#2 The Bad Situation of the Public Transit in Atlanta

The Bad Situation of the public transit in Atlanta

From the statistics in “Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning.”, we can see that compared to 47.3 percent of workers in New York, only 4.7 percent of workers in Atlanta, which is less than national average, commute to worker via public transit. As an Olympic city, Atlanta should run a good public transportation system, but why are there only a few people using it?

Having been living and studying in Atlanta for more than 3 months, I have a quite comprehensive understanding of this this question. In Atlanta, MARTA, also known as Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, is the principal rapid-transit system, including both a bus route and a railway. Although it was formed in 1965 and is the ninth-largest in the United States, it does not seem like extraordinary. Personally, MARTA does not provide good services and convenience. MARTA consists of 48 miles of rail track with 38 train stations. It sounds like a huge number, but mathematically, there are only 38 stations with 1.3 miles average length between two of them within a city of total area of 132 square miles. If you are not sensitive for statistics, let’s say MARTA only operates primarily within the boundaries of Fulton and DeKalb counties. From my own experience, when I rode MARTA to my aunt’s house, I need to walk for 20 minutes from my Georgia Tech dorm to Midtown Railway Station, take the train, and call a cab or take my aunt’s ride for the rest 10 miles because there is not a MARTA station near her house. Obviously it is really inconvenient for me. Also, MARTA does not serve good services. There is not a map of the surroundings or a worker in the rail station, not any fence preventing kids from falling down on the platform, and the worst thing is that once I took MARTA rail Decatur Station, the time showed on the clock was wrong! Also the vibration on the train truly makes people uncomfortable. Maybe they are not serious problems for people who are used to MARTA, they cause inconvenience and unsafe. Even a common international student like me can find huge amounts of disadvantages, I believe the transportation department is aware of that. However, a second question comes, why don’t they really take care of the bad situation?

The reason is current Atlanta’s government’s policies. Government only has a limited amount of money, so it is reasonable that they want to use the money in a most profitable way. According to the 1999 Atlanta Region Outlook, the Atlanta region’s highway system has been a primary catalyst of economic growth and development for the past two decades. Therefore, the Georgia Department of Transportation is more concentrated on road building program than on public transit system. Mobility is quite equated with driving since mass transit has not penetrated much of the Atlanta region nowadays, which leads to less interests of government to improve public transit, and this result make economy depend even more heavily on keeping traffic moving along highways by cars instead of public buses.

As for the future, Atlanta public transit system is not optimistic either. Since sprawl is more and more common in Atlanta region, citizens are willing to move out of the city and into suburban area. If most of people are living in suburb, government must to increase the scope of public transit to satisfy those people’s need. It will be a great difficult for the transportation department since it not only costs a lot of money, but needs a convincing plan about how to construct these railways. Also, as Robert Bullard mentioned in his book,  "historically, planning agencies were unwilling or unable to address the mounting traffic, air quality, and cross-jurisdictional land use problems associated with the region’s needs." Although national press alarms that the region’s traffic congestion and poor air quality may keep new businesses from relocating to the area, actions will not be acted easily. Railroads and buses will not be there after a few words, government need to act but the current circumstance is that government needs more money. Hence, if there is not a way to solve the economy problem, public transit system can hardly be modified. However, I still hope transportation department will concentrate more on public transit and the region’s businesses and political leaders will heed the call to improve public transit.

Work Cited.

Bullard, D. Robert, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning. Washington DC: Island Press, 2000.

Dawson, Christie. Public Transportation Ridership Report. Third Quarter 2009. American Public Transit Association.

Neighborhood Relationships

Neighborhood relationships

“I’m not to get too friendly with anyone. My husband does not believe in it.”

“People are too gossipy and they could get us in a lot of trouble.”

“It is best to mind your own business.”

The statements above all show that many citizens are avoiding themselves from becoming involved in neighborhood friendships. They strictly limit the number of their friends into one or two. However actually, it will be a disaster if most of citizens hold this thought.

Let me share one of my experiences studying in Beijing, my hometown. Once I took subway with my elder sister, a woman with ragged clothes walked into us. She was taking lots of toys and showed me a piece of paper wrote ’10 RMB per toy. Your small amounts of money will be a huge help for me. Thanks.’ She showed me that she is deaf and dumb and really needs help by her hand language. Although I was impressed by her at that time, I did not bring any cash on me, so I just spoke to her that I did not have money without thinking about her deaf ears. Unexpectedly, she just left me and went into somebody else. The truth is she can hear at least but she pretended to be a deaf to arouse sympathy. Such thing is really common in streets and people barely have street friendship or even street trust on strangers.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I love walking as my favorite transportation because I love eye contact and communications on facial expressions between two strangers when they passing through each other. Smiling to someone reacts to the same result as breathing fresh air. However, in Beijing, people seldom have street smiling even when they are in a good mood. So many street lies lead to vanish of street trust and street smiling. I kind of disagree with some points in the Death and Life of Great American Cities since she mentions a lot about the disappear of street relationships in the United States. Actually, one thing that I like most about Atlanta is people on the street or in your neighborhood do not treat you as air. They are willing to smile back if you smile to them, and they are willing to talking to you whenever you start the conversation. It is not like people do not care anything rather than themselves, but they do want to contact with others. It is not like walking on the streets with eyes concentrating on the floor but on other people. Those behaviors seem to be trivial things in one’s life, but they are not trivial at all for a society. Elder people have formed our street trust over time from many little sidewalk contacts like getting advice from the grocer or giving advice to the newsstand man and we can not ruin it. Also, the success of forum on Internet has confirmed we human are born to communicate with others. Since street trust is decreasing, we find Internet a way to share our daily lives. However, why not just express ourselves to our neighbors? Face to face communication should always be more effective than screen chat. Therefore, even in a city living mode, we should still pursue a good street neighborhood relationship, which lead people to get contact, enjoyment, and help from the people around.

