It's not so much that Michigan has car culture as that, for decades, making cars was the biggest business in the state. A lot of state politics were more like company town politics during the time when cities could have been putting bus systems or other modes of mass transportation. It was particularly a thing in the Detroit area since that's where the car factories were (and some still are).
There's a lot of inertia in the laws and politics, even the local politics. The auto industry having shifted away from Michigan doesn't change the long fear that mass transit means unemployment. We've still got people utterly terrified of unions, too, because they believe that unions destroyed the state's economy by selfishly wrecking the big three auto companies.
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It's not so much that Michigan has car culture as that, for decades, making cars was the biggest business in the state. A lot of state politics were more like company town politics during the time when cities could have been putting bus systems or other modes of mass transportation. It was particularly a thing in the Detroit area since that's where the car factories were (and some still are).
There's a lot of inertia in the laws and politics, even the local politics. The auto industry having shifted away from Michigan doesn't change the long fear that mass transit means unemployment. We've still got people utterly terrified of unions, too, because they believe that unions destroyed the state's economy by selfishly wrecking the big three auto companies.