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Regional Transit Authority is charged
with creating a more integrated transit system throughout
Southeast Michigan.
There are a lot of people who are just not used to the idea
of thinking of Southeast Michigan as a region
that works well together, and so a lot of the work
that the RTA has before us is to help cultivate,
help create that regional identity, and to make it natural
for people across Southeast Michigan to think of themselves
as part of an integrated region.
A regional transit system has, I believe, a huge potential
to have a positive impact on our regional economy.
In other places that have created a more integrated
regional transit system, you've seen significant increases
in employment opportunities, educational opportunities,
and of course, someone has to pay for that.
The thing about transit spending is
that there are very large pots of money at the federal
and state levels to match any local spending that takes place.
So in fact, there is a cost at the local level,
but it's a very small portion
of the total investment that's being made
in the infrastructure.
Some of our activities will be relatively short-term,
so things like trying to get the existing transit providers
to better coordinate their systems, their routes,
their fares, and so on.
Some of the other work is more long-term.
This is capital infrastructure investment,
and so if we're talking
about getting a new bus rapid transit corridor up and running,
that could take 10, 15, even 20 years, and so the hope is
that we're working on a lot of different fronts,
and there will be both short-term
and long-term successes that come out of the RTA.