PITTSBURGH -- Sen. Jim Ferlo has introduced a bill to bring a casino to Pittsburgh. Ferlo believes a new tax on gambling revenue would mean new money for depleted city coffers.

Four years ago, the city of Detroit took the big gamble on casinos.

Target 11 consumer investigator Becky Thompson traveled to Detroit to gauge gambling's impact on the local economy, the job market, neighboring businesses and society.

Thompson begins a series of week-long reports with a look at the attraction of casino gambling and the dollars it brings.

Many people in the Pittsburgh area take chartered buses to casino destinations. According to one operator, most of the gamblers he drives go to Detroit.

At 6:30 a.m. Monday in Cranberry Township on just about every Monday morning, area gamblers line up for the ride to Detroit.

The bus picks up people at five different stops in (the) Pittsburgh area. Then the gamblers head to the motor city for the day, taking with them money they say would be better spent at home.

Joann Spohn, of Butler, said, "I think they should have gambling in Pittsburgh area because there's so many people who go out of state."

"I'm tired of giving money to other states," Jerry Barilaro of Sewickley said.

Added Gerri Zimak, of Lawrence County: "We're tired of leaving the area."

By 12:30 p.m., the bus arrives at Detroit's Greektown Casino.

The Greektown Casino alone has an average of 8,000 customers every day. But what is surprising, is that few arrive by bus.

The great majority arrive car after car from the Detroit area, a reservoir of 7 million potential gamblers.

The casinos went up fast; right now they're in temporary quarters.

The original plan was to make Detroit a national gambling destination, committing casinos to 800 hotel rooms each. But after concerns that the market couldn't support that investment, the number of rooms was cut in half.

Greektown representative Roger Martin said, "Eventually, when we do develop our permanent casino here this will be a regional destination place. There's no doubt about it -- we will draw very large numbers from 250 to 300 miles away."

For now, the Detroit tri-county area makes up the lion's share of casino customers wagering away an estimated $1 billion every year, with nearly 10 percent of it becoming taxable income for the city of Detroit.

Comerica Bank economist David Littmann said, "Casino gambling for Detroit has been a veritable cornucopia of revenues. We're looking at essentially $100 to $110 million of additional revenues over the past three years, per year."

So why is the city still having problems paying its bills? Because casino revenue makes up only 5 percent of Detroit's annual budget.

Yet, despite the desperate search for jobs and revenue to cover the cost of city services, it took voters five visits to the polls before saying yes to a proposal of only three casinos.

Sean Werdlow, Detroit's CFO, said, "I think it's safe to say there was nothing on the horizon that we could have brought in that was going to rival the amount of revenue that we realize now from casinos being present in this city."

Unlike the property tax-free deals cities use to get big business to move in, the payoff from casino gambling in Detroit was immediate.

It's become one of Detroit's top five sources of revenue and its largest employer. Casinos have brought thousands of jobs to Detroit.

Tuesday at 5 on Channel 11 News, Thompson will take a look at what types of jobs casinos bring, how the pay compares with others and who is mandated to get those jobs.