"Seating Bench 01" by Tae Jun Park sits just inside the east fare gates at Arts Center Station
“Light Up Atlanta” opened last week, dotting MARTA’s rail system with white Corian sculptures that lend some brightness to the stations.
Members of the local architecture and design community produced the six pieces, which will be on display through June 30.
Ready the recycling bins, MARTA will implement coverage and/or schedule changes on 13 bus routes beginning June 18.
Affected routes are:
2 Ponce de Leon Avenue/Moreland Avenue (Yes, again.)
8 North Druid Hills Road
49 McDonough Boulevard
56 Adamsville/Collier Heights
75 Tucker (This is only a chage to the location of the bus bay at Avondale station that the bus will service.)
86 Fairington Road/McAfee Road
87 Roswell Road/Morgan Falls
93 East Poin/Delowe Drive
95 Metropolitan Parkway / Hapeville
99 Boulevard/Monroe
117 Rockbridge Road/Panola Road
124 Pleasantdale Road
181 Buffington Road/South Fulton Park & Ride
To catch up on the protracted legal tussle over the Peachtree and Pine Street shelter run by Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, read this piece published in last month’s ABA Journal.
It’s long, but it’s light on legal jargon and free of the axe-grinding that tends to creep into anything written about the facility and its management.
Georgia DOT issued the latest version of the regional transportation wish list Thursday. The roster of prospective projects will be funded by the one-cent sales tax that comes up for a vote next summer.
State Transportation Planning Director Todd Long had the task of adding and subtracting projects from the original list, compiled in April. The new version will now go before the 21-member regional roundtable, whose members have to slice approximately $15 billion worth of projects from the list’s current total of $22.9 billion – a reduction of about 65 percent. The reductions will bring the projects’ price tag in line with the $8 billion that the transit tax is expected to generate in its 10-year lifespan.
Here’s a searchable database of the new wish list as well as an interactive map for locating projects in your area. Fact sheets for the projects on the updated list will be available here on June 9.
What’s on, what’s off ?
Afternoon commuters pass through the plaza at Five Points Station. The transportation tax would fund improvements like removing the non-functioning sign from the ceiling.
So far bus rapid transit for the portion of Piedmont Road between Roswell Road and Lindbergh Station is still on the list, as are funds for improvements to Five Points Station. Those improvements will include removing the mammoth yellow contraption – once a sign – hanging from the ceiling in the plaza, as well as fixing the skylights.
A circulator bus system for Fulton and DeKalb counties, on-board security cameras for all of MARTA’s bus, rail and paratransit vehicles, and and set-up of a distance-based rail fare system are also still included.
An extension of the Silver Comet Trail from Cobb County to Centennial Olympic Park and an ad system for MARTA’s rail tunnels were both axed.
What’s next?
An Atlanta Regional Commission informational meeting will be held June 9, followed by a meeting of the executive committee for Atlanta’s regional roundtable. The executive committee meeting will be open for public input on the first round of changes to the wish list.
A “telephone town hall meeting” for Fulton County residents is scheduled or June 22.
Details are on the roundtable’s meeting page.
This is the week during which the City of Atlanta was to conduct an internal audit to track down the $5.6 million it needs to cover its portion of the first segment of the downtown streetcar project.
According to a story in Saturday’s AJC, the City Council might have based its December 2010 decision to allocate funds for the project on faulty information provided by Chief Financial Officer Joya De Foor. De Foor became the city’s CFO in June 2010.
C.T. Martin, one of two council members who voted against the resolution, told the AJC that he believes De Foor herself wasn’t aware of the budgetary hole. “I know that the first action that happened on this happened before she got there and she was operating off information she was told,” Martin said. “Somebody told her that the money was there.”
The $5.6 million is part of Atlanta’s share of the streetcar project’s $56 million cost. The bulk of the project will be paid for by a $47.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, with the remaining $2.8 million coming from funds originally designated for other transportation projects along the same corridor the streetcar will serve.
