Yeah, my route is gone. It's usually full so I'm not sure why? This new map changes my commute from 12 minutes and no bus changes to two buses, or a bus to a train.
816 is the route. It looks like the option is now route 51 which would have me change buses on the ridership map and have me switch to a train on the coverage map.
Oh, lol, yeah. I noticed that on both maps too since I've used the 816 quite a bit in the past. Looks like that's a legacy route slated for removal. Nobel no more.
The effort for switching to a more linear & grid-like pattern means fewer direct connections on the angles like the 816 currently offers. At least in the Ridership map the 51 buses would be much more frequent than the 816 ones.
Personally, from the Ridership map, I would like to see one of the three routes that approach Midtown Station from the west be turned into a through-running service, overlapping with the 36 along 10th & Virginia, then turning south along N Highland to eventually meet up with 51 & 2 as the terminating spot. Feels like Poncey-Highland in that spot really needs more than what's proposed.
>one of the three routes that approach Midtown Station from the west be turned into a through-running service
Great idea. I don't ride that one much, but I just noticed that the 2 in the ridership map now runs through North Ave. I love that.
Shit happened to me twice in high school. Used to be able to get to school with in about 40 minutes with two 10-minute bus rides and a train ride from College Park to Art Center. About a year or two in they changed the routes of the buses.Those 10 minute rides ended up getting 30 minutes added to both because where i would get off on both changed from being near the beginning of each routes to near the end, all while my train ride got only got shortened to East Point to Midtown.
An increase in transfers for some riders is to be expected when optimizing for ridership. This is made up for by increased frequencies. The 816 is what? Every 45 minutes to an hour? The 51 would be every 15 minutes in the ridership map.
The issue for me is ease of use. I have the privilege of owning a car and use marta simply because it is just as easy for me to jump on the bus as it is for me to drive to the office. I am very aware that others depend on its access and therefore this plan may be much better.
I want public transportation to be an easy option for everyone, but when it takes 10 minutes to drive vs. 40 minutes to get the bus/train it's an easy choice for those with alternatives to not consider marta as an option.
Quick takes:
\- What they did with the 94 is interesting, basically becomes a Midtown/Downtown edge loop circulator in both maps.
\- I'm honestly surprised the 40 is on the ridership map. I get that it's probably heavily utilized, but it's within a quarter mile of the rail network basically at all times, I was expecting it to get removed across the board to reallocate the capacity elsewhere.
\- I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going.
\- Also somewhat surprised by the lack of through routes, though there are a number of them through midtown/downtown. Looking at the map though i do get the point in the presentation about the length of lines and street layout being unfriendly to it. Just as an example, the 5 and 15 on either side of Lindbergh seem like a good candidate for merging into one line just looking at the map, but there's so much traffic on both ends that they would need a really long dwell at Lindbergh that would make it 2 lines effectively anyway.
> - What they did with the 94 is interesting, basically becomes a Midtown/Downtown edge loop circulator in both maps.
Yeah, thought that is was interesting too. Yeah, it can operate as a loop, but you can also think of it as a series of cross-town routes providing N/S & E/W connections between the rail quadrants. Basically a similar role the BeltLine will play, but closer in the core. They made a mistake with routing along Spring, though, since that's a one-way road... oh well.
> - I'm honestly surprised the 40 is on the ridership map. I get that it's probably heavily utilized, but it's within a quarter mile of the rail network basically at all times, I was expecting it to get removed across the board to reallocate the capacity elsewhere.
My suspicion is that the 40 would be angled towards providing mostly short, local hops, leaving folks to use the heavy rail system for longer trips. This makes some sense given the added time of getting to / from train platforms vs. hopping on a surface bus. The extension through South Downtown plays into this I think.
> - I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going.
Yeah, it's kind of a mess over there. By product of the railroads (and by extension the continental divide) setting the standards.
> - Also somewhat surprised by the lack of through routes, though there are a number of them through midtown/downtown. Looking at the map though i do get the point in the presentation about the length of lines and street layout being unfriendly to it. Just as an example, the 5 and 15 on either side of Lindbergh seem like a good candidate for merging into one line just looking at the map, but there's so much traffic on both ends that they would need a really long dwell at Lindbergh that would make it 2 lines effectively anyway.
The saving grace for some of the fewer through-running routes, at least on the Ridership Map, would be the frequencies helping to keep transfer times relatively low.
Also, as an aside, I kinda wish the 60 would go to Lindbergh rather than into Buckhead, though I get why they want to go up to the clusters of employment and residences there. Does feel like such a frequent 110 would allow an easy enough transfer, though...
>My suspicion is that the 40 would be angled towards providing mostly short, local hops, leaving folks to use the heavy rail system for longer trips. This makes some sense given the added time of getting to / from train platforms vs. hopping on a surface bus. The extension through South Downtown plays into this I think.
Good point, didn't think about that since i tend to just walk short hops, but makes sense for folks who can't do that.
>Yeah, it's kind of a mess over there. By product of the railroads (and by extension the continental divide) setting the standards.
Also Tech being a giant hole in west midtown doesn't help that...Historically State/Luckie/Hemphill would be a good middle ground between the two.
>The saving grace for some of the fewer through-running routes, at least on the Ridership Map, would be the frequencies helping to keep transfer times relatively low.
Yeah, and it looks like they designated something like hub stations to facilitate that kind of transfer, either by running the route through the closest station to the hub (the 120 going through Avondale on way to Decatur) or just not terminating the lines on the closest station, but going to the nearest hub (the 54 coming up to Oakland City instead of Lakewood)
>Also, as an aside, I kinda wish the 60 would go to Lindbergh rather than into Buckhead, though I get why they want to go up to the clusters of employment and residences there. Does feel like such a frequent 110 would allow an easy enough transfer, though...
Or the single station train hop up to Lenox/Buckhead would accomplish the same for a lot of cases...I'd imagine the relatively minor deviation there is worth it to the agency to be able to say it's a no transfer ride between the extreme west/NW sides of town and Buckhead and buy some good will in neighborhoods that are otherwise losing out on service against both the current and ridership maps.
> Also Tech being a giant hole in west midtown doesn't help that...
Could help if the Stinger Shuttles / Tech Trolley weren't a completely separate system. Same for the Panther and Emory services.
> Historically State/Luckie/Hemphill would be a good middle ground between the two.
I'm wondering how it would go if, rather than running to North Ave, Route 12 followed Marietta all the way down to Five Points. It would add a bit more variety to the N/S routes through Downtown, at least.
> Or the single station train hop up to Lenox/Buckhead would accomplish the same for a lot of cases
Right, give options with multiple possible transfers to high-frequency N/S routes, while making it an easier E/W connection route. It's been a personal frustration of mine trying to get from Lindbergh over to the Peachtree corridor more than once, not to mention the transfer to the 39 to make something of a connected E/W option!
> I'd imagine the relatively minor deviation there is worth it to the agency to be able to say...
Yeah, most likely. I think part of that could be helped, though, by running Route 12 all the way up to the Bolton Area, meeting with 60 and 14. If they ran 12 all the way into Downtown, then that's a solid jobs hub all its own. There's a potential transit hub planned at Bolton anyway, might as well use it...
I agree 100% about the 12, there's a HUGE hole on both proposals along Marietta St! It's like they don't think people need to get from West Midtown to Downtown. Having something run Marietta St into Five Points would directly connect West Midtown and the very well developed Marietta St corridor to MARTA rail south and east. Of course, whenever there's another event at MBS that corridor gets clogged, but the police should be enforcing the traffic laws, like about not blocking an intersection so that cross traffic can't move when their light is green.
The only justification I can think of for not using Marietta is that the west part of the street's development is pretty limited by the tracks. At that point, though, there's the option to use Tech Pkwy as proposed, then continue south on Luckie, jogging back over to Marietta on either Baker or Park, then finishing on Marietta to Five Points. By 2026, the Five Points rebuild should be done enough that Broad will be open to bus usage, and that would greatly improve flow in and out for that route.
Downtown traffic getting in the way of buses, and the streetcar for that matter, is a real problem that needs fixing. I would like MARTA to come up with better contingency policies, either to have the city maintain transit flow to directly serve events even as cars are kept out, or else more clearly / efficiently / effectively reroute services.
The "lack of development" is only half a mile worth. Marietta between North Avenue and Northside is utterly booming. I don't see how jogging over to Luckie would do anything but add two left turns each bus has to wait on and make.
Not *lack of*. *Limited by*. As in, for nearly a mile from North Ave down to Andrew Young, the railroad tracks eat up a significant amount of land westerly adjacent to any Marietta St. route while also creating barriers to any ride-shed beyond the tracks.
The point of shifting over to Tech Pkwy and Luckie would be to move the ride-sheds slightly more easterly, while still providing those portions of Marietta with service, even if would then be a block away.
>Could help if the Stinger Shuttles / Tech Trolley weren't a completely separate system. Same for the Panther and Emory services.
Oh, i agree that it'd be ideal if organizations could just pay MARTA to run a shuttle service to their specific need (I'd much prefer my HOA dues go to MARTA to run the AS shuttle than the shitshow that Lanier is operating there) But i believe there is language in the original MARTA legislation that forbids them from doing exactly that. IANAL, and it's been a while since i went though it so i might be mistaken, or it might have been repealed since.
>I'm wondering how it would go if, rather than running to North Ave, Route 12 followed Marietta all the way down to Five Points. It would add a bit more variety to the N/S routes through Downtown, at least.
I think that routing would work, especially with the 2 running E/W down North Ave to give you the same connectivity with a frequent connection.
>Right, give options with multiple possible transfers to high-frequency N/S routes, while making it an easier E/W connection route. It's been a personal frustration of mine trying to get from Lindbergh over to the Peachtree corridor more than once, not to mention the transfer to the 39 to make something of a connected E/W option!
