well this sure isn’t making my job any easier…
i have been trying to preach the virtues of marta to anyone who will listen for months now it seems like.
you would think marta could return the favor by making things easy for me.
alas, no such luck.
according to an article in the ajc today, at least three escalators all failed in the exact same manner on new year’s eve. according to reports the brakes failed on the escalators, causing the up escalators to go in reverse and catapult people to the floor.
the incidents occurred in late afternoon twice at five points and the later that evening at the dome station. what is particularly crappy about this is since it occured when people were going to and then leaving the chik-fil-a bowl (formerly the peach bowl, then the chik-fil-a peach bowl – geez) they probably happened to a lot of people who were experiencing marta for the first time.
and you can guess what their attitude is going to be next time someone encourages them to give transit a try.
let’s hope marta does the right thing, fully investigates and accepts responsibility for whatever occured.
or they could just blame it on terrorists.
I thought the malfunction (or whatever) was caused by people “rough-housing” on the escalators. I think it was WABE/NPR that made the report I heard, that misuse caused the brakes to fail. Was that not right?
Stairs are faster anyway, and keep your butt from turning into a giant trashbag full of meat.
amen d.
and will, i dunno. it seems that the reason for the failure is in dispute. marta originally blamed the problem on rowdy fans but appears to have backed off on it.
as for my contention that this will bring out the marta naysayers, the always erudite comments on the ajc article linked above seem to bear that out….
Eh, I’d be surprised if over the long haul people really see this as a marta problem. Unless it starts happening a lot, it’ll vanish as just another fluke event.
Of course, if this had happened at the Peachtree Center station, there’d be fatalities.
Dammit HBL you beat me to it.
James, I can tell by your optimistic attitude towards the operation of public transit in Atlanta and willingness to ride MARTA’s bus system, that you ain’t from around here, are you?
you are correct, sir!
of course, i have ridden almost twenty different bus routes and have had no problem…
“James, I can tell by your optimistic attitude towards the operation of public transit in Atlanta and willingness to ride MARTA’s bus system, that you ain’t from around here, are you?”
This is why death is such an important evolutionary force.
This was NOT an isolated incident. It has occured often, but don’t give Marta any more excuses than they have already come up with to waste tons of money and continue to reduce service to people who have to use transit out of necessity.
Blaming those that were injured is indicative of the mindset of Marta personnel. I guess they thought no one on any of those escalators could afford a good attorney. I’m sure they were wrong.
I’ve been a faithful MARTA rider since 2001 and YES, I AM FROM AROUND HERE!
“This” (full escalators going down with loads of ppl on it) does not occur often. What DOES occur often are escalators that are not currently operating.