SMART service, FAST routes

Eli Cooper likes he to say he was "born to ride." He grew up taking buses and subways in The Bronx. Now, as Oakland County's transit manager, he helps the residents, workers and visitors of Michigan's second-most-populous county get to where they want or need to go.

Hired after citizens voted to expand transit in all Oakland communities, he and the system operators—SMART and WOTA and NOTA and more—have made it the easiest it's ever been to travel within and past the county. But they've never strayed away from their, as Eli says, 'bread and butter': fixed-route buses. 

Eli and host Beau Brockett have more.

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Learn more about the transit services offered in Oakland County by going to oakgov.com/community/oakland-transit.

Learn about transportation efforts and opportunities through the Michigan Environmental Council. You can also subscribe via email and follow on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Transcript

Fixed Route, Steadfast Growth

[00:00:00] 

Beau Brockett: Hey folks, you are tuning into Common Groundwater, a podcast by the Michigan Environmental Council, where we go across the state to talk about environmental topics. We talk about the issues around them, stories about them and solutions to them. I'm here today with Eli Cooper, transit manager of Oakland County. Welcome Eli. Thanks for being here.

Eli Cooper: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Beau Brockett: Yeah, for sure. So you are taking part in an episode that is part of a larger miniseries of sorts on transit.

We've gone across the state over the past few episodes, um, to Cadillac to look at rural transit. We've gone to Lansing to talk about transit funding at large in Michigan. And then we've gone to Detroit to talk about young people and how they interact and interface with transit. Um, you're here [00:01:00] today to talk about a more suburban and urban perspective of all things transit, so really appreciate you taking time outta your day to join us.

Eli Cooper: Well, it's, uh, great to be here. I hope that I have some interesting information for your listeners

Beau Brockett: based on our conversation as I set up, I think we will, so I'm, uh, really excited. As I've asked all the guests on this little miniseries of sorts, I'd like to start off with, with just like a little bit of grounding, you know, for the both of us.

So what is your transit story? How have you interacted with transit, whether personally or professionally over the years?

Eli Cooper: Yeah. So when I was introduced as Oakland County's first transit manager, I was at a staff meeting with 90 economic development colleagues of mine.

And I introduced myself as somebody who was born to ride. I was born in the Bronx, New York, and through the first grade, all of our transportation was satisfied by buses and subways in the city of New York. So, it comes to me naturally.

Beau Brockett: Very nice. 

And you've mentioned before our episodes started [00:02:00] that you came to Oakland from Ann Arbor through Washtenaw County as well, from a lot of transit experience in that part of the Michigan.

Eli Cooper: Yeah. So, I started my career back in 1985 as the transportation planner for Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And my first professional assignment was to prepare a public transportation plan for a suburban Philadelphia county.

So I've been riding and working in the transit industry for decades. A lifetime, I would say. 

Beau Brockett: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Born to ride, as you mentioned. Yeah, really, I mean, kind of a night and day experience for me. I grew up in rural Macomb County, and even though there was transit offered there-- my grandpa was a SMART bus driver for a while-- I never actually used it or interacted with it. But as I went through college and then have started my career, I find myself interacting with it more and more and really enjoying it.

Well, now that we have that grounding underway, I'd love to maybe ground the audience next in Oakland County itself.

[00:03:00] It's over a million people reside in this county. To my understanding, it's pretty diverse in terms of, like, the communities that make up it, people that are here, et cetera. To help us get a better sense of the transit that's offered, what's, what's the county itself like?

Eli Cooper: So, in Oakland County, we as a county adopted a first countywide millage in November of 2022 and since then, the transit Oakland Transit office was created. Where I work, we have five contracts. Four are with smaller providers that provide what we call community response service in places like Holly and South Lyon, the Rochester area, demand response-- primarily, elderly folks that have medical needs to get to the doctor's office.

