Who’ll save MARTA? Good question, Maria
*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.
MARTA to gain a few new bus shelters
Photo credit: Willamor Media via Flickr
I produced this short piece on MARTA bus shelters yesterday for WABE and I thought you guys might find it interesting that not only are there 11,000 bus stops that don’t have shelters but that most of them probably won’t ever have shelters.
I talked to Tony Griffin with MARTA and he said it’s just not feasible to outfit the agency’s 12,000 bus stops with protective shelters and benches. And it’s not just cost, apparently. At many stops, there’s simply no room, or the stop is on a sloping hill.
I find that amazing because it means there will be riders — Riders in the Storm, you could say, ahem! — who will always be subject to rain, heat, snow, sleet, whathaveyou.
I pestered Tony a lot about this but who knows? He might have been thinking, “Hey lady! Have you heard? We might have to slash 25 percent of our train and bus service over the summer because we have no money! I don’t have time to worry about bus shelters!”
And I suppose he would be right, if he were thinking that.
The story is actually about a pro bono project of the the Atlanta chapter of Architecture for Humanity to build and design bus shelters for free for MARTA. The group, which will cull designs for the shelters from an open contest, will start this year with three stops in south Atlanta.
For more information or to submit a design entry for the bus shelter contest, contact Rick at rick@afhatlanta.org. By the way, Rick says you don’t need to be an architect or a designer to submit an entry. And you don’t need to complete a fancy schmancy design on a computer. You can draw something on the back of an envelope, he said!
UPDATE: Read more
No go on the Peachtree Streetcar
Ariel Hart of the AJC reports that Atlanta will not receive federal funds to build a streetcar line here.
As Ariel puts it, “The loss for the streetcar is one more drop in the bucket of metro Atlanta’s mass transit misery.”
She has all the details here.
It’s times like this that I like being a blogger. Because it would have been hard to write the story Ariel had to write.
Streetcar announcement today — I hope!
Photo credit: kevinseanw via Flickr
Good morning!
As you probably know, Atlanta expects to hear word today whether it has been awarded up to $300 million in federal funds to build a streetcar system downtown.
MARTA and several other organizations put together an application for funds, which, if awarded, would help bankroll a six-mile line on Peachtree Street and/or a three-mile, east-west line on Auburn Avenue that would connect the King Center with Centennial Olympic Park.
Officials have said they think Atlanta has a good chance. We’ll see.
Federal regulations recently changed to favor the construction of streetcar systems, and many cities already have a head start (the photo above shows a streetcar in Toronto).
In fact, Charlotte, which already has a light rail line, has begun to explore the possibility of applying for federal funds for a streetcar line.
I think many of you are up to date on the prospects of streetcars in Atlanta but if not, check out this post on SaportaReport and this post from Thomas Wheatley at Creative Loafing.
Is MARTA listening to me?!
We all like to flatter ourselves sometimes, and that may be especially so for broken-down reporters such as myself.
So I would like to think Michael Walls, the chairman of MARTA’s board of directors, read a post I wrote a few months back about the utility of our mass transit system, particularly when you need to reach certain destinations.
In an opinion piece for SaportaReport (clearly the source of so many great things) Walls wrote the following:
“For residents and visitors alike, MARTA matters tremendously to our quality of life. If you’re heading to the Peachtree Road Race on July 4th, watching musical legend Paul McCartney perform at Piedmont Park, going to a hometown game for the Braves, Falcons, Hawks or Thrashers or leaving on a business trip from Hartsfield-Jackson airport, MARTA makes all of that possible.”
That’s more or less what I said in the post. Here’s how I put it:
Read more
SaportaReport: Time for Chambers to move on
Maria Saporta of SaportaReport speaks with authority when she says that Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Dunwoody), who chairs the Georgia legislature’s MARTA Oversight Committee (MARTOC), and the rest of the naysayers need to move on now that the state has given MARTA a clean fiscal bill of health.
Below is a short excerpt, but please read the full column here.
From SaportaReport:
“This audit review should be enough to silence Chambers once and for all. She has made MARTA and the state jump through time-consuming hoops on her witch hunt for evil and wrongdoing.
“And now it’s time for her to stop.”
(end)
I will reiterate that I don’t think everything MARTA does is great. For example, I still want to know why there isn’t a bus that goes all the way up Boulevard and Monroe!
But using the transit service as one’s own punching bag is wrong. What are we doing to do, stop the trains, pull up the tracks, bulldoze the stations?
