How a much longer people mover up Woodward would have done any of that is a mystery to me, but in any event, I'd refer them to the sainted Big Bopper's answer to that question.

To be sure TRU does say "the rapid bus project that has been proposed is a good step and something that our region very much needs." Here's the problem, however.

Politics is the art of the possible. And politically and economically speaking, we are never going to get light rail. Not in this generation; not in the foreseeable future. We can get a rapid bus service if we all fight for it.

Nobody sane can doubt that this would be better than we have now. Yet we strongly risk not getting anything if we don't fight for a rapid bus line, fight hard, and do it now.

Otherwise, we can watch things just keep getting worse.

Go Wayne State: Last weekend, the Wayne State Warriors almost won the NCAA national football Division II championship, losing a heartbreaking final playoff game.

Nevertheless, I think everybody in Michigan ought to adopt them as Our Team, and the example of what a football team should be. (Yes, I teach there. But I also went to both the University of Michigan and Michigan State.) U of M spends $110 million a year on athletics, the lion's share on football.

Wayne State's budget was $195,000, for the whole team, for the whole year. The team had to scrape to find a few thousand extra for warm weather gear for the playoffs.

Athletic Director Ron Fournier told Crain's Detroit Business, "Football isn't going to run the campus. Academics are." He might be shot for saying that some places.

But to me, he and his team are heroes.

> Email Jack Lessenberry