One of my favorite local blogs, Pecanne Log, wrote a post yesterday about a great Atlanta mystery: Why are Downtown and Midtown so damn dead after dark and on weekends? I think everyone who lives in Atlanta is confounded by its inexplicable car culture, and the lack of a thriving and bustling city core.

For my part, I think the problem is three-fold: One part fear of crime, the poor, and crappy schools, one part irresponsible development that throws up more junk while neglecting the existing infrastructure, and one part geography: Most great American cities have grown up around a limiting geographical feature, usually a body of water, that hems it in and forces it upward rather than sprawling out. Pheonix, Dallas, and Atlanta are all limited by the room they have to spread their wings; NYC, Chicago, DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. . . all are hemmed in and yet empowered by their geographical limitation.

What is the problem? What is the answer? I have no clue. Does anyone really think that Atlanta will be a great city in the vein of a New York or Seattle? I have my doubts.

Anything else you see as a great Atlanta Mystery?

For at least six months I drove by a sad, lost, lonely and confused corkscrew twice a day. It’s been six months since my commute path changed, and it’s still there. That’s a total of one year that a lone piece of plastic and metal has been hanging out, waiting to be claimed, removed, or thrown away.

He’s laying neatly on the yellow paint of the center divider between Forsyth Fabrics and TDS/Figo on Huff Rd. waiting for someone to recognize him and pick him up. He doesn’t know his name or his parents names, or where he lives.

I’ve concocted several possible explanations for how he came to be there, but none are right or real. I’d love to find the truth.

He looks to be a classic lever model, black, and no longer in working condition.

Is he yours?

i started riding marta one year ago last week. it was a combination of frustration with sitting in my car, the rising price of gas and just a plain old desire to have some time back in my life that put me on the train for the first time. by the time those first few weeks were over, i was hooked. i haven’t driven my car to my office in alpharetta in more than one year, that is how much i love my ride to and from work on the bus and train every day.

this is what i wrote here on the atlanta metblog of that decision a year ago:

and then last friday hit. my commute from my workplace off of old milton parkway in alpharetta back home to north ormewood took more than two hours to complete. i was frustrated, upset and stressed. i seriously could feel my blood pressure increasing with each time i tapped the breaks.
as i watched each marta train cross over me on 400 zipping into town i asked myself, can it really be that bad?

i start every morning out on the #9 bus which i ride from in front of my house ever morning to the five points station. i get on the northbound train and ride it all the way to the end of the line at north springs. from there i get on another bus, the #140, which takes me all the way up to old milton parkway and my office. all told the trip takes me about 90 minutes each way. it’s a good 45 minutes longer in the morning and about a push in the evening, adding 45 minutes to my commute. and i wouldn’t give it up for the world.

i have learned a lot in the year i have been riding marta. first and foremost i have learned that for the most part all of the reasons people give for not riding marta – it doesn’t go anywhere, it isn’t safe, it’s not reliable are just myths. i have learned that if you are willing to ride a bus, you can get almost anywhere in fulton or dekalb on marta. marta is as reliable as driving; you can look back on my posts about marta over at my personal blog and it’s incredible how few of them have to do with problems or delays. sure they happen, but about as frequently as construction or an accident or a braves game would delay my commute.

so i have learned those things; that most of the issues people come up with for not riding marta are basically myths, but i have learned a lot more about myself too. i have for the last year on an almost daily basis been in the overwhelming minority on my commute. i can’t begin to stress how much this has changed my thinking and perspective on issues related to race and our society . i tried to capture it once in a post on my personal blog, but i don’t think i am a good enough writer to nail it:

it is with some level of dissatisfaction with myself that i must admit that i was very uncomfortable for a long period of time. some of it was basic fear. we have all heard the arguments for rational stereotyping – black men commit the majority of violent crime, ergo we are right to have our pulse quicken when we see them. yes i know it is a tad bit more complex but just stick with me, i am paraphrasing to try to get this out. some of it was just being uncomfortable being different. some of it was, i am convinced, fear that those on the trains and buses didn’t want me there – this was there space, and who was i to invade it.
i consider myself an enlightened guy, so it is with pain that i admit this. it is with pain that i admit that sometimes my heart can quicken a bit when i come out of the tunnel onto alabama street to catch my bus.