Admittedly, in city area where citizens is busy working and lack a natural public life, it is common for residents to isolate themselves from others. Also, Jane Jacobs mentions "nowadays in city life, privacy is precious and indispensable." in her book. If we contact too much with our city neighbors, it will generate a sense of threatens where privacy does not exist. Also, in planning theory, if anything is shared among people, much should be shared, which is mentioned as ‘Togetherness’ in Jane Jacobs’ book that may keep people from share their lives with us to protect their privacy. However, one thing that is always true is if we can not bear lack of contact, which causes distressing results. If people leave in a life where they never communicate with others, their mind can not hold the pressure of being alone. Therefore, although privacy is important, communication in a good neighborhood is even more.

Work Cited.

Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.

Walking

Among so many different ways of transportation invented by modern technology, the most convenient way will always be walking. With walking, people do not need to spend time waiting for buses, own the transports like bicycles, also people do not need to worry about the pollution which is inevitable when people are driving a car. However, nothing is perfect, so here what I am going to talk about is the strengths and weaknesses about walking.

What bothers us most nowadays? Transportation issues! The government and the public were finding ways to reduce the air pollution, energy consumption, and congestion, as well as revitalize downtown areas and to promote mobility for the carless since 1960s. Specifically, according to Susan Hanson's "the Context of Urban Travel concepts and Recent Trends"(Page 24), American government spent more than 11% of the U.S. Economy on the department of transportation on 2003, so the main point is what the government spent so much money for. Firstly, it is clearly that transportation, except for walking, is really a major consumer of energy, including fossil fuels like petroleum, gasoline and labor. Also, government needs to spend a lot on build new roads, broaden old roads, and repair broken roads. However, what does walking cost? Obviously, walking is still a major consumer of energy for us, but what we need to provide the energy is just live our regular lives. Moreover, which pollution or congestion will walking lead to?Apparently, unless there are so many people parting in a small place, I do not think walking on the street will cause pollution or congestion. 

Also, walking in a short distance to reach somewhere is a perfect sustainable transportation example. According to Preshn L. Schiller's "An introduction to sustainable transportation: policy, planning and implementation"(page 2), "walking in a short distance meets the basic access and mobility needs of individuals and societies to be met safely and in a manner consistent with human ecosystem health and it is affordable, and operate efficiently." Also, the patterns of transportation and urban land use,which is associated with high levels of automobile dependence, present many environmental, economic and social problems for the sustainability of cities. For example, the problems include oil vulnerability, urban sprawl, photochemical smog, acid rain, high greenhouse gases(global warming), noise, neighbourhood severance, visual intrusion, physical danger, decimated transit system, poor transit cost recovery, high proportion of city wealth spent on passenger transportation, congestion costs, high urban infrastructure costs for sewers, water mains, public health costs from air and other pollution, health costs from growing obesity due to sedentary auto lifestyles, lose of urban land to pavement, loss of productive rural land, loss of community in neighbourhoods, loss of street life, loss of public safety, anti-social behaviour due to boredom in car-dependent suburbs, enforced car ownership for lower-income households, isolation in remote suburbs with few amenities, access problems for those without cars or access to cars and those with disabilities, and physical and mental health problems related to lack of physical activities in isolated suburbs. Although walking can not solve all the problems above, choosing walking as the first choice of transportation will be effective for most of them and reduce their degree.

However, the biggest problem for walking is that walking holds a small mobility. As the distance between two places becomes longer and longer, it is much more exhausting going to one place from another by walking than by other transportations. For example, according to Susan Hanson's "the Context of Urban Travel concepts and Recent Trends"(Page 17) in 1997, American logged 4.6 trillion passengers miles of travel by all motorized mode, and 92% of those miles were by automobile; this total amounts to more than 14,000 miles of travel per person per year. (U.S. Department of transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1999, pp.35-37). That distance is truly impossible by walking. Here is a website which assesses the walkability score for any addresses:  http://www.walkscore.com/ . This website provides people whether they can take walking as their first choice of transportation or not. For example, if I type in the towers residence hall in Georgia Tech, I will get a walk score of 88 out of 100, which indicates it is very walkable here.

In my opinion, walking is and will be the most basic transportation way which can not be replaced. If people want to get onto a bike, a car, a bus or a plane, they need to have some distances walking. Hence, although the technology nowadays is well-developed, people will never forget what they do for transportation by born ------ walking.

Work Cited.

Hanson, Susan. The Geography of Urban Transportation. 3rd ed. Susan Hanson and Geneviene Giuliano. New York: Guilford Press, 2004

Schiller, Preston L. An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation. London: Earthscan, 2010.