The state of Michigan won’t want to bring this report card home.

A study released Tuesday by the Sierra Club gave Michigan and Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint and Grand Rapids areas failing grades for efforts to clear up the air with transit spending.

Lansing was not surveyed.

The study, which had been put together over eight years, had pooled information from across the country.

Anne Woiwode, director of the Mackinac Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the organization looked at the largest metropolitan areas. She said the 50 largest areas in the country were examined and compared.

She said money spent on public transportation in Michigan is restricted.

“We have constitutionally limited how much money we can spend on public transportation, which is 10 percent and we use 8 percent,” she said.

The report shows public transportation receives only a fraction of congressional money highways and air travel receive.

Woiwode said the Lansing area is fortunate to have a good public transportation system like Capital Area Transportation Authority.

“In the Lansing area, traffic is one of our basic concerns and we don’t see the local community trying to address those concerns,” she said.

“I ride CATA when I can and it is a real asset for the university but it’s clearly not making a dent (in the environment).”

But Ari Adler, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Transportation, said Michigan is an auto dependent state and “one of the things that is difficult is selling public transportation.”

“It is not like you have a central business area that you go to, it is more spread out,” he said. “It has been that way for many years.”

Adler said when it comes to funding, the department of transportation is at the bottom for funding.

But the department does support various areas of public transportation, from trains to buses.

Adler said no form of public transportation is self-sufficient and that $160 million is spent by the department just on bus operations.

CATA receives its funding from tax money, millages and money from the county that comes directly from property owners.

“You have more people leaving from the home now a days, people don’t have time, it is difficult and people need the freedom their own vehicle provides them,” he said.

There are still many people though that fork out their change to get a bus ride.

In Lansing, public transportation numbers have risen, said Debbie Alexander, director of strategic management for CATA.

“Our ridership has been on a steady growth pattern for four or five years,” she said.

Alexander said 6.4 million trips were made last year and next year they are expecting there will be 7 million made.