i have also been able to observe and participate in the human drama in a way that i just didn’t disconnected from the people around me in my car. the most enjoyable thing about marta for me is the overwhelming sense of community i feel, sharing a bus or a train with all these other people. it can’t be replicated. this sense of community and my feelings about race as they have been channeled through my experience on marta have even become the backdrop for a novel i am writing.

during the gas shortage, i learned how nice it is to not need gas. i can get anywhere in the city on marta with a little planning and during the gas shortage i got to laugh at my friends who were waiting in line for more than an hour trying to fill up their tanks. i fill my tank up once a month and during the gas shortage i stretched that even more.

oh and the time i find. i work on marta, i read, i meditate, i write. heck i am even writing this post as i sit in the front of the #140 riding up north point parkway.

i guess the most important thing i have learned though, is that it’s important to be open. for years i was closed to the idea of taking marta because i didn’t want to ride a bus. if the train had gone to my office i might have done it years ago. finally driven by the insanity of sitting in my car for hours on end, i took the plunge and i have never looked back.

if you have considered marta but dumped the idea because of one of those little myths or one bad experience, give us another chance. we’re out here riding every day. we’d love to see you. i have a feeling next november, i at least, will be writing my two year retrospective.

the center for neighborhood technology has released a new series of maps to showcase transportation and affordability in various cities.

the atlanta maps are interesting with lots of detail, but i think the most interesting ones are the transit ones. the map above is a zoom in on the area around my house showcasing how many transit lines are within walking distance. i am lucky to live in an area where i can walk to multiple bus routes, but what shocked even me, was how many wide swaths of the city have only one transit route within walking distance. and i am not talking about suburbia (alpharetta, duluth, etc.) i am talking about buckhead, vinings, druid hills, parts of east atlanta etc.

you can play around with the atlanta map here

i suppose this is probably another reason why so few people go the marta route. when there is only one bus route it takes an insane amount of planning to make your destination on-time and makes spur-of-the-moment trips difficult. it can be done, but it definitely is hard.

a call to you gwinettians though – you can begin to help improve this by voting yes to the transit option in your upcoming primary.

h/t to ben at the excellent blog terminal station for the find.

up to EIGHT LANES are going to be closed on the connector this weekend according to this press release from the dot.

i inadvertently got caught in this when only three lanes were closed and it was an abject nightmare.

piedmont is probably your best bet on the east side of town and on the west side northside has been pretty much clear throughout this paving mess. if you are traveling from points outside atlanta to points beyond atlanta, take i-285.

of course, transit is always an option, especially with $4.00 gas.

the clean air campaign is looking to you to help take one ton of pollution out of atlanta’s skies over the next year.

it’s actually pretty simple – you just commit to one alternative commute a week. carpool, public transit, bike, walk, telework – anything other than driving alone. the math says that the average atlanta commuter would take one ton of pollution out of the air by doing this once a week.

so what do you say, up for the one ton challenge?

if so you can register here.

i’d tell you about my own experiences becoming a ‘clean’ commuter, but i might get accused of self-righteous preaching again ;-)

I’m surprised they still let me post here at Metblogs. See, I spent the last month-plus living about two hours outside of Atlanta (that will have to be a whole ‘nother post) while we moved out of our East Atlanta home and waited to close on our new house in the burbs. I had no internet access at home. It was truly harrowing.

There. I said it. I can no longer say I live intown. I live in the burbs. OTP. Outside the fence.

I have written numerous times about my love for our old neighborhood. When it came down to it, though, I love my kids more. I just wasn’t ready to send my kid to a school with abysmal test scores and where he would be a less than one percent minority at that school. I know. Many parents send their kids to schools where their child is in that small a minority, but I wonder how many of them send them to a school where their child is in that small a minority and test scores are bottom of the barrel. My guess? Not many. I am thinking that parents might overlook the lack of diversity at a school if it meant a child would be surrounded by kids who are more successful.  We weighed the options and the issues, and it came down to the realization that sending my child to that school would simply serve the purpose of proving a point, rather than striving to give my child the best educational opportunities I can manage to give him.

