In the weeks since the route cutbacks at the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, I have had the opportunity to continue using Woodward for some of my weekly errands around decidedly less bus traffic. I will admit that most of my trips along Woodward do not involve the use of public transit, but I have managed at least one recent bike-and-bus excursion out to the suburbs with only the DDOT buses at my disposal.
Even though I remain a fervent believer in and voting supporter of public transit, I feel bound to report my pleasant surprise as a cyclist at the recent noticeable decrease in off-peak hour bus traffic along Woodward. While the idea of cycling on Woodward may not strike Michigan’s entire cycling community as a practical one, Woodward Avenue will continue to be a de facto cycling corridor so long as there are destinations along its length to and from which cyclists are inclined to ride. Ever since the conversion of streetcar service to rubber-tired diesel bus service, the Woodward corridor has remained the region’s busiest transit corridor, a condition only exacerbated during the period in which two overlapping bus-based transit systems served the same 11-mile-long right-of-way.
As the streetcars and omnibuses have come and gone over the years, the cycling community has continued to ride on Woodward, for better or for worse. Legend has it that the Wolverine Sports Club’s fabled Pontiac Express ride got started during the streetcar days, and continued long into the reign of bus service. These days, Detroit’s newly-awakened Critical Mass scene can be seen strutting its monthly stuff amongst the remaining buses of Woodward, and a recent Woodward-based annual group ride has renewed organized cycling interest in the region’s spinal corridor.
It is important to remember, amid the new discussions over what is to become of rapid transit service along Woodward after the demise of the M-1 rail plan, that transportation decisions are never made in a vacuum, and that their consequences are never uniformly beneficial or harmful to users of the public roadway. As a cyclist, I can’t help the fact that Woodward has inadvertently become more bicycle-friendly as a result of involuntary transit budget decisions. I do notice that more and more DDOT buses—on Woodward and elsewhere—feature front racks for bicycles, and that more and more of them seem to be filled with bikes when the bus pulls up. As the region thinks about its transportation future, perhaps that’s a good problem to have.