New era at MARTA can open new opportunities for metro area
An end is a beginning.
In that sense, this month’s departure of MARTA CEO Beverly Scott marks the closure of a critical half-decade for the region’s backbone transit agency and the community it serves.
Which moves us to the opening lines of a new chapter in Atlanta’s ongoing transportation saga. Now’s a pivotal moment for this metropolitan area that hammered out for itself a global perch by audaciously seizing the future while competitors were out to lunch.
We can likewise maximize the present opportunity — and profit now, and down the road, as a result. Or we can fixate on the here and now — or worse yet, on the past — and squander the promise of a pivotal inflection point.
Every MARTA worker and resident here will be involved in crafting this narrative — really, a business plan of tomorrow for our town. We must accept no less an outcome than ending up with a game-changing, yet achievable, transportation strategy that all the world’s A-list players will scramble to read. That’s the Atlanta we must become once more.
We should take the opportunity of a new start to bring a fresh, brash approach to chopping down to size our mobility woes.
In order to boldly navigate the future and bend it to our benefit, we must do the prep work of studying the problems of the past that plague us still today. They include the grievances legitimate or petty, the personality clashes, human frailties, infrastructure challenges, wasted dollars and opportunities alike. Taken together, they have left us where we are today — a great and beautiful city that’s vastly underserved by its transportation systems, be they overworked roads, or the aging steel cross of MARTA’s once-cutting-edge rail system. That both need work is undeniable.
And that is the task now before us as Beverly Scott heads off to run Boston’s well-developed transit system. Let us use the moment to move well past the status quo.
The impetus to do so was framed nicely by Gov. Nathan Deal in remarks last week at the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s annual meeting. In speaking about transportation, Deal noted that, “I think we can all agree that if people can’t move around freely, then I think that some of the growth that we’ve seen will begin to slow down.”
“Fortunately, I don’t think we’re at that point yet,” he added.
If we’re not there yet, we’re surely getting closer to the unprofitable juncture where growth collides with substandard infrastructure. That impending crash will cost Atlanta jobs and prosperity, as people, businesses and capital drive away to more-navigable cities.
We cannot even flirt with the temptation to let that uncreative economic destruction happen here.
Elsewhere on this page, Beverly Scott offers her thoughts on the transportation challenges ahead. Many might take issue with where Scott ends up, but her broad themes are well-reasoned and should find general agreement among many.
And it’s what happens here next that will matter. We need to figure out just what an intelligent, efficient, 21st-century mobility machine looks like in one of the least-dense big cities in the U.S. It can’t mimic today’s I-20 or Georgia 400 at rush-hour, we all know that much.
We can argue about whether new transit here looks like a bus roaring down a dedicated, congestion-resistant highway lane or a suburb-to-suburb light-rail line. Citizens and planners can debate how many new, or improved roads, are needed. We may need all three solutions.
And we must figure out how to pay for both bettering our present situation and keeping in good repair what we already have. Even the conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s post-T-SPLOST “Plan B” recognizes MARTA’s importance and recommends that funding be dedicated for the beleaguered agency.
As a region, we must also come to a more-businesslike attitude about how to most-efficiently operate the area’s multiple transit systems. Where are the opportunities to improve service and lower costs? Is it more cost-effective to operate disparate systems — or seek economies of scale that may be gained by better coordinating operations and services. The latter seems more in line with the ideal of making government squeeze the most out of public dollars.
A necessity toward this end is finally figuring out a regional transit governance structure. Our competitor cities, from conservative Dallas to liberal Minneapolis, made this leap long ago. Continued inaction in this regard will result in our prosperity leaching away at the margins.
Lastly, the arrival of a new CEO at MARTA should result in earnest efforts to rebuild relationships with elected leaders locally and statewide. Regaining the trust and confidence of pursestring-holders will push us toward resoluton of the regional mobility mess that we all struggle against daily.
Under new leadership, MARTA must also take tough, comprehensive steps to improve its fiscal results. That, too, will help with the matter of trust. It may also yield enough savings to let MARTA begin improving sketchy service.
And by achieving a gold standard of efficiency, MARTA will win the most critical battle of all — that of regaining the trust of grass-roots Atlantans. That will let us shake off the past, and move toward tomorrow.
