Streetcars ala the 50’s, elevated tram the People Mover, all four major Detroit teams playing within a couple blocks of each other. Like the article says, Detroit downtown has always has good structural bones. The actual downtown didn’t burn or get blighted too much.
Henderson: Detroit has taken the ‘first step’ with streetcars and Windsor should take note
Published on: May 19, 2017 | Last Updated: May 19, 2017 9:00 PM EDT
Woodward Avenue’s QLINE streetcar rolls north on May 12, 2017 during its official launch in downtown Detroit as thousands lined up to take a free ride.
Fifteen years ago, even 10 years ago, a lot of Windsor residents felt pity for our downtrodden neighbours in corrupt, debt-ridden, blood-splattered Detroit.
The Motor City defined urban failure. And now? Now a ride up resurgent Woodward Avenue on one of Detroit’s quiet, buttery-smooth electric streetcars is enough to send an envious Windsorite off in search of a nice cup of hemlock juice.
I rode the 10.6-kilometre QLINE this week, along with throngs of noisy, beaming Detroiters and lots of gasping tourists, and came away awed that a city with so many woes could pull off such a triumph.
This is more than a US$140-million streetcar line. It’s a mobile testament to Detroit’s remarkable comeback, presenting eye-popping views of the staggering $7 billion and counting — most of it private money — pumped into the Woodward corridor in recent years.
Detroit, once one of America’s top five cities, has always had good bones. Now, in a blizzard of construction, it’s putting flesh on those bones with condo towers, town home developments, office buildings, immaculate parks and, of course, the sprawling Ilitch arena project.
Ride the QLINE and you’re reminded just how much Detroit has going for it, including the Fox Theater, Wayne State University, the Detroit Institute of Arts and two sprawling hospitals complexes, Henry Ford and the Detroit Medical Center.
It seems every day is now a party in downtown Detroit. At noon, hundreds of young, well-dressed people bask in the sunshine while taking lunch at tables and chairs scattered freely about the area. It feels like a Sunday picnic for the upwardly mobile. Fun times in Hipsterville.
The return to Windsor is an ice-cold shower. It begins with a scuzzy Transit Windsor tunnel bus shelter. The overflowing trash can sports graffiti and oozes gunk. The shelter needs a bath, or a trip to the landfill. The base of the steel bench is rusting out. A nearby banner promoting the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is tattered. And there’s zero promotion of Windsor apart from a Caesars sign.
Where are we, Bratislava? What a comment on the joys to be anticipated at the end of a spine-bashing bus ride under the Detroit River.
Emerging, blinking, from the tunnel, you find yourself, not in Bratislava but in Sleepy Hollow. The contrast these days between downtown Detroit and downtown Windsor is, frankly, demoralizing.
Where the hell are the people? Where’s the foot traffic? In mid-afternoon, mid-week, our downtown appears to be primarily a refuge for folks down on their luck or with serious personal issues.
That’s particularly sad, given the current area real estate boom. Our upwardly mobile young couples covet a home in the burbs and most wouldn’t touch downtown with a barge pole.
Who to blame? Not our city elders who have pumped hundreds of millions of tax dollars into trying to revive downtown.
Sadly, we have lots of absentee owners/speculators who either don’t give a fig about this city or lack deep pockets. But we are utterly lacking in the kind of entrepreneurial muscle that has powered Detroit’s renaissance. No Dan Gilbert. No Roger Penske. No Ford Foundation. No Kresge Foundation.
What we do have is a surfeit of whiners who condemn every attempt to do something creative, from the canal to the urban village, from the pedestrian underpass to the exciting plan to transform our bleak riverfront festival plaza.
Six years ago then councillor Al Maghnieh was ridiculed for raising the idea of a trolley line from the university to Walkerville. The idea is still in the city’s 20-year strategic plan but has been laughed off as a pipe dream. Even as cities across Ontario land new LRT (light rail transit) systems on the province’s dime.
We are our own worst enemies. Perhaps a quote from civil rights heroine Rosa Parks, splashed across one of Detroit’s sleek new streetcars, says it best: “to bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try.”