Over the course of the past two years, we've worked with them to expand their service by purchasing vehicles, expanding their footprint. It's been a really fantastic program as more [00:04:00] and more of the county is able to take advantage of public transportation services.

The large operator, the metropolitan operator that operates in the southeastern part, uh, of our county is SMART. And SMART, as you know, serves Oakland portions of Wayne and Macomb County, all of Macomb County. They have five primary lines of transit service, ranging from their high speed, efficient, fast service that runs up and down Woodward and some other ERs throughout their service area. Their fixed-route buses, which run on many of the primary arterials that help folks to move both around Oakland County, but between Oakland County, Macomb [County], Wayne County, Downtown [Detroit], into Detroit.

They also provide paratransit, which is, uh, ADA-accessible transportation for folks who, for a variety of perhaps, physical limitations, can't either get to or ride on a bus. So there [00:05:00] is, uh, ADA paratransit, and they have two more contemporary forms of transportation. One is, called Connector, which is demand responsive, like the ADA service, but it's available for any citizen. And Flex, which is the microtransit, the equivalent of Uber and Lyft but offered by a public transportation authority at public transportation pricing, not the value pricing that you find on an Uber or Lyft. And the Flex services are in the Troy area, Farmington area and the Pontiac area. Very effective way for folks in light density areas to be able to have on-demand transit at a reasonable price. 

Beau Brockett: I feel like two through lines came out in my mind from that. We could hit on both of them separately, but the first one was that just how varied the system is here in Oakland and, to a larger extent, Metro Detroit at large. You have your curb-to-curb services, your on-demand [00:06:00] services, you have your rapid bus lines. I'd imagine that is, I dunno, a very layered sort of approach you have to take as the one managing the system as a whole.

Eli Cooper: Well, the great news for me is managing the system and administering the program, I work with five exceptional partners. They, working with us have been in the process of improving the transit since the millage passed and looking at a significant increase in fixed-route service offered by SMART out into the city of Novi, up to Rochester, Oakland University along Highland roads.

So there's a lot of growing that's going on in the Flex system, the SMARTer Mobility program. It's probably winding up as you're gonna go on the air with this, but SMART has spent the last year and a half with Michael Baker International studying ways to more efficiently and effectively meet the public's demand for transit in their service area.

Beau Brockett: Great. That's great. And you also mentioned, too, how SMART, which is one of the transit services provided, [00:07:00] goes beyond just Oakland. And that's like the other part that I find really interesting about your role and then Oakland's role as a, you know, maybe transit service provider-- Oakland as not the county government, but, but just as a community in general. There's also larger things in the works too. There's like a sort of regional approach to transit in addition to having a county-specific transit as well. Could you talk a little bit about that? 

Eli Cooper: Within our, community transit providers-- for example, WOTA in the Western end, adjacent to Livingston County-- Livingston County has, LETS. So there's coordination that goes between, uh, WDA and LETS to enable people who may need to get to Brighton, but they live in White Lake in order to make that ride.

There's also, a lot of the cross-community services. Again, SMART's, a multi-county provider and so folks that are in Macomb, that work in Oakland, or folks in Oakland that want to go down to a Tigers game, SMART can get them there. So there's [00:08:00] both at the local level liaison to adjoining counties and service areas as well as our metropolitan providers. Truly metropolitan. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah, it's a great reminder that county lines, city lines, what have you are just lines. The way people travel goes far beyond that. 

Eli Cooper: Forty years plus in the transportation and urban planning world and one thing is for certain is that transportation issues do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. Period. Whether you're working on roads-- I mean, state highways system. It connects the state, but it's not really just the state, it's the interstate.

And if you think about it, for those folks who are either unable or unwilling or not in a position to own and operate a car, the transit service provides that connection to adjoining states, adjoining areas. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah, I think back to my time in southwest Michigan, as I was there, a partnership had just kind of been created between Berrien County's--Berrien County, Michigan's-- transit [00:09:00] service and St. Joseph County, Indiana's transit service. I would always travel to go, you know, to South Bend, to Mishawaka in Indiana to go grocery shopping and do all my major shopping. But to think that other people weren't able to do that because they didn't have a vehicle or because they, you know, didn't want to have to go slug through traffic for half an hour by driving, I didn't think about that. And then when those services came together, it all clicked for me. Very neat.

