into decline as the 1980's opened with a national recession, coupled with a sharp rate of inflation, steep increases in fuel prices and a massive conversion to smaller, more fuel-efficient automobiles.
• Michigan’s highway trust fund was opened for spending for public trans­portation, railroads and port devel­opment, and the state vastly ex­panded its activities in all areas.
• The highway department became a department of transportation and its role was enlarged to include responsibilities in all travel modes.
• Steps were taken for construction of a subway and rail transportation system in metropolitan Detroit, to be operated by the Southeastern Michi­gan Transportation Authority and built with federal, state and local dollars.

A word in retrospect: Few in the 1950's suspected the interstate free­way system would plant the seeds for the turbulence of the 1970's. Michi­gan, at the end of World War II, had the remains of a good railroad system, municipal and intercity bus systems and many thousands of miles of highways.

Michigan’s prowess in planning and building superhighways was recognized by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 1977, designating this nine-mile stretch of US-31 Freeway in Oceana County as first-place winner in national competition.

Across the country, there was a general feeling that personal freedom and prosperity were somehow linked to the privately owned automobile. Combined with the creation and growth of a vast freeway system, it gave millions of motorists a mobility far greater than any they had known before. Autos sold faster than ever and travel mileage rose even faster. Fuel was cheap. The population of city suburbs grew year by year, but the central cities began to lose people and industry.

While new highways were being built and improved, other modes of trans­portation in Michigan were left to fend for themselves. Municipal and intercity bus services were declining, or vanishing, because of low rider­ship. Increasingly, the old, the young, the disabled, the chronically ill, the poor had no regular, reliable means of travel. It was the same for railroad passenger services. Rail freight systems also suffered financially, and some went into bankruptcy. Nearly 1,000 miles of freight lines in Michigan were threatened with abandonment.

Rescue efforts began early in the decade. In 1972, the Legislature raised the gasoline tax from seven to nine cents a gallon. One-half cent of the increase—yielding about $22 million a year—was diverted into general transportation programs, chiefly bus and rail. The State Supreme Court upheld the legisla­tion, saying it fell within the Legisla­ture's constitutional prerogative to "define by law" money spent for highway purposes.

Three-fourths of the new money went for highways, roads and streets and lawmakers ordered the state's share to be spent on completing a backbone system of freeways and upgrading specific other major high­ways.

In the spring of 1973, Gov. William G. Milliken issued an executive order reorganizing the state highway de­partment giving it jurisdiction over all state transportation programs. He directed the highway commission and the department to develop and de­liver a unified, coordinated program for total transportation for the people of Michigan.

Marching bands helped open the final link in the 193 miles of I-96 from Muskegon to downtown Detroit. This 12-mile segment through Livonia, built at a cost of $126 million, opened Nov. 21, 1977.

Symbolic of this sweeping change, Milliken signed legislation Aug. 23, 1973, adding "and Transportation" to the department's traditional designa­tion of highways only.

For the first time, Michigan's agency for highways expanded its respon­sibility to aeronautics, railroads, buses, water transportation and port development and non-motorized transportation such as bike paths and equestrian trails.

For the department, it was the end of one era and the beginning of another. It took time and a strenuous shifting of gears, but the single-minded goal of building and maintaining the best possible state highway system gave way to the larger goal: developing an integrated, total transportation sys­tem for Michigan.

Woodford, appointed director of the "highways" department at the end of 1972, now was handed the chal­lenging task of transition, shifting departmental gears and taking some 4,500 personnel with him.

A few months later, the need for a comprehensive transportation system became even more apparent. An oil embargo by Arab nations quickly reduced supplies of gasoline and sent prices into an upward spiral. Rider­ship on public transportation systems began to climb, bolstered by state programs to expand existing systems

The Tuscola, Saginaw and Bay Railway, a short-haul line operating in Michigan's Thumb area, is one of several railroads formed with Department aid and subsidy in the 1970's to preserve rail freight service, threatened with abandonment.

and establish new ones in com­munities throughout Michigan. Be­tween 1973 and 1980, more than $200 million in gas and weight tax revenues and monies from the state's general fund were poured into bus and rail programs, aside from federal aid and contributions by local governments. State subsidies pre­served and upgraded nearly 900 miles of railroads operated by eight rail freight companies, six of which were organized for that purpose. All the track otherwise would have been abandoned, ending service in wide­spread areas of the state. State subsidies also supported Amtrak rail passenger service and carferry service across Lake Michigan.

The state-launched Dial-a-Ride small-bus program spread to small and medium-sized cities across the state, and into some larger urban areas. It soon became the nation's largest, supported by state and local dollars.

Dial-A-Ride personalized transporta­tion was established in 77 of Michi­gan's 83 counties, enabling hundreds of thousands of often homebound persons to travel inexpensively on small buses. State funds helped pri­vately owned intercity bus companies to establish experimental service routes designed to become profit-making ventures. State and federal monies enabled municipal bus sy­stems to buy modern vehicles, up­ grade their facilities, improve services and, in some cities, build intermodal terminals to accommodate a variety of transportation services, including taxis and passenger trains.

Starting with three vans and 31 state employees in April, 1977, the Department-sponsored vanpool program for state employees became the largest such program in the nation by mid-1980, involving 120 vans and 1,350 persons.

Challenged by the nation's continuing energy shortages, the department set the pace nationally in establishing ridesharing programs. Its vanpool program, the largest in the nation for public employees, grew to 120 vans in 1980, carrying some 1,350 state workers to and from work every day.

