The TransportationCamp South Conference* was held on February 9th on the campus of Georgia Tech University here in Atlanta. I attended so I could mingle among like-minded individuals though I usually don’t say much. This year was an exception because I attended one session hosted by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) social media folks who wanted feedback on MARTA’s efforts with social media. I had some opinions about their performance s as did others. Here are my takeaways:
- As I suspected the MARTA phone application is limited in its usefulness. The only time I ever use it is track a bus route when I am taking a bus instead of the subway, but those traveling icons on the phone screen are not reliable. I learned that the buses are not on an automatic GPS system similar to the ones on Uber or Lyft, but rather it uses some kind of radio technology that is subject to outages and it is not automatic.
- The MARTA Facebook page is NOT designated as the place for up-to-date information about outages and problems. Facebook complaints are kind of bad MARTA PR, so there is a tendency to keep them to a minimum. For real time complaining and outage reporting, use MARTA Twitter’s account for that kind of sharing. (But I’m not on Twitter!)
- MARTA does track complaints about service etc. There was some debate among those in attendance whether MARTA should respond to each comment with something like “Your feedback is important to us…” instead of just crickets. Either way those complaints are tabulated and reported up the administrative food chain.
- MARTA really staffed up day and night for the Super Bowl Weekend, which kept delays and problems at a minimum. The MARTA representatives admitted that this same kind of service is not available during normal ridership. The costs are prohibitive. Thus, my satirical piece (see the January 22nd posting “Expectations for Super Bowl Fans Riding MARTA Subway Trains”) is founded in truth. The whole MARTA and City of Atlanta marketing plan was to tout the city’s great transportation system, but the day after it was “business as usual” and as regular riders know “business as usual” is not always so good.
I will give a little bit of a shout-out to the MARTA social media people who fielded the questions from those who attended the session. The staffers listened, they were candid as they could be in their response, and thus they deserve some respect and sympathy.
* Shown in photo are Professor Kari Watkins from Georgia Tech (left) with David Emory of Conveyal one of the event sponsors. Note how the TransportationCamp is spelled as one word.
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