10 Comments on Is MARTA listening to me?!

Jack Stenger on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 5:21 pm


Of course we all know that people who say that “MARTA doesn’t go anywhere” are being intellectually lazy. These are the same people who say – election in and election out – “I don’t like any of the candidates …” There opinions can be easily dismissed. Where MARTA is concerned, of course no one should be advocating that the towel be thrown in. But here are the facts where public transport in Atlanta is concerned: Until gas prices climb much higher than where they are now, and until our city reaches higher population densities, and until parking becomes exorbitantly expensive, MARTA will always struggle. Consider: Round trip fare is $4 now. Unless I have my math wrong, even driving a gas-guzzling clunker is a less expensive proposition than MARTA. (Sigh …) Generations ago, Atlanta made a Faustian deal with the road developers to make driving here a pleasantly unencumbered and tax-subsidized pleasure. We all inherited this landscape and no amount of wishing will make MARTA a viable option. (Pessimism or realism? You make the call!)

Jack Stenger on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 5:22 pm


Meant to say “their” not “there” (Wishing this fine blog had an “edit option …”)

Lance on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 11:40 pm


Jack, you make a fine point. But let me propose doing the math another way. I heard some guy this one time on the radio (how’s that for intellectually lazy?) saying that the average car owner spends $8,000 a year on a car, once you factor in payments, insurance, gas, taxes — the works. So if a two-car family drops down to one car, and springs for a round trip on MARTA six days a week for every week in a year, the family is spending less than 60% of what they would have been spending if they’d kept the second car and never used MARTA. That leaves plenty of room to spring for the occasional Zipcar and still come out on the better end of the deal.

This is essentially what my wife and I do, and it works pretty well. We live in Candler Park, my wife works downtown and my daughter’s day care is near my office in Midtown. I do understand that the situation would be different if I lived in Vinings, but then that’s part of the reason I don’t live in Vinings.

Jeanne Bonner on Thu, 5th Nov 2009 8:41 am


Lance, thanks for weighing in. I think what you’re doing makes a ton of sense!

I think many people think of it as one way or another problem. But you have not given up cars; you still drive a car, you still ride in a car, you still pay for a car but you just don’t pay for TWO. And if I understand correctly, you avoid the aggravation of the daily commute by using MARTA in one of the smartest ways. In addition, many companies subsidize monthly MARTA passes.

You wanna go to Virginia Highlands? Yeah MARTA doesn’t have a train station there and I can tell you from experience, the #16 bus doesn’t pass super often.

But do you need to commute to Midtown or downtown? Yeah MARTA makes sense then.

I don’t mean to dismiss what Jack is saying. MARTA works particularly well in a fairly narrow band of circumstances. Jack, your point about gas prices is well-taken.

Christa on Thu, 5th Nov 2009 11:48 am


The lazy “MARTA doesn’t go anywhere” complaint is one of my biggest concerns about the BeltLine as mass transit – the BeltLine doesn’t go anywhere! It’s like a weekend route for brunchers and park-goers, not for people who need to get to and from their jobs. Lindbergh is the only major employment hub it touches.

MARTA does go places, but people want subway stops in their neighborhoods because buses and bus stops aren’t glamorous. And, like you said, for people who live south of but not along Dekalb Avenue, it’s really not efficient if you have other options.

I think MARTA’s biggest challenge to overcome (besides existing in the state of Georgia) is increasing ridership and therefore building its base of powerful advocates. Publishing opinion pieces on the SaportaReport isn’t going to get “important” people out of their cars. Your idea to publish bus routes at stops – or on buses! – is so common sense that I can’t believe MARTA hasn’t bothered with this!! I’ve been on too many buses with panicky riders who don’t know where they are or where they’re going.

Denver is doing some awesome things to increase their transit ridership without expansions: http://www.commoncurrent.com/notes/2009/10/denver-nearly-doubles-public-t.html

PS, The #16 runs every 15 minutes during peak times, and every 30 minutes off-peak which is still pretty frequent. Va-Hi is also served by the very reliable but less frequent #45 and, at the very south, the horrible #2.

Lance on Thu, 5th Nov 2009 12:56 pm


It took me a couple of years to figure this out, but MARTA beyond the train lines isn’t terribly difficult or slow. It’s just more difficult and slower than the trains. Taking the bus just requires a little planning ahead. That’s a skill that quickly atrophies in our car culture, but regaining it is no more difficult than remembering to scrub your own teeth when your electric toothbrush dies.