You mentioned this a little bit as well, but one other point I wanted to touch on in our conversation was kinda like the needs and wants of Oakland County residents or people visiting the county.

You mentioned that some of your services are specially designed for older folks. You have like your fixed-route systems, which I'd imagine you have like a regular set of people tending to use those. What are kind of the wants and needs?

Eli Cooper: When you say regular people, which are the irregular people?

Beau Brockett: That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are regularly using those services.

Eli Cooper: Yeah. So, uh, for regular and special people,

Beau Brockett: yes. Yeah.

Eli Cooper: Any trip purpose that you can think of are the bases for our public [00:10:00] transit ridership. We do surveys and we find out how many percent of the trips are medical-based. Some people rely on public transit, in order to get to life-sustaining dialysis treatment. So that's basically public transit as a means to staying alive. For others, annually you go to the doctor, you might have a follow-up appointment. There are folks who don't drive, who use transit to get to the medical appointments.

As hard as this to imagine in a world where it's primarily autocentric, there are folks that use SMART and the other providers to get access to groceries, to go, to the nearby Kroger or other grocery store, social needs.

We have-- mentioned the elderly population-- a number of senior centers throughout the county. Our providers bring folks there. In cooperation with SMART and the other operators, the county has This Ride's On Us, a veterans benefit program where any veteran can, take a ride on transportation [00:11:00] and we have a grant program that funds that. So it's a free ride for veterans.

People ask, you know, well, why do folks use transit? The answer is to get to do what they need to do as part of their life. And it's that simple. 

Beau Brockett: Yep. I like that. Short and sweet sort of a response to that question. Well, I'd love to get into maybe some of the more specific programs that you're particularly fond of or want to call out.

Before we do that, though, we'll go onto a quick intermission for our audience and for the two of us as well. Before we do anything else you want to add to our conversation so far?

Eli Cooper: Let's take a break.

Beau Brockett: Alright, that sounds great. Well, to folks listening, stay tuned. We'll be right back. 

Beau Brockett: Welcome back folks. You're tuning into Common Groundwater. I'm here with Eli Cooper. We're talking about transit in Oakland County and maybe to a smaller extent, Metro Detroit at large. You are tuning into our miniseries of sorts on transit. We have a set of four episodes so far that you can listen to in any order that talk about the various aspects of [00:12:00] Michigan's transit systems across the state and as a whole. When we left off, we were just talking about some neat programming that, you know, Oakland's various services offer.

 I'd like to maybe dive in a little bit more to that. Do any like particular sorts of programs or services come to mind when you think of your system?

Eli Cooper: Yeah, I mentioned this in the last segment, the SMART Flex program is this public transit version of Uber, Lyft, and it's demand response. It's available the day you need to travel, so it really replicates the context of getting to where you need to go when you need to go. A lot of the demand response services requires, a call a couple of days in advance.

But as you frame the question, for me, what I wanna do is focus on the workhorse of public transportation, the fixed-route system, those buses that run the same road up and down, stopping at bus stops, letting people come and go.

Everyone's always looking for the newfangled [00:13:00] thing. The reality is that when we talk about public transportation and we think about the 40-foot coaches with the bus driver and people getting off and on those buses kneel, they've got ramps to help people with strollers and wheelchair. I mean, that's the bread and butter of the transit industry.

 It's interesting to talk about Flex. It moves people around in the three communities that I described earlier on. But when we talk about the fixed-route system, those buses operate at different speeds at different times of day. And it's often overlooked when we try to say, 'Well, what's really unique?'