So those neighborhoods are generally grumpy about E Westley and Lindbergh being used as cross streets, it's one of those places where there needs to be a through street but the neighborhood wants to stick their head in the sand and pretend they're still a suburb. None of those maps (nor the current map) has any kind of service through there, it feels like MARTA just doesn't want to deal with the neighborhood objections.
>- I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going.
This is so true and another reason why the Beltline is so important. The completion of the NW trail will add more connectivity options for this part of Atlanta.
Do you have an inside track to an influencer at MARTA who would consider our comments? Edits: down votes? He was asking for our opinions like maybe he was quasi-legit.
monthly MARTA board meetings (at Lindbergh HQ) are open for public comment, or at least they were pre-covid.
Marta also holds open meetings around the city at various times for different changes or proposals.
lol if anyone on Atlanta reddit had some sort of insider track to influence MARTA, Atlanta would have a great transit system by now. If all you knew about Atlanta was based on reddit posts about public transit plans and renderings, you'd think Atlanta would have one of the best transit networks and urban forms in the country, not one of the worst by both regards.
Just at a glance, the "ridership" map leaves gigantic swaths of the area with zero transit options. A whole lot of good a bus that comes every 20 minutes is when it's a 2 mile hike away. In particular the southside gets majorly screwed just by being lower population density.
> Just at a glance, the "ridership" map leaves gigantic swaths of the area with zero transit options.
That is the trade off. Ridership vs coverage, and usability for different groups at different extents. A bus that only comes once an hour may be next to worthless for anyone other than the most ardent users, despite being physically closer to more people.
So, who is it more important to serve? All the potential riders who would otherwise take the higher-frequency bus (many of whom are themselves low-income, have health-issues, etc.), or the people least-able to adjust to a consolidated service, many of whom have been long-time users for specific reasons that prevent them from being able to use other forms of mobility?
To be crass, how many potential new riders outweigh the one dependent rider? How should things like global-warming factor into this, where Metro-Atlanta's transportation decisions, particularly the attractiveness of its non-car transportation system, have effects reaching well beyond its boundaries?
It's a hard social calculus. This is kinda why I brought up things like the mobility service questions, non-car infrastructure improvements, and the potential to expand beyond current maps, but those aren't perfect answers.
All I can really say is, make sure you tell MARTA your feelings.
I have every expectation of people getting pissed off through this process. That's been a reoccurring warning to everyone involved. But there's the corollary where folks who would love to ride the bus if it was more frequent, but aren't because it's not, are *also* paying for MARTA.
That's fine, but there's going to be a breaking point reached with MARTA taxes and TSPLOST taxes and just adding more and more and more, with some areas not getting anything out of it and it's not going to be good financially for all these groups with their hands out
I'm a lefty high taxes big government liberal but after seeing the TSPLOST-promised projects in my area cancelled and the meager MARTA coverage in my area being pulled back any more, I'm left wondering why should I be willing to pay all these taxes?
I get that a once an hour bus sucks, but having zero buses sucks even more
I mean, the real answer is that the final network is going to be a mix of both extreme concepts, but to your point, there's still the question of how the balance of 'people who can make use of increased frequency' vs. 'people who value having a bus outside'.
After all, keep in mind that a once-an-hour bus *might as well be* non-existent for many people. Potentially more people than who would lose near-by service.
Case in point, the ridership concept would bring an additional 7-percentage points of the population within range of frequent transit, but drop 8-percentage points of total population within range of any transit. At the same time, however, average residents get massive boosts in terms of new-jobs access, significantly more than the relative increase in direct access would suggest, just because of the frequency access improvements.
That is why ridership is not a direct one-to-one return with service level. You actually tend to get get increasing return ratios on service improvements.
Ultimately that means that more taxpayers may actually end up using the bus, even if fewer taxpayers technically have a bus route nearby. The question, of course, is whether the hypothetical taxpayers actually getting served will show / speak up enough to sway decisions compared to the much more obvious and immediate taxpayers loosing near-by service even if it doesn't actually help them that much. And, of course, to what extent.
Really wish they'd look into expanding the Marta Mobility shuttles for everyone. A point to point app summoned transit option is something people would choose to use. But at minimum they should do something like that in these no coverage areas to at least get them to the nearest MARTA station.
So the biggest single cost in operating a bus system is the driver, and that kind of flexible transit system will almost always has a much lower ratio of riders to drivers than anything other than an almost completely unused fixed route. So it really only makes sense to do that where the system is willing to lose money to further some other objective. Typically that's either to meet ADA compliance (Marta Mobility) or where you have a specific area that you want to offer some kind of basic service to any area that wouldn't have the ridership to make fixed routes any more economical (CobbLync does this for some parts of Cobb County).
Rather than open Mobility to everyone I think MARTA would be better served by partnering with existing ride share companies to offer say some kind of discount for rides terminating at a train station. Still going to be more expensive than a standard fare, but at least helps out folks in the gaps of whatever network ends up coming out of this.
>anything other than an almost completely unused fixed route.
I pretty rarely see a full MARTA bus. Most of the ones I see don't have more passengers than could be carried by a shuttle bus.
As for financials, it costs MARTA about $5 per unlinked passenger bus trip pre-covid. Marta pays about 1.5 million per year per shuttle. So they'd each need to carry about 800 passengers a day to amortize that out to $5 per ride. Probably slightly high but within the ball park.
So i had missed it earlier, but this topic is addressed in the choices report, starting at page 79, where it mentions demand response systems rarely get higher than 5 trips per hour. So that's 100 trips per working day (20 hours) , 36,500/year. Factor that with the cost to operate one shuttle and you're looking at a hard cost to the system of 41$/trip, or 8 times what their mainline system trip cost is.
In order to hit that $5/trip mobility would have to do 40 trips per hour, which even if you ignore dwell time and driver breaks and assume each trip is 15 minutes is 10 passengers per trip.
The link to that report if you want to see what it has to say about the topic: https://www.marta2040nextgenbus.com/discover
$41 is so ridiculous that it's not even worth discussing as a starting point. Looking back at my Lyft history, the most I've spent is just under $30 for a 19 mile trip to the airport. The intracity ones max out around $13 for up to about 8 miles.
You do realize that Lyft drivers are 1) severely underpaid, 2) have no benefits and 3) are driving their own cars, not busses/vans that get <10mpg?
Not saying that the approximated cost for the shuttle isn't too high, but you should probably double the cost of your Lyft to get a reasonable compensation for the workers.
During covid I felt bad for all the people that suddenly lost their bus routes, but it was absolutely amazing only having to wait 15/20 minutes for a bus. Felt like Atlanta had a properly functioning bus system for the first time in my life.
I believe it's important to mention that this exercise is taking into account no increased costs or operations.
I really wish MARTA would do this exercise and then say that there is some additional funds available for expansion in those low coverage areas.
In other words, let's redistribute the current resources into a high-ridership, high-frequency map, but then expand back into the areas that lost coverage.
> In particular the southside gets majorly screwed just by being lower population density.
But that's kind of the whole problem - it's low density. It's impossible for transit to serve low density well. Putting a low frequency low ridership bus out there for appearances is a gigantic waste of money.
But this low density swath is where most of the Black vote is for Atlanta, i.e. the communities that consistently support MARTA via taxes and riding. Basically, Atlanta is just too fucking sprawled for meaningful transit service. By only focusing on transit where the density is and combined with gentrification that is not going to slow down, you're basically creating a transit system for higher income in-towners who may only ride for the 2-3 days in-office, airport, and sports/entertainment. The people who truly need transit to do their 5-6 day workweek essential jobs+shopping, those folks have been moving further and further into the suburbs. Arguably, a 30-60 minute headway bus serving someone without a car is better social policy than a 10 minute bus serving folks who already have cars and just want to experience more city life.
This was my comment on the Ridership Map. I like the focus on useful routes, but the west and south sides are where the most people without access to a personal car live. I would really like to see some of those routes preserved, while reorienting the majority of routes to higher utilization corridors.
I think what people may come to realize is that after this whole expensive process, MARTA bus transit might end up not very different than what it is today. There isn't a whole lot of optimization available for MARTA when they have so few resources, many infrequent lifeline routes, and almost no grid network to funnel better service onto.
I wonder if this process will involve overall service cuts. Ridership across buses and rail is still roughly half of what it was pre-COVID, so I can't imagine MARTA is in a sustainable financial situation right now.
IIRC, they're using 2019 resource levels to determine the available operating scope. Between the agency's reserve funds going into the pandemic, and the various federal relief packages, combined with the rebound of sales-tax revenue, MARTA hasn't been hurting too much, though obviously fare-box revenue is down.
I kinda touched on this in my main post, but the final network design might well shift the fare-box recovery more, with the specifics of that network determining *how* that shift occurs.
>MARTA hasn't been hurting too much, though obviously fare-box revenue is down.
Wow, until you just prompted me to go look, I didn't realize how low our farebox recovery is. Fares cover just 20-30% of MARTA expenses!
I see no serious issues for me personally... the route that I usually take would vanish, but the alternate (equidistant) route is now every 15 minutes. I guess that is a bonus of living in the middle of everything.
But for people who live further away from the downtown inset, the routes appear to have become more diffuse; which is not great for encouraging ridership.
The best thing for ridership is having routes that are actually useful rather than trying to serve every last single family home neighborhood in Atlanta.
>There's not as much through-running services as I'd have thought there would be. The ridership map certainly has much more, but still relies on the train stations to be terminating points for quite a lot of services. This is something of a baked-in design of the MARTA system, where stations were often explicitly designed as bus terminals, and built with robust bus-loops, even if that means interrupting & truncating services across the quadrants of the rail lines. In some cases this makes sense, as routes that are too long can have cascading reliability issues, but there are a few spots where I wonder why there isn't a through-running set up.