When we made the decision not to send our children to the public elementary school in our neighborhood, we started looking at other options. Charter schools? Not an option for us in our area of unincorporated Dekalb. Private schools? Yikes. Even at the more affordable end they were going to cost us five to seven thousand dollars a year (and some of them cost much more than a year of public university tuitions!) Sure, we could swing $7000/year if I went back to work. Oh, wait – Our daughter will start school in four years. Then we’d be paying almost 15,000 dollars/year tuition. Not to mention the cost of after school childcare and for the summers, when they aren’t in school.

We searched for homes inside the perimeter in better school districts. (I dare anyone to start researching schools and not start going gray – It is as if someone didn’t want me to compare test scores and other information for schools in different areas and different school districts, much less for different states. Try to compare public and private schools and your head will explode.) We’d either be downsizing (and we already lived in a three BR), or paying so much for a house that, again, I would have to go back to work and then the daycare costs until both kids started elementary (and again, for summers) would barely make the back-to-work option worth it.

We slowly started discussing the possibility of moving outside the perimeter, at first laughingly, then in whispers, as it became a more real possibility, and finally we resigned ourselves to it. We started looking at homes in the school districts we had identified that had what we were looking for: Decent test scores, diversity, in a neighborhood we could afford, and not so far from town that the commute would suck my husband of any semblance of a meaningful life. We finally found an area we liked (ish), where houses are in our price range, the kids would have other kids to play with, and that we didn’t find too lacking in character. We bought a house here a few weeks ago.

When it came down to it, I cried when I left East Atlanta. I hated leaving the place where I met my husband, where I met friends and wonderful neighbors, and to which I brought two kids home from the hospital. I had been there long enough that I couldn’t go anywhere without at least seeing one person I knew from the neighborhood.
In the end, I know that it is for the best. The kids love the new house and neighborhood already, and my husband and I are laughingly giving in to a quieter way of life, and at the same time cracking up at what we have become. I do think, though, that we are not alone. I have already met four sets of neighbors with kids close in age to ours. They always ask where we moved from and then nod knowingly at our answer. Turns out they moved from Ormewood, Kirkwood, and East Atlanta themselves. As one girl told me, “We are city folk.”

I wonder how many people all over Atlanta have struggled with the same thing, forced by poverty, job location, housing prices or failing schools to make the same difficult decision that we made. Our decision is made, though, and we do not regret it. I just see it as an adventure, a challenge to find what is interesting and colorful, and special about the new area we live in. I’ve already been thinking a lot about it, and exploring this new frontier, and you can bet that you will see some Metblogs posts about it. I think that intown readers might be surprised at a few of my observations. I know I have already found a few things that surprised me.

no news on the marta web site yet, but the austin business chronicle reported several days ago that cap metro (austin’s excellent transit service) would be losing their coo and evp, dwight ferrell, to atlanta.

from the article it seems that ferrell is highly regarded and this appointment is just the kind of proven executive that atlanta’s system may need.

as a public service i thought we would open up comments here on what you would like to see marta’s new coo focus on. i know i would like them to get the darn led displays working properly.

you?

the ajc is reporting today that atlanta gas prices have reached an all-time high. citing the web site atlantagasprices.com the paper report that the average price for regular unleaded in the metro is $3.203.

i am curious, and i would love to hear from you solo commuters in the comments, how high is your threshold before you start considering other options.

for those of you already doing so, please feel free to use the comments section of this post to gloat….

p.s. – sorry for the f’ed up links. still learning our new publishing system.

photo courtesy of Colin Mutchler

the 14th street bridge project is the gift that keeps on giving.

beginning this weekend and also on the next two weekends after the atlanta police will be ‘pacing’ traffic on the downtown connector so that georgia power can relocate equipment around the new bridge (details available on the 14th street project site.)

basically for about 15 minutes every hour from 7 am for the next ten hours the police will be slowing traffic to 20 mph and blocking off any new traffic from getting onto the downtown connector. i have gotten caught in this pacing once before and it is an unmitigated traffic disaster.

gdot suggests you give 511 a call before you head out. i suggest you take surface streets if you need to move north/south through the city.

or maybe this is the time for you to finally give something else a try.