Who’ll save MARTA? Good question, Maria

March 29, 2010 by Jeanne Bonner
Filed under: POLITICS, SMART GROWTH, transportation 

*Post has been amended and corrected*

Maria Saporta asks some great questions today in her regular Monday column at SaportaReport.

Namely, why did civic groups and private businesses rally to save Grady Hospital but no one is rallying to save MARTA or C-TRAN for that matter?

Maria quotes Mayor Kasim Reed as saying recently, “I…want to send a message to the economic development community and business people.”

‘If budget cuts force MARTA to cut back service to six days a week, he said, it will weaken metro Atlanta’s economy, especially tourism, and it will weaken the state’s attractiveness to business.’

“If Atlanta is going to remain dominant, if Atlanta is going to continue to be the economic engine that drives metro Atlanta and the State of Georgia, how are we going to do that with a train line that runs six days a week?” Reed asked.

(Or half the number of buses that run now, for that matter).

You can read her column here.

There was also a great op-ed about MARTA recently in the AJC by Jim Durrett, who is executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District and sits on MARTA’s board.

Thanks to kind reader Darin, you can see Durrett’s piece here.

What caught my eye was that the Buckhead is home to many businesses and residents that don’t rely on MARTA, and yet this group is smart enough to know that transportation is key for any community.

Durrett makes so many great points. For example, he says:

“The state Legislature should do three things. First, pass long-term transportation funding legislation (that has been considered for four years now) that includes transit operations and maintenance as allowable uses of the new funding. Second, permanently eliminate the 50/50 restriction on the MARTA sales tax revenues. Third, provide short-term funding assistance to MARTA during the next three years, such as state-supported bonding for capital projects, which, coupled with elimination of the 50/50 restriction, would help MARTA to make ends meet.”

So many smart people here in Atlanta and yet MARTA may have to cut 30 percent of its service next fiscal year (i.e., in July) and C-TRAN is on life support.

At this rate, I think I’ll stop trying to be smart because all of these “smart” people are giving smart a bad name.

Bookmark and Share

Related posts:

  1. A Question for Atlanta’s next mayor? “That’s a question for the next mayor,” said Harris...
  2. Atlanta Unfiltered: MARTA sales tax down til 2017 More bad financial news about MARTA this week by way...
  3. I heart Maria Saporta! I heart Maria Saporta for asking REAL questions tonight at...
  4. “MARTA doesn’t go anywhere” When I returned from vacation on Monday, one of the...
  5. Special session for MARTA? State and local lawmakers joined with activists Wednesday in urging...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

7 Comments on Who’ll save MARTA? Good question, Maria

  1. christa on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 9:55 am

    2. Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition, was the mayor who made the major push to establish MARTA.

    What do you mean by “the MARTA crowd”?

  2. Darin on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 12:51 pm

    3. RE: “Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition, was the mayor who made the major push to establish MARTA. ”

    Someone needs to correct the Wikipedia entry on Massell. MARTA was established throughout 1965-66 by a state legislative act and a subsequent regional ratification. Massell didn’t become mayor until 1970. Planners, legislators, voters and county leaders in Fulton and Dekalb deserve as much credit — if not moreso — than any mayor for the creation of MARTA.

    Jeanne — I think you mean this AJC opinion piece by Jim Durrett of the Buckhead Community Improvement District: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/why-marta-matters-to-382706.html

    There are, indeed, a lot of smart people in Atlanta, but that only goes so far. We need solid state support for a sustainable, functioning transit system in this region. As Durrett points out in his piece: “a federal administration supportive of transit won’t give grants to a state that won’t support transit.”

  3. Jeanne Bonner on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 1:00 pm

    4. Oh Darin you’re a doll! That IS the piece I meant. Jim’s name was on the tip of my tongue.

    I’m going to amend the post to reflect the link you sent. Thanks!

    @Christa: I meant people like me (and you! I think) who take MARTA.

    I think per capita Buckhead isn’t one of the neighborhoods with the highest MARTA penetration, in part because the residential neighborhoods in Buckhead are somewhat sprawling and more car-friendly (I remember Mary Norwood said during the campaign that some parts of her Buckhead neighborhood don’t even have sidewalks).

  4. christa on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 1:28 pm

    5. Darin,

    MARTA was proposed by the state legislature in the ’60s but didn’t actually start operating until Massell’s term. That was what I meant by “established.” Of course the policymakers, planners, and engineers deserve credit for designing a comprehensive mass transit system where one never existed and without many other models in the U.S. However, Massell played a major role in getting DeKalb and Fulton taxpayers to vote for the bonds that would pay for MARTA, which they previously rejected in the ’60s. I think he deserves a lot of credit for getting people to pay for MARTA, since obviously no one has been able to get much more money for the system since. I was just pointing out that Massell has been the face of the Buckhead Coalition for decades and also has been a passionate supporter of MARTA and its relationship to Atlanta’s business community.

  5. Darin on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 3:26 pm

    6. Thanks for the clarification, Christa. I guess I read ‘establish’ incorrectly. Just wanted to make sure people knew the seeds were sewn — through much hard work and political wrangling — long before the first MARTA bus or train ran. Massell’s support of MARTA and the business community is appreciated.

  6. Jeanne Bonner on Mon, 29th Mar 2010 4:56 pm

    7. I love this sentence from Christa’s comment:

    “I think he deserves a lot of credit for getting people to pay for MARTA, since obviously no one has been able to get much more money for the system since.”

    How freakin’ true is that?!

  7. alston dutton on Wed, 7th Apr 2010 9:50 pm

    8. C-Tran buses sit parked and collecting pollen. And MARTA is looking at cutting service drastically– as if it weren’t already bad enough. Since all the smart people are comotose, I will venture forth a solution: Jitneys! Bring back the jitneys. License independent drivers, who furnish their own vans, and have them run the bus routes. Result? Jobs. And transport for people needing rides to jobs they will lose if they can’t get there and back. This is especially needed YESTERDAY in Clayton County. If the state will not fund MARTA, then have MARTA do the coverage it can and let the jitneys fill in the bare spots. It worked in days gone by– ending only because of greed to monopolize by the city bus operators, who now cannot fulfill their obligation to the public. In eastern Europe jitney vans are common today, even though they have incredible tram and bus coverage.

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!