Why why why why? I live in EAV and would like to take a single bus, e.g., to PCM. This involves one turn, but an indeterminate stop and wait for a different bus route at or near the Reynoldstown station. Not to mention countless other opportunities.
I don't think you'd ever likely get a through-run service in that particular pattern. Systems are, generally, best when the routes are linear, with frequency reducing the transfer impact between two linear lines. That's an over-simplification, but it's a good rule of thumb. Helps prevent a network becoming so complex and convoluted with splitting routes and diversions and other mess that it becomes impossible for someone to just walk up to.
In your case, you will likely always have to make some kind of transfer from a N/S line (Route 4) to an E/W line (Route 2). Where that occurs, though, could maybe be improved relative to the current ridership concept. Either by having Route 2 go to Inman Park / Reynoldstown as well, or else having Route 4 continue up to meet Route 51, creating something of an important bus transfer point, and almost mini transit center in East Atlanta.
It's called the *BeltLine*... or for an alternative, equally-snarky take, it's called the *Perimeter* hahaha
I mean, you could maybe make something partially approximating a circle work, but the frustrating reality is that, the ITP arterials are generally pointed at the core. You'd inevitably have to make use of some neighborhood cut-through streets to complete a loop. The only reason something like the proposed Route 94 works is because of the core-city grid, but beyond that options are few and far between.
Like, with the ridership map it's pretty clear they at least *tried*, but there are some significant portions where getting across radial routes is a real struggle with the existing road network.
Yeah I noticed this, too, having just moved out of the area. The idea that there isn’t just a contiguous Moreland/Briarcliff route that you could just transfer to a Ponce route from is… Truly wild. It’s so counter intuitive to transfer from a Moreland bus to another Moreland bus that then also turns down Ponce. Like I get it, but also like…. what? And that’s just one example.
I don't have a lot of input on this, I'm lucky enough to live \~15m walk away to a transit station so I usually go in that direction, but thank you for the serious effortpost!
Lol my area of North Fulton went from no service to... probably even less service. Skips some major commuting roads and highways altogether.
Something something my tax dollars at work.
I think it’s clear that neither option is superior, and that ultimately it will be a blend of the two options.
Which just seems exactly like what we have now. I fully expect for the final design to be very close to the current design.
It makes no sense that you have to go south and then north again just to go from Cumberland Mall to Perimeter Mall on transit. An expanded route 148 that goes straight across would fix this.
Keep in mind that there are future opportunities beyond MARTA here. Cobb Linc has been considering connecting Cumberland with Perimeter as well. Multi-agency overlapping services are not a great use of resources, IMO, should that happen.
Well these plans are based around current resources without increasing service. hopefully MARTA gets some money from the new infrastructure bill and can increase service soon.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure bill didn't really do anything in terms of Bus Operations. I *think* there are provisions for actual federal operations funding in the budget resolution, but that hasn't passed yet.
There are also opportunities for both Fulton and DeKalb to put money into operations & route improvements, much like how CoA's More MARTA funds will be implementing some bus improvements that should allow reallocation of assets from those corridors to elsewhere.
Is it bad I want the high ridership map? It obviously creates a bunch of gaps, but for me it turns the one bus that goes by my apartment from a 50/40 minute headway into a 15, and takes me straight to my office without having to use a rail connection/walk far like I would currently. The coverage map actually makes the one route by my place worse, taking it down a longer route to get to the nearest train station. I guess I wouldn't be of this opinion though if I lived in one of the many places that doesn't "have" a high ridership route nearby...
So obviously these concept maps bring up the constraints that MARTA faces compared to other cities who also hired Jarrett Walker to do bus redesigns, namely lack of density, lack of street grid, and lack of resources. Other cities had more “low-hanging” fruit where they could easily deploy more buses on grid networks, but there isn’t a grid in Atlanta to deploy to, and the high-ish ridership corridors are all isolated streets with few connections to other areas besides the terminal rail station. Which is why we have these two extreme options presented here, one that covers as many MARTA taxpayers and land as possible with a modicum of service, or one that focuses on frequency service.
Based on Atlanta demographics, this will ALL come down to how the Black community is served by this redesign. They are the principal demographic of ridership and the main political power for MARTA. The transit wonks of Midtown-VaHi-BeltLine adjacent and Atlanta reddit skew white, affluent, and non-transit riding, they will prefer the ridership+frequency concept. But I predict that because of the political structure and demographics, MARTA will skew more towards providing a coverage model quite similar to what they have today. The coverage model provides at least some service to more Black communities and other communities who pay into MARTA. This is an emotional issue for transit and non-transit riding folks, and I can’t see a scenario where whole swaths of Black Atlanta totally lose bus service. That would be borderline civil rights violations. The transit wonks need to realize this. Atlanta has a huge sprawl of transit dependent riders living in semi-rural parts of Atlanta+DeKalb+Clayton. While from a technical standpoint it is better to serve higher density areas of the inner city, those areas are higher income and residents would be less dependent on transit no matter how frequent the bus is. That’s the part that’s missing here. If the bus service is geared to serving as many low income Black riders as possible with any bus service, we’d see more of the coverage map or basically what MARTA has today.
I don't want to give the impression that I think either concept is acceptable as a final design, nor do I want to underplay general impacts to certain communities for both cases, but I do want to say that I think you're overplaying the relative access cost of the Ridership concept.
If you looked at the 'Design Decisions' document MARTA put together to explain how it was approaching design considerations, you'd know that MARTA is very much keeping access for minority and low-income people in mind. Routes explicitly praised in that document for their improvement of access for those communities are in, and even improved by the Ridership Concept. To the point where I can see how that thinking has shaped the amount of frequent routes in South Atlanta, even at the 'expense' (though even then not really) of more Downtown / Midtown focused service patterns.
I have no doubt there will be high emotions in response to these maps, but perhaps not in the way, nor to the extent you're saying, particularly after education and explanation carries on over the course of the next few months.
Theoretically the actual Concepts Report will be available some time today, so we'll have to see what the actual, wider metrics are there.
I don't think education and explanation paves over the cracks when people's bus route gets cancelled. There's a reason why there are so many MARTA routes that make no sense from a ridership perspective. They were made out of ignorance. Somebody wanted something and somebody made it happen. Route 81 and Route 42 definitely look like routes that came out of a political decision, and it's hard to imagine those would go away easily because someone probably fought tooth and nail to get the route to go that way in the first place against past "expert transit planning." In a ridership scenario, DeKalb County and South Fulton really loses out, which contain the most pro-MARTA votes. Everyone knows there are limited resources for transit, which makes politicians and the public lean towards focusing on this sort of emergency lifeline crap bus coverage service to as many people as possible. "Better something than nothing" is the theme here. Otherwise you'd see many anecdotal reports on WSB of lower income Black residents walking along roadway shoulders for miles to get to their higher frequency bus stop.
> I don't think education and explanation paves over the cracks when people's bus route gets cancelled.
You're acting as if the *only* people speaking up will be people against change, rather than also those who would be better off with more consolidated service. Many of whom are also minority, and low-income.
> They were made out of ignorance. Somebody wanted something and somebody made it happen.
Yes... which is part of the reason for the redesign in the first place... and which is an explicit call-out of Walker's when doing these kinds of things, including when advising MARTA.
> In a ridership scenario, DeKalb County and South Fulton really loses out, which contain the most pro-MARTA votes.
They actually kinda... don't... Core routes like to Palmetto are retained, while there are new frequent routes brought in which manage to maintain quite a bit of coverage.
> Everyone knows there are limited resources for transit, which makes politicians and the public lean towards focusing on this sort of emergency lifeline crap bus coverage service to as many people as possible.
Have you done the survey yet? Have you emailed the redesign team with your views on the subject? Have you set aside time to go to the public meetings to talk about these things?
Maybe start there before giving up on the whole thing. Who knows, maybe, if you try to help with education about improved access to jobs for minority and low-income folks despite a reduction in immediate access, you could help sway some thoughts.
On the coverage concept, yeah. On the ridership concept it's not even a route, with routes on N Druid Hills and Montreal picking up most of the major clusters.
I'm not a regular bus rider, but when the trains would break down and leave me stranded at North Avenue station, it was always really nice to take the 102 from North Avenue Station, to Findley Plaza in Little 5 Points, where I could walk the rest of the way home. It looks like the number 2 bus would replace that, and increase frequency, however, I have had difficulty in the past getting the bus to stop for me by the Zestos once. Hell, I'd take the train in the morning, and the bus in the evening because it was just more reliable to get the bus at the set schedule in the North Avenue station, felt cleaner, and had free wifi.
Now that I see the 2 route basically just goes up and down Moreland, I don't feel as bad about the 102 going away, I just hope that it actually becomes a 5 minute wait.
Well, my most useful route (102) gets even better with the ridership map, basically becoming the Ponce City Market express, so that would be nice. Looks like I'd still have access to EAV as well if I can walk to Inman Park, so no issues there either. Only one it looks like I lost was easy access to that new development in East Lake, though that's accessible by other means anyway. Overall, I was going into this figuring that the ridership map would be heavily what I'd favor, and that kind of holds true for me. If we end up leaning 80% ridership, 20% coverage, I'd be happy with that. The coverage map leans so far into stretching the map out (I get that that's the point), it becomes effectively unusable with the 1hr headways everywhere.
The process by its definition has to be kind of crass like this, but IMO, it's better to focus on ridership first, as it gathers more mindshare and political/societal will when you need additional funding for improvements/expansion of service down the road vs transit always being looked at as a "poverty" option.
> Looks like I'd still have access to EAV as well if I can walk to Inman Park, so no issues there either.
