[FullMtlAlcoholc]

> At the end of the day Detroit is a city which was designed from the ground up to discourage public transport.

As another person from Detroit, this isn't necessarily true. It's just how Detroit developed after the 1960's riot.

The city is based on a wheel and spoke design as opposed to a grid. Detroit was meant to have the downtown area be the commercial and high price residential metropolitan center, with Woodward being the main thoroughfare along which development would spread out. As we both know, many of the high rent areas of the city are on the extreme periphery. (Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, etc.) and there is little development on Woodward until you get outside of the city into Ferndale (which starts at the famed 8 Mile Rd) Also, a disproportionate amount of the commerce like big box retailers, movie theaters, shopping malls. is in the outlying suburbs.

So the city became inverted, in almost the opposite way the designers intended. But your main point is right, public transportation won't work in the city because of the distribution of population, placement of freeways, etc. Thanks Big Three!

Offtopic: Even though Detroit used to be a big city, it feels like a mining town in Appalachia in a way with three instead of one dominant companies, with its fortunes and failures tethered to the boom and bust of the US automotive industry.