#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.