During the Chamber luncheon last week, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said that, “I believe in being in the future business.” He added that, “I believe we’re in a unique city in the world.”
We deserve a transportation system to match.
Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board.
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12 comments Add your comment
Uncle Fester
December 3rd, 2012
7:49 am
After 6 years, there is no reason for single tracking at Lindbergh. Why must the passengers on the North Springs line have to get off at Lindbergh and wait for a Doraville train to show up? There is no construction going on. It’s a big scam to inconvenience the folks who actually pay for this monstrosity.
Want to get to the airport from the north suburbs without any hassles? Drive. You’ll get there faster than taking MARTA.
Zen Galacticore
December 3rd, 2012
2:07 am
@Sawbe- Apparently, a whole lot of people have to get downtown or surrounds five days a week. I know, because I see it three days a week myself.
I most times take the Marta train from the North Springs Station, but occasionaly I drive it, and everytime I do drive it, I wish I had taken the train! (So, I try to take the train as much as possible.)
Zen Galacticore
December 3rd, 2012
1:56 am
I’m a native Metro-Atlantan of 49 years. (I was born at Georgia Baptist Hospital, toddler to 6 years of age in Decatur, and raised and still living in Roswell.)
Greater Atlanta’s “transit system” is just shy of a joke! We need 10 TIMES more rapid rail, and wholly new equally extensive light-rail systems to connect this Greater Atlanta Monstro-CITY!
An attorney who’s connected to the whole geo-political mess that is Georgia and Atlanta said to me, when I strongly urged that the Greater Atlanta region, at least, concentrate on modern rapid rail, that, “rail costs money”.
Well, no kidding! Limited access highways, surface highways, exit ramps, bridges, etc., also cost money! (And don’t forget to compute and consider the environmental impact of millions of cars and ever widening highways to accomadate them that lead to untold ecological and environmental destruction!)
Let me make it personal for you. If you had to make a choice, would you rather your house be 150 feet from a rapid rail line, or 100 feet from a 10-lane expressway like I-285? Be honest.
And if you’re honest, then, as a fellow Atlantan and fellow Greater Metropolitan Atlantan, you know in your head as well as heart that it can’t go on this way, the way it mostly has for the last 40 to 50 years.
As Atlantans, we are not really serious about being a truly, “International City”, unless we get serious about rapid rail, light rail, and probably massively extensive subways as well. It’s the only way, and we have to do it.
Show me that spirit, fellow Atlantans, and let us rise from the ashes like the phoenix city we know we are! We can do it. It’s not just a question of money, it’s a matter of collective will power!
And while we’re at it, begin to re-develop our urban and suburban areas (when the ravages of time show their inevitable signs)and re-design and build on traditional grids, and forego the cul-de-sac and the “office park” and “strip shopping center”.
Start building “live-work-play” communities, on grids, communities that people will care about, and that will connect–again through grids– to the greater area. Get Logical!
One more thing. As a native Atlantan and Southerner, we’ve all got to get over this “racial” thing, both blacks and whites, and forever take that primitive absurdity out of the civic and civil engineering equation altogether forever!
Don’t fall prey to illusion, as we’re truly all in this together, like it or not. What is considered Metropolitan Atlanta is now over 6 Million people, and rest assured it will grow to probably 8 to even 10 Million people by 2050 or sooner.
Are you counting on flying cars, like “The Jetsons”? Well, don’t count on it. The federal aviation people will never allow it, so get real.
Anyone who commutes just two days a week to downtown and surrounds knows this: It can’t go on this way, and you all know it.
SAWB
December 3rd, 2012
12:54 am
While I can see the desire to have MARTA as part of the infrastructure future of the region I wonder how practical that is. Regardless of what the Urban Planners tell us we should desire citizens of the region have voted by their actions for a less than centralized region – sprawl if you will.
There is no way MARTA can ever effectively serve the region when you look at how the bulk of people in the Atlanta Metro Region live. For example folks are much more likely to live in Snellville, work in Dunwoody and shop in Buford than in the old model where everything was centralized in Downtown Atlanta.