I don’t think so, so let’s work on building on the transit system we have.
DOT Chief visit, Part two
Filed under: ARTS & EVENTS, GREEN BUILDING, SMART GROWTH
When I give my opinion here, I’m taking one of the liberties that, I think, blogging affords.
But as a former — very recently former — newspaper reporter, I always feel weird, for lack of a more eloquent phrase.
So I want to add some other context to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s visit to Atlanta today.
First off, if one of the feds is here, and he wants to talk about transportation, I would like to think he won’t forget us, and he will keep an eye on our progress, or lack thereof.
Also, any money for MARTA is good.
So LaHood brought the classic big check in the amount of $10.8 million to help MARTA become more energy-efficient.
By installing solar panels at the Laredo bus maintenance facility in Decatur, MARTA will save at least $150,000 a year for the next 45 years.
Lord knows, MARTA needs an extra $150,000. I think MARTA may even need an an extra $1.50, while we’re on the topic.
And the initiative will translate into other money for MARTA because the excess electricity the panels generate at the facility will then be sold to Georgia Power, bringing in some much-needed income.
What organization doesn’t want to be more energy-efficient these days?
AJC on Maglev train proposal for Turner Field
Ariel Hart of the AJC has a good story today about the proposed maglev train line that would connect MARTA with Turner Field, which I wrote about last week.
And by good, I mean, she tells us exactly where we stand — which is very far from having a maglev train line that would connect MARTA with Turner Field. Ahem!
Please check out the link above!
DOT Sec’y Ray LaHood answers some questions
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was in Atlanta this morning for a few reasons, including bringing $10.8 million to MARTA so it can install solar panels at its Laredo Bus Maintenance Facility in Decatur.
More about that later, because as often is the case, the ancillary events can be newsier than the main event.
LaHood fielded questions from the audience, including one from Kevin Hughley, who’s with a Brookhaven-Chamblee neighborhood association.
Hughley wanted to point out that MARTA is one of the few transit systems in the U.S. that does not receive state funding.
And further Hughley wanted to know if Sec. LaHood and Sen. Johnny Isakson could possibly influence the Georgia legislature to either provide more funding to MARTA, or remove the restriction that strictly splits the sales tax funds into two camps — operational and capital expenses.
And LaHood, who had been a legislator, sidestepped the question ever so gently by saying he was not in the habit of making laws in Georgia, and that he would leave that to Gov. Sonny Perdue.
But he could allow that it’s “counterproductive” to have funds on hand to BUY buses but no funds on hand to PAY the bus drivers.
Alright, we’re getting somewhere.
In a state as transit-allergic as Georgia is, that’s actually a step forward!
Except, he really just bounced it back to Georgia officials, didn’t he? And those officials have proven time and time again that they are not interested in transit.
So did we really get anywhere? I mean, we got solar panels. But we still haven’t fixed the finance mechanism for MARTA, or indeed the mindset that MARTA and other transit is for other people.
I’ll have more to report later on LaHood’s visit.
MARTA says no funding for maglev train
photo by Hexham8629 via flickr
Sure, MARTA’s CEO Beverly Scott and other employees saw a demonstration of how a maglev train works at American Maglev Technology’s test track in Marietta.
And sure Scott was quoted on Atlanta Unfiltered as saying, “We’re drilling into the numbers with them. We’re real interested in continuing the discussion.”
But in an official statement MARTA sent me this morning, the transit system strikes a much vaguer, less upbeat assessment, saying there’s still a long way to go before MARTA thinks the service would be ready for prime time here in Atlanta.
In the meantime, MARTA said it has offered to help the company work through “safety, operational and financial questions” to help “position this initiative” at home and at the federal level.
The two-paragraph statement ended this way: “For now, MARTA looks to become more informed on the Maglev project as their research and development continues.”
As you know from my previous post, the idea of connecting MARTA to Turner Field via maglev train surfaced at a MARTOC meeting earlier this week.
AMT has a sample drawing on its Web site of how it could add a maglev train line to MARTA’s Lindbergh station that you can see here.
(Also, here’s a cool Q&A with the company’s president that appeared in the AJC last year).
I left y’all hanging for so long so I wanted to give you the few crumbs I had managed to collect, but I hope to add some more detail.
Five days is a long time to wait in this day and age so thanks for your patience.
(Photo at top is of a maglev train in Shanghai).
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