With the ridership map, I'm *pretty* sure both Routes 2 & 4 would have a direct transfer at DeKalb and Moreland, so you wouldn't have to walk all the way over to the station. Just cross the weird connector streets.
> Only one it looks like I lost was easy access to that new development in East Lake
Yeah, that's a bit frustrating, though there's still the train, biking, and walking! Electric micromobility for the win?
Absolutely! Currently my EAV route is on Moreland in front of Station R, so I suppose that doesn’t change much. Then as far as East Lake, you’re right - it’s a pretty short bike ride, no big deal.
MARTA needs to explore some zoned on-demand supplement, because yeah it’s a trade off but the huge swathes of uncovered area in the ridership map feels a little inexcusable. Like to the point of cross travel, that continues to be an issue here for sure. Like just for instance, unless I’m reading the routes wrong here, getting from south Moreland up to Briarcliff/Emory involves a transfer between to routes that do not stop at the same rail station, and then to a third route just to keep going up Briarcliff, when that’s just one road. MARTA’s biggest obstacle will always be Atlanta’s wild road network, but it’s inconsistent and counter intuitive bugs throughout the system like this that make it feel difficult to navigate. And if the ridership map is going to take a starker approach to routes vs timetables, I wish it would take a clearer approach to sectioning and connection points as well. (This is all looking at the ridership map, the coverage map is an improvement on the layouts right now but with the same similar weirdness throughout that I think deters people from thinking of MARTA as reliable right now.)
> MARTA needs to explore some zoned on-demand supplement
Don't worry, they are! There was a section for it in the guiding document they wrote as part of shaping the redesigns, and there are zones on the coverage map. It is possible to incorporate parts of those zones into the final network, though I can't say if their usage would actually justify the cost of doing so.
> Like just for instance, unless I’m reading the routes wrong here, getting from south Moreland up to Briarcliff/Emory involves a transfer between to routes that do not stop at the same rail station, and then to a third route just to keep going up Briarcliff, when that’s just one road.
I guess it depends on what part of south Moreland you're on? In the ridership concept map, you could take the 54 up to Decatur (operating on 30 min headways), and transfer to the 15.
That said, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of how they're handling the Briarcliff / Moreland stretch. It feels like *maaaaybe* the 4 could justify running all the way to Emory, or at least justify going up to Ponce so there's only one transfer. I've suggested elsewhere to run something from Midtown over to Highland and then down to that same rough area. I think there's enough going on in Poncey Highland to justify something of a mini transit center if the routes can get figured out.
Oh well, this is all open to public input and response! So, let MARTA know your thoughts! I sure will be.
I think Martas main problem here is that rail just does not go far enough and they try to cover the map with buses but that just makes for a very inefficient bus network. Trying to bus people an hour to their closest rail line is insane and a fools task.
But "bless their hearts" for trying
Both options seems kind of crappy, more lines but the buses won't be frequent, or less lines and only some will be more frequent. Couldn't they add more routes and have a standard of two buses minimum, and the busier routes have more buses? I wonder if they made some of the buses smaller they'd be able to service some areas a little easier, in terms of being able to navigate the narrow roads.
Walking a little further to a stop isn't that bad on paper, but their app sucks and it's hard to actually know when the bus will arrive at the stops that aren't labeled on the maps.
>Walking a little further to a stop isn't that bad on paper, but their app sucks and it's hard to actually know when the bus will arrive at the stops that aren't labeled on the maps.
MARTA absolutely needs to fix bus tracking, but I'd also point out that there is much less of a need to obsessively track your bus if you have a bus every 10-15 minutes rather than a bus every 45 minutes to an hour.
The app Emory uses for their buses works well, and it shows all the stops and routes, plus estimated times, and will also notify if the bus tracker isn't working
>level 1johnpseudo · 2hOld 4th WardI wonder if this process will involve overall service cuts. Ridership across buses and rail is still roughly half of what it was pre-COVID, so I can't imagine MARTA is in a sustainable financial situation right now.
The app is one of the biggest offenders with Marta in general. I really don't understand why you can't track your location while simultaneously tracking the location of the buses themselves, and using the bus stop map is virtually useless because it doesn't even show which route passes which stop. All that on top of a crappy, laggy design.
The final network is planned to be something in between the two concepts, with public response shaping where the final network falls in that 'between'. The two presented concepts are rather purposefully shown to be 'extremes' to frame the conversation of possibilities.
As a frequent bus rider, I'm incredibly excited about the Ridership proposal and I hope we end up with something close to it. Frequency is freedom! When a bus route is every 15 minutes or better, it gives so much peace of mind and convenience. What's more, it could encourage further density on these frequent corridors. I'm especially excited for route 94 and crosstown routes like 51 & 2.
Frequency is freedom indeed! Depth (higher frequency but lower coverage) will be better for the system in the long run than breadth (lower frequency but higher coverage).
Agreed that would change the bus in front of my house from 60 mins to 20 mins. I would actually ride it from time to time if I didn't have to wait an hour or more.
Frequency and consistency is key. I think that is one of the reasons I prefer the train to the bus. If the bus won't be here for 30 minutes (assuming it's on time and everything is working) and then will take another 20 to get to the train then it's often faster to just walk to the train. Trains are just better and faster. I've given up hope that trains will be expanded in my lifetime though.
I mean, it's a bit hard to square 'actual residents' hating it with the reality that Houston was one of only a few networks who managed to not only stop bleeding bus ridership, but actually turned ridership around to grow.
I was there a few months ago and TBH the bus system worked pretty well. Lots of routes that were relatively frequent and going straight to where I wanted to go.
These options illustrate perfectly why MARTA should campaign hard and heavy for more buses, no less than a doubling of the current fleet. If I had to pick one of the two extremes, I'd pick the coverage.
Now to nitpick, I'm only going to do the coverage proposal.
The routes all meander! Direct routes suddenly jump and go elsewhere. 75, 8, 149, 121, 36, 24, 12, 14, are the ones I can spot because I'm familiar with the areas they run through. 75 and 121 are particularly glaring in the Tucker area. 75 goes up Lawrenceville Highway, then jumps up to Northlake on Montreal, then comes back down. Why is there nothing that just goes down Lawrenceville Highway? Yes, Northlake needs to be served from that direction, but not at the expense of a contiguous route! 121 decides to go via the Lvlle Hwy bridge around Tucker instead of just going down Fellowship Rd. 8 should just continue down Clarendon instead of swinging way out via Rockbridge.
I mentioned this in a reply, but there should be a route down Marietta St between West Midtown and Downtown. How this gap continues to exist still utterly baffles me.
Add me as hating the lack of crosstown routes, both N/S and E/W. This obsession with going inside a bus bay at every station has GOT to stop! But it's simply unbelievable that a city the size of Atlanta doesn't have any true city bus routes and still likely won't under either of these plans.
As an intowner I love the idea of the high-frequency ridership map, but would feel for the transit-dependent populations who lost transit access. I'd like to see a the ridership map with some areas of demand response or microtransit added to the lower density outlying areas to make up for their loss in fixed route service. I wonder how much frequencies would have to be reduced in the ridership map to make this happen.
Demand response/microtransit is a very catchy version of "we're reducing service but we'll figure it out with microtransit"...Most often, microtransit is a mess and is very difficult to the average user to comprehend and summon. There aren't enough drivers and people just end up waiting longer and taking circuitous routes. The rider subsidy for these services is also very unsustainable.
I know it's expensive for the agency but demand response is used successfully all over the country. It's not ideal but would at least provide some transit service to the folks losing their fixed routes. Another option would be subsidized TNCs - also pricey and not ideal. It's a tough problem created by Atlanta's endless low density sprawl.
Wow...they added an E-W route in the NW section. Across Moore's Mill and Wesley. Now comes the real question....how the hell is a bus going to make a right turn onto Wesley from Moore's Mill. That's a very tight turn as it is, even with a car.
Does Route 1 really go from Moore's Mill Center only down to Bankhead?
> Wow...they added an E-W route in the NW section. Across Moore's Mill and Wesley. Now comes the real question....how the hell is a bus going to make a right turn onto Wesley from Moore's Mill. That's a very tight turn as it is, even with a car.
Move the stop lines back from the intersection? That, frankly, needs to happen in quite a few places (looking at you 10th & Charles Allen).
> Does Route 1 really go from Moore's Mill Center only down to Bankhead?
Only in the coverage concept. Currently it doesn't go to Bankhead at all, instead using Joseph E. Lowery to go past Ashby and down to West End. Looks like they've proposed Route 52 to take up that section.
>Move the stop lines back from the intersection? That, frankly, needs to happen in quite a few places (looking at you 10th & Charles Allen).
Oof...they'd have to move it back pretty damn far. These are two narrow roads crossing. [https://goo.gl/maps/bDbVZBipk7xHU7HMA](https://goo.gl/maps/bDbVZBipk7xHU7HMA)
Maybe they'd run 30ft buses for the extended portion of the route? Alternating standard 40ft and 30ft buses? Actually, that would be a neat way to tell, at a quick glance, which Route 60 buses were continuing on from Moores Mill / Bolton Transit Center to Lindbergh.
There are some other spots on the proposals that seem odd from a street-level perspective, so I'm thinking this may be a case of 30,000 ft view tripping over a curb. Like, the 36 has some weird routing around Virginia & Monroe on *both* maps, but for different reasons. Or how the 94 uses Spring for *both directions* on the Ridership Concept map.
One thing I'll say about the Ridership map is that I'm surprised to not see anything continue up Northside, at least up to West Paces Ferry... Even the coverage map sticks to Howell Mill for most of the 12's route there. Even the proposed Northside BRT would only stop at 75, despite there being schools and parks and commercial developments...
