Computer and mechanical problems disrupted service on the elevated downtown rail system at least four times in two weeks in late January, prompting Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to order mechanics to board each car in peak hours to ensure operation.

When designed, the People Mover, which runs along a 2.9-mile track around the central business district, was considered one of the most sophisticated mass-transit systems in the world.

Officials of the Detroit Transportation Corp. (DTC), which maintains the system, have been making dire predictions for more than a year.

"The equipment and components are at and beyond their useful life," they wrote in their request for $2.1 million to upgrade the system this year.

"DTC will not be able to maintain the existing level of service and the reliability will decrease. Adding the uncertainty factor, DTC may not be able to operate," they said.

A 1999 audit commissioned by the city's auditor general agreed.

Yet former Mayor Dennis Archer's administration budgeted only $700,000 this year for capital improvements for a system that serves more than 7,000 riders a day.

Though Archer acknowledged the system would need $32 million in improvements over the next five years, he left it to Kilpatrick to find a way to pay for it.

In briefing books Archer ordered to assist his successor's transition, People Mover officials wrote: "It is critical that this funding be identified as many of the component parts have become obsolete, are not supported by vendors and the system cannot operate without them."

Marsden Burger, who worked for the company that sold the People Mover to Detroit and was operations manager from 1993 to 1995, said the problem is years of neglect.

"When I left the system in '95-'96, we knew we needed a new computer system," he said.

People Mover officials estimate that more than $11.2 million is needed to upgrade computer systems installed when the rail line was built in the early and mid-1980s. Because the People Mover was a unique project, designers used software dating to the 1970s, Burger said.

Now industrial laptop computers could replace the three vehicle-control computers that ensure the safe operation of the trains, People Mover officials said in the briefing book.

Burger said new software needs to be written for the People Mover, which would drive up the cost.

A shortage of maintenance workers and technicians has complicated the situation. Electronics technicians, frustrated over working under an expired contract and seeing few promotional opportunities within the 100-employee DTC, often leave for higher-paying jobs, People Mover officials said.

A major obstacle to improving the People Mover is the quasi-governmental operation's reliance on city dollars. Detroit pumped more than $10.6 million into the system last year because fares, advertising and grants raised only $1.5 million of the People Mover's $12.1 million budget.

Those figures are fairly typical. And that means each of the 2 million 50-cent People Mover rides cost taxpayers more than $5.

Rather than put more money into a 15-year-old system that never lived up to predictions that it would serve 20 million passengers a year, Michael LaFaive of the Mackinac Institute said the city should shut it down.

"It would be cheaper to get everyone a cab for the distance that this People Mover travels," said LaFaive, a policy analyst at the Midland-based think tank.

Nevertheless, Kilpatrick remains an ardent supporter of the People Mover, said spokesman Bob Berg. "It has to be made workable," Berg said.

Just how to do that remains an open question. Berg said repair technicians from Toronto have come to Detroit evaluating the system's needs.

Short of an overhaul, Burger said resourceful technicians may be able to continue doing patchwork fixes to keep the trains running, but eventually the limitations of obsolete technology will exceed their ingenuity.