Jack Stenger on Thu, 5th Nov 2009 12:58 pm


Lance: Love your math computations! Of course what you wrote makes perfect sense — for y’all. Unfortunately “y’all” (in-town progressives from leafy Candler Park) is a pretty narrow group. We’ve already established that many Americans are both physically and intellectually lazy. I’m afraid few people around here are as inclined to “run the numbers” as you have so admirably done. So the song remains the same. For the hoi polloi, driving is the only option and that gives us the auto-slum that is Atlanta.

I completely want to concur with Christa’s spot-on statement regarding the transit element of the Beltline. The transit aspect is wholly rooted in fantasy. Should we take money from an already depleted public purse and direct those funds toward building an uber-expensive light rail experience that will offer passenger conveyance from, say, Reynoldstown to Vine City, we will have expensive empty trains and little else. (Oh … we’ll also have bonds we have to pay down for about eighteen generations …) The Beltline does not follow commuting patterns therefore it only makes sense as a recreational bike path (if that). Where the Beltline is concerned, we’ve long heard this “build-it-and-development/density-will-come” blather. This is based on speculative (and wishful) thinking, and this manner of thinking is consistent with an American penchant for pipe dreams.

I’m a cyclist so I have a bias for this manner of urban transport. And one thing that a bike affords is self-directed point-to-point travel (as opposed to fixed station to station travel). I will veer now into the aforementioned realm of fantasy and express the hope that more Atlantans will opt for bike commuting. In the fuel-scarce future that we’re all entering, our public purse should go toward projects that make our built-up landscape more amenable to biking. Not only would doing this require far less in the form of public subsidies (and last I checked the city is broke), it would also make our city at least appear more “livable.” Atlanta will never be a Portland, by any means. But if we make cycling a more viable (i.e., safe) proposition, more people would do it. And with a bike, there’s no waiting around for spotty MARTA trains/buses. Who’s got time to wait?

Joeventures on Fri, 6th Nov 2009 4:46 pm


Y’all — much like the intellectually dishonest Mike Dobbins — are completely ignoring the land use aspect of the Beltline.

The real fantasy thinking here is the 20th Century habit of separating land use planning from transportation planning, something the Beltline planners are thankfully not guilty of.

R Walker on Sat, 7th Nov 2009 8:55 am


Land use or not the idea that we are pushing most of our transit dollars toward the beltline is a giant mistake for many reasons. As many have mentioned it doesn’t address getting people where they want to go and its too far away to address what is an urgent need for the city.

I’d like for us to get rid of two lazy overstatements. 1.) that marta doesn’t go anywher and 2) that atlanta doesn’t have the density to support transit. Neither are true and if we have a comprehensive, localized, clean, efficient bus service people would use it. Its the one thing you could privatize and make work. We had better bus service 20 years ago with less density and fewer people.

Jeanne Bonner on Mon, 9th Nov 2009 9:42 am


I wanted to circle back to the bus system. Christa, I did actually mean the #45 bus. You’re right — the other buses pass more frequently. In fact, many of the system’s buses pass every 15 minutes during rush hour, which I think is sufficient.

But outside of peak times, you will wait 40 to 50 minutes for many buses. Now, I guess I should just treat it as an Amtrak train — the bus will leave at 11:45; if you miss it the next one is at 12:30.

Yet I think most people expect the buses to be on a continuous schedule — be it every ten minutes, every 15 minutes, every 20 minutes or every 30 minutes.

I know there are not enough people taking the bus to justify such frequency, but it’s also probably a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem.

For the most part, the MARTA bus system is comprehensive. But the buses tend to have one priority: connecting one MARTA train station with another. And I would prefer if more of the buses simply connected specific neighborhoods, or specific points of interest (i.e., there’s a bus that connects the Zoo with the Aquarium; it also connects stations but that’s besides the point).

R Walker, I’m interested in what you say about density. I just don’t know if we do have enough density. I guess we do in Midtown and maybe a few other neighborhoods. I think gas prices and parking rates play a role; if it’s cheaper to drive, then why take MARTA? (I mean mostly in one-off situations, not regular commuting). So people don’t take MARTA so it’s hard to gauge if a particular neighborhood has the density — because the question isn’t, are there enough people? The question is, are there enough people who are willing to leave their cars at home and wait for a bus or train?

Thanks for a great discussion, everyone! You guys are wonderful!

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