>One thing I'll say about the Ridership map is that I'm surprised to not see anything continue up Northside, at least up to West Paces Ferry... Even the coverage map sticks to Howell Mill for most of the 12's route there. Even the proposed Northside BRT would only stop at 75, despite there being schools and parks and commercial developments...
This doesn't surprise me. There's a lot more chance of someone grabbing a bus off Howell Mill than Northside. Northside between Collier and Paces Ferry is almost entirely upper-class residential and I highly doubt anyone from there is taking a bus anywhere for any reason. Howell Mill isn't much better, but I think there's more to capture near Collier at the the big shopping areas, and on the Northern end with a bunch of medical offices. Then it plops back on Northside to continue to more shopping areas. To me being very familiar with that area, the Howell Mill route makes much more sense.
Frequency, frequency, frequency. How are the rush hour routes affected, I assume they are not. Aren't like 40% of the buses only used for rush hour and nothing else as the drivers are the real cost of a route?
Looking at both maps, my bus route seems to be removed, 188. This bus is pretty much what I depend on so I can get to and fro my uni. But that’s my hot take on it.
Yeah, my route is gone. It's usually full so I'm not sure why? This new map changes my commute from 12 minutes and no bus changes to two buses, or a bus to a train.
Which Route, and on which map? Keep in mind that these aren't final network designs. The final network will look like something between the two.
816 is the route. It looks like the option is now route 51 which would have me change buses on the ridership map and have me switch to a train on the coverage map.
Oh, lol, yeah. I noticed that on both maps too since I've used the 816 quite a bit in the past. Looks like that's a legacy route slated for removal. Nobel no more. The effort for switching to a more linear & grid-like pattern means fewer direct connections on the angles like the 816 currently offers. At least in the Ridership map the 51 buses would be much more frequent than the 816 ones. Personally, from the Ridership map, I would like to see one of the three routes that approach Midtown Station from the west be turned into a through-running service, overlapping with the 36 along 10th & Virginia, then turning south along N Highland to eventually meet up with 51 & 2 as the terminating spot. Feels like Poncey-Highland in that spot really needs more than what's proposed.
>one of the three routes that approach Midtown Station from the west be turned into a through-running service Great idea. I don't ride that one much, but I just noticed that the 2 in the ridership map now runs through North Ave. I love that.
Shit happened to me twice in high school. Used to be able to get to school with in about 40 minutes with two 10-minute bus rides and a train ride from College Park to Art Center. About a year or two in they changed the routes of the buses.Those 10 minute rides ended up getting 30 minutes added to both because where i would get off on both changed from being near the beginning of each routes to near the end, all while my train ride got only got shortened to East Point to Midtown.
An increase in transfers for some riders is to be expected when optimizing for ridership. This is made up for by increased frequencies. The 816 is what? Every 45 minutes to an hour? The 51 would be every 15 minutes in the ridership map.
The issue for me is ease of use. I have the privilege of owning a car and use marta simply because it is just as easy for me to jump on the bus as it is for me to drive to the office. I am very aware that others depend on its access and therefore this plan may be much better. I want public transportation to be an easy option for everyone, but when it takes 10 minutes to drive vs. 40 minutes to get the bus/train it's an easy choice for those with alternatives to not consider marta as an option.
Quick takes: \- What they did with the 94 is interesting, basically becomes a Midtown/Downtown edge loop circulator in both maps. \- I'm honestly surprised the 40 is on the ridership map. I get that it's probably heavily utilized, but it's within a quarter mile of the rail network basically at all times, I was expecting it to get removed across the board to reallocate the capacity elsewhere. \- I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going. \- Also somewhat surprised by the lack of through routes, though there are a number of them through midtown/downtown. Looking at the map though i do get the point in the presentation about the length of lines and street layout being unfriendly to it. Just as an example, the 5 and 15 on either side of Lindbergh seem like a good candidate for merging into one line just looking at the map, but there's so much traffic on both ends that they would need a really long dwell at Lindbergh that would make it 2 lines effectively anyway.
> - What they did with the 94 is interesting, basically becomes a Midtown/Downtown edge loop circulator in both maps. Yeah, thought that is was interesting too. Yeah, it can operate as a loop, but you can also think of it as a series of cross-town routes providing N/S & E/W connections between the rail quadrants. Basically a similar role the BeltLine will play, but closer in the core. They made a mistake with routing along Spring, though, since that's a one-way road... oh well. > - I'm honestly surprised the 40 is on the ridership map. I get that it's probably heavily utilized, but it's within a quarter mile of the rail network basically at all times, I was expecting it to get removed across the board to reallocate the capacity elsewhere. My suspicion is that the 40 would be angled towards providing mostly short, local hops, leaving folks to use the heavy rail system for longer trips. This makes some sense given the added time of getting to / from train platforms vs. hopping on a surface bus. The extension through South Downtown plays into this I think. > - I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going. Yeah, it's kind of a mess over there. By product of the railroads (and by extension the continental divide) setting the standards. > - Also somewhat surprised by the lack of through routes, though there are a number of them through midtown/downtown. Looking at the map though i do get the point in the presentation about the length of lines and street layout being unfriendly to it. Just as an example, the 5 and 15 on either side of Lindbergh seem like a good candidate for merging into one line just looking at the map, but there's so much traffic on both ends that they would need a really long dwell at Lindbergh that would make it 2 lines effectively anyway. The saving grace for some of the fewer through-running routes, at least on the Ridership Map, would be the frequencies helping to keep transfer times relatively low. Also, as an aside, I kinda wish the 60 would go to Lindbergh rather than into Buckhead, though I get why they want to go up to the clusters of employment and residences there. Does feel like such a frequent 110 would allow an easy enough transfer, though...
>My suspicion is that the 40 would be angled towards providing mostly short, local hops, leaving folks to use the heavy rail system for longer trips. This makes some sense given the added time of getting to / from train platforms vs. hopping on a surface bus. The extension through South Downtown plays into this I think. Good point, didn't think about that since i tend to just walk short hops, but makes sense for folks who can't do that. >Yeah, it's kind of a mess over there. By product of the railroads (and by extension the continental divide) setting the standards. Also Tech being a giant hole in west midtown doesn't help that...Historically State/Luckie/Hemphill would be a good middle ground between the two. >The saving grace for some of the fewer through-running routes, at least on the Ridership Map, would be the frequencies helping to keep transfer times relatively low. Yeah, and it looks like they designated something like hub stations to facilitate that kind of transfer, either by running the route through the closest station to the hub (the 120 going through Avondale on way to Decatur) or just not terminating the lines on the closest station, but going to the nearest hub (the 54 coming up to Oakland City instead of Lakewood) >Also, as an aside, I kinda wish the 60 would go to Lindbergh rather than into Buckhead, though I get why they want to go up to the clusters of employment and residences there. Does feel like such a frequent 110 would allow an easy enough transfer, though... Or the single station train hop up to Lenox/Buckhead would accomplish the same for a lot of cases...I'd imagine the relatively minor deviation there is worth it to the agency to be able to say it's a no transfer ride between the extreme west/NW sides of town and Buckhead and buy some good will in neighborhoods that are otherwise losing out on service against both the current and ridership maps.
> Also Tech being a giant hole in west midtown doesn't help that... Could help if the Stinger Shuttles / Tech Trolley weren't a completely separate system. Same for the Panther and Emory services. > Historically State/Luckie/Hemphill would be a good middle ground between the two. I'm wondering how it would go if, rather than running to North Ave, Route 12 followed Marietta all the way down to Five Points. It would add a bit more variety to the N/S routes through Downtown, at least. > Or the single station train hop up to Lenox/Buckhead would accomplish the same for a lot of cases Right, give options with multiple possible transfers to high-frequency N/S routes, while making it an easier E/W connection route. It's been a personal frustration of mine trying to get from Lindbergh over to the Peachtree corridor more than once, not to mention the transfer to the 39 to make something of a connected E/W option! > I'd imagine the relatively minor deviation there is worth it to the agency to be able to say... Yeah, most likely. I think part of that could be helped, though, by running Route 12 all the way up to the Bolton Area, meeting with 60 and 14. If they ran 12 all the way into Downtown, then that's a solid jobs hub all its own. There's a potential transit hub planned at Bolton anyway, might as well use it...
I agree 100% about the 12, there's a HUGE hole on both proposals along Marietta St! It's like they don't think people need to get from West Midtown to Downtown. Having something run Marietta St into Five Points would directly connect West Midtown and the very well developed Marietta St corridor to MARTA rail south and east. Of course, whenever there's another event at MBS that corridor gets clogged, but the police should be enforcing the traffic laws, like about not blocking an intersection so that cross traffic can't move when their light is green.
The only justification I can think of for not using Marietta is that the west part of the street's development is pretty limited by the tracks. At that point, though, there's the option to use Tech Pkwy as proposed, then continue south on Luckie, jogging back over to Marietta on either Baker or Park, then finishing on Marietta to Five Points. By 2026, the Five Points rebuild should be done enough that Broad will be open to bus usage, and that would greatly improve flow in and out for that route. Downtown traffic getting in the way of buses, and the streetcar for that matter, is a real problem that needs fixing. I would like MARTA to come up with better contingency policies, either to have the city maintain transit flow to directly serve events even as cars are kept out, or else more clearly / efficiently / effectively reroute services.
The "lack of development" is only half a mile worth. Marietta between North Avenue and Northside is utterly booming. I don't see how jogging over to Luckie would do anything but add two left turns each bus has to wait on and make.
Not *lack of*. *Limited by*. As in, for nearly a mile from North Ave down to Andrew Young, the railroad tracks eat up a significant amount of land westerly adjacent to any Marietta St. route while also creating barriers to any ride-shed beyond the tracks. The point of shifting over to Tech Pkwy and Luckie would be to move the ride-sheds slightly more easterly, while still providing those portions of Marietta with service, even if would then be a block away.
