Page:Making Michigan Move.pdf/31



The 1970’s throbbed with new ideas and innovations. More than ever, transportation was established as the fourth necessity of life, along with food, shelter and clothing. They were money-lean, money-rich, turbulent years, a decade that inaugurated a new age of mass transit and total transportation for Michigan.

These were major milestones:
 * Highway user tax revenues leveled off twice and had to be replenished, then went into decline as the 1980's opened with a national recession, coupled with a sharp rate of inflation, steep increases in fuel prices and a massive conversion to smaller, more fuel-efficient automobiles.
 * Michigan’s highway trust fund was opened for spending for public trans­portation, railroads and port devel­opment, and the state vastly ex­panded its activities in all areas.
 * The highway department became a department of transportation and its role was enlarged to include responsibilities in all travel modes.
 * Steps were taken for construction of a subway and rail transportation system in metropolitan Detroit, to be operated by the Southeastern Michi­gan Transportation Authority and built with federal, state and local dollars.

A word in retrospect: Few in the