Metro Detroit’s efforts to create a rapid mass transit system on par with other major regions has often gone off the rails. 

WDET explores some of that history in the latest episode of CuriosiD.

But one small slice of the transit puzzle is in place — the QLINE streetcars running along Detroit’s Woodard Avenue.

Former Washington, D.C.-based attorney Jared Fleisher was there at the advent of the QLINE. He’s now the vice president of government affairs for Rock, billionaire Dan Gilbert’s family of companies. 

In the interview below, Fleisher told WDET the QLINE is a marker for what Detroit could do with transit and how the region could roll into the future. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Jared Fleisher: What we did with the QLINE had never been done before. Most major public infrastructure projects are led by public agencies like a transportation agency. Take yourself back to 2009, and in this case it was a ragtag nonprofit group saying, “Detroit is really struggling, economically and from a transit perspective. We want to do something to create a spark. And we, this ragtag nonprofit, wants to tear up Woodward Avenue and put in a streetcar — tear up the main avenue in a major American city.” As you can imagine, the U.S. Department of Transportation had never encountered this circumstance before. Washington had watched metro Detroit, going back to the Carter administration, never really be able to get its act together around transit. And therefore they did not take us very seriously or send money our way. They said, “You don’t even have a regional transit authority (RTA) in Metro Detroit. If you want us to approve the QLINE, which you’re saying is going to be the spark for a regional system, let’s actually create a RTA that could administer it.” 

So in 2012, before the QLINE broke ground, we worked together with the governor — and the Feds were big champions of this — to create the RTA. There were literally dozens and dozens of failed attempts over decades to create a regional authority, because of divisions between the different jurisdictions. Fast forward to 2016, and the backers of the QLINE led an effort, with community input, to develop a regional transit plan that would finally fund a regional system. It would have had rapid transit to Pontiac, rapid transit on Michigan Avenue out to Detroit Metro Airport. With support from the Kresge Foundation, Roger Penske, Dan Gilbert and others, it went on the ballot in 2016 and it lost by half-a-percent. And here we are, nine years later, and we still have not solved the issue of regional rapid transit. 

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: What is the reason these ballot proposals failed? Why has there been opposition to it? 

JF: I’ll be very candid with you. One of the realities of our region is that it’s diverse. The closer you are to the urban core, the more supportive of transit you are. But as you get into more rural areas, north Oakland County, north Macomb County, northwest Wayne County, they’re less oriented to transit. When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, he won by turning out a lot of the voters in those communities. And on the Democratic side, Hillary underperformed in the more urbanized areas. So the God’s honest true story about what happened in 2016 is that it was less about transit specifically and more about how the top of the ticket influenced everything on the ballot, including the transit referendum. And when there were attempts to go through the legislature to get it on the ballot in a different form, a narrower, more Coalition of the Willing kind of thing, the legislative majority at that time didn’t want to stick their necks out.

QK: You mentioned the diversity of the region. I’ve heard people bring up racism as an issue in transit. Do you think racism plays any part in all of this?  

JF: I don’t think that is the fundamental issue. For example, all of Macomb County votes for SMART, the suburban bus system. And that runs lines in and out of Detroit through Macomb. One of the biggest recent wins for transit, in 2022, was when Oakland County got rid of this “Swiss cheese” thing they had forever, where some communities were part of SMART and others said no to transit. Oakland County voted overwhelmingly for the whole county to be part of SMART. So I don’t think, if you’re trying to look at it analytically, they would say, “We don’t want those people coming here,” as what’s going on. I think the issue with regional transit is whether certain rural voters feel it’s worth it. Do I support investing my tax dollars in this? By the way, for the record, a lot of specialized transit has been developed over the last eight years to meet the needs of rural communities in a more tailored way. 

QK: So here we are now, in 2025. What’s your view of where regional transit is in the metro Detroit area? And where do you see the likelihood of it going in the future? 

JF: Recently, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans said he was going to try to end the Swiss cheese there, where certain communities opted-out and busses aren’t allowed to travel. They don’t participate in funding the Wayne County part of the network. Warren Evans has said they’re going to go to the ballot, in hopes that Wayne County voters pass it just like Oakland County voters did. So that’s progress. But what it’s not is the kind of modern rapid transit you see in your dynamic cities, your big cities, your great cities.

So, what’s the next step? Should we work together to really focus on one major rapid transit investment? For example, doing rapid transit up Woodward all the way to Pontiac, where Oakland County is investing so much into a new county campus and there’s other investment happening. Should we do one thing that is really, really significant? That comes full circle, right back to the QLINE. It’s successful, exceeding expectations as it carries one million or more people a year. It did its part. And now the question is, if resources become available, do we try to do a newer version of this movie, where we make a significant regional investment with the strategy that we can then use that to try to catalyze something even broader. 

WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, listener Jennifer Kulczycki of Sterling Heights asks... 

“I’ve heard for many years that metro Detroit doesn’t have a robust transit system because the Big Three undermined the streetcar and bus systems in order to sell more vehicles. I’ve always been curious about that, but I’ve never really been able to find any concrete evidence of it.”

The short answer

In 1949, General Motors and the Firestone Tire company, among others, were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and products to National City Lines, which had taken control of dozens of transit systems. But GM, Firestone and the others were acquitted of trying to, in effect, monopolize the transit industry. And experts say automakers could not run over Detroit’s streetcars, because the city itself owned the system.

Riding the rails all around the town

Imagine traveling back to Detroit in the 1920s and ’30s, when streetcar tracks split the middle of Woodward Avenue.

Riders who once strolled past horse-drawn carriages to get onboard the Department of Street Railways system, known as the DSR, now had to dodge vehicles going 30 miles an hour or more.

