Unpredictable city buses and a chronic lung disease could be a devastating combination this winter for Rochella Stewart.
The 66-year-old retiree usually leaves home with a mask, scarf, and her inhaler. Still, she’s worried what her body can tolerate if she has to wait too long for a bus in frigid conditions that could trigger a health problem.
“If the air is so dense with cold, it cuts my breath off,” said Stewart, who lives on Detroit’s west side and relies on the city’s bus system to retrieve her medicine at a CVS pharmacy.
Stewart is part of a vocal group of transit advocates castigating the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) for shoddy bus service—the latest among a parade of complaints levied against Michigan’s largest public transit provider that serves Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park and surrounding suburbs with an average 85,000 riders daily.
DDOT’s recent data stoked the outcry: 62% of mid-afternoon and evening buses departed terminals on time during weekdays in November – a 5% drop from October, according to the department’s performance dashboard. In comparison, daytime performance in November was better, with 78% of buses leaving on schedule.
Ongoing delays reflect the system’s longstanding reputation for unreliable service. The main culprit, according to DDOT, is a lack of buses ready for the road. Although the number fluctuates, more than 20% of vehicles have maintenance issues.
Clamoring for accountability and attention, a group of advocates shouted “Fix DDOT” and wagged neon-colored protest signs near the windshields of mini-vans cruising into the parking lot of the Northwest Activities Center on the chilly night of Nov. 12 for an evening city council meeting.
With even more cold temperatures in store, transit advocates said long wait-times for buses are “unacceptable” and a lack of urgency to resolve the problems continues to erode the most vulnerable riders’ basic welfare—which can result in threats to health and safety, lost income and diminished independence to travel across the city.
“Every time a bus isn’t running, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people who are waiting and left stranded,” said Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United, a nonprofit that advocates for reliable and affordable public transit.
Transportation is a social determinant of health. Jobs, education, and safe housing all affect health outcomes and can be more influential on a person’s health than genetics or access to healthcare services alone.
Michael Cunningham II, a longtime transit advocate and taxi driver who organized the November protest, said he’s concerned about “people on canes, walkers, disabled folks” who rely on the bus to get anywhere.
He relates to the frustrations of passengers. He was unhoused for several years and hopped on city buses to stay warm.
“These folks are waiting on service,” said Cunningham, 42, who passes out hats, gloves, and hand warmers to people across the city.
Michael Staley, DDOT’s interim executive director, acknowledges the worries about waiting for a bus in brutal weather.
“The concern is very legitimate, particularly whether it’s winter time with the extreme cold, or summer time with the extreme heat,” said Staley, who assumed the leadership role last year.
He said DDOT has taken steps to improve overall service quality and on-time performance.
The department is working to revise its deployment plan for service inspectors, who monitor the timeliness of buses.
DDOT’s service reliability committee, which began its work last year, provides some oversight. The committee includes DDOT employees from the department’s operations, vehicle maintenance, scheduling and safety divisions and meets at least twice a month.
“Part of that committee’s work is to identify routes that are operating in a substandard fashion and to identify drivers that are operating in a substandard fashion,” Staley said.
“Our primary focus right now is to stabilize and improve the core service that we’re putting out there,” added Staley, noting service enhancements introduced in 2024, including increased frequency and hours, aligned with DDOT Reimagined, a roadmap to bolster public mobility in Detroit.
In a city dominated by cars, mass transit in Detroit is an essential service for those needing a cheap way to travel or whose mobility options are limited. About 21% of the city’s occupied households don’t have access to a vehicle, compared to 7.2% statewide, according to census estimates.
In a 2023 DDOT survey of 1,018 passengers, 64% reported an annual income of less than $33,000, 55% don’t have a driver’s license, 39% use the bus to travel to work, and 36% used a reduced fare pass, which is only available to adults 65 and older, Medicare recipients, people with disabilities and students with a school-issued ID. DDOT has no plans for an expansion at this time.
Lagging buses could jeopardize some riders’ livelihoods, Owens stressed. Those with low-wage jobs often have sporadic hours, meaning being late to a shift could risk angering their bosses, losing a paycheck or worse.
“If they’re not on time, they can usually get fired because there’s somebody else who can fill in,” Owens said.