The state provided funds to set up ridesharing offices in local com­munities and furnished help to private companies setting up vanpool programs. The department built more than 100 lots, mostly at high­way intersections, for free parking by carpoolers.

The great highway-building era of the 1950's, 60's and 70's produced 1,700 miles of multi-lane freeways to accommodate huge growth in vehicles and travel mileage in Michigan. This is the interchange of M-21 and I-475 freeways under construction in Flint.

Aviation activities also gained ground, guided by the Michigan Aeronautics Commission, which was transferred to the department in the 1973 reorganization. The number of passengers boarding and deplaning at Michigan's 21 airports served by certificated airlines climbed to a record 14 million by 1980. The number of registered general aviation aircraft rose to 6,600 and airports totaled more than 300. Department personnel assisted local authorities in airport planning and development, establishment of air commuter services, efforts to preserve privately owned, public-use airports threatened by closure, particularly in urban areas, and a wide variety of safety and service operations.

Bike paths were established on widened shoulders or built separately along a number of state highways, including a 40-mile bikeway for the full route of I-275 Freeway west of Detroit.

This paved bicycle path built in 1974 from Hillsdale to Jonesville along M-99 marked the Department's entry into a program to provide facilities for non­-motorized transportation.

Meanwhile, the commission and Woodford pushed ahead with the state's highway-building program, al­though it did not begin to match the pace of the 195O's and '60's. The freeway system reached the 1,700-mile mark. All but 50 miles of the 1,181-mile interstate system were opened to traffic, including all 395 miles of the longest freeway in the state—I-75 from the Ohio border north to Sault Ste. Marie.

The number of automobiles regis­tered in Michigan stood at a record 5.2 million at the end of the decade and trucks numbered more than a million. Travel mileage peaked at 67.4 billion in 1978, then dropped slightly, primarily because of higher fuel prices and a declining economy.

Highway development slowed as it became more complex, the result of federal requirements for more exten­sive environmental impact assess­ments, more public participation in decision-making and other additional steps in the preconstruction process.

In 1977, with inflation driving up costs and older freeways and other major highways increasingly in need of rehabilitation, the commission made a far-reaching policy decision. It revised its plan for highway development to shift emphasis from new highways to management of the existing system as a primary objec­tive.

Sixty-five airplanes re-enacted the historic first air tour of Michigan in 1929 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Michi­gan Aeronautics Commission. Here, Ludington area residents inspect the visit­ing fleet in the spring of 1979.

The year-by-year need for extra dollars for roads and transportation was met in 1978 with a legislative act informally known as "Transpack." It was an abbreviated nametag for a collection of highway laws and a constitutional amendment that put the department solidly in the busi­ness of moving people as well as vehicles.

This prize-winning section of M-28 along the shore of Lake Superior typifies Department efforts to upgrade existing highways as well as to build new ones.

Seventy-six modern rest areas were built along Michigan's 1,800-mile freeway system by 1980, many containing information plazas like this one on I-94 to make highway travel easier and more pleasant.

Hannes Meyers Jr. of Zeeland, first chairman of State Transportation Com­mission.

The gasoline tax was raised from nine to 11 cents a gallon, the diesel fuel levy from seven to nine cents. The weight tax went up by 30 percent, truck fees by 35 percent. The distribution formula of the newly named Michigan Transportation Fund was rewritten to give the Michigan Department of Transportation, also a new title, 46 percent of gas and weight tax revenues. The counties' share was pegged at 34.3 percent and the cities and villages at 19 percent. The state's portion was split 82.3 percent for highway construction and maintenance and 17.7 percent for public transit, rail and port programs. In addition, the non-highway pro­grams can receive up to 25 percent of unearmarked sales taxes collected on auto-related products. The package produced more than $160 million in new money for transportation.

A constitutional amendment ap­proved by voters froze 90 percent of gas-weight revenues for construction and maintenance on highways, roads and streets. It empowered the Gov­ernor, for the first time, to appoint the department director as well as a chief administrator of its Bureau of Urban and Public Transportation. The same amendment replaced the four-member Highway Commission with a six-member Transportation Commission. Zeeland attorney Han­nes Meyers Jr., chairman of the Highway Commission, became the first chairman of the new panel by appointment of Governor Milliken.

One of the commission's first major

Aging of road surfaces and shortages and increasing costs of oil-based products in the 1970's brought on the recycling of existing pavements.

decisions was to approve sale of $217 million in revenue bonds to pay the state's share of programs for bus, rail passenger, rail freight, waterways and port development. It coincided with findings of Michigan's first multimodal transportation needs study, conducted by transportation officials representing all travel modes and covering the years 1977 through 1989. The study concluded that transportation systems would need more than $30 billion in 1977 dollars to bring their services and facilities up to "reasonable levels." Projected revenues from existing sources indi­cated the money available would meet only about one-third of the needs.

At the age of 75, the department could look back on a proud record of accomplishment. By any standard of measurement. Michigan's state high­way system, comprised of all I-, US- and M- numbered highways, totaling 9,470 miles, is among the finest in the nation. It is the backbone of Michigan's highway, road and street network extending for nearly 117,000 miles.

Today, the department not only develops, maintains and administers the state highway system but also provides direction and expertise for Michigan's total transportation sys­tem, ranging from airport develop­ment to water transportation. That is the multi-purpose function it is likely to serve from now on.

Starting in the 1970's gas taxes helped pay for modern city buses like this one, picking up passengers in downtown Detroit.