MARTA is planning a 25 percent fare hike for the fall.  The increase would push the one-way base fare from $2 to $2.50. The more painful change would be in the price of regular monthly passes from $68 to $95 –  an increase of almost 40 percent. The latest fare hike comes just two years after the last one, which went into effect Oct. 1, 2009. MARTA fares had held steady for eight years before that.

MARTA’s board Chairman Jim Durrett told the AJC that the fare hike might be implemented in stages – 25 cents now and another 25 cents later – rather than all at once, but it sounds like some fare increase is a done deal.

The agency has already resorted to service cuts, staff reductions and borrowing from its capital reserves to slow its fiscal bleeding in the last few years. But with the capital reserves expected to be tapped out in just two years and the price of fuel creeping up, we’re probably going to keep paying more for less until the transportation tax kicks in.

If you’d like to have a word with MARTA about the proposed increase, there will be public hearings on May 16 and May 17.

MARTA

Tomorrow, March 24, MARTA is holding three public hearings   – two in Atlanta and one in Decatur – to gather input on bus route changes as well as tenative plans to revive the Braves Shuttle. The shuttle, which usually runs from Five Points Station to Turner Field on Atlanta Braves game days, was axed during last fall’s service cuts. Bus routes affected by the proposed changes are:

• Route 2 – Ponce de Leon Avenue/Moreland Avenue
• Route 87 – Roswell Road/Morgan Falls
• Route 99 – Boulevard/Monroe Drive
• Route 181 – Buffington Road/South Fulton Park & Ride

Here’s a map (PDF) detailing the proposed changes to routes 2 and 99. Here’s one for routes 87 and 181. The service changes, if they’re adopted will go into effect June 18.

GDOT

Next week, on March 30, the Georgia Department of Transportation is holding a hearing for public input regarding the Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal (PDF) project that’s planned for the downtown “gulch” area. GDOT announced last week that it had selected a development team led by Cousins Properties to build the potentially transformative transit project, but proposal summaries from all three of the short-listed development teams are still on the GDOT site.

If you can’t make it to the meeting, use the online comment form.

ARC

Still not enough civic engagement for you? The Atlanta Regional Commission is inviting metro Atlantans to an “online public meeting” to offer opinions on draft transportation recommendations  for “Plan2040,” the agency’s plan to “accommodate economic and population growth sustainability over the next 30 years.”  The online meeting is open until April 30.

Just a reminder…MARTA’s recent cuts go into effect tomorrow, September 25, 2010. Cuts include up to an increase of five minutes in wait time between trains, no more weekend train service before 6 am and the elimination of 2700 bus stops. For more detailed information on the cuts, you can visit the MARTA website here. In addition to these cuts, the token phase-out and pass fare increases will begin in October.

I’ll admit, as an OTPer, I only use MARTA occasionally for sporting events, conferences, etc. But, I still empathize with the thousands of ITPers who will be severely affected by these cuts. What will this do for commuters who use MARTA everyday to get to/from work? Will their jobs work with them?

When will Atlanta realize what all other big cities have? To truly be a big city you need REAL mass transit.

Are you guys “car-free” today?  I thought I saw a few more bikes than usual on the way in this morning!

If you agree to give your car the day off one day this week, Clark Howard will give you a free Chick-fil-A sammich. Just don’t make an extra trip and drive there.

Apparently Atlantans spend an average of nearly $500 a month driving back and forth to work. That is completely nuts when you add in the value of lost time spent in the car, too. And the cumulative stress it generates– it raises the hairs on the back of my neck thinking about sitting in the parking lot of the connector every day. I picture a big black ball of Angry sparking and hovering over Spaghetti Junction.

A good resource for anyone even considering carpooling, MARTA, biking, or other transportation options is the Clean Air Campaign. I “log my commute” with them every week and occasionally win an Amazon gift card, plus get pretty annoyingly smug when I use their online calculators to see how much money I save by biking to work instead of driving. They can pair you up with carpool partners, and you get up to $100 or more just for starting an alternative commute.

I called the MARTA police yesterday.

When I got off the train at Civic Center, there was a large shopping bag from World of Coca-Cola sitting on the northbound platform. Hardly unusual, as it’s the closest station to there. But this bag had been placed right against a column at the north end of the platform, and rolled up clothes and a blanket were stacked up around three sides of it. No one was anywhere near it. At least two trains came and went from the platform,  still no one came for it.

The operator sounded a touch skeptical when I called. She asked a couple of times whether the bag had any wires protruding from it, whether it had a strange odor or was ticking. I didn’t see any wires and I passed within a couple of feet of it and didn’t smell anything, but do explosives actually tick any more? Besides, as loud as it gets down there with trains going in and out, that thing could have been playing the 1812 Overture and I wouldn’t have heard it. She said they’d send someone by. I waited a while. I never saw anyone come.

The chances that it was something dangerous are nearly nothing, of course. I almost didn’t call. It’s not as if it was purple and green with question marks all over it, like something from The Joker would leave. A “suspicious package” is only suspicious because someone is suspicious of it.

Maybe a homeless person left it there. But I can’t imagine why. When people own very little, they tend to always keep it with them and usually where they can see it. If they can’t keep it with them, they tend to put it behind or under something, or stuff into a bush or even up in a tree. I can’t imagine a homeless person just leaving their things where they’re sure to be stolen or thrown away. It just didn’t make sense, sitting there so neat and conspicuous.

