Regional Transit Stew: Consensus Building and Transit Building Transit in Metro Detroit.

摘要

Over a period of 15 months during 2012 and 2013, an interdisciplinary team of six faculty members and six students at the University of Detroit Mercy studied the factors that enable and inhibit the development of effective regional transit, focusing on Metro Detroit and four peer regions: Atlanta, Cleveland, Denver and St. Louis. This report provides the key findings related to transit leadership and politics, especially those related to the successful planning and funding of regional transit. The processes described employ a metaphor of transit stew that emphasizes the broad variety of values and opinions (ingredients and flavors) that exist in any major metropolitan area. This diversity must be blended in ways that respond to each stakeholder group, allowing each group to remain faithful to their values and priorities (retain their flavor), but also compromising to accommodate the values and priorities of other stakeholders (absorb and blend flavors). Such a process will create a system that provides value to all, but may not be perfect for any. In fact, a guiding principle for the entire process is don't let perfect the enemy of progress. A three-phase process is presented that starts with sharing and recognition of all stakeholders perspectives on what they want and need from regional transit. This leads to the creation of a consensus vision of regional transit in terms of characteristics, but not a system design. The second phase, translation of that vision into a specific transit system design and plans to develop it, must be done by transit professionals, always keeping the leaders of stakeholder groups aware and engaged and providing feedback on options under consideration. Once an acceptable plan emerges, phase three involves the stakeholder leaders actively advocating for the plan and its funding through segmented advocacy--emphasizing the values and impact of the system that are most important to the specific segment of the population. Once each segment sees that the system will support their values and objectives, funding and building of the system become far more likely.