One-third of the Detroit Department of Transportation's buses routinely are in disrepair, stretching out wait times for riders, hamstringing the agency's ability to cover all of its routes and forcing drivers already on the clock to wait for buses in a system one maintenance department union chief calls "broken."
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan acknowledged the number of DDOT buses out of service, which represents about 96 of the department's 292 bus fleet, earlier this summer and attributes part of the issue to the city getting behind on purchasing new buses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But more than a year after the pandemic's official end, bus operators, passengers and some mechanics who work on buses said the shortage of working vehicles affects the entire system's ability to operate. Some said part of the problem is hiring mechanics without enough experience. At least one expert said the pandemic upended public transportation in many big cities, which are still recovering.
"It's going to take time (to address all of the broken-down buses) because it's built up," said Muneer Islam, AFSCME Local 312 president, the Detroit Department of Transportation's maintenance union, about the process of getting the city's broken-down buses fixed.
Michael Staley, interim executive director of the Detroit Department of Transportation, acknowledged how having one-third of his department's buses broken down taxes the system.
"What I've learned over almost forty years in the transportation business, you need drivers and you need vehicles," Staley said. "So if one-third of the fleet is down, then obviously it not only has an impact on how much service you can put out on the street on any given day, but also has a direct impact on service reliability ... how on time the system is."
Staley, previously the city's paratransit director, was appointed as interim executive director last year after Mikel Oglesby resigned. The city is working to upgrade the transportation system with replacements to the 2012 bus fleet and improvements within the maintenance department, he said.
Detroit expects to receive 45 new buses next spring and summer, a combination of diesel, electric and hybrid vehicles to replace the 2012 bus fleet. The city also acquired 20 gasoline-electric hybrid and 5 hydrogen fuel cell buses through the FTA grant earlier this year, and they are expected to arrive in the spring and summer of 2026.
"We know what happened during those three years of COVID. ... I wasn't paying attention to the fact that with the bus service way down, we stopped ordering replacement buses," Duggan said at a conference on the city's acquisition of the FTA grant in July.
One-third of the fleet is down, the mayor said, "because we did not keep purchasing replacement buses on a schedule that we should have."
The department is in the process of "fixing the old buses (they) have," he said.
"... We're going to replace a quarter of the entire fleet the next two years," Duggan said. "This is going to allow us to continue to expand bus service to residents in the city of Detroit, and this is life and death to our community."
For Detroiter Rondnita Davis, 62, who uses DDOT buses regularly, taking the bus to do everything from grocery shopping to other tasks is a carefully orchestrated task that takes time and planning. But if buses don't show up on time because there aren't enough on the road, it can cost her more money and sitting around for one to show up.
On Mondays, Davis gets off at the Woodward and Manchester bus stop to go grocery shopping, a weekly routine, and she said as long as she can meet the four-hour transfer deadline to catch a bus to take her home, she does not have any issues. The four-hour DDOT transfer pass allows unlimited rides within the time frame. But if a passenger cannot make it to the bus on time, or if the bus itself doesn't show up or shows up early, the pass expires.
"What does make me angry is when I can't utilize the transfer pass," Davis said. "That means I have to wait another hour and usually pay the fare again to get a new pass. I schedule myself; I time the buses to make sure I can make the four-hour transfer. Waiting another hour is a long time, plus having to pay another fee."
A look under the hood
Of the one-third of DDOT buses that have repair issues, about 6.5% of all buses had major body damage that required out-of-shop repair work, according to the department. Another 15.4% of buses were at the end of their 12-year or 500,000-mile life, the department said. The Federal Transit Administration requires that the spare ratio, or percentage of unused vehicles, for bus fleets is 20%.
AFSCME leader Islam said the shortage of working buses has been "building up for some time."
Islam, who has worked in the department for more than 27 years, pointed to factors that affect the department's working buses, which include low pay, understaffing, maintenance workers quitting and under-training. He said bus repairs have also become more complicated with technological advancements, and the repair turnaround time for broken-down buses has become longer even though the department operates around half of the buses it used to.
"We're currently in contract negotiations, so morale is low at the department as well, because of the pay, to be honest with you," Islam said. "First, they blamed it on a bus driver shortage, so they gave them a raise without opening their contract, and the maintenance department didn't get a raise. Some people quit. We were already short-staffed. Some of our people went to drive buses, even, because the bus drivers are making just as much as a mechanic."
"So it's just a broken system," Islam said.
Islam said the low pay also hamstrings whom they can recruit as mechanics and contended DDOT has actually lowered parameters or qualifications for whom they hire. While he couldn't be specific, he said mechanics used to be required to have two years of verified mechanic experience.
"Some of them are not up to par. I hate to say it, but it's just the truth," said Islam, who is not part of the department's hiring process.
Staley, DDOT's interim director, said the department is fully staffed for maintenance work. The focus will now turn to train mechanics and do preventive maintenance inspection for buses, which would include regular, thorough inspections of buses to catch issues before they can cause service failures, he said.
