Duggan: Detroit almost out of large parcels, could expand People Mover

Detroit — Mayor Mike Duggan said Thursday that attracting and retaining young people for the jobs of the future may require expanding the People Mover elevated train that loops through downtown.

Speaking at the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual Detroit Policy Conference, Duggan said city officials are going to study modifying routes of the People Mover, the 37-year-old downtown skytrain that has 13 stations in the central business district.

"The People Mover was built when it was envisioned that a subway was going to come from Royal Oak or Pontiac and it was going to distribute people into the downtown office buildings. They built the People Mover and the subway never came," Duggan said.

The People Mover's future route may need to be adjusted to account for an influx of new downtown residents and their mobility needs, Duggan said.

"If the People Mover were to be built today, you'd be looking at these high-rises and you'd be connecting them to each other as a neighborhood ... potential reconfiguration of the People Mover to make a downtown neighborhood where you both live, work and play is something we're looking at," Duggan said.

Duggan addressed transit issues during a talk at the Detroit chamber's annual policy conference, which was focused on Detroit and Michigan's long-term population challenges.

Detroit's first version of a bus rapid transit route, meaning riders can get off and on the bus quicker, is also being rolled out on Jefferson Avenue this year, Duggan said. That includes rolling out paperless tickets, pulling over easier and being at the same level as the person boarding on the bus, he said.

The city also is looking to improve working conditions for bus drivers with a $3 an hour pay raise.

The theme of this year's Detroit Policy Conference at Motor City Casino was growing Michigan's shrinking population. Panelists and experts spoke about the 10 recommendations from the Growing Michigan Together Council, which released its report in December.

“Michigan’s house is on fire," Detroit chamber CEO Sandy Baruah said, citing data that the state is getting older, poorer and literacy rates are declining.

The policy conference focused on improving education, retaining skilled and educated workers, the looming decline of car ownership and the increased need for alternative transit.

Duggan said the state's largest city is almost out of large parcels for any more manufacturing facilities, so a new economic development focus is in order.

"We have a couple left and that's going to be it," Duggan told reporters. "Which means that the jobs of the future are going to have to be in buildings that are vertical."

Continuing to challenge Detroit's growth

In Detroit, Duggan is still challenging the Census Bureau's 2020 count and 2021 estimates. In 2020, the Census Bureau counted 639,111 Detroiters. Between 2021-2022, the city gained fewer than 4,000 people. But researchers from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University found that the population was undercounted by more than 8% in some neighborhoods during the 2020 census, which could have meant that tens of thousands of people weren’t included.

Duggan is appealing the counts and estimates from 2020-2022 and the 2023 estimates come out in May.

During his stage conversation Thursday, the mayor said the metrics distributed by the Census Bureau showed a conflict that the count subtracted people as the city demolished vacant houses.

"We knocked down 2,500 vacant houses and we had 2,000 rehabbed vacant houses. The Census Bureau took those to mean (6,000) families are leaving and didn't count the ones that stayed. The Census Bureau is going to officially declare population is growing in Detroit," he said on stage.

Speaking to reporters, Duggan didn't provide much clarity on what that meant: "The estimates (2021) are going to get resolved sooner than the count (2020), but I think at this point, the Census Bureau understands you can't do annual estimates where you count the demolition of 2,500 vacant houses that led to a reduction of 6,000 people. I think we are convincing the Census Bureau that there was some real bias in the annual estimate and I'm optimistic they're going to fix it."

Duggan has previously asked the City Council if the city should take on the responsibility of demolishing blighted private-owned homes (he estimates about 5,000) with the remaining $250M Proposal N bond initiative voters approved in 2020. 

The Detroit Land Bank, the largest landowner in the city, has demolished 24,000 homes and sold and rehabbed 16,000 homes. In 2022, Duggan said, more vacant homes were rehabbed than demolished. The city is selling 200 homes each month on buildingdetroit.org.

Touting a decline in crime

The city recorded 252 homicides last year — its lowest total since 1966 — while nonfatal shootings declined for the fourth straight year, officials announced earlier this month. Duggan said for the first time, "There's a professional management team in the police department and everyone is on the same page in attacking gun violence."

"When you're looking at an 18% reduction in homicides, 33% reduction in carjackings, and lowest homicides on record since 1966," Duggan said. He attributed the reduction to the $10 million ShotStoppers community initiative and ShotSpotter, the city's ariel gunfire detection system.

In June, the city announced six community agencies to address the increase in shootings during the COVID-19 pandemic. They each were assigned a four-square-mile area and Duggan said later this month, they'd show proof that their efforts have led to fewer shootings.

"We're spending $350 million a year to pay for the police department to get people to stop shooting each other. If I could, I'd pay $10 million a year to get them to stop shooting at each other. That may sound flip but it's what we did. We pay these nonprofits $175,000 a quarter and if they reduce the shooting rate as fast as the rest of the city, they get an additional $175,000 as a bonus," Duggan said. "I bet we'll see most of them getting that bonus."

srahal@detroitnews.com

X: @SarahRahal_