It’s MARTA, which claims to “serve” metro Atlanta, but doesn’t even serve the city. (Shown is the mostly-empty south parking lot at the East Lake MARTA station.)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When I moved to my present home in 1983, it was to be near the train station that still sits a few hundred feet from my door. My wife used MARTA for decades until the COVID pandemic, with a few interruptions when the kids were little.
When my son returned home to do his Ph.D work at Georgia Tech, 5 miles away from that home and the train station above , I assumed he would do the same. He tried. God knows he tried. But he is giving up, buying a parking pass, and I can’t blame him.
Outside rush hours, trains now run only every 15 minutes. At least they’re supposed to. Single tracking often has riders waiting half an hour. Instead of investing in new rolling stock, MARTA is “upgrading” its stations, to look pretty for the 2026 World Cup. This focuses on Five Points, the transfer point between its two lines, a station only the homeless see now. The footbridge between our house and the trains will be closed most of next year as it’s replaced. The bridge on the other side was supposed to be finished months ago, but the parts haven’t arrived.
What Destroyed MARTA
Transit should focus on convenience and frequency. Fixed rail doesn’t go where people need to go and doesn’t do it often enough. Downtown Atlanta is now a spine running up Peachtree through Buckhead to Georgia 400 in Alpharetta, with an even more car-centric city along I-75 in Cobb County.
Georgia has chosen to focus on moving living rooms that don’t scale to serve tall buildings. Our traffic jams are legendary, and “one more lane” won’t fix it, as is proven whenever one goes in.
The racists who support this system and live on half-acre lots in the mountains grouse that Atlanta is “crime ridden” (it’s not) and that things were better in “the good old days” (they weren’t). They see Atlanta as the “hole in the donut,” a dumping ground for the poor, with distance and zoning keeping “those people” out of “our city.” It’s their contribution to the environmental disaster quickly overtaking all of us.
Inside Atlanta, the air is poisoned with the noise and exhaust of hundreds of leaf blowers, driven in on the trailers of giant pick-up trucks, used by immigrants the racists want expelled from their midst.
MARTA has become a Potemkin transit system, a false front that serves only the Airport and major sporting events. The stations took out poor neighborhoods by eminent domain 50 years ago, replaced with parking lots. MARTA is now developing the parking lots into four-story apartment blocks and pocketing the income. I don’t know where the money is going, because it sure isn’t going into service.
What Could Be
There is hope. (These bikes were parked along Georgia Avenue during the most recent Streets Alive event on the south side.)
People with money are moving into town, buying homes and filling condos along the spine of Peachtree. They buy what they need for delivery and spend their time living. Atlanta must have a middle income majority to function. It will have one. The poor will be pushed to the suburbs. Enjoy, suckers!
The MARTA CEO should be fired, but he won’t be. The board consists of men and women who don’t need the train and wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.
There could be service. Regular surveys of potential riders, learning the scale, timing, and routes required for vans and buses to run, work in other cities. As it is, private buses run on the roads frequented by workers, charging more than MARTA but filling up with those who can’t afford a car.
Atlanta may never be a 15 minute city. But it can be a 30 minute city, where an e-bike takes you where you need to go in a half hour. The city is putting in some bike routes, grudgingly. Electric motors can scale, from trains down to vans, cars, bikes, scooters, even wheelchairs, for much less than the $5,000/year a private car costs, even if you own it, for insurance, gas, and parking.
Suburbs are becoming mini-Atlantas cars can’t adequately serve. Let those centers grow, connect them for bikes the way Atlanta is being connected. Learn where and when people go, so they can get there efficiently, adjusting as needed. That’s what will build an electric transit network that works for the 21st century.
MARTA is an artifact of another time.
Get rid of it.
