{"id":69,"date":"2015-02-02T22:18:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T04:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/02\/did-you-see-the-story-about-the-detroit-man-who-commutes-21-miles-a-day-by-foot.html"},"modified":"2017-06-29T21:07:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T03:07:57","slug":"did-you-see-the-story-about-the-detroit-man-who-commutes-21-miles-a-day-by-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/02\/did-you-see-the-story-about-the-detroit-man-who-commutes-21-miles-a-day-by-foot.html","title":{"rendered":"Did you see the story about the Detroit man who commutes 21 miles a day by foot?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This was featured in The Atlantic<\/a>, based on a report in the Detroit Free Press<\/a>: \u00a0in order to get to his job in a suburban Detroit factory, a man spends most of his non-work waking hours walking (and gets virtually no sleep, either). \u00a0The trip is 23 miles each way; much of that is travelled by bus but he walks 7 miles from the closest bus stop to his workplace, to get to work; and, for the return trip, walks those 7 miles, plus a further 5 home because the bus line doesn\u2019t travel as far at night. \u00a0All told, this is 21 miles (yeah, I don\u2019t see where the additional 2 miles comes from, either; perhaps that\u2019s the distance to the first bus stop in the morning).<\/p>\n

The Freep article focuses on his dedication, and the banker who, after seeing him on that route so often, began giving him rides. \u00a0The Atlantic focuses on the failures of the area to provide sufficient mass transit to ease his commute. \u00a0And the commenters on the Atlantic article (the Freep comments wouldn\u2019t load) focused to a large degree on the question: \u00a0\u201cwhy doesn\u2019t he ride a bike?\u201d<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what the Atlantic missed: \u00a0there is a bus route that comes pretty darn close to being ideal:<\/p>\n

His employer is mentioned as Shain Mold & Engineering; the google map <\/a>shows that this is located on Crooks, just north of Auburn, in Rochester Hills. \u00a0And SMART route 465<\/a> plys a route that\u2019s nearly ideal \u2013 from Woodward in Detroit (which the article mentions as the major cross street near his home) to the Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills, passing by Auburn and Adams, only two miles from his workplace. \u00a0(Yes, it\u2019s still a two mile walk, but it\u2019s a far cry from 7 miles!)<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the problem? \u00a0The bus travels this route northbound during the morning rush hour, and southbound during the evening rush hour \u2014 and he works the afternoon\/evening shift, from 2 \u2013 10 pm.
\nWhich means it\u2019s not a matter of the city\/region being unwilling to pony up the money for bus service, but that, outside these key hours, they couldn\u2019t fill the farebox enough to justify the route. \u00a0Now, it is true that the article mentions \u201ccutbacks\u201d so perhaps there was more daytime northbound and nighttime southbound service than now (perhaps the additional 5 miles from the last bus stop to his home in the city were added after night service in the city was curtailed) but at the same time, it still seems out-of-the-norm for a suburb to have plentiful odd-hours bus service, cutbacks or no.<\/p>\n

And, indeed, there is also a service intended to help low-income reverse-commuters:<\/p>\n

Detroit\u2019s director of transportation said there is a service Robertson may be able to use that\u2019s designed to help low-income workers. Job Access and Reverse Commute, paid for in part with federal dollars, provides door-to-door transportation to low-income workers, but at a cost. Robertson said he was not aware of the program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what\u2019s my point? Just that things aren\u2019t always as simple as they seem. \u00a0And the problem is much more difficult than just \u201cmean Detroit suburbs that won\u2019t fund transit\u201d because transit from the city to suburban jobs is an issue everywhere (an the evening shift compounds it) \u2014 though most of the time, it produces joblessness, because people simply won\u2019t go to these extreme lengths to get to a job.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/p>\n

Thought about this some more.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic commenters, as I said, are, to a large degree, saying, \u201cwhy doesn\u2019t this man ride a bike?\u201d and my initial reaction was, there\u2019s probably some entirely reasonable reason why he doesn\u2019t \u2014 perhaps he never learned and is unable to now \u2014 so it\u2019s not helpful to focus on that.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just him. \u00a0There are surely plenty of other people with difficult commutes where mass transit doesn\u2019t run, or who work a shift that mass transit doesn\u2019t cover, and countless more who turn down jobs because the commute is too much to handle. \u00a0And the wider issue is something that a greater \u201cbike culture\u201d \u2014 not just for hipsters but for everyday people who don\u2019t have access to cars or transit, generally \u2014 would go a long way towards helping. \u00a0(Hey, I even wrote about this before<\/a>. \u00a0And I have got<\/i> to get tags on my posts!) \u00a0If this man had indeed grown up riding a bike, along with his neighbors, it would seem much more natural to use one of those bike racks, or even take a \u201cjunker\u201d bike up to the Mall where the bus route ends, and keep it there when not in use. \u00a0And if the pedaling becomes too much, an electric bike would be an option (but only, of course, if there were enough of a biking culture that these were plentiful and available used). And the inner city is the right place to promote biking because of the significant number of carless (not by-choice) residents.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the ending to this particular story <\/a>is a GoFundMe campaign that\u2019s gotten him a car and money to put towards insurance (a huge cost in Detroit) and other costs. \u00a0But that\u2019s not a long-term solution for everyone else.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was featured in The Atlantic, based on a report in the Detroit Free Press: \u00a0in order to get to his job in a suburban Detroit factory, a man spends most of his non-work waking hours walking (and gets virtually no sleep, either). \u00a0The trip is 23 miles each way; much of that is travelled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,665,456],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-detroit","tag-maps","tag-mass-transit"],"yoast_head":"\nDid you see the story about the Detroit man who commutes 21 miles a day by foot?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This was featured in The Atlantic, based on a report in the Detroit Free Press: \u00a0in order to get to his job in a suburban Detroit factory, a man spends\" \/>\n<meta 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