Down & Outbound: The Hub

MARTA Whiteboarding

Recently at the southbound platform at Atlanta's Midtown Station, MARTA put up a large white board with magnetic letters encouraging commuters to “spell an affectionate word, food for thought, or a poetic sentence for your fellow passengers.”  These kind of initiatives (this one is called #railtalkATL) never hit me right. Instead of giving me warm and fuzzy feelings about public transportation worth sharing, my initial reaction was: “Don’t these people who think this stuff up have better things to do like keeping the trains running consistently?”

Apparently, judging from the affectionate words and thoughts shown here, my fellow commuters felt much the same.

I was thinking of rearranging the letters to:

If u cn rd

ths u prbbly

cnnt spll

This joke comes from the cover of a collection of cartoons called MacDoodle Street (1980) by Mark Alan Stamaty (note the circled text). But before I could act, the white board was removed. See? Atlanta is coming together as a city.

 

 

A Super Bowl of Jehovah Witnesses

Earlier this month, MARTA stations were overrun with Jehovah Witnesses who were in Atlanta for a three-day global convention on May 17-19th. Attendance at Mercedes-Benz Stadium was estimated to be 46,500 people, which depending how you look at it is somewhat equivalent (when multiplied by 3) to the Super Bowl invasion earlier this year, but with less fanfare.

There were several differences though: a.) MARTA didn’t really “talk up” their pre-event preparation like they did for the Super Bowl, b.) Well-dressed ambassadors patrolled the rail platforms and led the throngs around Five Points (shown in the photo above) and c.) the riders were not intoxicated and thus there was an absence of piss puddles, which we often see and smell after major sporting events.

Satire Meets Reality

For those few readers of Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire, this blog’s namesake, this should ring with some familiarity. In the fictitious town of Atlantis City where the book is set, the train stations of the East-West line have been renamed after the Stations of the Cross. This renaming was based on an Economic Task Force's suggestion to capitalize “on the nation’s growing interest in religion by creating a Christian-themed line to stimulate the city’s tourism industry.”

In the novel, more hijinks ensue when a man known as The Bad Samaritan and his followers ride the subway helping people on the condition that they retract any may-God-bless thank yous from appreciative commuters. After one incident when the Bad Samaritan helps a woman who has collapsed on sidewalk outside the Calvary station to get to the hospital, he asks when she blesses him, “Do you mind keeping your worldview on the power of God to yourself?”

Of course, the Atlantis City religious community found such conditions unacceptable and soon began distributing literature:

For purchasing information for the book, which includes 15 color mini-posters like this one,  visit downandoutbound.com.

The MARTA Book Club - A Transit Tradition

On my other blog -- a blog of personal musings about books an book culture called The Book Shopper,  I have been periodically tracking what people are reading while riding a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority bus or train.  I call it -- The MARTA Book Club.  For nearly a decade the MARTA Book Club has been metro Atlanta’s premier transportation book club (first posting November,2009). One reason is that membership is easy.  There are no meetings, no dues, no organization, no T-shirts and no one determines which book everyone must read. The only requirement is to read a book while on a train or a bus or waiting for a train or bus. Very individualistic.

Here’s a list of what members have been reading while riding MARTA in recent months:

Galapagos: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

Trouble Brewing by Susan Page Davis

White Death by Clive Cussler

Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy by Jules Witcover and Senator Edward M. Kennedy

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia by Robert Hughes

In a Sunburned Country (Australia) by Bill Bryson

Early Riser by Jasper FForde

D-Day Illustrated Edition: June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose

The Seventh Babe by Jerome Charyn

The Solace of Monsters by Laurie Blauner

Year One by Nora Roberts

Fidel: A Critical Portrait by Tad Szulc

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

The Bible

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

Guards! Guards: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Michael Duncan

There is a healthy selection of books, but we are disappointed when nearby Gwinnett County voted down an opportunity to join the MARTA Book Club by 54 to 46 percent margin last Tuesday. We would have welcomed them to the fold, but we guess short-sighted residents there prefer sitting in never-ending traffic and contributing to the deterioration of the environment with their fossil fuel consumption.

But one of best strategies to combat ignorance is to read, (and think) and that’s what MARTA Book Club does.

(A variation of this  posting appears on The Book Shopper Blog: Personal Musing About Books To peruse the previous 33 MARTA Book Club postings dating back to 2009 visit here.)

Notes from Transportation Camp

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.

Related Articles?

A couple of headlines from the Sunday, February 10, 2019 edition of The Atlanta Journal Constitution. One is from the front page about the widespread destruction of Georgia's crops during Hurricane Michael caused in part by climate change (though the article doesn't say that, but if you scroll down to an earlier October 17th posting...) and the other from the Metro section is about whether Georgia's second most populous county Gwinnett is going to vote to expand mass transit. The article focuses on people's long commutes with no mention of the cleaner air or lessening the need to burn fossil fuels, which is contributing to climate change. Just connecting the dots. Voting for Gwinnett MARTA expansion is March 19th. 

Expectations for Super Bowl Fans Riding MARTA Subway Trains

Expect constant delays.

Expect constant apologies for constant delays over the loud speaker, but with little or no additional information.