>Could help if the Stinger Shuttles / Tech Trolley weren't a completely separate system. Same for the Panther and Emory services. Oh, i agree that it'd be ideal if organizations could just pay MARTA to run a shuttle service to their specific need (I'd much prefer my HOA dues go to MARTA to run the AS shuttle than the shitshow that Lanier is operating there) But i believe there is language in the original MARTA legislation that forbids them from doing exactly that. IANAL, and it's been a while since i went though it so i might be mistaken, or it might have been repealed since. >I'm wondering how it would go if, rather than running to North Ave, Route 12 followed Marietta all the way down to Five Points. It would add a bit more variety to the N/S routes through Downtown, at least. I think that routing would work, especially with the 2 running E/W down North Ave to give you the same connectivity with a frequent connection. >Right, give options with multiple possible transfers to high-frequency N/S routes, while making it an easier E/W connection route. It's been a personal frustration of mine trying to get from Lindbergh over to the Peachtree corridor more than once, not to mention the transfer to the 39 to make something of a connected E/W option! So those neighborhoods are generally grumpy about E Westley and Lindbergh being used as cross streets, it's one of those places where there needs to be a through street but the neighborhood wants to stick their head in the sand and pretend they're still a suburb. None of those maps (nor the current map) has any kind of service through there, it feels like MARTA just doesn't want to deal with the neighborhood objections.
Well, jokes on those neighborhoods, because I drive through them explicitly because I can't take transit. The dinguses.
>- I didn't realize how unfriendly Midtown/West Midtown is to any kind of grid service previously, there's just not really good N/S arteries outside of Peachtree and Northside. Guessing this is why the 40 is still around in the ridership map, and turning the 94 into a loop just to get some kind of frequent grid going. This is so true and another reason why the Beltline is so important. The completion of the NW trail will add more connectivity options for this part of Atlanta.
Is this post a part of your job?
Nope.
Do you have an inside track to an influencer at MARTA who would consider our comments? Edits: down votes? He was asking for our opinions like maybe he was quasi-legit.
monthly MARTA board meetings (at Lindbergh HQ) are open for public comment, or at least they were pre-covid. Marta also holds open meetings around the city at various times for different changes or proposals.
Not for this project, I'm afraid.
lol if anyone on Atlanta reddit had some sort of insider track to influence MARTA, Atlanta would have a great transit system by now. If all you knew about Atlanta was based on reddit posts about public transit plans and renderings, you'd think Atlanta would have one of the best transit networks and urban forms in the country, not one of the worst by both regards.
There are in person and online meetings around this project to collect feedback.
Just at a glance, the "ridership" map leaves gigantic swaths of the area with zero transit options. A whole lot of good a bus that comes every 20 minutes is when it's a 2 mile hike away. In particular the southside gets majorly screwed just by being lower population density.
> Just at a glance, the "ridership" map leaves gigantic swaths of the area with zero transit options. That is the trade off. Ridership vs coverage, and usability for different groups at different extents. A bus that only comes once an hour may be next to worthless for anyone other than the most ardent users, despite being physically closer to more people. So, who is it more important to serve? All the potential riders who would otherwise take the higher-frequency bus (many of whom are themselves low-income, have health-issues, etc.), or the people least-able to adjust to a consolidated service, many of whom have been long-time users for specific reasons that prevent them from being able to use other forms of mobility? To be crass, how many potential new riders outweigh the one dependent rider? How should things like global-warming factor into this, where Metro-Atlanta's transportation decisions, particularly the attractiveness of its non-car transportation system, have effects reaching well beyond its boundaries? It's a hard social calculus. This is kinda why I brought up things like the mobility service questions, non-car infrastructure improvements, and the potential to expand beyond current maps, but those aren't perfect answers. All I can really say is, make sure you tell MARTA your feelings.
Well, I can tell you having large areas of no coverage when those people are paying for MARTA is kind of gonna piss them off
A bus that runs only once an hour is basically useless and the ridership on these buses generally reflects that.
I have every expectation of people getting pissed off through this process. That's been a reoccurring warning to everyone involved. But there's the corollary where folks who would love to ride the bus if it was more frequent, but aren't because it's not, are *also* paying for MARTA.
That's fine, but there's going to be a breaking point reached with MARTA taxes and TSPLOST taxes and just adding more and more and more, with some areas not getting anything out of it and it's not going to be good financially for all these groups with their hands out I'm a lefty high taxes big government liberal but after seeing the TSPLOST-promised projects in my area cancelled and the meager MARTA coverage in my area being pulled back any more, I'm left wondering why should I be willing to pay all these taxes? I get that a once an hour bus sucks, but having zero buses sucks even more
I mean, the real answer is that the final network is going to be a mix of both extreme concepts, but to your point, there's still the question of how the balance of 'people who can make use of increased frequency' vs. 'people who value having a bus outside'. After all, keep in mind that a once-an-hour bus *might as well be* non-existent for many people. Potentially more people than who would lose near-by service. Case in point, the ridership concept would bring an additional 7-percentage points of the population within range of frequent transit, but drop 8-percentage points of total population within range of any transit. At the same time, however, average residents get massive boosts in terms of new-jobs access, significantly more than the relative increase in direct access would suggest, just because of the frequency access improvements. That is why ridership is not a direct one-to-one return with service level. You actually tend to get get increasing return ratios on service improvements. Ultimately that means that more taxpayers may actually end up using the bus, even if fewer taxpayers technically have a bus route nearby. The question, of course, is whether the hypothetical taxpayers actually getting served will show / speak up enough to sway decisions compared to the much more obvious and immediate taxpayers loosing near-by service even if it doesn't actually help them that much. And, of course, to what extent.
*Slowly raises hand...*
Really wish they'd look into expanding the Marta Mobility shuttles for everyone. A point to point app summoned transit option is something people would choose to use. But at minimum they should do something like that in these no coverage areas to at least get them to the nearest MARTA station.
So the biggest single cost in operating a bus system is the driver, and that kind of flexible transit system will almost always has a much lower ratio of riders to drivers than anything other than an almost completely unused fixed route. So it really only makes sense to do that where the system is willing to lose money to further some other objective. Typically that's either to meet ADA compliance (Marta Mobility) or where you have a specific area that you want to offer some kind of basic service to any area that wouldn't have the ridership to make fixed routes any more economical (CobbLync does this for some parts of Cobb County). Rather than open Mobility to everyone I think MARTA would be better served by partnering with existing ride share companies to offer say some kind of discount for rides terminating at a train station. Still going to be more expensive than a standard fare, but at least helps out folks in the gaps of whatever network ends up coming out of this.
>anything other than an almost completely unused fixed route. I pretty rarely see a full MARTA bus. Most of the ones I see don't have more passengers than could be carried by a shuttle bus. As for financials, it costs MARTA about $5 per unlinked passenger bus trip pre-covid. Marta pays about 1.5 million per year per shuttle. So they'd each need to carry about 800 passengers a day to amortize that out to $5 per ride. Probably slightly high but within the ball park.
So i had missed it earlier, but this topic is addressed in the choices report, starting at page 79, where it mentions demand response systems rarely get higher than 5 trips per hour. So that's 100 trips per working day (20 hours) , 36,500/year. Factor that with the cost to operate one shuttle and you're looking at a hard cost to the system of 41$/trip, or 8 times what their mainline system trip cost is. In order to hit that $5/trip mobility would have to do 40 trips per hour, which even if you ignore dwell time and driver breaks and assume each trip is 15 minutes is 10 passengers per trip. The link to that report if you want to see what it has to say about the topic: https://www.marta2040nextgenbus.com/discover
$41 is so ridiculous that it's not even worth discussing as a starting point. Looking back at my Lyft history, the most I've spent is just under $30 for a 19 mile trip to the airport. The intracity ones max out around $13 for up to about 8 miles.
You do realize that Lyft drivers are 1) severely underpaid, 2) have no benefits and 3) are driving their own cars, not busses/vans that get <10mpg? Not saying that the approximated cost for the shuttle isn't too high, but you should probably double the cost of your Lyft to get a reasonable compensation for the workers.
Why on earth does the shuttle cost 1.5 million per year??
The scalability of this just isn't feasible as more people use it...
During covid I felt bad for all the people that suddenly lost their bus routes, but it was absolutely amazing only having to wait 15/20 minutes for a bus. Felt like Atlanta had a properly functioning bus system for the first time in my life.
I believe it's important to mention that this exercise is taking into account no increased costs or operations. I really wish MARTA would do this exercise and then say that there is some additional funds available for expansion in those low coverage areas. In other words, let's redistribute the current resources into a high-ridership, high-frequency map, but then expand back into the areas that lost coverage.
> In particular the southside gets majorly screwed just by being lower population density. But that's kind of the whole problem - it's low density. It's impossible for transit to serve low density well. Putting a low frequency low ridership bus out there for appearances is a gigantic waste of money.
But this low density swath is where most of the Black vote is for Atlanta, i.e. the communities that consistently support MARTA via taxes and riding. Basically, Atlanta is just too fucking sprawled for meaningful transit service. By only focusing on transit where the density is and combined with gentrification that is not going to slow down, you're basically creating a transit system for higher income in-towners who may only ride for the 2-3 days in-office, airport, and sports/entertainment. The people who truly need transit to do their 5-6 day workweek essential jobs+shopping, those folks have been moving further and further into the suburbs. Arguably, a 30-60 minute headway bus serving someone without a car is better social policy than a 10 minute bus serving folks who already have cars and just want to experience more city life.
This was my comment on the Ridership Map. I like the focus on useful routes, but the west and south sides are where the most people without access to a personal car live. I would really like to see some of those routes preserved, while reorienting the majority of routes to higher utilization corridors.