The DSR touted the system’s widespread use. It noted that at peak periods of the day as many as 1,000 streetcars crisscrossed the city, “carrying Detroit’s industrial army.”

It was also a different animal from some other municipalities, because in 1922 the city itself had bought out the streetcar system, ostensibly to operate it more efficiently.

“Every time a bus or a trolley car rolls down the street, there’s a stockholder’s meeting in motion,” the DSR proclaimed.

Iowa State University Professor Robert Pfaff did his dissertation at the University of Michigan on the history of Detroit’s streetcars. He says it was the largest publicly-owned transit system in the U.S. at the time.

And Pfaff contends Detroit’s burgeoning auto industry viewed rail cars as a necessity.

“They recognized that this was the way that most of their workers actually got to work,” he said.

The takeover of transit

Over those decades, a company called National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, backed by a consortium that included General Motors and Firestone, took control of dozens of transit systems.

The moves caught the interest of the U.S. Justice Department.

In 1949, GM, Firestone and others in the consortium were convicted of a conspiracy to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel and similar products to National City Lines. They were fined a token few thousand dollars each. But the companies were acquitted of trying to take over the systems owned by NCL in order to, in effect, form a transit monopoly.

Still, the idea of automakers sabotaging streetcars gained increasing traction in the public imagination, even serving as the plot for numerous books and movies.

For instance, the 1988 animated film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” features the villainous Judge Doom buying up the Red Car rail line, preparing for a new freeway with “wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see.”

When a character tells him no one will use the freeway since they can take the streetcar for 5 cents, Doom replies, “Oh they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it!”

Buses take the lead

Pfaff hits the brakes on any takeover of streetcars in Detroit, however, since the city itself owned the system.

“That automatically prevented other private investors from trying to come in and disrupt that space. We are the ones to blame for dismantling that system. We don’t have some private company that swept in with some grand scheme, we have to look inwardly at ourselves,” Pfaff said.

In the mid-20th Century, the American Dream was paved with highways crossing the country. Pfaff says metro Detroit transit officials wanted to be on the cutting edge of it all.

“The super-modern thing were these nice, fast, rubber-tired diesel buses that operate on the streets. And they decided if they’re gonna serve the modern region with more suburban residential areas, they couldn’t do electrification and tracks. The easy way to do it was with buses.”

The transit system that is

About three-quarters of a century later, Metro Detroit’s transit system unfolds along streets like Gratiot Avenue.

Detroiter Charles Green stands at a bus stop on Gratiot near 12 mile in Macomb County. Green says he grew up riding buses with his father.

He calls newer routes, like the suburban SMART system’s Fast Gratiot line into the city, a definite upgrade. Mostly.

“I like the bus. It’s eco-friendly and convenient. But the frequency of the bus just ain’t right,” Green lamented. “I work at a bar and man, every bar over there is closing after midnight. So at that point I gotta pay $20 for an Uber just to get home.”

Detroit’s DDOT bus system wants to significantly increase its number of drivers and cut wait times for customers. But at a bus shelter further along Gratiot, Detroiter Shina Harps says she’s part of the roughly 25–33% of the city’s residents who don’t have their own vehicle.

In the car capitol of the world, Harps says that quickly becomes a badge of shame.

“I do get that a lot, ‘Oh you take the bus,’” Harps said in a disparaging tone. “That’s my life. I’m living in my truth.”

‘Does Detroit really want public transit?’

Detroit transit also carried a stigma among some in the federal government.

The Vice President of Rock, billionaire Dan Gilbert’s family of companies, is Jared Fleisher. He previously worked as a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who helped a Detroit nonprofit group develop what they hoped would be both a catalyst and a part of improved public transit in the region – the QLINE streetcar system.

“Going back to the Carter administration, Washington never saw metro Detroit really be able to get its act together around transit,” Fleisher said. “They did not take us very seriously or send money our way. (The QLINE) was meant to show Washington that we were serious, we were working together around transit in a different way.”

In 2012, before the QLINE even broke ground, officials formed an actual Regional Transit Authority for southeast Michigan, the same kind of transportation agency the federal government worked with in other municipalities.

But Fleisher says a four-county millage to fund inter-connected public transit in metro Detroit ran into a roadblock in 2016.

Rural voters came out in force to support then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Fleisher believes it was an electorate that saw little value in paying extra taxes for a transit system they likely would hardly use.

“It went to the ballot and lost by half a percent. And nine years later, we still have not solved the issue of regional rapid transit.”

A magnet for young talent

What exists alongside bus service, along with Detroit’s elevated People Mover system, is a 3.3 mile stretch of railway on Woodward Avenue punctuated by the clanging bell of the QLINE streetcar.

It’s a reminder of what could be in Detroit, especially for younger travelers.

Onboard the QLINE, Wayne State student Sara Jaloul notes she has her own car. But she says using the streetcar for even a few miles helps her save both gas money and the environment.

“I think the less cars we have on the street is probably a lot less pollution, so that’s really important to me. As much public transportation as possible should be best,” Jaloul said.

Catering to that smog-free desire is a key selling point for many younger workers, says the head of the metro area’s Regional Transit Authority, Ben Stupka. And he says no one wants to grow the transit system more now than Detroit’s automakers.

“The Big Three and those that support them in that ecosystem have a laser-focused understanding that transit is part of the brew, if you will, that keeps and attracts talent to this region,” Stupka said. “And that is what they need to survive and thrive.”

Whether that eventually leads to metro Detroit public transportation that legitimately competes with other regions across the country though, remains a question for down the road.

Meet the listener

Jennifer Kulczycki is the Director of External Affairs and Communications at The Kresge Foundation. She lives in Sterling Heights. She came to metro Detroit from western New York state fresh out of college to work in the automotive industry.

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