stumble across his website, but they do.
"I get calls from people who say they
want to ride the train from Port Huron to
Monroe. They think it's real. They look at
the schedules. I thank those who call and
tell them I'm so glad they've proven there is
demand for this.
"For the longest time, it's been
frustrating to me to watch people fumble
the transit conversation," says Greenberg.
"We have a tendency to talk about policy
and money and all the reasons transit is
challenging. At least, there is today an
acknowledgement that our city needs to
address transit, but no one really knows
even how to talk about it in a way that gets
people excited. If we can get people who
don't normally pay attention to transit to
truly see its potential for even one minute,
we've done a huge service to the cause."
for Metro Detroit."
His work in Santa Barbara is just one part
of his transit career. In 2002, as a student
at the University of Michigan, Greenberg
co-founded CSG Airbus, a transit system
between Ann Arbor and Metro Airport,
which he still manages. "It's part of the
student government and funded with
public money, but we run it very much as
a business entity," he says. This year, the
company is celebrating its 100,000th rider.
"The first pay check I ever received in the
transit capacity was as a bus driver with
the campus bus system operated by the
university," he said. "That probably remains
the best job I ever had. I have a commercial
drivers' license. I will never give it up."
Greenberg also worked for the suburban
Detroit SMART transit system for more than
five years, as well as the Ann Arbor transit
system.
Greenberg created Freshwater Railway
last year from Santa Barbara, Calif., where
he works occasionally for a company that
produces maps for transit companies
around the country. As he watched a
colleague working on a map of the Los
Angeles MetroLink commuter rail line, an
idea struck him. "I realized that before
there was a train, there was a map, and
before there was a map, there was an
idea," he said. "I thought if we're ever
going to get to real mass transit in Detroit,
we need to display it better. So I went home
that day and starting drawing a transit map
What
"For instance, somebody is making ginger
tea in the basement of a kitchen in a church
on the east side. It may employ five people,
but what she's really trying to do is give the
kids an idea of what it looks like to run a
business because a lot of time they haven't
seen anybody who looks like her who does
something like that," Daniel said.
Many of the people she has met are
underground — they operate from their
home kitchen under Michigan's Cottage
Food Law that allows a person to make up
to $15,000 in profit for baked goods, jams or
other dry products without regulators getting
in the way.
FoodLab is set up to help those people get
to the next level, Daniel said, and the learning
curve is much steeper for some.
"There is a dominant dialogue around
entrepreneurism that tends to feature young,
white, highly educated folks who have
recently moved back to the city," she said.
"Entrepreneurs who are all in one social
network; they're all kind of tightly bubbled
in the middle. They know one another, they
trust one another, and they help one another.
We have a group of jam makers who go in
together to purchase jars; we have people
NaYt 7
After creating a detailed vision of mass
transit in southeast Michigan, what's the
next step?
Greenberg and new business partner
Stephen Maiseloff are in the beginning
stages of creating their own transportation
management company — Freshwater
Transit.
"The railway on the website is obviously
something we can't snap our fingers and
make happen, but we're trying to extract
some of the principles from that," says
Greenberg. "We aspire to be a company that
FoodLab is a community that supports
local and socially conscious food
entrepreneurs.
sharing kitchen space.
"And there are also lots of people who live
in the city, who have lived in the city for a
very long time, in all sorts of neighborhoods,
and they have been hustling, especially in the
Adds Greenberg: "There's a lot to this.
Transit operations is an enormously complex
and misunderstood business. It's huge, and
I can't do this myself. We're looking for
people who have experience in accounting,
labor relations, fleet management and
obtaining grants to help us round this out."
Detrn;fic Mand Cnr
manages transit service in a professional
capacity and employs and manages front-
line staff — drivers, mechanics, road
supervisors, dispatchers, the people who
actually make the transit system go."
Greenberg brought Maiseloff on board
this year to help bring the vision to life. The
two met earlier this year through Jewish
connections.
"I thought we were going to meet for
20 minutes. We ended up talking four
hours," says Maiseloff, 30, who specializes
in business development. "We're in the
process of incorporating. We want to go
after a contract as an operator."
Greenberg and Maiseloff hope to be
a part of the solution for Detroit's transit
needs. The city's financial crisis has led to
discussions of shrinking or unloading its
transportation department.
"It's interesting to note that Detroit was
one of the earliest big cities to take transit
into the public realm," says Greenberg. "The
city of Detroit has had a publicly owned and
operated transit system since 1922, which is
a lot earlier than most other cities.
"And it wasn't until there was that
community ownership and a public stake
that the system was really able to develop
and expand for the right reasons. When
transit was seen as a resource for the
whole community, the system was able to
really connect. We take that as one of our
inspirations.
"What's great about the Jewish
community is its unwavering willingness to
get involved on the community level," says
Greenberg. "This is a reflection of that, and
we certainly hope there are others who
would want to get involved."
He invites those interested in the project
to contact him at fwtransit@gmail.com .
food business," Daniel added. "They have
been underground for a long time. They're
making money and supplementing their
family income, but they'd like to take it to
the next level. But when you're not in that
social network, you tend to be of color and
from a different income level," she said.
"It's not just about access to capital
or access to health insurance. It's not just
about transportation. It's also about these
social networks. Are people even able
to imagine all the possibilities of their
business? We're really trying to find those
folks and invite them in."
Daniel said they provide childcare and
make sure the meetings are rotating
in different areas of the city so that
people can attend a meeting in their
neighborhood without having to travel so
far.
"We have city and state regulators
who are really trying to help us get these
people licensed and above ground,"
she said. "It's very difficult, especially for
entrepreneurs, to have the time to maintain
relationships with city and state inspectors.
We help become the conduit of that
relationship."
FoodLab started around the kitchen table
with seven people in January 2011, and has
grown to 190 businesses on its listsery and
more than 80 businesses that have attended
their workshops. They hold monthly meetings
where about 30 businesses have come to
teach tactical business practices, like crowd
sourcing, the use of online platforms to start
a campaign to purchase equipment.
"We have lots of people in our group, and
there's a digital divide, people who don't
have Internet access or are not comfortable
putting together a video and posting it on
the Internet. Even if they did, they don't have
a network of friends on the Internet who
are going to have the expendable income to
finance that sort of campaign," she said.
Marty Baum, a semi-retired attorney
from Detroit, was intrigued by the subject,
although he found it a bit "amorphous."
"I think it has a lot of potential, and the
social value sounds really good — giving
[help to] entrepreneurs who have little
experience with the business end of their
skills," he said. "That opens up opportunities
for volunteerism especially with the
professional skills of people who are entering
their third stage [retirement]." ❑
Stephen Maiseloff and Neil Greenberg
are working to change the conversa-
tion about mass transit in Detroit and
southeast Michigan.
❑
it
November 29 • 2012
53