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.

 

 

Black & White Photos of Commuters

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the famous photographer Walker Evans took black and white photographs of riders on the New York City subway. The book Many Are Called includes 89 of these photographs with an introductory essay by James Agee. It was not published until 1966 because Evans was initially concerned that since these passengers were photographed secretly without their permission, there were  issues surrounding privacy and worries about possible legal problems. Moreover, the idea itself was not particularly well-received at the time by publishers and galleries and was mothballed along with Agee's introductory essay until Evans began to revive the project in 1958 (Agee died in 1955).

Agee immediately understood the significance of Evans' s work because riding a subway as a commuter  (even today as then) is one of the few times that people let their guards down revealing "a wound or nakedness" that we often conceal from others. Until I studied the words and pictures of  Many Are Called  I didn't realize that this is the underlying reason that people do not like to be stared at on the subway. You should always avert your eyes -- gaze at the oracle that is your cell phone, read a book or peer into the dark tunnels instead. Avoid looking at people when they are the most weary and vulnerable.

 

 

 

Churchill on the Subway

In this scene from movie "The Darkest Hour" Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, queries riders on the London Underground whether Great Britain should sue for peace or fight the Nazis on the beaches, the landing zones, fields and streets etc. It was the emotional zenith of the movie, but as it turns out totally fictitious. Rats.

 

Hidden Train Video

From the director of Percolator,  a new film about the Decatur MARTA Station...

 

 

Burning Memories #2

On Thursday, May 4th, I was on the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) train that filled with smoke during my evening rush hour commute. I ended up having to evacuate the train and take a tunnel catwalk back to the Midtown Station. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the following Saturday that, "MARTA Police and Emergency Management said an arc of electricity from a high voltage rail -- not a fire -- apparently created smoke that filled the train."  My re-occurring thoughts include:

• Where there is smoke there is fire. Not sure how that "not-a-fire" explanation works.
• What caused the arc of electricity? MARTA trains are notorious for electrical outages especially during heavy rains.
• As mentioned in a previous posting, if you ride MARTA regularly enough, something like this -- where a train breaks down or an incident with a passenger causes major delays -- happens every other month. (It was the second time in 6 days where I had to evacuate a train.)

My prediction is that once the I-85 bridge is repaired, commuters will return to their car driving ways, especially since gasoline prices remain low and they will know that the MARTA experience often requires passenger patience.