Expanding MARTA the wrong way on Highway 400

by Darin Givens | August 19, 2024

Ugh, this image.

It's as if someone prompted an AI image generator with: "create a Bus Rapid Transit stop that no sane person would enjoy, and that essentially celebrates the dominance of personal cars over transit while also exposing riders to exhaust fumes"

This is a rendering of how MARTA's bus-rapid transit (BRT) station on Highway 400 could be situated near a revised Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell. It's taken from an Urbanize Atlanta article about GDOT's project to add 16 miles of lanes that will serve as tolled express lanes for vehicles, plus BRT lanes.

I understand the value of incremental strides toward transit expansion, but I fear this design for stations could undermine ridership.

A recent Urban Institute analysis by Yonah Freemark (at urban.org) states that locating open-air stations near highways exposes transit riders to high levels of air and noise pollution. It also requires riders to walk a considerable distance to get onto a platform, and offers less opportunity for high-density, mixed-use construction oriented around the transit stations.

Basically, GDOT and MARTA are doing the right thing (expanding access to transit), but doing it exactly the wrong way. I understand how this type of transit station seems like a "win" when compared to no expansion at all. But in this era, we need to be reaching for a higher goal than "better than nothing at all" with our transit investments.

When riders are exposed to a high levels of air and noise pollution, don't we bear responsibility for negative health outcomes? If we know that there are better designs possible? I also understand "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" but who gets to define "good" here?

MARTA is building a new $37.5 million transit hub next to the Gallery at South DeKalb shopping center, pictured above, according to a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about a federal grant for the project. This is a good investment in transit. But...

1.) DeKalb needs to make this place less car-centric in the long run. It's a grossly hostile environment for walking, which is a terrible situation for transit riders and transit investment.

2.) It's strange that the redevelopment plan for Five Points MARTA Station in Downtown Atlanta essentially consists of the same bus-bay + plaza + canopy combo that the burbs are getting (albeit a supersized version). The center of a city should be getting actual development at its transit stations. Transit design that's appropriate for the burbs is not necessarily appropriate for Downtown.

The invisible MARTA bus network redesign; when will it appear?

"MARTA will unveil a new bus network plan this summer...new service would launch next spring" -- that quote is from a March 31, 2023 article in the AJC by David Wickert, reporting that a proposed route map would be revealed that summer, based on info from the MARTA board’s planning committee.

And yet over a year later, no plan has been unveiled for the new bus network. Instead, MARTA's website for the project says they're still at the design-drafting stage (see second image, source: marta2040nextgenbus.com)

It would be nice to know exactly what's delaying this bus network redesign.

I realize that, with no new operations funding accompanying the project, it's not likely to be a spectacular change to the system. It would reportedly reduce the overall number of bus routes, redesign most of them, and increase frequency of bus arrivals on some.

But there would not be any extra money for hiring new bus operators to improve service in a comprehensive way. And that may be playing a part with this delay in the redesign; MARTA administration may not be excited about rolling out changes that will privilege some routes with higher frequencies while cutting services elsewhere -- and honeslty, who could blame them.

And yet we spent money on that network redesign, hiring an outside firm (which completed their work a couple of years ago), and we need to see some results from it, I feel.

I've asked various folks what the pathway is for increasing operations funding at MARTA for bus operators and maintenance workers, and no one seems to know. That question always sinks into a black hole of shoulder shrugs.

And so I'm now asking you, gentle readers. Are there any policy wonks among you who can point a way toward increased operations spending for MARTA buses?

Build rail for tomorrow's city, not today's

Darin Givens | April 23, 2024

There are many logical reasons to cast a critical eye on the streetcar extension to the Eastside Beltline, and we should never spend this much money without arguing.

But folks, please stop acting like we can only build rail for the current conditions in a place -- this wrong assumption is the foundation for too many arguments against Beltline rail. We should build rail for the future version of Atlanta.

Obviously, we've screwed up in the past and built rail for "current conditions" and not for walkable growth, and that's a set of mistakes we should remember...

We built the MARTA heavy-rail system to serve as commuter lines to a Downtown Central Business District as it existed in the 1970s, but the system ended up being dwarfed by both job sprawl and residential sprawl, while too many of our rail stations were ensconced in parking lots and low-density development.

And we built a streetcar for tourists that runs mostly empty throughout the week because we included no walkable-density plan, leaving it surrounded by too many parking lots and empty properties -- and saddling it with interstate access points that challenge walkability.

