Back in July of last year, a strong storm damaged a canopy over the waiting area of the Rosa Parks Transit Center in downtown Detroit. At least I believe that’s what happened. With the information available to me, all I can tell you for certain is that the damage occurred after 2018.
Now, the City of Detroit would not allow such obvious damage to go without repairs for six years? I hope not. But it’s been at least six months already. I posted about it here back in August. I’ve told Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero about it face to face, and I’ve talked to some of Mayor Duggan’s staffers about it. I’ve also put in a FOIA request which is now way past the deadline for a response.
Here’s how it looked back then:
From August 2023 to January 2024, there was no progress other than that a RAM Construction banner on the barricade below was straightened out. Then last week I noticed a new tear in the canopy material.
I don’t know what that canopy material is and no one has been able to tell me. What would happen if some of that material fell on a frail, elderly person waiting for the bus below? That’s not even the worst case scenario I can imagine.
So far the damage seems to be isolated to that one canopy. Maybe it won’t cascade to the other canopies. But I’m not a civil engineer, I can’t promise the damage to that one canopy won’t compromise the other canopies, nor can I promise that such a cascade of damage would not render the whole transit center dangerously unusable.
In a couple of months, a whole bunch of people are coming to Detroit for the NFL Draft. They won’t be bothered by Detroit’s notoriously unreliable buses. But if they go looking for Detroit ruin porn, they might not have to go too far from downtown for it.