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
25
