Transportation in metropolitan Detroit comprises an expansive system of roadways, multiple public transit systems, a major international airport, freight railroads, and ports. Located on the Detroit River along the Great Lakes Waterway, Detroit is a significant city in international trade, with two land crossings to Canada. Three primary Interstate highways serve the region.
History
1805–1928
The period from 1800 to 1929 was one of considerable growth of the city, from 1,800 people in 1820 to 1.56 million in 1930 (2.3 million for the metropolitan area). During this period, a new road system had been created in 1805, a regional rail network was constructed, a thriving streetcar network developed and an emerging global motorcar industry was established in the city.
In 1805, five new radial avenues (Woodward, Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson) were constructed in the city as part of a new city plan drawn up by Augustus Woodward following a devastating fire in the city earlier the same year.
Over land the Sauk Trail, a Native American trail which ran through Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, connected Detroit with Sauk Village, Illinois, and Chicago; in 1820 it was described as a 'plain horse path, which is considerably traveled by traders, hunters, and others' but one which not possible for someone unfamiliar with the route to follow without a guide.
Congress passed an act to construct a new Chicago Road from Detroit to supply Fort Dearborn in Chicago; surveying began in 1825 however financial shortfalls resulted in the road mostly following the path of the Sauk Trail which military couriers were already using. By 1835, daily stage coach departures run by the Western Stage Company traveled all the way from Chicago to Detroit on a multi-day trip whose travel time was dependent on how bad the road was at the particular season.
The Erie Canal, which had first been proposed in 1807, opened in 1825 and greatly improved access to Detroit and other Michigan ports from Europe and the eastern seaboard. From Detroit, settlers were able to use the Chicago Road and other land routes. Land sales in Detroit reached a peak in that year with being sold.
A charter for the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad was granted in 1830 to link Detroit with Pontiac; however, it was not until 1843 that the line was completed and operation started from a station at Jefferson and Woodward Avenue. Plans for a railway line to St. Joseph, Michigan and then on to Chicago by boat were outlined in 1830, and after a number of funding problems, the line reached Dexter ten years later and Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1846 when the Michigan Central Railroad was formed to progress the work faster and replace faulty rails that had already installed. The new company decided to create a line all the way to Chicago (via New Buffalo rather than St. Joseph), which they completed by 1852.
In January 1863, a Syracuse, New York-based firm gave a $5,000 deposit which created the Detroit City Railway Company, which was followed by an ordinance which was passed in May 1863 awarded a 30-year franchise to the DCRC for the construction of a horse-drawn streetcar system in the city; construction started in June and services were available to the public starting August 4 on Jefferson (from the Michigan Central depot at 3rd to Elmwood Street), August 27 on Woodward (from Jefferson to Adams), September 12 on Gratiot (to Russell Street) and November 25 on Michigan (to Thompson Street (later 12th Street, now Rosa Parks Boulevard)) (note: west of 8th Street, Michigan Avenue was named Chicago Road until 1867). By the end of the year, services were operating along Jefferson (which had been extended on October 1 to the then-city limits at Mount Elliott), Woodward (extended in October to Alexandrine Street), Gratiot and Michigan. Other companies were also established on other streets (the first being the Fort Street & Elmwood Avenue Railway Company which operated the city's first crosstown car line from the then-city limits west of Porter Road (present-day 24th Street), to downtown along Fort Street, then out along Michigan Grand Avenue (present-day Cadillac Square), Randolph and Croghan Street (present-day Monroe Street) to the Elmwood Cemetery) and business was brisk, by 1875; the Detroit City Railway Company alone carried 2.9 million passengers on their four lines. The first electric streetcars started operation on September 1, 1886, along Dix Street (present-day West Vernor Highway) from 24th Street to Livernois Avenue (which was now along the western city limits) and the last horse-drawn trams on November 9, 1895, on the Chene Street line, in which the car was literally stripped down to its trucks. In 1880, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad was formed to provide a new route to Chicago through lower Michigan.
Work started on the construction of the U-shaped Grand Boulevard road around the city in 1883 which was completed in 1891. The entire length was decorated with trees, shrubbery, and flowerbeds. Originally, the roadway was supposed to run through the then-rural outskirts of Detroit near its borders with Springwells, Greenfield and Hamtramck townships, between East Jefferson in Hamtramck Township and West Jefferson in Springwells Township.
Henry Ford tested his new Quadricycle, a gasoline-powered motor car, in Detroit on June 4, 1896.
