Private Donations for Public Transit: The Equity Implications of Detroit’s Public–Private Streetcar

Abstract

Transportation agencies are increasingly seeking private sector funding, but resulting deals have implications beyond specific projects. We analyze the broader regional and equity impacts of private funding by examining Detroit’s donation-funded streetcar. Despite potential negative consequences for transit-dependent populations, the longer-term political will forged through streetcar planning has a contingent possibility to enhance regional transit. In addition to donations, the streetcar relies on public sector funds, but we found limited public influence to ensure collective transportation benefits. A federal-level actor did mandate that a regional transit agency form, but more systematic public action is needed.

Governing Without Government: Nonprofit Governance in Detroit and Flint

“…The M-1 Rail board of directors includes no elected officials. Thus, a major new downtown infrastructure project in Detroit is both financed and led by the private sector (Lowe and Grengs 2018).…”

Value Capture In Situ: Participation, Evaluation, and Signaling in Kansas City, MO

“…While value capture financing allowed city officials to reduce the number of people involved with project approval, it also provided an incentive to enhance business and private sector participation in transit management and operations. Unlike other streetcar investments that have been driven by business and property interests (Brown, Nixon, and Ramos 2015; Lowe and Grengs 2018), “businesses [in Kansas City] don’t see transit as an area that affects them, they don’t see how or why they should get involved with transport issues” (Economic Development Agency Planner, May 2015). A local transit advocate elaborated that the local business community “is dominated by people who only think of the capital expense [and] feel that rail transit is too much of a capital expenditure for them to support it” (Transit Advocate, May 2015).…”

Who Decides? Toward a Typology of Transit Governance

“…The devolution or decentralization of transit financing and decision making to sub-regional and even sub-municipal levels suggests the need for a new framework and new data sources to think about transit governance in the United States. Decentralized approaches to transit governance introduce new priorities, values and metrics including new definitions as to what counts as a successful transit project [43,44] and we miss important lessons about the politics of public transit and policy implementation by focusing primarily on technical questions about operations and regional scales of governance. Rather than impose normative views about the appropriate level of decision making across all contexts, the typology described in this paper aims to support inquiry into the decision-making behavior of local and regional stakeholders to better understand the politics of goal setting, policy adoption and implementation strategies in public transit.…”