Detroit Is So Deserted You Can Snowmobile Down The Freeway

It's not that a pack of snowmobiles can comfortably take to the streets of Detroit in winter that amazes us about this video. It's that Detroit has become so empty, snowmobiles can now also hit the freeways.

You can read the boilerplate in any story about Detroit from the past ten years; after hitting a peak population of 1.8 million in 1950, the city has slowly lost half its populace, and will be lucky to stay above 900,000 when the new count comes out this year.

Parts of the city have been abandoned long enough to return to nature and spur hunting of pheasants and foxes; last week, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing unveiled a plan to lure police officers to move back within city limits by offering them homes for $1,000, along with $150,000 for renovations.

We were fans of the Chrysler Super Bowl ad talking up Detroit because Detroit deserves the kind of self-promotion most other cities take for granted. But there's a flip side; the city remains stuck in crisis, and getting better will mean generating enough traffic to make snowmobiling up the Lodge Freeway a little less appealing.

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