Staley asked for a definition of how the hiring parameters for mechanics had been lowered but defended the city's hiring practices.
"... As you might imagine, some of the people that we've been able to hire don't have extensive experience in repairing transit coaches, so there will be a period of time that will provide some formalized training for them to get them up to a basic skill set level where they can help us in the repair of the transit coaches," Staley said.
The department has 95 maintenance workers but will expand to 100 in the 2025 fiscal year, which began July 1. The maintenance department is negotiating its labor contract, which expired on July 1.
Staley said the city is preparing to enter into labor negotiations with the maintenance department and that "…the expectation would be, as it is with every new labor agreement, that there's going to be an adjustment in the wage scale… . I would expect that to begin happening in the fall."
Islam said the department is in a "transitional period," with some senior staff having only around six years of experience after the department did not hire new mechanics for more than 20 years. He said he and department officials do not agree on the number of maintenance workers that should be working, and the city's move to hybrid and electric vehicles as opposed to diesel-running makes more skilled maintenance workers a necessity.
"When I came in (1997), there were over 350 mechanics," he said. "So 250 mechanics left. ... We're down to about less than 100. We were down to probably 60 mechanics at one time."
Staley said the department's solution to the broken-down coaches will come from the combination of replacing 2012 vehicles, making sure recently hired mechanics get training sooner rather than later and ensuring the department stays on top of the agency's preventive maintenance inspection schedule.
The department will also implement plans in the coming months that will put a greater number of buses on the street, he said.
DDOT reimagined
A 2017 University of Michigan study exploring Detroiters' views on transportation and mobility found that one-third of residents don't own a personal car and must rely on buses or another driver to get them to their destinations.
Less than half, or 44%, of Detroit residents who do not own a car reported that they were either "somewhat satisfied," "mostly satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their transportation options, according to UM's Detroit Metropolitan Area Communities Study. The report found 29% of Detroit residents prioritized adding more public transportation routes and services, while 26% prioritized improving the frequency and reliability of the existing bus service.
The bus system is an “essential service” in Detroit, particularly because a significant proportion of residents face severe poverty and cannot afford cars, relying on public transit instead so they can focus on other needs such as housing and food, said Joel Batterman, engagement director of Transportation Riders United, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public transit in the Detroit region.
“If there's not enough buses to go out on the street, that means that people's buses are getting canceled, and people are being left stranded,” Batterman said. “It's very hard to live your life around a bus that just comes hourly."
The "gold standard" for what constitutes really adequate service is a bus every 15 minutes, he said.
"So far, we just have nowhere near the amount of staff or buses to make that a reality," Batterman said.
Duggan insisted he has made improving DDOT a priority.
His DDOT Reimagined Plan — which began in fall 2022 and has been collecting riders' feedback on the department over the past two years — is in its third phase, which includes an upgrade in the operating schedule for buses. The city wants to improve the time it takes the buses to get out on the streets and get to bus stops. In May, the Jason Hargrove Transit Center opened at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and Eight Mile to allow bus riders to escape the weather at one of the biggest transfer points for riders headed toward downtown Detroit.
Unsafe work environment
The shortage of working buses has created an unsafe work environment for bus operators, who sometimes face assaults from frustrated passengers who have been waiting at a bus stop for hours before one shows up, said Schetrone Collier, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, which represents DDOT bus drivers. Some drivers even suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to being attacked, Collier said.
"When a bus is (broken) down, or if a bus can't go out, even if there's a bus driver there to operate and there's no bus, what do you think happens to the bus driver that's behind that bus?" Collier said. "We're being cursed at, verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, and it makes for a very stressful work environment for the members of my operating union."
He said bus drivers sometimes wait for hours at terminals around the city, where they report at the start of their shifts, for a bus to pull up to the station so they can proceed to their stops, making the shortage of buses obvious to drivers as well.
"It's been rare when we've had both (enough drivers and enough buses) at the same time to be able to actually function the way we should," Collier said. "I believe that the mayor and his administration have made (DDOT) a priority in trying to get back to at least ... the service levels of pre-pandemic. They're hiring like crazy, but ultimately, you still need your equipment."
Shortages of both drivers and buses have become common in some metropolitan areas around the country after the pandemic, said Jacob Wasserman, a research program manager at the University of California Los Angeles's Institute of Transportation Studies.
"Transit agencies are really having a hard time finding and retaining bus operators to drive the buses, and without that, they've had to cancel service or delay service restoration," Wasserman said. "The pandemic, of course, upended everything. Most cities are still recovering. Some bus systems have recovered their ridership. ... But now COVID has happened, (and) work patterns have changed."
He also acknowledged that the inefficiency of public transit is an expectation in many U.S. cities.
Batterman with Transportation Riders United said Detroit's lack of public transit holds "the whole city back."
“Even folks who don't rely on transit themselves often rely on people who rely on transit," he said. "These are folks working in the service industry, folks making our food, working at hospitals, serving other ... important needs."
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