Special series: It’s time to end MARTA’s boom-and-bust budgeting
(NOTE: This is the first in a special series examining MARTA. Part 2 will be posted Monday evening.)
On May 14, this newspaper ran a story that began:
“MARTA’s managers appear determined to hold the line on bus and train fares for another year, but unresolved labor problems and a desire to find new sources of revenue will be continuing worries . . . .”
Yep, that story ran on May 14 — in 1984.
What has the transit agency learned since then? Evidently not much. MARTA still awaits salvation, a train that never seems to arrive. If you read the digital board in a station, it may say, “North Springs, 13 minutes,” or “Airport, 2 minutes.” Perhaps MARTA should add, “Financial Rescue, forget it.”
As you may have heard, MARTA now faces a $120 million budget hole. Believe it or not, the agency projected as early as in 2006 that it would be short $60 million by now, even though revenues were forecast to rise for a decade. Problem was, expenses piled up even faster.
One might summarize the financial history of MARTA (and most public entities) this way:
The economy takes a turn for the worse; MARTA’s budget, which already assumed some operating losses, goes from tenuous to disastrous. Officials warn of (take your pick) drastic, draconian, devastating service cuts unless someone, anyone, finds $50 million in new annual funding. Because the economy has also hit state and local governments, no new money materializes. Service is cut and employees laid off by the hundreds.
The economy takes a turn for the better; MARTA’s losses don’t disappear but do shrink. Still, no new $50 million. Yet the agency restores service and reinstates jobs by the hundreds. Sales tax revenues rise, but expenses rise faster.
The economy takes a turn for the worse . . . .
For a quarter-century at least, MARTA has waited. It has hired lobbyists and PR agents. Managers have come and gone, as have four governors, five Atlanta mayors and various county leaders, of all political leanings. No matter; no new money.
It’s time to stop assuming that things are going to change.
It’s time to stop assuming that the money will come, and that MARTA’s leaders should keep approving boom-and-bust budgets rather than passing what’s sustainable.
It’s time to stop assuming that MARTA itself can or should expand throughout the region.
It’s time to start assuming that MARTA is what it is: One transit entity among many, one that can interlink with the others to play a relatively small but essential transportation role in metro Atlanta. One that must live with today’s 1-penny sales tax for its primary funding.
Alternatives are lacking. Dedicated state funding is a pipe dream — for political reasons, but also because, as the lean budgets lately show, no amount of state spending is truly dedicated.
The Transportation Investment Act of 2010 may generate some $7 billion over a decade if metro voters approve a new 1-cent levy. But, with apologies to the Beltline, the biggest challenges to metro mobility lie on or beyond I-285, and OTP voters are more likely to bite on projects that don’t bear a sullied brand.
In any case, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority would oversee rail or bus projects funded by the new levy. The idea that GRTA should then turn the new tracks or routes over to MARTA is loopy.
With a clearer view of its role in Atlanta, MARTA could better tackle the problems and opportunities it faces in its current size. There are plenty of each.
Next: How MARTA fell into its current hole.
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172 comments Add your comment
Jefferson
May 17th, 2010
11:12 am
I laugh at people like Smith who think they know it all, hope they are mad too. Bet he can’t resist making a comment either.
Horrible Horrace
May 17th, 2010
12:26 pm
buycott.com
NetBanker
May 17th, 2010
3:00 pm
My impression is that those who disparage public transportation because they’ll never ride it forget that they too receive a benefit by getting all those people who do ride off the road. It also allows students to get to classes thus educating the next generation as well as enabling people to get to jobs so they can pay income taxes and have money to put into the economy.
One other thing to consider with public transportation and an improved national rail system is our own desire to stop giving money to oil producing countries who financially support the terror groups who hate us. Train travel (be it heavy rail, light rail, street cars) is the most energy efficient way to move people and goods. If we had a better rail system then we could reduce our need for foreign oil and gasoline.
Disgusted…you must not know the history of MARTA. It wasn’t designed to stop at the perimeter, but that is where it stopped because the people who lived OTP didn’t want MARTA coming to their neighborhoods. They were afraid it would bring crime from the city. The original design had rail lines running out 75/85/20 in the median which was paved over in favor of more lanes instead.
rdh
May 17th, 2010
3:10 pm
Divide MARTA’s deficit by their ridership, and you get a fare increase of 80 cents per ride.
Problem solved.