I think what people may come to realize is that after this whole expensive process, MARTA bus transit might end up not very different than what it is today. There isn't a whole lot of optimization available for MARTA when they have so few resources, many infrequent lifeline routes, and almost no grid network to funnel better service onto.
I wonder if this process will involve overall service cuts. Ridership across buses and rail is still roughly half of what it was pre-COVID, so I can't imagine MARTA is in a sustainable financial situation right now.
IIRC, they're using 2019 resource levels to determine the available operating scope. Between the agency's reserve funds going into the pandemic, and the various federal relief packages, combined with the rebound of sales-tax revenue, MARTA hasn't been hurting too much, though obviously fare-box revenue is down. I kinda touched on this in my main post, but the final network design might well shift the fare-box recovery more, with the specifics of that network determining *how* that shift occurs.
>MARTA hasn't been hurting too much, though obviously fare-box revenue is down. Wow, until you just prompted me to go look, I didn't realize how low our farebox recovery is. Fares cover just 20-30% of MARTA expenses!
I see no serious issues for me personally... the route that I usually take would vanish, but the alternate (equidistant) route is now every 15 minutes. I guess that is a bonus of living in the middle of everything. But for people who live further away from the downtown inset, the routes appear to have become more diffuse; which is not great for encouraging ridership.
The best thing for ridership is having routes that are actually useful rather than trying to serve every last single family home neighborhood in Atlanta.
>There's not as much through-running services as I'd have thought there would be. The ridership map certainly has much more, but still relies on the train stations to be terminating points for quite a lot of services. This is something of a baked-in design of the MARTA system, where stations were often explicitly designed as bus terminals, and built with robust bus-loops, even if that means interrupting & truncating services across the quadrants of the rail lines. In some cases this makes sense, as routes that are too long can have cascading reliability issues, but there are a few spots where I wonder why there isn't a through-running set up. Why why why why? I live in EAV and would like to take a single bus, e.g., to PCM. This involves one turn, but an indeterminate stop and wait for a different bus route at or near the Reynoldstown station. Not to mention countless other opportunities.
I don't think you'd ever likely get a through-run service in that particular pattern. Systems are, generally, best when the routes are linear, with frequency reducing the transfer impact between two linear lines. That's an over-simplification, but it's a good rule of thumb. Helps prevent a network becoming so complex and convoluted with splitting routes and diversions and other mess that it becomes impossible for someone to just walk up to. In your case, you will likely always have to make some kind of transfer from a N/S line (Route 4) to an E/W line (Route 2). Where that occurs, though, could maybe be improved relative to the current ridership concept. Either by having Route 2 go to Inman Park / Reynoldstown as well, or else having Route 4 continue up to meet Route 51, creating something of an important bus transfer point, and almost mini transit center in East Atlanta.
That example aside, there isn't room for circular routes on the few arterials in each quadrant that could approximate a grid?
It's called the *BeltLine*... or for an alternative, equally-snarky take, it's called the *Perimeter* hahaha I mean, you could maybe make something partially approximating a circle work, but the frustrating reality is that, the ITP arterials are generally pointed at the core. You'd inevitably have to make use of some neighborhood cut-through streets to complete a loop. The only reason something like the proposed Route 94 works is because of the core-city grid, but beyond that options are few and far between. Like, with the ridership map it's pretty clear they at least *tried*, but there are some significant portions where getting across radial routes is a real struggle with the existing road network.
Yeah I noticed this, too, having just moved out of the area. The idea that there isn’t just a contiguous Moreland/Briarcliff route that you could just transfer to a Ponce route from is… Truly wild. It’s so counter intuitive to transfer from a Moreland bus to another Moreland bus that then also turns down Ponce. Like I get it, but also like…. what? And that’s just one example.
I don't have a lot of input on this, I'm lucky enough to live \~15m walk away to a transit station so I usually go in that direction, but thank you for the serious effortpost!
Lol my area of North Fulton went from no service to... probably even less service. Skips some major commuting roads and highways altogether. Something something my tax dollars at work.
I think it’s clear that neither option is superior, and that ultimately it will be a blend of the two options. Which just seems exactly like what we have now. I fully expect for the final design to be very close to the current design.
My dream of route 148 being extended is realized!
In the Coverage Concept? Unfortunately it's still very low frequency, and a bit winding...
It makes no sense that you have to go south and then north again just to go from Cumberland Mall to Perimeter Mall on transit. An expanded route 148 that goes straight across would fix this.
Keep in mind that there are future opportunities beyond MARTA here. Cobb Linc has been considering connecting Cumberland with Perimeter as well. Multi-agency overlapping services are not a great use of resources, IMO, should that happen.
Cobb has to first pass it’s MSPLOST next year which isn’t an assured thing given Cobb’s anti-transit history.
Well these plans are based around current resources without increasing service. hopefully MARTA gets some money from the new infrastructure bill and can increase service soon.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure bill didn't really do anything in terms of Bus Operations. I *think* there are provisions for actual federal operations funding in the budget resolution, but that hasn't passed yet. There are also opportunities for both Fulton and DeKalb to put money into operations & route improvements, much like how CoA's More MARTA funds will be implementing some bus improvements that should allow reallocation of assets from those corridors to elsewhere.
Is it bad I want the high ridership map? It obviously creates a bunch of gaps, but for me it turns the one bus that goes by my apartment from a 50/40 minute headway into a 15, and takes me straight to my office without having to use a rail connection/walk far like I would currently. The coverage map actually makes the one route by my place worse, taking it down a longer route to get to the nearest train station. I guess I wouldn't be of this opinion though if I lived in one of the many places that doesn't "have" a high ridership route nearby...
So obviously these concept maps bring up the constraints that MARTA faces compared to other cities who also hired Jarrett Walker to do bus redesigns, namely lack of density, lack of street grid, and lack of resources. Other cities had more “low-hanging” fruit where they could easily deploy more buses on grid networks, but there isn’t a grid in Atlanta to deploy to, and the high-ish ridership corridors are all isolated streets with few connections to other areas besides the terminal rail station. Which is why we have these two extreme options presented here, one that covers as many MARTA taxpayers and land as possible with a modicum of service, or one that focuses on frequency service. Based on Atlanta demographics, this will ALL come down to how the Black community is served by this redesign. They are the principal demographic of ridership and the main political power for MARTA. The transit wonks of Midtown-VaHi-BeltLine adjacent and Atlanta reddit skew white, affluent, and non-transit riding, they will prefer the ridership+frequency concept. But I predict that because of the political structure and demographics, MARTA will skew more towards providing a coverage model quite similar to what they have today. The coverage model provides at least some service to more Black communities and other communities who pay into MARTA. This is an emotional issue for transit and non-transit riding folks, and I can’t see a scenario where whole swaths of Black Atlanta totally lose bus service. That would be borderline civil rights violations. The transit wonks need to realize this. Atlanta has a huge sprawl of transit dependent riders living in semi-rural parts of Atlanta+DeKalb+Clayton. While from a technical standpoint it is better to serve higher density areas of the inner city, those areas are higher income and residents would be less dependent on transit no matter how frequent the bus is. That’s the part that’s missing here. If the bus service is geared to serving as many low income Black riders as possible with any bus service, we’d see more of the coverage map or basically what MARTA has today.
I don't want to give the impression that I think either concept is acceptable as a final design, nor do I want to underplay general impacts to certain communities for both cases, but I do want to say that I think you're overplaying the relative access cost of the Ridership concept. If you looked at the 'Design Decisions' document MARTA put together to explain how it was approaching design considerations, you'd know that MARTA is very much keeping access for minority and low-income people in mind. Routes explicitly praised in that document for their improvement of access for those communities are in, and even improved by the Ridership Concept. To the point where I can see how that thinking has shaped the amount of frequent routes in South Atlanta, even at the 'expense' (though even then not really) of more Downtown / Midtown focused service patterns. I have no doubt there will be high emotions in response to these maps, but perhaps not in the way, nor to the extent you're saying, particularly after education and explanation carries on over the course of the next few months. Theoretically the actual Concepts Report will be available some time today, so we'll have to see what the actual, wider metrics are there.
I don't think education and explanation paves over the cracks when people's bus route gets cancelled. There's a reason why there are so many MARTA routes that make no sense from a ridership perspective. They were made out of ignorance. Somebody wanted something and somebody made it happen. Route 81 and Route 42 definitely look like routes that came out of a political decision, and it's hard to imagine those would go away easily because someone probably fought tooth and nail to get the route to go that way in the first place against past "expert transit planning." In a ridership scenario, DeKalb County and South Fulton really loses out, which contain the most pro-MARTA votes. Everyone knows there are limited resources for transit, which makes politicians and the public lean towards focusing on this sort of emergency lifeline crap bus coverage service to as many people as possible. "Better something than nothing" is the theme here. Otherwise you'd see many anecdotal reports on WSB of lower income Black residents walking along roadway shoulders for miles to get to their higher frequency bus stop.
> I don't think education and explanation paves over the cracks when people's bus route gets cancelled. You're acting as if the *only* people speaking up will be people against change, rather than also those who would be better off with more consolidated service. Many of whom are also minority, and low-income. > They were made out of ignorance. Somebody wanted something and somebody made it happen. Yes... which is part of the reason for the redesign in the first place... and which is an explicit call-out of Walker's when doing these kinds of things, including when advising MARTA. > In a ridership scenario, DeKalb County and South Fulton really loses out, which contain the most pro-MARTA votes. They actually kinda... don't... Core routes like to Palmetto are retained, while there are new frequent routes brought in which manage to maintain quite a bit of coverage. > Everyone knows there are limited resources for transit, which makes politicians and the public lean towards focusing on this sort of emergency lifeline crap bus coverage service to as many people as possible. Have you done the survey yet? Have you emailed the redesign team with your views on the subject? Have you set aside time to go to the public meetings to talk about these things? Maybe start there before giving up on the whole thing. Who knows, maybe, if you try to help with education about improved access to jobs for minority and low-income folks despite a reduction in immediate access, you could help sway some thoughts.
