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.

Flickr photo by Willamor Media

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.

Whether the downtown streetcar project has you saying “Yay!” or “#$%&!” or just “Huh?” you’ll want to get to the second public hearing  that the Federal Transit Administration, the City of Atlanta and MARTA are holding Monday evening.

If you’re in the “Huh?” crowd, have a look at the Atlanta Streetcar Environmental Assessment (big PDF) before you go. It’s long, but pretty much every speck of information in the streetcar project is there, all in one package. Just <Ctrl+F> to search for a term if you don’t have time to pore over every one of the 345 pages between now and Monday afternoon.

Time and place:

December 13, 2010
5:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m.
Auburn Avenue Research Library
4th Floor Auditorium
101 Auburn Avenue NE
Atlanta, Ga. 30303

H/T to Creative Loafing.

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.

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.

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!

photo Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com

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 .

The Atlanta Streetcar might be stuck on the drawing board for a while yet. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced the recipients of federal TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants on February 17 and the streetcar project wasn’t on the list. The city of Atlanta, MARTA, Central Atlanta Progress and Midtown Alliance partnered to apply for TIGER funds for the transit project, which is projected to cost $298.3 million.

[youtube]”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygXEqWoedEQ”[/youtube]

Atlanta wasn’t the only city that TIGER got away from. None of the other 32 Georgia communities that applied for grants received funding either.

If built as planned, the Atlanta Streetcar project would include a route on Peachtree from Five Points station to Savannah College of Art and Design and an east-west loop from the Centennial Olympic Park/Georgia Aquarium area to the King Center. An alternative plan, also included in the partnership’s application, proposes options for building the streetcar in phases if it can’t be funded all at once.

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When I can, I take MARTA a few days a week into work. It’s a fun ride. Here are a few observations I’d like to share.

1. MARTA is an art gallery for graffiti. East, west, north or south, you’ll see a collection of Atlanta’s finest taggings. It’s all on display for you. Enjoy.

2. MARTA time is faster than normal time. Today my commute took about an hour and it went by quickly. It didn’t feel like an hour. 20 minutes in my car can feel like an hour. An hour of MARTA time feels like 20 minutes in a car.

3. MARTA is good for you. Most, if not all, of the escalators are out of service forcing you to take the stairs. That is good for you. It’s good for your heart and body. Taking the stairs gets your blood pumping and energized as you start the day. Not only that, you have to walk to get where you’re going. MARTA is a good health alternative to driving.

4. MARTA gives perspective. You will see beautiful views of Atlanta you will never ever see driving.

5. MARTA saves money. Sure driving is way more convenient but it’s way more expensive. You can make a tank of gas last many days longer.

Try it out and see for yourself.

Unless you too are car-less and in temporary exile in southwest Cobb County, you might not have noticed the gaping hole in public transportation coverage out here. I’m staying with an extraordinarily generous friend in a subdivision off Oakdale Road, which is, in turn, off Veterans’ Memorial Highway. Veteran’s Memorial is the name Bankhead Highway/Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway (DLH) assumes once it crosses 285. MARTA service used to run as far up DLH as Bankhead Courts, but since Bankhead Courts closed, it now stops almost a mile further east, just before DLH crosses 285. So, anyone out here who needed to get to a transit station had to drive to or be dropped off at Bankhead Station or H. E. Holmes. Until now, anyway.

On Jan. 4 Cobb Community Transit added the new CCT Route 35, which (PDF) starts at Wellstar Cobb Hospital, ends at the H.E. Holmes MARTA station and runs 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Route 35 also serves Mable House Amphitheatre, Six Flags, downtown Austell, and the South Cobb Government Services Center.

Unrelated side note: I catch the #35 at the intersection of Discovery Boulevard (the name Oakdale Road takes on after it crosses Veterans’/Bankhead/DLH) and Veterans’, just past Pizza Bar and right in front of a new, ostensibly mixed-use development bearing the name “The Walk At Legacy.” The Walk At Legacy’s most prominent feature, other than a near-complete lack of tenants, is the acreage of parking lot splayed in front of it. I guess “The Drive and Park At Legacy” lacked the desired cachet.

Anyway, this isn’t an area that people move to if easy access to transit is high – or really, anywhere – on their list of important features in a neighborhood, so the creation of the new route certainly wasn’t driven by residents of the “Enclaves” and “Plantations” along Oakdale Road. I’m going to try to get in touch with someone at CCT to see if I can find out more about what went into the design and planning for this route.

in an effort to show support for atlanta’s beleaguere but absolutely vital public transit system, a grassroots movement has organized around the idea of having a “ride marta day” tomorrow.

it’s really easy to participate. you just ride marta. that’s it. nothing more.

seriously, just plan one trip on marta that you might have normally taken in a car. a strong turnout will show out “leaders” that we atlantans care about having a vital public transportation system.

this issue is of course deeply personal to me as someone who rides on marta every day and loves the system, the people that operate it and ride on it. so i am personally asking for you to support ride marta day.

and one other thought – try riding a bus if you never have. i know many people really dislike the idea of riding a bus, but give it a whirl. you might be surprised.

you can find more information on the ride marta day web site including a list of supporting organizations.

also the citizens for progressive transit’s a-train trip planner is a great resource for planning your marta trip tomorrow.

happy riding. if you see me on the #9, the north-south line, or the #140 say hello.