So let's learn from our mistakes and start matching investment in high-capacity transit with transit-supportive density for the future. Is the Beltline a great place for doing that? I think so. It's a growth corridor, and the route is level for rail with only a few tricky intersections.

I think it's absolutely a good thing for people to disagree and have healthy debate about this, but the debate needs to be informed by the fact that building rail for current conditions is a mistake, as evidenced by our past, and that remedying that mistake means thinking about high-capacity transit in a new way.

Opposing Beltline rail in terms of what the conditions are on the corridor today is a bad faith argument. It's unfair to the future of the city to burden it with more of that same problematic planning decisions of the past.

Yep. We need someone to speak on the record about what's really happening with these announcements about four new infill MARTA stations and a new BRT line on North Avenue to the Bowen Homes redevelopment.

We went from the austerity of "we need to trim down the MARTA project list because we can't afford all this" & "the Campbellton Road project is now BRT because we can't afford rail" to the surprise of "we're massively expanding capital projects with new stations and BRT" in just a couple of years.

How? MARTA and the City of Atlanta owe us some real numbers, please. Otherwise the entire More MARTA tax and the recent austerity are really confusing.

Obviously, all of these recently-announced projects would be wonderful to have. I'm not arguing about that. I love 'em.

But Atlanta has a history of announcing things that don't happen (the massive redevelopment of Underground Atlanta that didn't materialize, for instance) or things that end up being surprisingly costly to the public (the Mercedes-Benz pedestrian bridge). It erodes the public trust.

I want transparency about this new situation so that we're better informed about decisions that are obviously being made behind closed doors that are affecting us all.

This image was used in a 2017 Streetsblog post from Yonah Freemark, titled "In Atlanta, Transit Service Lags Behind a Booming Population."

As Freemark noted, the Atlanta region sprawled out dramatically across several counties during the last few decades, onto previously undeveloped land. We've come to the point where only 8% of our metro population lives within a mile of MARTA's 48-mile heavy rail system.

Imagine if Metro Atlanta had instead spent the last few decades building transit-focused, compact neighborhoods that serve transit well -- versus exploding outward in a sprawling, car-centric format that doesn't help transit become an efficient alternative.

It's like Atlanta ran away from our train lines with our growth format, enforcing car dependency along the way through zoning laws that demand low density neighborhoods.

We can't simply build new train lines to every suburban cul-de-sac (with the current cost of rail construction, it's doubtful we'll see new heavy rail lines at all).

But we also can't build inclusive density near all of our existing rail stations unless zoning is changed to allow it.

In the center city, we have been treating single family neighborhoods -- even ones that are near train stations -- like each one of them is a precious jewel in need of preserving in amber, even as housing woes increase and low-income people are pushed into suburbs without transit service and with dangerous roads.

We need to reverse all of that. Step one is convincing people that a problem exists and that our old ways of land development are in need of a fix.

The first MARTA passengers, at GSU Station in July of 1979. MARTA rail came together pretty quickly, at least by today's standards.

That's less than 10 years between the funding and the first passengers. Even when you consider that preliminary concepts and political work for MARTA rail started in 1965, that's still less than 15 years.

Meanwhile, the Tax Allocation District funding for the Beltline began 20 years ago and the first rail line isn't expected to open until 2028. Better late than never, but I have nostalgia for the heady days of the 1970s when things seem to have happened more quickly.

(Photo source: GSU Digital Collections)

The only pedestrian route to the rail station from the apartments at MARTA's King Memorial development is a watery mess after the rain.

I've heard that the puddles and the goopy water are largely due to bad rainwater management on the CSX property.

Question: can we get federal help in forcing CSX to address it? This is just embarrassing.

Ridership of MARTA has declined sharply over the last decade and there are many factors behind that. But surely we can all agree that awful pedestrian conditions are not helping.

Added context for this tunnel: CSX owns the land behind the tunnel walls and MARTA can't do anything about that rainwater management without CSX approval. The rail company also owns air rights above their tracks, so MARTA would need approval for building a pedestrian bridge to the apartments.

I assume the city owns the roadway under the tunnel including the sidewalks. I wonder if there's a way for the city to build an elevated sidewalk with drainage that at least puts the goop on a level beneath the one pedestrians are on? Is that a thing?

