This is a party bus service to allow bar hopping in a car-dependent city when passengers are too intoxicated to drive. It only runs on Friday & Saturday nights between a couple of suburban bars & the downtown & university district of Detroit. It might well be a good business (and certainly better than drunk driving), but it's not a meaningful substitute for functional mass transit.<p>Public transit systems require subsidy to permit service at unprofitable times of day & to unprofitable regions of the city, interconnecting parts of a region to permit greater economic activity. Roadway systems are likewise unprofitable on their own. Most transit systems have at least a couple lines that are profitable.<p>In the New York City area, there is significant "dollar van" jitney service & a large number of private bus companies, especially in New Jersey that provide commuter service, rather than serving as a substitute for drunk driving. Dollar vans of varying legalities are also common between Chinatowns & Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, as well as down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.<p>Flatbush Avenue also an easy place to observe the downside to privatized transit run by independent contractors-- the vans usually speed & make dangerous maneuvers to move more fares more quickly, with the safety of other motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists often disregarded. This could be improved by the NYPD enforcing traffic laws, which would be my preference to replacing a useful service.<p>Unfortunately, nearly all American cities have onerous regulation on selling automobile rides to other people, while it's incredibly easy to get a driver's license and private automobile. This raises taxi prices & means there often isn't timely bus/jitney service between popular destinations, which motivates a lot more people to purchase cars & drive them.<p>The cost in car ownership is also mostly in the depreciation of the car & insurance (which is monthly, rather than per-mile), so once a person purchases an automobile because they can't make a few trips by walking/biking/transit, they'll make a lot more trips by car.