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Originally Posted by Steely Dan
Do you think it would've been fundamentally different enough to replace "Los Angeles" with "Detroit" in the title of this thread?
Or would it have come too late and merely lessened the decline, per crawford's opinion?
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It depends on how much rail they ultimately built. Detroit in 1970 still had a population density of almost 11k ppsm, which was just a little behind D.C.'s density at the time (12.4k ppsm). If building the transit system did manage to stabilize the population earlier, the city would easily still be in the top tier of dense cities today. But due to Detroit's large footprint, the rail system probably needed be bigger than what DC and SF built to have a similar stabilizing impact.
By the 1970s there was widespread awareness that Detroit was headed towards catastrophe after the riots and disastrous urban renewal projects of the 1960s. There was also awareness that what was happening in Detroit was more pronounced than what was happening in the other 4 of the top 5 cities at the time. I found a NY Times article that covers the grant and talks about the major concerns the federal government had about the trajectory of the city:
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Federal transportation officials, in what one of them termed “a major new departure” in policy, have committed $600 million for a rapid transit system in southeastern’ Michigan to be used as a rallying point for urban revitalization.
Robert E. Patricelli, administrator of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, said in an interview that the commitment reflected a shift to a broader view of Federal transportation objectives.
Rather than approving grant applications simply on the basis of projections of ridership and costs, Mr. Patricelli said, the transportation agency is increasingly concerned with the overall implications of a transit system.
He cited Detroit's crime problems and the city's deteriorating tax base as crucial factors in the decision to make the commitment.
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/01/archi...pid-transit-but-600-million-federal.html
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One caveat of the funding that the Times mentions is the requirement that the private sector match the federal commitment by investing in development around the transit line. I'm not sure if that requirement was ever changed before Reagan came in and reformed the program, but it also might have been a factor in why they failed.
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