What's unique is that this thing gets up every morning at six o'clock and it runs into the wee hours of the night, and it's moving people all day throughout the entire county and throughout the community. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah, that's a great point. I really respect that. I appreciate that, 'cause I'm sure that's kind of how the system was founded, right?

[It] was through those fixed-route systems to begin with. And why stray away from those? That's great.

[00:14:00] Switching a little bit, we also- well, first I should say, do we wanna talk a little bit more about those fixed-route systems? Anything else that, you know, you really wanna particularly call out or mention?

Eli Cooper: Well, again, I think it's important to note that they are consistent. They're reliable, and a lot of folks see the bus go by, but they don't think or picture themselves being a transit rider. Interacting with riders, and with the public, a lot of folks have questions.

'How can I get to downtown, how can I get to the airport?' And as a matter of fact, in the environment in Oakland County today, whether you are in [the service area of] WOTA or NOTA area north of the SMART service area, you can take a local shuttle bus to get to the Woodward FAST route. Take that Woodward FAST route Downtown and transfer either to the Michigan FAST or to the RTA's [00:15:00] Downtown Airport Express, [also known as] DAX. And so you can actually take a bus ride to the airport from Oakland County today. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah. You don't need to drive to the airport or have someone take you there at four in the morning.

Eli Cooper: And at public transit fairs, you're getting there and back for 10 bucks.

Beau Brockett: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Eli Cooper: And again, the idea of parking, and this isn't about anti-parking at the airport, but in thinking about fixed-route transit, it's running, it's fast, it's reliable, and you can use it to meet your daily needs. Or if you're going on a trip and you don't want the aggravation of driving out to the airport. 'Am I gonna get my flight?' Jump on the bus. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned too--maybe this is a great place to plug this in-- you mentioned at the start of the episode, that a transit millage had passed in Oakland a few years back. I think that is why you are here today, in fact. How does that play into the fixed-route services?

Eli Cooper: So, uh, uh, great question. Prior to the millage, the countywide millage, there were [00:16:00] local opt-ins and opt-outs. Similar to what's going on in Wayne County today, although Wayne County's looking at a countywide millage coming up soon.

The challenge was we had disjointed service. There were communities that were in the middle of a fixed-route service, but they, the residents, didn't opt in, so the buses would run closed door through the community. You couldn't get off or get it. And so it was a disjointed system.

When the millage passed, we now have a county-wide millage. First, it enabled us to fully fund, fill in the donut holes of the opt-out communities so folks can get in and out of buses anywhere along a fixed-route line.

We've had the first expansions of the fixed-route service out into the city of Novi, Wixom, up to Rochester, Oakland University along, Highland Road, M-59, out through Waterford to White Lake. These are all new services that, with the additional resources that came on through the millage, 'cause it's countywide. It's not half the county in and half [00:17:00] the county out.

Beyond that, with the millage, what we've done is we've enabled the growth of the smaller operators to know, the WOTA, OPC, People's Express. I think I've purchased or helped them purchase about 120 new transit vehicles, not 60-foot buses, but mini vans with wheelchair equip; transit vans; cutaway, small buses, that are all operating. And ridership up almost like doubling or more in these communities.

And we have delivered, we as Oakland County with the millage. Any Oakland County resident can call a local operator and will be offered transit service to get anywhere they need to get within the county, into some closely related, nearby places.

Beau Brockett: That's amazing. Congrats. I know you kind of joined after the fact, but still like amazing for Oakland County residents to pass that and then to see it actually play out so quickly too. It's very fantastic.

To pivot a little bit, you mentioned that [00:18:00] maybe there's sometimes a little bit of educational work involved getting people to realize that they can use the transit systems they see every day to get to places, if they need to. And as you're expanding, I'd imagine that happens more. I guess this is a bit of a leading question, but are there any sorts of challenges that you feel like, Oakland's, various transit systems still face?

