My final bus ride for this project began ten minutes late. The SMART 450 was supposed to show up at Woodward and Catalpa at 8:56 AM. A bus finally arrived at 9:07. I enjoyed that extra time standing outside on this damp and windy fall morning. It gave me an opportunity to ponder why I haven't been able to shake this head cold for the last week.

In a sense, the moment perfectly summed up my week on the bus--the powers that be make it hard to commute by public transportation in this town.

Here's the dirty, little secret about my experiment--I live at one of the most transit/pedestrian-friendly spots in metro Detroit.

The Woodward bus stop is a few blocks from my house. Within a stone's throw from that stop are two grocery stores (Trader Joe's and Westborn Market), several restaurants, dry cleaners, furniture stores, paint stores--two paint stores--doctors' offices, insurance agencies, and even a vet.

Downtown Royal Oak, along with movie theaters, hardware stores, and pharmacies is about an easy mile walk or bike ride in the other direction.

My day-to-day life could go on without much inconvenience if I gave up my car permanently. While have no plans to ditch the car, I probably will be more pedestrian with regular errands. That's my personal takeaway from this project.

I'd like to continue to commute by bus, perhaps not every day, but at least a couple days a week. It's cheaper and I enjoy not driving in traffic. Unfortunately, SMART and DDOT has made that difficult. You really have to hand it to them because it takes a special kind of incompetence to make it hard for someone to get from Woodward and 11 1/2 to Woodward and Campus Martius by bus.

But we've covered this ground before. And as annoying as that situation is--and it is--if Woodward bus service is this jacked up, I can't even imagine how bad it must be if you need to rely on a less prominent route to get to work. Or have to carry groceries home on a packed bus scheduled to make as many as 63 stops on a nine-mile route.

Public transportation should be about one thing and one thing only: Effectively and efficiently moving people from a given point A to a given point B.

Buses and trains aren't economic development projects as some want to believe, though good transit can spur some development. Buses and trains aren't jobs programs as too many Detroit politicians think, though well-run transit systems require significant man hours of labor. And, just like roads or Medicare Part D, transit isn't a for-profit enterprise that "pay for themselves."

Transit is a public good that serves a public purpose. We all benefit from good public transportation regardless of whether we ride the bus.

The prospective employee's opportunities to find a good job are greatly expanded if he/she can travel to more prospective jobs. Employers can hire better people if the labor pool is expanded because more prospective employees can reliably travel to the job. And, as consumers, everyone benefits when the people who serve us can actually get to their jobs.

This is before we even talk about bringing customers to market.

Unfortunately, because metro Detroit wants its transit system to be everything but a transit system (that is, something designed exclusively to move people between points A and B) it not fails the people it's supposed to serve but also fails to deliver the hoped for secondary goals.

It would be great if middle-class families living in the city and inner-ring suburbs could, by choice, live with just one car. A system that makes that scenario possible benefits students, seniors, and the working poor who must rely on transit. What's more, it's a system that makes transit an asset to the region as opposed to just this thing we spend money on.

Hopefully, the proposed regional transit authority will move us closer to that goal. However, right now, metro Detroit isn't even close.