Given the reactions to MARTA’s proposed fare increase and bus service changes for this fall, I expected that at last Monday night’s 7 p.m. hearing I’d barely be able to wedge myself into a room packed with riders in various states of outrage. But not only was there a conspicuous absence of torches and pitchforks, but those in attendance filled only about one-third of the Fulton County Commission’s public meeting room.
The low turnout – I counted about 75 people – might indicate that the agency’s public outreach needs some work. It could also suggest that many of MARTA’s customers believe the proposed changes are pretty much a done deal, with only the matter of “when” left to be settled.
I was only able to stay for about an hour and 15 minutes of the hearing, so I didn’t hear everyone who came forward to offer comment, but the comments of the approximately 20 speakers I did hear were pretty evenly divided between complaints and suggestions.
Among the most often heard suggestions:
The most frequently heard complaints:
Although the hearing started out with a pretty formal air, by 8:15 it had taken on the feeling of a transit riders’ pep rally, with some audience members applauding and cheering when they found a speaker’s remarks particularly clever or insightful.
The loudest cheers came when a woman prefaced her remarks about the long-standing nature of some of the system’s problems by saying “It’s obvious that no one on this board rides MARTA.”
Although many of those who spoke were adamantly against the fare increase, many others said that the fare increase itself was less the issue than steadily decreasing service and reliability. The cost of most other commodities is rising, so it’s only fair that the same should be true for transit service, they said. But so many years of paying more and continuing to get less, they said, is unacceptable.
Yikes, almost forgot: MARTA is holding public hearings at 7 p.m. today and Tuesday.
Here’s what’s on the agenda:
Today’s meetings are at the South Fulton Service Center in College Park, which is served by the route 180 bus, and at the Fulton County Government Center downtown, which is served by the route 49 bus. There’s also free shuttle service to the downtown meeting.
Tuesday’s meetings are at the DeKalb Maloof Auditorium in Decatur, which is one block west of Decatur Station, and at the North Fulton Service Center in Sandy Springs. Take route 87 bus from Dunwoody or North Springs Station to the North Fulton Service Center.
Have you ever noticed how a long walk feels much shorter when you’re in a densely-built urban area with a lot of other people on the street? Festivals or other events that create novel and rapidly-changing scenery around you can have the same effect. There’s a name for that: “Pedestrian propulsion.”
Areas that rank highly in pedestrian propulsion also have high rates of “compensation” – the visual and social payoff received in exchange for the time and energy required to walk.
That’s why it seems to take weeks to walk past a strip mall or just a block or two like this:
while walking somewhere interesting seems to take less time than it really does.
Speaking of pedestrian experiences, the vision for the “Midtown Mile” is being revamped. The idea of replicating a place like Chicago’s Miracle Mile is out the window, with planners now aiming for a area of shopping and restaurants that’s more everyday than special occasion. They hope to make it a constant draw for residents in and around midtown as well as the thousands office workers who come and go daily instead of a place mostly catering to tourists and the very well-off.
A similar re-think is afoot at the Streets of Buckhead project. The “Rodeo Drive of the South” concept, with high-dollar hotels, restaurants and boutiques intended to draw people from all over the region, is being toned down and will eventually even have a different name.
If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around the wheres and whats of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable’s transportation project “wish list,” or if you’d just like a quick, easy way to get more information on projects close to you, check this out:
The Roundtable has created an interactive map of all 437 projects that were submitted for funding. (Keep in mind that this list will be trimmed considerably during the next several months.) Just use the text, graphic or address function to specify an area and the map produces a list of proposed projects submitted for the area you highlighted. Alongside each item on that list is a link to its project submittal form. The project submittal form provides a description of the project as well as information about the purpose, submitting agency and cost and completion time estimates.
After you finish playing with the map, make sure to take the quick transportation priorities survey here or here.
The Oppidan Omnibus 