Eli Cooper: So this isn't just Oakland. I could speak industry wide. I think there's a public education and marketing component. You know, 'Where does the bus run? How can I get from where I want to go, from where I am using the bus? What does it cost me? What mechanically do I need to do? Do I stand at the bus stop? Do I have to wave at the bus or is it just gonna stop? How do I know when to get off?'

There's so many questions that, for me, born to ride, it was second nature. I learned this, growing up. If you've lived your whole life out in a suburban or rural environment, a bus is something that just goes by from time to time. Yeah. And folks are frightened, not because it's scary, [00:19:00] but it's unknown. And so to the extent that we can educate the public about how do you ride a bus, where do the buses go, what opportunities do you have for the different types?

I mentioned five different types of transit. Some are more responsive than others, and some are more regular than others. There's a lot of opportunity for us to increase awareness, and that's part of my contribution to your podcast. Hopefully we're speaking to folks who see the bus goes by and they wanna know how to use it. You can look up your local provider and give 'em a call. Their customer service staff will be more than happy to give you the tools you need to ride. 

Beau Brockett: That's great. That's great. Yes, I think we do have listeners who are like myself, maybe transit fans and maybe long have been, but haven't been able to utilize the services as much.

I do think that there is a bit of, yeah, of fear not of the system itself, but of, for me, looking silly, like, as I step onto the bus, right? Like that first time was, feels a little [00:20:00] bit embarrassing, but once you do it, once, you realize how simple it is, and I'd imagine that transit systems across the state and the nation run in a very similar way. So once you do it once, doing it again is simpler.

Eli Cooper: Indeed.

Beau Brockett: Yeah. Very cool. When you look ahead to the future with this transit millage in Oakland passing, or maybe even larger too, looking at other systems in place, where do you hope or where do you see that system going? Like how do you see it expanding, moving forward?

Eli Cooper: So there are different forms. I would describe five.

There's something called bus rapid transit, which has been an aspiration in southeastern Michigan for i'll say forever. And the FAST is a little better than a normal fixed-route bus. But bus rapid transit has bus stations, not bus stops with level boarding.

The buses have either exclusive lanes to operate in unimpeded by traffic. Or [00:21:00] there's high tech, gizmos where the bus, as it's approaching a traffic light, the light stays green so the bus can go through without stopping for the red light, enabling the transit trip to be quicker, even though it's stopping from time to time to pick people.

So the bus rapid is a emerging opportunity that we have in the region. I do think that, if I take it back a step and address some of the safety considerations, I was at a meeting earlier today and they were talking about the SMART fixed-route bus stop sign sitting in the sod.

There's a lot of room to add what I'll call passenger amenities. Key walks, so you don't have to walk through the grass to get to the bus 'cause the bus can't get up on the sidewalk, right? So there's a small piece of walk between the sidewalk that's parallel to the street till you get to the bus.

There's bus shelters. We are in Michigan. It snows, there's hail, there's rain, so more shelters. [00:22:00] But even simpler types of things like that. Just, lighting. Again, this time of year it's light until eight, nine o'clock at night. The what do you do in December, January when the days are shorter? Having appropriate lighting so that somebody is comfortable and so that the driver can see them.

 Coming out of Ann Arbor working on pedestrian things, crosswalks, the ability for someone safely to walk across the street, is foundational to transit 'cause if you take the bus into town, you're coming back on the other direction and at one point or another you gotta walk across the street. Are there properly marked crosswalks? The drivers know to be mindful that there is actually somebody walking across the street here, so it's not polite for someone in a vehicle to meet with somebody who's walking. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah. That's, yeah. Yeah.

It seems to, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm giving the wrong spin on this, but it seems like the [00:23:00] future orientation is, I guess on one hand it's, um, kind of like, making sure that the level of prioritization of transit is a bit higher, right?

So like, for example, with bus rapid, it's making sure that the bus has the priority in some ways to get ahead of traffic or to stay in time with traffic. With crosswalks, it's making sure that people using the buses can get from place to place easier. Is that a fair sort of spin?