Expect to be panhandled.

Expect electronic train arrival signs to be either not working or incorrect.

Expect puddles of urine in the stairwells decorated with wet cones.

Expect crowded subway trains.

Expect passengers to lean against crowded subway doors that prevent the trains from leaving.

Expect this to cascade to further backups on the platforms, which leads to more crowded subway cars, which won't leave because riders are leaning on doors, etc. etc.  (e.g. The night of the 2018 College Football Championship) 

Expect to be treated like a daily Atlanta commuter.

Despite all this, thank you for choosing MARTA and have a wonderful day.

Scooter Myth: First and Last Mile Connectivity

Here's a short article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, December 20th written by Bill Banks about the City of Decatur where I live and walk the 10-15 minutes to the train station four days a week for the last 9 years. 

Though miffed by the sudden arrival of EScooters in the city last October without prior notification, Decatur commissioners believe the technology is, according to City Manager Peggy Merriss, “consistent with the city’s strategic plan and community transportation plan.”

The scooters, also called “dockless mobility scooters,” “longboards” and “stand up electric scooters” (and less savory designations by those in opposition), are marketed as a convenient solution for short trips.  Merriss believes there’s truth here and that potentially the scooters “can get people out of cars and contribute to better air quality. 

“I don’t have an issue with them, if used appropriately,” she added. “They are not toys, and there has to be education, enforcement and role modeling.”

On Dec. 17 the commission authorized the city manager (Andrea Arnold will take over for Merriss beginning Jan. 1) to execute an interim operating agreement for using the scooters. This interim agreement has room for flexibility and probably will take another month to finalize. But the eventual goal, Merriss said, is to pass an ordinance by the first quarter of next year.

Some key points the in the interim manifesto include keeping the vehicles on bikes lanes, streets and bike paths while prohibiting their use on sidewalks. Also, the age limit is 18, helmets are mandatory and usage is limited to daylight hours (although this could expand). Each company is limited to 50 scooters within the city, and strict parking regulations apply—currently scooters are often parked in clumps on sidewalks, or occasionally singly and abandoned.

“There are some cities in the state that have banned them,” said Mayor Patti Garrett. “We don’t want to go that route. The big problems are irresponsible drivers, underage drivers, people riding double and, in one case, I heard somebody say, ‘I don’t know how to stop this thing!’ 

Merriss said she doesn’t have a precise number but guesses there are over 100 scattered throughout Decatur’s four square miles. Most belong to Bird Rides and few to LimeBike. On Wednesday a third company, the “JUMP by Uber” launched scooters in Atlanta.

Though a short article it touches on several related issues about transit:

1. "First and last mile connectivity" is a transit wonk catch phrase that the scooter industry has used in marketing to convince people that scooters are a remedy for transit woes. (Anecdotally,  I have yet to see a commuter ride a scooter to or from an adjacent neighborhood to the Decatur train station.)
2. The sidewalks, especially on Church street are narrow and broken and underwater when it rains (shown here).Of course automobiles constantly buzzing at 35 miles an hour doesn't improve the walking experience. Plans are for improvement to slow the traffic but that has been promised or proposed for years. (Last word is that easements were being obtained.)
   
3. New developments in Decatur including the proposed one called the Quarters on Church Street near Glenlake Park seem to be an antithesis to make Decatur more walkable or sustainable by dumping additional motorists from the proposed 43 unit development onto an already very busy street.  Even if the developer puts in a wide sidewalk -- the development connects to nothing but narrow, broken, and flooded sidewalks. 
4. On a larger scale, isn't this development and scooter regulations indirectly a carbon issue? A developer cuts down large mature trees and more traffic is potentially dumped on the roads and more scooters dominate the discussion. This is really climate issue because everything is a climate issue. Below is the headline from the front page of the January 11, 2019 New York Times. Maybe its not as indirect as we have been thinking.
   

 

Scooter Humor

I have become obsessed* about scooters but in an unhealthy way -- like riding 15 mph on a motorized scooter without a helmet on a sidewalk strewn with wet leaves. I really dislike them.  I've even written a joke about it:  "The only thing that keeps me from clipping the brake cable on every parked scooter I pass, is doing prison time for manslaughter."

Here's the one major irony of scooters. They often are parked on narrow sidewalks blocking the path of pedestrians and can become a nasty obstacle to those on motorized wheelchairs. The irony is that the ramps on curbs that allow motorized wheelchairs to cross the street are the same ramps that allow scooters to use sidewalks. Funny, but nobody's laughing.

 

*check out the DownandOutbound Facebook page for more scooter vitriol. 

Price Comparisons: Hurricane vs. Public Transportation

The other day I was reading this article from the September 20th edition of The Economist while riding a crowded MARTA train:

And that's not all -- then there is the loss of poultry and pigs:

You could buy a lot of greenhouse gas-reducing public transportation for that kind of money and maybe save yourself the expense of a hurricane or two:

 

But either way, those chickens are not coming back...

Is This Abandoned Bicyle Street Art?

This seat-less bike has been chained to a Midtown Atlanta street sign for a couple of weeks. Long enough to wonder if someone is making some kind of "artistic" statement.