MARTA is unwilling to make their ridership pay another $1.60 per day, but would be glad to let the taxpayers of Toccoa, Albany, St. Mary’s and Dalton, and the rest of rural Georgia, subsidize their budget.
NetBanker
May 17th, 2010
3:58 pm
“MARTA is unwilling to make their ridership pay another $1.60 per day, but would be glad to let the taxpayers of Toccoa, Albany, St. Mary’s and Dalton, and the rest of rural Georgia, subsidize their budget.”
Since the MARTA served area (aka Atlanta area) subsidizes Toccoa, Albany, St. Mary’s, and Dalton with state tax revenues why shouldn’t those areas help fund the transportation system that allows residents to earn and spend money thus ensuring the flow of tax dollars out of Atlanta (i.e. MARTA territory) to them?
Michael H. Smith
May 17th, 2010
4:19 pm
It is I who is doing the laughing Jefferson. MARTA and those who support it are the ones who are crying and angry because they can’t get any money from people like me to pay for their GUB’MENT rides and their GUB’MENT union jobs. Of course there is always the pitiful little lost attack puppies like you with nothing else better to do that can’t resist spouting off some lame drivel to boost their low self-esteem that adds nothing but a few more bytes of useless keystrokes to occupy empty server space.
End of the day MARTA gets no money, I keep my money and you… well, who really cares what you get or get off on. Now I’m laughing even harder.
Jefferson
May 17th, 2010
4:49 pm
Read like a book.
Blog is getting old Kyle did you hire Smith?
May 17th, 2010
5:08 pm
Enter your comments here
Michael H. Smith
May 17th, 2010
5:16 pm
I don’t work cheap, Kyle.
Peter
May 17th, 2010
5:52 pm
Conservatives are not conservative at all…….they just spend more money on guns and War then other folks.
Michael H. Smith
May 17th, 2010
6:20 pm
Let me see now, since 1900…
WW I – Woodrow Wilson socialist liberal Democrat
WW II – Franklin Roosevelt socialist liberal Democrat
Korean War – Harry Truman liberal Democrat
Viet Nam War – Lyndon Johnson socialist liberal Democrat
Gulf War I – George H.W. Bush moderate conservative Republican.
Afghanistan and Iraq War – George W. Bush liberal Republican.
Yep, liberals do tend to lie.
samuel
May 17th, 2010
6:48 pm
I find it remarkable that MARTA is the 9th largest transit system in the country despite its limited reach. In New York, you can take the Long Island Railroad more than 120 miles from Penn Station to Montauk. Even In South Florida, you can take the Tri-Rail commuter train 70 miles from Miami to West Palm Beach.
Just about every transit system that’s bigger than MARTA is running a budget deficit, in some cases (such as in New York), in the billions of dollars. Since all transit systems in this country are paid for with sales and/or property taxes, and those tax receipts decline when the economy is weak, major transit systems have budget deficits. It really is the economy. When it get humming again, things should get better for transit, as it will for the rest of the country.
I have been to cities of similar size to Atlanta (Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and Barcelona) that have much larger transit systems. If Cobb, Gwinnett or Clayton county had approved MARTA 40 – or even 20 years ago – we would have a much larger system than we have now. The crime problems those 3 counties are having now have nothing to do with MARTA. Thugs have cars too.
Finally, the purpose of mass transit is not to make a profit or go out of business, as so many conservatives believe. It’s to provide a service to the people in a city or metroplolitan area, because not everyone is old enough to drive, some people are disabled and some people simply can’t afford cars. I have lived in the city of Atlanta my entire life and I’ve never owned a car. Indeed, I’ve been a MARTA rider for 34 years. But I have also traveled extensively and ridden some of the world’s great transit systems, including the London Underground, the Paris Metro, the Mass Transit Railway in Hong Kong and the Tokyo Metro. I can say without hesitation that I am not missing a thing because I don’t own a car, and I don’t envy those who spend their lives making car payments. Mass transit is an essential part of the urban experience and those who disparage it are extemely provincial and could stand to get out and see more of the world.
Special series: Ending 50-50 split is no salvation for MARTA | Kyle Wingfield
May 17th, 2010
7:26 pm
[...] This is the second in a special series examining MARTA. Read Part 1 here. Part 3 will be posted Tuesday [...]
StevenCee
May 18th, 2010
5:40 pm
Kyle, I think it would be far more intellectually honest to first create your premises on solid ground, rather than just your opinion. Most major, functional cities, in America, and the world, have robust public transportation, Atlanta doesn’t and all attempts to create it (over the last 30-40 years) have been obstructed, and YES Kyle, due primarily to racism!