Eli Cooper: Yeah. It's back to the basics, but because we're starting so far behind. You know, in the home of the big three, right? This is a very auto-centric environment. The future, speaking about it here, it's these foundational fundamental elements. And then as more people feel more comfortable with the bus and the ridership picks up, we can get into further forms of transit.

But, honestly, the expression you gotta crawl before you walk? I think there's a lot of room for us to expand the system, have it run more reliably, have it [00:24:00] run more frequently, to enable more people to capitalize on it.

Similarly, at the same time, on other hand, we talked a little bit, uh, during the intermission about the sustainability of transit.

 The longer term view of transit isn't. Only about transit, it's about transit-oriented communities so that we have more places that have the type of housing. They call it the 15-minute city nowadays, where you can walk around comfortably, where you have a variety of type and tenure of housing, including workforce housing, so that more people that are closer together that have a transit route that connects them to other.

 interesting and exciting places. That's part of a future. That transit is a piece of that picture. And that image is sustainable from so many different community attributes. And it's foundational into achieving the success, where if you try to create a 15-minute neighborhood based on walking [00:25:00] and everybody's looking for a place to park, it's an antithesis to the overarching strategy you're looking for. Room for cars for sure, but, to create that emphasis and opportunity and more sustainable, forms of both living and traveling.

Beau Brockett: I love that. I feel like that's a nice visionary point to maybe wrap things up with. However, I do wanna do my due diligence.

Anything else that you want to talk about today? We've covered a fair amount, but I know that there's always so much to cover. 

Eli Cooper: Well, I'd like for the listening audience to understand that transit is first and foremost available throughout our region. It is reliable. It's flexible from the standpoint of there are different forms of transit depending on how one needs to travel.

If you have a wheelchair, there's an ability to reach out to a transit provider to get a wheelchair-equipped bus to pick you up. In today's modern world, it's innovative. There are, apps that allow you to [00:26:00] plan your transit trip by just asking for the transit strategy. It'll tell you, walk three blocks, get on the bus, pay this fair. It's easy to use. Give it a try. It's a great way to get around.

And, you know what I can say is when you hear today that the average cost of a new vehicle is $50,000. Transit's, a way to get rich as an individual if you avoid the whole car payment thing and the 70 cents, a mile that the operating insurance costs-- insurance costs are really high in Michigan.

 And you bank that. You can either take a lot of really nice vacations or you could retire at a younger age, and you can thank the transit system for helping you get there. 

Beau Brockett: Yeah, that's wonderful. 

As someone who has just bought a vehicle and is paying the price. Yeah, it is great. That would be great.

And I feel like what you had just had mentioned too, really fits into something I've heard time and again on this miniseries and [00:27:00] I think our listeners have too, and it's that, like, transit is wanted, transit is here, and, transit is itching to expand, I think. And the people riding it are, want it to expand and improve as well.

And we've seen that through, you know, millages passing high rates. We've seen that just from surveys and sentiments from people and we've seen it from ridership. And so I'm glad to hear that Oakland is, is fitting into that sort of storyline in many ways.

With that, Eli, thanks so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate it.

Eli Cooper: Thank you for the opportunity to converse with you and with your listeners.

Beau Brockett: Yeah, not a problem. And thank you to listeners, since you've been mentioned for, tuning into this miniseries. Whether you're, this is your first episode or you've been a long time listener, we really appreciate you.

This is the last episode for the time being in our transit, miniseries, however. We'll do a bit of a, 'where they now?' sort of episode in a couple of months.

One thing that has also been a bit of a through line, Eli, is, we've talked a bit about transit funding and how there's a big effort [00:28:00] going on in the state to make sure that it, that state funding for local authorities is like being met, and so we'll have an update on that in the months ahead.

 Anywho. With that, thanks again for tuning in. Thanks again, Eli, and we will see you soon.