While transit has a place in the future of the region we have to be realistic about the return on our investment and like it or not that most likely means more roads.
Wishing for Milton County
December 3rd, 2012
12:14 am
OK!!!! – Last week or so we got the story of bus drivers making $175,000 with overtime & sick leave.
Trasit cops making $300,000+ with overtime. Now the AJC want taxpayers to pump more money into this make work project….. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! MARTA needs to be put into bankruptcy. Every contract it has needs to be voided and the system turned over to a regional agency or somebody that will RUN IT LIKE A BUSINESS or least try to! Now it is just a money pump for the political class, their cronies and transit employees to suckle on.
I have lived in metro Atlanta since 1985. MARTA was a problem then. IT”S NOW A DISASTER. Hell even the airport planners did not care about MARTA when they built the new INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL.l. YOU CAN”T GET THERE USING MARTA!!! HOW SMART WAS THAT????
Finally our politicians want to build a new rail terminal in the gulch next to the GEORGIA DOME. WHICH YOU CAN”T GET TO EASILY IN A CAR!!!! Who owns the land in the gulch??? Some worthless study says the new “INTER MODEL TRANSPORTATION HUB” will generate 15,000 jobs. WHO was smoking what when they came up with that. Once again, this project will generate money for the political class and their cronies!!!! Talk about a waste of money…. Who in their right mind will go down to the gulch after dark to wait for a train, that won’t be on time, run by people who could care less about the passenger, who is waiting for the train.
The AJC needs to get their nose out of the butts of the politicians and start holding them accountable for all the stupidity, corruption and waste of taxpayer money. Didn’t the T-SPLOST vote tell you all anythiing????? HELL NO!!!!!!!
Jm
December 2nd, 2012
9:50 pm
Here’s an idea
Instead of using the hundreds of millions of dollars generated each year from the sales tax for tons of inefficient bus service that is also stuck in traffic, redirect those funds to things busy people can use, like dedicated rail lines or dedicated busways
Otherwise it’s a waste
And then layer in couter automation to increase frequency on the rail, and reduce costs
If google can program a car, someone can program a train and even a bus
But the Marta unions will fight that tooth and nail
At some point Atlanta needs to build transit to serve people cost efficiently rather than to create jobs and serve special interest, uneconomic bus routes
Retired Vet
December 2nd, 2012
6:35 pm
@DAWG POUND
December 2nd, 2012
4:54 pm
I guess I have been lucky when I rode MARTA to and from work- Atlanta to Decatur- for three years, and never was I late due to a disruption in train service. Once on the way home I remember having to get off at Candler Park station and a catch bridge bus to King Memorial Station on the way home bacuse someone deciced to conveniently jump onto the tracks and shut down service. I often see comments on blogs regarding unfortunate incidents involving some MARTA riders, but I guess luck has always been with me while riding MARTA. Below is a segment of an article of the Washington Post regarding Washington’s much touted metro rails system:
Everywhere you look, Metro seems to be busy rebuilding the subway system. That is, if you can see much of anything. As Metro spends billions to repair escalators and elevators and upgrade miles and miles of track, some riders and rider advocates say the transit system is continuing to neglect an even more basic need: light.
For years, many of Metrorail’s stations have been plagued by dim — even dark — pockets, yet better lighting has remained a low priority. Riders complain that stations are too dimly lighted to read a newspaper or even make out an escalator step. Wheelchair users and the visually impaired say navigating the system is even more difficult when the stations are too dark.
Levinson
December 2nd, 2012
6:08 pm
Why do you think Florida is going for the expanded Medicaid?
They have been trying to lure away business from Georgia with easy relocation for forever.
Levinson
December 2nd, 2012
6:06 pm
Business is going to leave this state to relocate to states where they can take advantage of the expanded Medicaid. This whole taste is going to turn to a desert economically.
And you all know it.
DAWG POUND
December 2nd, 2012
4:54 pm
First MARTA needs to improve the service it now provides. Trains are unreliable as they now exist. In the past 3 years, I personally missed 2 flights in which I should have arrived at least an hour in advance of departure. Both times the trains broke down and the entire system came to a hault. Today, I refuse to use MARTA as a means of transportation to the airport. Many I know have similar stories.