Dream map of MARTA rail by artist Brooke Robinson

Thanks to local artist Brooke Robinson for letting me share this beautiful map, which shows a dream expansion of MARTA rail for Atlanta!

I asked Brooke to describe the purpose of this piece and here's the response:

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Well said! It's important to keep dreaming and imagining a more sustainable and equitable future for Atlanta.

We've heard it said that a city's annual budget is a statement of its values, and similar can be said about our creative visions for what the city can become. The dreams display our values -- and a less car-oriented place is an excellent value statement for all of us to embrace.

You can find Brooke on Instagram at @brooketheartist

Top: a map of Atlanta from 1927, zoomed in on a section of South Downtown just southwest of Underground Atlanta, at the intersection of Forsyth Street and Trinity Avenue. Notice the dark blocks that show where buildings were.

Bottom: what's currently at this location. Notice that the buildings – most of them, anyway – are gone. Instead, we've got surface parking lots that stay empty most of the time. Five Points MARTA Station is out of view to the north, and Garnett Station is just barely out of view to the south.

Remember this when someone says that MARTA doesn't go anywhere. We haven't given rail a fighting chance to succeed in Atlanta, given the disused space around many stations. This should be a great urban place.

We can and must do better. This is a dramatic example but there are others as well, where we've allowed suburban levels of density to linger near our major investments in rail. Some progress has been made by way of MARTA' s transit oriented development program. Much more is needed.

I want Atlanta to beef up its urban density near MARTA's heavy rail lines to the point where our daily ridership is much higher than the 87,805 indicated here.

And add a few infill stations. As far as expansion goes, I'm standing by my pessimistic prediction that heavy-rail expansion isn't likely in ATL. Hopefully I'm wrong.

But even if I'm right about heavy rail, we can still expand high-capacity rapid transit in general. We can build many miles of Bus Rapid Transit, for instance, and of course the light-rail component of the Atlanta Beltline.

The end result I want to see is not transit ridership in itself, but the thing that ridership represents: a better match between urban development and urban-appropriate transit lines, moving us away from sprawl and car dependency.

None of this is meant as a slight to regular buses, BTW, which are great and will continue to be important.

Image source: NaqiyNY on Twitter

Well said. If you're a local leader who "can't use MARTA" because your "schedule is too busy" you need to be speaking out constantly on the need for better transit service in the city, for the sake of everyone.

Many of the rest of us are busy too, and we're reliant on transit because we can't drive. We just have to make that s*** work the best we can.

MARTA should change course on costly Five Points Station redesign

According to Atlanta Business Chronicle, MARTA has announced that the redesign of the top of Five Points MARTA Station will not be completed in time for the 2026 World Cup crowds as previously planned.

I think this is a chance for MARTA to make a better decision.

I say scrap the whole idea for a redesign at street level until some day when MARTA is able to include vertical development on top. Otherwise this is arguably a waste of a precious $259 million worth of funds.

Aesthetically, the planned redesign may be an improvement. But we need more than an aesthetic improvement in an area that is besieged with dead spaces such as data centers and parking decks. Five Points desperately needs active uses for 24/7/365 vibrancy to turn the tide.

Check out the above image to see what I mean when I say "besieged with dead spaces." The land-use around Five Points MARTA is awful, and this doesn't even capture all the badness.

An aesthetic improvement to the top of the station is arguably a misuse of public money given the huge need for active uses here.

Opposition to MARTA rail in North Fulton was ugly in 1988, but luckily it failed

The sign reads: "Save our homes. Save our neighborhood. No Pitts Road Station." This photo (by Walter Stricklin for the AJC) captured the angry opposition to MARTA rail at a 1988 public meeting in North Fulton.

They were trying to halt what ended up becoming the North Springs Station.

To be clear, these people weren't in danger of being displaced. They were simply 'in danger' of having rail connect their area to the City of Atlanta. It's not hard to guess at what was behind that fear, looking at this group of white faces.

Crime was one of the big topics at the meeting. People didn’t want 'urban' transportation near suburban homes and schools. The horror.

It’s possible that these protests played a small part in the exact position of the final station (there were multiple alternatives in play). But they didn’t stop rail from coming.

Today, North Springs Station handles thousands of weekday boardings. That means thousands of people have the option to not bring their cars into jobs centers and more in Atlanta.