A shortage of bus drivers contributed to the system’s shortcomings with on-time performance at the onset of 2024, but Staley said “that hasn’t been the case for some time.”
DDOT established a target of having 600 drivers by the end of this year. Right now, the department has 514 drivers and 118 students in training.
But Schetrone Collier said he has seen a high turnover rate among bus drivers across transit agencies, primarily because of wages.
Earlier this year, DDOT increased starting pay for drivers from $16.15 an hour to $19.15 an hour. By contrast, the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), which serves parts of Detroit, ratified a new contract in August with its bus operators that saw a starting wage of $26.95 an hour, a 32% wage boost that makes them among the highest paid in the state.
“DDOT does not compete in this landscape the way they need to, to attract and retain operators here,” said Collier, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, which represents DDOT employees.
Right now, vehicle availability is the biggest challenge facing DDOT. The process of procuring new vehicles to replace the aging fleet began several months behind schedule. Forty-five of them were purchased in 2012. Staley said the use life of a transit coach is 12 years or 500,000 miles.
The department is hiring more mechanics to ensure vehicles are repaired more quickly. Staley said DDOT has roughly 10 vacant mechanic positions. Last year, there were about 30 openings. The starting pay is $24.75 an hour, according to a job posting.
DDOT plans to buy 45 new vehicles. The buses should hit the streets by summer 2025.
“That will begin to address the vehicle availability issue,” Staley said.
‘They all need fixing’
Kenneth Falls, 36, recently spent a couple of months riding the bus while his car was in the shop. He’s frustrated with the unpredictability of city buses while idling in the blistering chill.
“Sometimes, the bus don’t come,” said Falls, who works in security. “It has affected me from getting to work.”
With the exceptions of Woodward and Jefferson, Stewart chafes at the late bus runs she’s seen along Dexter, Van Dyke, Conner, and Grand River.
“They all need fixing,” she said. “They need a little bit more freaking service during the busy hours to keep the people moving.”
Stewart, a Medicare card holder who uses reduced fare passes, said she has been late to medical appointments because of long wait-times. She must plan ahead her journeys to the grocery store or to see a family member or friend.
Her arthritis makes it difficult to stand in one spot for a lengthy period of time. Her knees can start to ache, she said.
“It’s ridiculous,” Stewart said. “You have to leave two hours or more in advance to get somewhere you want to go.”
In recent weeks, DDOT caught renewed flak from some transit riders with disabilities. The department’s paratransit pilot program DDOT Now, a same-day service which promises more efficiency and speedier pick up times, has delayed its intended launch until January, Outlier Media reports.
Stewart said she uses paratransit twice a month and services improved since the city took over. “I don’t really have any qualms,” she said.
Owens said she’s seen some customer satisfaction of DDOT’s quality of service among the over 1,000 riders the transit advocacy organization recently surveyed, in addition to more positive reviews of paratransit services.
“It used to be pretty abysmal, and now it’s become at least a solid, reliable service,” she said. “However, it still requires people to arrange rides, days or even weeks ahead of time.”
The upcoming same-day service, Owens said, can provide riders with disabilities another mobility option for impromptu activities instead of relying on family or friends to commute.
“While it’s frustrating that this great move forward hasn’t happened yet, we are certainly excited to see it coming soon,” she said.
DDOT, Owens said, has “made major improvements, and it is important to recognize that the system has gotten substantially better in the last year or two. But there’s still some real problems.
Owens said hours-long wait times are less common. Still, the most vulnerable residents can get squeezed if mass transit fails to deliver. Owens remembers a colleague got frostbite when a bus didn’t show up.
“The consequences can be really devastating,” Owens said.
Stewart, who doesn’t have a car, lives in her childhood home near Grand River and Livernois. Her mother, sisters and brothers all passed away. “I’m the last one,” she said.
The house is a few miles from a CVS pharmacy, where she picks up medications to treat her high blood pressure and the arthritis she’s had since she was 18.
At least once a month, Stewart will hop on a bus and head to the drug store—a roundtrip that could take less than 40 minutes by car but can stretch out to three hours by a bus not running on time. She has gotten stuck at CVS before, left to find another way back home.
“It’s sad to say that,” Stewart said. “We deserve a good transit system.”