An empty bus does not mean that expanding public transit options in Oakland County are unused.

“The first day of a new route, people aren’t going to be queuing up. It’s been 30 years and no one’s seen a bus in that area,” said Eli Cooper, the county’s transit manager.

A robust transit system serves three purposes: Supporting the country’s drive toward sustainability; helping people get to and from school and work; and supporting aging Baby Boomers’ ability to make essential trips when they are no longer able to drive.

Cooper said it takes a few years, especially in an autocentric community, for people to adopt a different mode of transit. “Ridership will grow and continue to grow.”

Growth was the goal after voters approved the 10-year, 0.95 countywide transit millage in 2022. Last year, the county and SMART signed a contract to provide SMART $31.6 million per year to preserve services in place as of Dec. 31, 2022, and $10.1 million to expand services.

In the county, SMART had 13,000 more passenger trips in the last quarter of 2023, compared to the same period a year earlier, credited in part to new routes in Novi and Wixom, according to Bernard Parker III, SMART’s vice president of external affairs.

Last year, demand-response rides rose 3% to 84,123 and use of the Flex service, which is on-demand travel, rose by 43% to 241,176

Cooper coordinates transit services provided by SMART and smaller regional services: Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), People’s Express (PEX), North Oakland Transportation Authority (NOTA), Western Oakland Transportation Authority (WOTA), and the former Older Persons Commission service, now called OPC Transportation (OPC).

Amy Grzymkowski, WOTA’s deputy director, is already seeing increased ridership.

“We had a little less than 9,000 riders in the first quarter of 2023,” she said. “This year we had 17,200 riders in the first quarter of 2024. It’s been a significant jump. Not quite double, but close.”

WOTA has twice as much ground to cover and will expand its service area later this year. Grzymkowski said new ridership is the result of expanding services from seniors and people with disabilities to the general population.

“But the vast quantity of our riders remain seniors and adults with disabilities,” she said, adding that the millage campaign raised awareness of public transit services and the successful millage vote led to more people using WOTA’s door-to-door transportation.

“It’s been a fantastic growth. We weren’t really surprised by that. We knew the need was there,” she said.

Current projections for 2024 ridership is close to 70,000, but Grzymkowski said she suspects it may go higher.

“We expanded hours for all our communities and now we’re operating six days of week,” she said. Before the end of the year, WOTA will provide daily service.

“We’re proud that WOTA has been able to meet the need and bring hope back to people who really have contributed to our community for their whole lives and kind of got left behind once they couldn’t drive,” she said. “Restoring their hope is what we work for every day.”

NOTA added five communities to its service area, which now includes the townships of Addison, Oxford and Orion as well as Lake Orion, Leonard, and Oxford Village. NOTA also runs a trolley providing limited service between Oxford’s and Lake Orion’s downtowns.

By the end of 2023, NOTA vehicles had carried 49,314 riders — 21% more than in 2022.

The millage helped OPC Transportation increase capacity for door-to-door service with four new wheelchair-equipped vans and expand service hours and destinations to include medical facilities in Auburn Hills, Troy, and Sterling Heights.

Last year, 43,335 people, including 5,350 members of the general public, used OPC Transportation to get around, a 50% increase over 2022. Last year, 30% of OPC’s riders were wheelchair users.

PEX offers limited-distance service for seniors and those with disabilities but in September began allowing members of the general public to schedule rides. Last year, PEX transported 19,180 riders last year, a 25% increase over 2022.

WOTA expanded hours and its service area more than doubled to eight communities including four that didn’t have public transit before the millage. Ridership increased by 55% over 2022, with 49,825 rides in 2023.

Cooper said several dynamics are at work for the growth of public transit, starting with residents’ love of cars.

There is a shift, he said, for some people. More are using the Wixom park-and-ride lot and using SMART to get to a job or errand in another community, including Detroit.

There are an increasing number of options in the county.

SMART offers fixed-route bus rides and four curb-to-curb services: Dial-A-Ride, Flex Route (for Dearborn, Troy/Clawson, Auburn Hills/Pontiac, Hall Road, and Farmington/Farmington Hills), Shuttles and, for trips within a 10-mile radius Connectors, which requires advance registration.

Last year, SMART added two bus stops at Woodward Avenue and Long Lake Road in Bloomfield Hills. Routes were extended into Novi and Wixom adding 66 new bus stops.

On April 22, SMART will debut a Route 492 new fixed-route from Oakland University in Auburn Hills through Rochester Hills, south through Troy, Clawson, Royal Oak, Madison Heights and Ferndale to the Jason Hargrove Transit Center on the former state fairgrounds in Detroit.

Another route, planned for the M-59 corridor through Waterford and White Lake Township, will begin in the summer.

The first few weeks those buses may be empty, Cooper said, until people who want or need the service learn where to find the bus, where the route goes and when it will be at the fixed stops along the way.

It’s true that drivers can get from one place to another fairly efficiently and public transit takes longer because of the many stops along the way, but Cooper — a Bronx, NY, native who grew up using public transit — said there are many reasons to take a bus.

“Someone riding a bus can pull out their cell phone without getting a traffic ticket,” he said. “People read books on the bus. The time you spend on the vehicle is time to do other things. Some people pull out their laptops and work for 45 minutes. It’s an individual choice of how that time is invested … it’s just the way of the world today.”

Jobs

Expanding transit also helps the economy, not just because people can get to medical appointments, shops or restaurants, said WOTA’s Grzymkowski.

WOTA hired 30 people, including an in-house maintenance manager to keep vehicles in good working condition with less downtime.

SMART hired 96 fixed-route drivers and 66 demand-response drivers. NOTA more than doubled staff, adding 37 new employees.

OPC Transportation hired a new director, eight drivers and a dispatcher.

Future

The expansion of the public transit system may not be happening as quickly as some people like, but every system faces the same challenges: Hiring enough drivers and getting enough vehicles. Job fairs and vehicle purchases are happening routinely.

The next step is optimizing the routes. SMART is working with a contractor to analyze which routes work well and which need to be tweaked.

Cooper said the county is working on a contract for the same type of analysis, which will include public hearings.

“The cool part about the millage is that there are a lot of wonderful small operators who are more than happy to grow their services and organization,” Cooper said.

Basic SMART fares are $2 for a fixed-route bus, $2.50 for Park and Ride and $4 for Connectors. SMART has discounts for seniors, people with disabilities and children 6 to 18 years old.

Riders using smaller transit systems pay $4 for a one-way trip. Seniors and people with disabilities get a $2 discount on each ride with one of the smaller services providing door-to-door trips.

“Like anything else, it’s a continuous-improvement process,” Cooper said. “We’re focusing on the future and proposing services to meet the anticipated demand from the public.”