VP Joe Biden In Detroit Linking Mass Transportation To Breaking Cycle Of Poverty
DETROIT (WWJ) - Vice President Joe Biden paid a visit to the D-DOT bus headquarters as the city of Detroit rolled out the last of a brand new fleet of 80 buses.
Mayor Mike Duggan says the new fleet comes through federal grants. Biden says the buses will help Detroiters get to work ... and to class.
"This isn't an investment in buses, this is an investment in the people of Detroit, this is an investment helping them move into the middle-class," said Biden.
He said the city of Detroit is off its back, off its knees - standing up again.
Citing a Harvard study as to the best way for populations to break the cycle of poverty -- Biden said: "It's not early education, it wasn't other things ... they wrote transportation is the single strongest factor in the changes that someone can move up the economic ladder."
The head of the bus drivers union, Fred Westbrook, says more still needs to be done to stop bus violence.
"The only way you are going to alleviate verbal abuse and physical abuse on these buses toward passengers and passengers on drivers is to have more safety; and that's to have more transit police," said Westbrook.
100 percent of the city's bus now work.
The vice president gave no indication as to whether he'd throw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
