I had a long conversation the other day with John Hertel, the CEO of the Southeastern Michigan’s Regional Transit Coordinating Council. Naturally, we talked about mass transit.

If the polls are to be believed, mass transit is very popular with people, both in Detroit and in the suburbs. It’s been a proven contributor to economic development elsewhere. Financing is now available through the federal government's stimulus package.

And last year, Hertel got his four bosses — Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano, Macomb County Commission Chair Paul Gieleghem, and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing– to agree on something big: A regional plan to expand and improve bus service, light-rail and commuter trains.

Here's how it would work: There would be three service corridors adding up to many miles of mass transit: One along Woodward Avenue (Grand Boulevard to M-59), another out Gratiot, and a third along M-59.

Should be a no-brainer. But it isn't. People are dragging their feet. And, contrary to expectations, the chief foot-draggers aren't in Oakland County, the only place run by Republicans.

The foot-draggers are in Detroit.

Mary Kramer, the highly respected publisher of Crain’s Detroit Business, wrote a column on the subject in last week's issue that called out Norm White for opposing the regional elements of Detroit's transportation system. White is Mayor Bing's Chief Financial Officer and the former director of the Detroit Department of Transportation, or D-DOT, the division that runs the city's bus system.

Kramer linked White to former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Detroit.) She is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which has heavy authority over what the feds are willing to support.

According to Kramer, White pushed to end the city's mass transit proposal at Eight Mile Road, Detroit's northern border. Kramer asks: "If you want to get regional buy-in for light rail and expanded transit, why stop there? Why not, say, at least I-696 (two miles north in Royal Oak) in the first phase?"

Good question, especially given the fact that mass transit in Detroit only makes no more sense than a mass transit system that would be confined to the suburbs. That’s bad enough.

But now there's conflict brewing over what kind of mass transit system we'll have … assuming the politics are finally worked out.

Most people in positions of power have in mind a light rail system like Denver's, which features electric trains running quietly alongside freeways with economic development clustering around the stops.

That's fine, but it's expensive to build light rail, and takes a long, long time. Some are arguing it would be far cheaper and quicker to build a "Rolling Rapid Transit" (RRT) system based on modern, articulated buses that look a lot like high-speed electric trains.

Advocates for the RRT version argue that it provides almost exactly the same reliability, speed and convenience as light rail. And they say a bus-based system would cost less than $1 billion, around one quarter the cost of light rail. And they say it would take 6-7 years to build a bus-based mass transit system, as compared with 20-25 years for rail. They also argue that a bus-based system would also produce transit-oriented economic development around the stations.

Yet supporters of light rail fear that going with a bus-based system now will crush any possibility of rail in the future.

They may be right, but that sounds a lot like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good — which could mean nothing would be built.

Those arguments may seem to be splitting hairs, but they're important to a region that is suffering. According to Hertel, the economic impact of mass transit through the region would be between $1.5 and $3 billion. And Detroit is the only major metro area in the country lacking a functioning mass transit system.

If anyone has the background to know what might work, Hertel's the man. He has an extraordinary resume of varied successes over a 40-year career. He's been chairman of two different county boards (including Macomb) a state senator, boss of the Michigan State Fair and a professor. And he's a noted breeder of fine Percheron draft horses.

It will take a guy with as many varied talents as Hertel to finally sort out the politics, economics and clashing egos that go into making uo a regional mass transit system. He deserves all the luck in the world — and we deserve a world where he succeeds.

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Editor's Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank which is sponsoring Michigan's Defining Moment, a public engagement outreach campaign for citizens. The opinions expressed here are Power's own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net