On New Year's Eve 1900, the Detroit Citizen's Street Railway, Detroit, Fort Wayne and Belle Isle Railway, Detroit Electric Railway and Detroit Suburban Railway merged to form the Detroit United Railway, as a result for the first time since 1865 all streetcar lines in the Detroit area were operated by one company and by August 1901 it had begun interurban operations to Port Huron, Flint, Pontiac, Ann Arbor, Jackson and Toledo, Ohio and even operated interurban service from Windsor, Ontario.
The Detroit and Toledo Shore Line Railroad which linked Detroit with Toledo opened in 1903. The Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad was formed in 1905 from the merger of two existing companies; it went bankrupt in 1908 but remained solvent and was later bought by Henry Ford in 1920 to carry raw materials and finished goods to and from his factories in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel between Detroit and Canada opened in 1910 followed by a rushed opening of the Michigan Central Station in 1913 after a fire at the previous station, the first train to depart from the new station terminated in Bay City, Michigan. The New York State Barge Canal opened in 1918 offering an improved route to the Eastern seaboard compared to the Erie Canal. The Ford Airport (Dearborn) opened in 1924, which added an airship mooring mast in the following year. The Ford River Rouge Complex was completed in 1928, by which time it was the largest integrated factory with some 100,000 employees during the 1930s.
In 1920, mayor James Couzens vetoed a bond issue which would build a subway system, but it failed by one vote. Later in 1921, the Municipal Operations began streetcar operations in Detroit while the DUR continued to provide interurban service. It had been plagued by problems and soon, at midnight on May 15, 1922, the Department of Street Railways was created to provide the streetcar service.
1929–1969 The years following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 until 1969 saw the creation of the Interstate Highway System, rapid growth of the suburbs and associated shopping malls, the growing importance of civil aviation, and growing dominance of the motorcar; it also witnessed the end of the streetcar system in the city followed by an increased use of buses and the creation of three successful trolleybus lines. The 1967 Detroit riot only accelerated the rate at which people, mainly white, were moving to the suburbs, with some 88,000 leaving in 1968 alone. The city population peaked at 1.85 million in 1950 before falling to 1.5 million in 1970; the metropolitan area's population peaked in 1970 at 4.5 million. There was growing opposition to urban freeway construction in many cities across the US, including Detroit, in the 1960s and the city authorities modified, scaled back and cancelled a number of schemes and passed a decree stating that no further urban freeways would be constructed in the city.
The Ambassador Bridge, a road bridge to Canada, opened in 1929 and then the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel in 1930, which was also the year of the first flight from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. By the late 1920s, railroad-highway intersections were becoming a serious source of travel delays and traffic collisions. The railway companies agreed to contribute half the $2 million cost of creating a number of grade-separated junctions; the Michigan Central Railway, Pennsylvania Railroad and Wabash Railway contributed $200,000 towards the ambitious Fort Street-Pleasant Street and Norfolk & Western Railroad Viaduct which opened in 1930. This work was undertaken when Fort Street close to the Ford River Rouge Complex was converted to a "superhighway" with a divided highway and night-time lighting. Then in 1931, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad launched a commuter service between Detroit and Pontiac, the trip took 45 minutes.
The city had one of the first municipally owned streetcar systems. The Department of Street Railways had taken over in 1922 since when it had been run by a three-man Detroit Street Railways Commission appointed by the mayor of Detroit. On June 14, 1930, the DSR launched a trolleybus route along Plymouth Road but the route had seen little use by 1936 due to the Great Depression and was discontinued on August 11, 1937. By 1934, the general manager, Fred A. Nolan, said that he wanted to convert the Detroit streetcar system to all buses operation by 1953 and the last streetcar actually ran in 1956. It remained in public ownership until 1974. Some sources claim that the Detroit streetcar system was purchased and dismantled by National City Lines as part of the 'Great American streetcar scandal', however, this was not the case as the company could not buy into the public system and lack of use of the streetcar system has to be explained by other reasons.
Approval was given in 1940 for the Davison Freeway, which was the nation's first urban depressed highway; the six-lane limited-access highway opened in 1942. In 1941, the Willow run bypass was rapidly constructed as a four-lane divided highway following the attack on Pearl Harbor to bring workers from Detroit to the Willow Run factory to the west of the city where Henry Ford had constructed a factory to produce the B-24 Liberator military aircraft.
By 1945, plans had been drawn up for a system of expressways and subways which included trains running within the median strips of these roads. The Ford airport closed in 1947 when all remaining services were transferred to Wayne County.
Also in 1945, the DSR purchased two PCC streetcars after finding out its existing streetcars were worn out; the cars, numbered #100 and #101, were diverted from an order by the Pittsburgh Railways Company and placed in service along Woodward, which at the time was the DSR's most-used car line. More PCC cars would arrive in May 1947 and August 1949.