Ask older folk in Cobb, & other surrounding counties, & most of the honest ones will tell you this is fact. I’ve heard people say so, and that they now realize (as they face horrendous gridlock) they were wrong to do so. I grew up in Chicago, & took public transportation to school, baseball games, museums, etc, even as a 10/11 year-old kid, didn’t need my parents clogging the roadways driving me everywhere, and so did all my friends. We didn’t have the mindset that only “poor” or “colored” folk take the bus or train, no, even businessmen making six-figure incomes road into the city on commuter trains. But here, that is the unfortunate stereotype, & I dare you to try and refute that fact, and it has only been the current wave of joblessness & reduced incomes, that has led even the non-poor or black to seek an alternative to burning dollars sitting in gridlocked freeways!
Had Georgia & its legislators (& yes, BOTH Democrats & Republicans) dropped their old racist & anti-Atlanta attitudes, and been forward-thinking & visionary (& really, I was here in the mid-70s, and we already saw in LA, the decrease in quality of life massive sprawl creates, so we could very easily & EXPONENTIALLY CHEAPER, have created a state of the art mass transit system, one that would be a magnet for growth, but in a more managed way!
Special series: MARTA, not slump, put MARTA in red | Kyle Wingfield
May 18th, 2010
6:40 pm
[...] This is the third in a special series examining MARTA. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. The final part will be posted Wednesday [...]
Special series: MARTA put itself in red before recession hit | Kyle Wingfield
May 18th, 2010
6:54 pm
[...] This is the third in a special series examining MARTA. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. The final part will be posted Wednesday [...]
mtanoct
May 19th, 2010
12:14 pm
I am sick of this political/racial vent mess I am reading. So you all have vented. NOW we come up with some solutions instead of the racial bagging, political posturing and MARTA bashing I have seen for years and years.
I will provide a few starting from the least of things. For those who would like to ride a ’safe’ train line, should the agency have an additional police on the trains and at least two officers (from the local police) at each station? Tell me if that solution would be good?
Now to the price of using the system: Having one fare is nice, if MARTA went to a distance-based fare system, that would not deter me from using the system. It will provide some relief to the agency’s issues…but what else can the agency do? (Think before you answer, don’t just VENT anymore). By the way, I wish someone would read what is going on in D.C. and ask yourself, would you like there scenario…
Public Transportation is a Public Service: Police, Fire and EMS are emergency services are public services well and do not make a profit. So I wonder why we fuss about public transportation so much…when there is not a peep about when additional money is needed for those other items. Granted, there is a need for it, and I understand that if list those services in order of priority, Public Transit would be last.
Those three services are paid for in most cases with property taxes (from your homes and a portions of the rents in apartment complexes –which is not seen by the naked eyes but its there).
But residents and visitors alike all go out and buy something, and a small portion of their costs go to the sales tax that is used currently for public transportation — just as residents and visitors alike pump gas at gas stations across the country and that is used as best as it can for roadways and bridges. So why in the world are we complaining. Really. Just be glad that you do not get a bill every month stating you owe 200 dollars for your daily commute or better yet a bill every month to pay for all the true transportation needs out there. Now that would be pure blackmail for every resident!
Special series: A lesson on frugality for MARTA from out West | Kyle Wingfield
May 19th, 2010
6:53 pm
[...] This concludes a special series examining MARTA. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here or Part 3 [...]
Dave from GT
May 22nd, 2010
5:48 pm
1977……. FARTA; nothing has changed!
Soapbox: Privatizing MARTA makes no sense | Fresh Loaf
June 4th, 2010
11:02 am
[...] May, the AJC’s Kyle Wingfield penned a multi-part opinion series about MARTA’s financial woes. One possible solution the conservative [...]
MARTA’s response to my series | Kyle Wingfield
June 9th, 2010
9:56 am
[...] promised, here is MARTA’s response to my series of columns about the transit agency: its perennial budgetary problems, false hope in ending the 50-50 restriction on its sales-tax revenues, out-of-control spending even [...]
Michael
August 10th, 2010
8:15 pm
I don’t see how in the world Atlanta expect to be a international city with such shabby transit. Wake up Atlantans your political crap and games means nothing on the global level. Im sure Charlotte, NC and Dallas, TX appreciates Atlanta and Georgia passive transportation attitude, as they continue to rack up new headquarter that look over Atlanta, because of traffic. Atlanta it’s time for a new makeover, and not just Marta.