Think of how many more car trips we could have prevented if Cobb and Gwinnett had voted to join MARTA in the 1970s, when there was actually federal funding available to build that rail.

Regrettable opposition to 'urban' things like mass transit and density -- that needs to remain in our past.

(Image source: GSU Digital Collections)

Stocking the Chattahoochee with piranha to keep MARTA out of the suburbs

by Darin Givens

Dan Immergluck gives a good summary of the troubled beginnings of MARTA in this excerpt from his book 'Red Hot City', which you should read.

Yes, metro Atlanta is a different place now and there's obviously a lot more support for MARTA in Cobb today than there was 52 years ago.

I'm not sharing this just to shame people. I'm sharing it because it's important to know how we got to where we are with our rail system, which reaches only a small portion of a very sprawled-out metro region. It's not MARTA's fault.

There was a period in the 1970s when the federal government was spending a lot of money to build rail transit in cities, but they still had to be judicious with where it was spent (Atlanta got its share of funding at the time it did partially because Seattle turned theirs down).

In the years since then, the price of building new rail in cities has skyrocketed for various reasons, even when adjusted for inflation. Cobb County could approve MARTA today, but getting a new rail track adequately funded there is a more difficult prospect now.

In 1971 no one was making transit-oriented density or a de-emphasis of cars in the transportation system a requirement for rail funding. The idea of building park-and-ride rail to a single office district seemed OK.

In 2023, we need to think differently. Work commutes are less than 1/4 of the trips we make, office districts have spread out, teleworking is more common -- it's time to reimagine transit so that it's paired with a more compact type of development, plus affordable homes, plus mixed-use neighborhoods designed at a scale for walking.

This is a great comparison from @cars.destroyed.our.cities! (You should follow that account BTW).

They overlaid the train system of Madrid on a map of Atlanta and vice versa.

But it's worth mentioning: metro Atlanta sprawls out at nearly 4 times the land area of metro Madrid. And the center city of Madrid has 4 times the population density of the City of Atlanta.

In other words, Atlanta needs to dense the F up to better support transit and become less car dependent. The center city should lead the way, and focus on affordability too.

"Expand MARTA" is not a useful rallying cry unless we're willing to put more people in proximity to transit, in housing that's affordable for lower and middle earners.

We can't build train lines to suburban cul-de-sacs that have only a few dozen home in walkable distance. Atlantans have a lot of trouble understanding this, which needs to change.

And if you think we should "just build rail and the density will come" I've got a sad little streetcar route I'd like you show you, plus several MARTA stations surrounded by a startling lack of residential density, including ones in downtown.

We have to be very intentional about equitable compact growth that de-centers cars. Plan for it, and match it with major investments in transit.

Our urbanism is not controlled entirely by developers & lenders

This eyesore sits across the street from Lenox MARTA Station and PATH 400, wasting space that could hold transit adjacent development.

This was a Houston's restaurant until about five or six years ago when it closed.

Unfortunately the only thing that's been proposed for the property is a luxury apartment tower perched atop a parking deck with 458 spaces. (FYI, zero parking is required for this spot because of its proximity to a MARTA station.)

Am I being too picky in expecting the city to find a way to add affordable homes, with a progressively-low amount of parking, near MARTA stations? Even in Buckhead?

Many will say I'm being too picky, and that my ask is unrealistic given the market forces at play. Yes, it's true that if you let the market do whatever it wants, lenders and developers will primarily create luxury apartments with massive parking decks near transit stations in the hotspot neighborhoods.

That's the conservative choice that they will make, based on assumptions that Atlanta is immovably a car-oriented city.

But our urbanism is not entirely at the mercy of lenders and developers. *Anyone who tells you otherwise likely has selfish motives*. (Seriously, look suspiciously at anyone who says we have to just let developers and lenders do what they want, and that we can't influence what they produce.)

We've bent over backwards for all kinds of corporate relocations and sports events. We've reshaped the city in many ways that were harmful or questionable, using public financing tools to make it work. Let's bend over backwards for better urbanism now.

Instead of just being a city that defines success largely by its ability to attract major sports events and corporate headquarters, we can be a city that triumphantly overcomes the damage of car-centric sprawl and development inequity.

We can do it by rebuilding our urban fabric for pedestrian-oriented, affordable density -- and making excellent use of the land near our precious rail investments.

It's not just a "nice to have" dream. I think it's something we need to have, and that we need to all expect from our growth.