I really hope that those clothes and that bag weren’t all that someone has in the world and that they weren’t thrown away by the MARTA police – if they ever came.

i’ve been in europe for two weeks and while i was there i rode around and in general observed public transportation for a bit. one day i did nothing but ride around helsinki for a bus. and never, ever did i wait more than 5 minutes for one. in copenhagen, i was standing on a road waiting on someone and while standing there i watched more than 15 buses go by in a thirty minute period.

and how does it work in atlanta. my dog wouldn’t go to the bathroom this morning. i had to walk her around and around and arounnd. because of that i missed the one bus that goes by my house every 30 minutes. because of that, i had to drive to the train station. that train got me to five points a few minutes after the north springs train left, which meant i waited there for 10 minutes on the next one. then that train waited at lindberg for 7 minutes and this ulitmatly caused me to get to north springs 2 minutes after the bus that only goes by my office every 30 minutes left.

sigh. so now i get to sit at north springs for a good 25 minutes.

it’s a stark contrast. i dream of a day when buses and trains run every five minutes. i suspect it will never happen.

Have no fear, loyal listeners – contrary to what we all thought, metblogs isn’t shutting down (some sort of technical difficulties probably involving serious mathematical equations put things on hold for a while yesterday).  See here for  details and donation opportunities, if that’s your sort of thing, for the greater metblogs site.

This means Atlanta metblogs is back for the attack.  We’ll continue updating y’all on sports teams on which I cannot name a single player, bitching about traffic and transit, debating the merits and potential of Underground, hyping scoutmob, and lamenting the loss of Tortillas.  Anything else you’d like to hear about, or think everyone else should hear about? Let us know, we may very well even get around to posting it!

Am I just imagining that getting on and off MARTA has lost all sign and semblance of order?

A few years ago, nearly everyone stayed to the right, whether going in the train doors or out of them, allowing people to enter and exit at the same time. Now, though, it’s become necessary to just about kickbox your way out of there. People waiting to board routinely plant themselves not just right in front of, but right in the MIDDLE of the train doors, sometimes two or three deep. You’re then treated to a bit of sighing and eye-rolling as you insist upon exiting the train through the doors rather than crawling through a hatch in the ceiling and then leaping down to the platform, as the door-crowders would apparently have you do.

These aren’t tourists, by the way. These are 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., lunchtime, weekend, and late-night riders. In other words, people who know better.

I always assumed that no one was paying attention to that recorded announcement about where and how to board the trains a few years ago. But, I remember almost never having people blocking the doors back then like they do now. Maybe it’s time time bring it back.

well, i wasn’t raining when i fell asleep last night about 10 pm. my how things change in 7.5 hours. by the time i woke up at 5:20 this morning it looked like a scene from monsoon wedding outside.

anyway, i steeled myself against the rain and threw my jacket on and headed out onto glenwood to wait on the marta #9. i hadn’t been outside four minutes before my foot was drenched from trying to cross the street.

i headed to five points to catch the northbound train and found out that marta was completely shutdown north-south between five points and lindbergh. i thought this must be because a tunnel was flooded but apparently it was unrelated.

marta was telling people over the loudspeaker they had a bus bridge set up but another marta rep was trying to get people to get on the #110 bus which runs up peachtree to midtown and then lenox. either way the scene at five points was utter chaos. i have travelled via marta long enough now to know that the system does not handle crisis well.

so i just walked back to the #9 bus, boarded it and headed home to telecommute.

how are the rest of you surviving the rainpocalyspe?

I sincerely hope that Metblogs isn’t your sole source for local news, but just to catch up any readers who may be a few days behind: last night the Georgia Legislature (on its third-to-last day of the 2010 session) passed the “Transportation Investment Act of 2010.”  Great news!

But first, a nod towards a little bit of background: On Tuesday MARTA staged a rally and “publicity campaign,” dramatically marking huge red X’s on a third of their fleet to represent the buses and trains that would be taken out of service later this year in order to help fill a $120 million budget hole.

The kicker (well, one of the kickers) is that MARTA has money – not a lot, but what they do have they weren’t allowed to use. By law, they can only spend 50% of their revenues from sales tax on operations. That’s why, I assume, we have all the brand-new fancypants black buses driving around in a time of rate hikes and service cuts.

There are obviously about 50 layers of issues here that I’m not going to pretend to know about and/or can’t get into, including the fact that MARTA is the only major transit system in the country without state funding, that leadership supposedly wants state funding but not state oversight, that the legislature has been debating a transportation funding bill for three years, and so on. (and on).

BUT! Last night we made progress! They’re going to let us tax ourselves! Hooray! A bill passed last night that will divide the state into 12 regions, and let each region vote in a referendum to thumbs up or thumbs down a list of transportation projects in the region, along with a 1% sales tax to fund them. Money has to come from somewhere, I suppose, and it’s better than nothing. HB277 also lifts that restriction on MARTA’s operations funding, though just for 3 years.

The bill just passed last night, and is on the Governor’s desk to be signed (he technically has 40 days past the end of session to sign it, I believe), so it’s not final yet. And nothing will actually happen for another couple of years (referendums would take place in 2012).  But I am allowing myself to hope, just a teeny bit, that Atlanta might eventually be, in my lifetime, a place where people ride a train or take a bus and it’s a quick, reasonably priced, perfectly normal means of getting from one place to another. Hoping this is a good step.

More info on the legislation – bill itself here, CL’s fresh loaf here, GPB Lawmakers here, AJC here .