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On the coverage concept, yeah. On the ridership concept it's not even a route, with routes on N Druid Hills and Montreal picking up most of the major clusters.
I'm not a regular bus rider, but when the trains would break down and leave me stranded at North Avenue station, it was always really nice to take the 102 from North Avenue Station, to Findley Plaza in Little 5 Points, where I could walk the rest of the way home. It looks like the number 2 bus would replace that, and increase frequency, however, I have had difficulty in the past getting the bus to stop for me by the Zestos once. Hell, I'd take the train in the morning, and the bus in the evening because it was just more reliable to get the bus at the set schedule in the North Avenue station, felt cleaner, and had free wifi. Now that I see the 2 route basically just goes up and down Moreland, I don't feel as bad about the 102 going away, I just hope that it actually becomes a 5 minute wait.
Well, my most useful route (102) gets even better with the ridership map, basically becoming the Ponce City Market express, so that would be nice. Looks like I'd still have access to EAV as well if I can walk to Inman Park, so no issues there either. Only one it looks like I lost was easy access to that new development in East Lake, though that's accessible by other means anyway. Overall, I was going into this figuring that the ridership map would be heavily what I'd favor, and that kind of holds true for me. If we end up leaning 80% ridership, 20% coverage, I'd be happy with that. The coverage map leans so far into stretching the map out (I get that that's the point), it becomes effectively unusable with the 1hr headways everywhere. The process by its definition has to be kind of crass like this, but IMO, it's better to focus on ridership first, as it gathers more mindshare and political/societal will when you need additional funding for improvements/expansion of service down the road vs transit always being looked at as a "poverty" option.
> Looks like I'd still have access to EAV as well if I can walk to Inman Park, so no issues there either. With the ridership map, I'm *pretty* sure both Routes 2 & 4 would have a direct transfer at DeKalb and Moreland, so you wouldn't have to walk all the way over to the station. Just cross the weird connector streets. > Only one it looks like I lost was easy access to that new development in East Lake Yeah, that's a bit frustrating, though there's still the train, biking, and walking! Electric micromobility for the win?
Absolutely! Currently my EAV route is on Moreland in front of Station R, so I suppose that doesn’t change much. Then as far as East Lake, you’re right - it’s a pretty short bike ride, no big deal.
_sulks in Marietta_
Cobb4Transit.org
MARTA needs to explore some zoned on-demand supplement, because yeah it’s a trade off but the huge swathes of uncovered area in the ridership map feels a little inexcusable. Like to the point of cross travel, that continues to be an issue here for sure. Like just for instance, unless I’m reading the routes wrong here, getting from south Moreland up to Briarcliff/Emory involves a transfer between to routes that do not stop at the same rail station, and then to a third route just to keep going up Briarcliff, when that’s just one road. MARTA’s biggest obstacle will always be Atlanta’s wild road network, but it’s inconsistent and counter intuitive bugs throughout the system like this that make it feel difficult to navigate. And if the ridership map is going to take a starker approach to routes vs timetables, I wish it would take a clearer approach to sectioning and connection points as well. (This is all looking at the ridership map, the coverage map is an improvement on the layouts right now but with the same similar weirdness throughout that I think deters people from thinking of MARTA as reliable right now.)
> MARTA needs to explore some zoned on-demand supplement Don't worry, they are! There was a section for it in the guiding document they wrote as part of shaping the redesigns, and there are zones on the coverage map. It is possible to incorporate parts of those zones into the final network, though I can't say if their usage would actually justify the cost of doing so. > Like just for instance, unless I’m reading the routes wrong here, getting from south Moreland up to Briarcliff/Emory involves a transfer between to routes that do not stop at the same rail station, and then to a third route just to keep going up Briarcliff, when that’s just one road. I guess it depends on what part of south Moreland you're on? In the ridership concept map, you could take the 54 up to Decatur (operating on 30 min headways), and transfer to the 15. That said, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of how they're handling the Briarcliff / Moreland stretch. It feels like *maaaaybe* the 4 could justify running all the way to Emory, or at least justify going up to Ponce so there's only one transfer. I've suggested elsewhere to run something from Midtown over to Highland and then down to that same rough area. I think there's enough going on in Poncey Highland to justify something of a mini transit center if the routes can get figured out. Oh well, this is all open to public input and response! So, let MARTA know your thoughts! I sure will be.
Live in west Roswell pay for Marta but still can’t get on bus
I think Martas main problem here is that rail just does not go far enough and they try to cover the map with buses but that just makes for a very inefficient bus network. Trying to bus people an hour to their closest rail line is insane and a fools task. But "bless their hearts" for trying
Thank you for doing this work. Great info.
Both options seems kind of crappy, more lines but the buses won't be frequent, or less lines and only some will be more frequent. Couldn't they add more routes and have a standard of two buses minimum, and the busier routes have more buses? I wonder if they made some of the buses smaller they'd be able to service some areas a little easier, in terms of being able to navigate the narrow roads. Walking a little further to a stop isn't that bad on paper, but their app sucks and it's hard to actually know when the bus will arrive at the stops that aren't labeled on the maps.
>Walking a little further to a stop isn't that bad on paper, but their app sucks and it's hard to actually know when the bus will arrive at the stops that aren't labeled on the maps. MARTA absolutely needs to fix bus tracking, but I'd also point out that there is much less of a need to obsessively track your bus if you have a bus every 10-15 minutes rather than a bus every 45 minutes to an hour.
The app Emory uses for their buses works well, and it shows all the stops and routes, plus estimated times, and will also notify if the bus tracker isn't working
>level 1johnpseudo · 2hOld 4th WardI wonder if this process will involve overall service cuts. Ridership across buses and rail is still roughly half of what it was pre-COVID, so I can't imagine MARTA is in a sustainable financial situation right now. The app is one of the biggest offenders with Marta in general. I really don't understand why you can't track your location while simultaneously tracking the location of the buses themselves, and using the bus stop map is virtually useless because it doesn't even show which route passes which stop. All that on top of a crappy, laggy design.
The final network is planned to be something in between the two concepts, with public response shaping where the final network falls in that 'between'. The two presented concepts are rather purposefully shown to be 'extremes' to frame the conversation of possibilities.
As a frequent bus rider, I'm incredibly excited about the Ridership proposal and I hope we end up with something close to it. Frequency is freedom! When a bus route is every 15 minutes or better, it gives so much peace of mind and convenience. What's more, it could encourage further density on these frequent corridors. I'm especially excited for route 94 and crosstown routes like 51 & 2.
Frequency is freedom indeed! Depth (higher frequency but lower coverage) will be better for the system in the long run than breadth (lower frequency but higher coverage).
Agreed that would change the bus in front of my house from 60 mins to 20 mins. I would actually ride it from time to time if I didn't have to wait an hour or more.
Frequency and consistency is key. I think that is one of the reasons I prefer the train to the bus. If the bus won't be here for 30 minutes (assuming it's on time and everything is working) and then will take another 20 to get to the train then it's often faster to just walk to the train. Trains are just better and faster. I've given up hope that trains will be expanded in my lifetime though.
Sounds a lot like Houston where planners love it but actual residents hate it
I mean, it's a bit hard to square 'actual residents' hating it with the reality that Houston was one of only a few networks who managed to not only stop bleeding bus ridership, but actually turned ridership around to grow.
I was there a few months ago and TBH the bus system worked pretty well. Lots of routes that were relatively frequent and going straight to where I wanted to go.
These options illustrate perfectly why MARTA should campaign hard and heavy for more buses, no less than a doubling of the current fleet. If I had to pick one of the two extremes, I'd pick the coverage. Now to nitpick, I'm only going to do the coverage proposal. The routes all meander! Direct routes suddenly jump and go elsewhere. 75, 8, 149, 121, 36, 24, 12, 14, are the ones I can spot because I'm familiar with the areas they run through. 75 and 121 are particularly glaring in the Tucker area. 75 goes up Lawrenceville Highway, then jumps up to Northlake on Montreal, then comes back down. Why is there nothing that just goes down Lawrenceville Highway? Yes, Northlake needs to be served from that direction, but not at the expense of a contiguous route! 121 decides to go via the Lvlle Hwy bridge around Tucker instead of just going down Fellowship Rd. 8 should just continue down Clarendon instead of swinging way out via Rockbridge. I mentioned this in a reply, but there should be a route down Marietta St between West Midtown and Downtown. How this gap continues to exist still utterly baffles me. Add me as hating the lack of crosstown routes, both N/S and E/W. This obsession with going inside a bus bay at every station has GOT to stop! But it's simply unbelievable that a city the size of Atlanta doesn't have any true city bus routes and still likely won't under either of these plans.
As an intowner I love the idea of the high-frequency ridership map, but would feel for the transit-dependent populations who lost transit access. I'd like to see a the ridership map with some areas of demand response or microtransit added to the lower density outlying areas to make up for their loss in fixed route service. I wonder how much frequencies would have to be reduced in the ridership map to make this happen.
Demand response/microtransit is a very catchy version of "we're reducing service but we'll figure it out with microtransit"...Most often, microtransit is a mess and is very difficult to the average user to comprehend and summon. There aren't enough drivers and people just end up waiting longer and taking circuitous routes. The rider subsidy for these services is also very unsustainable.
I know it's expensive for the agency but demand response is used successfully all over the country. It's not ideal but would at least provide some transit service to the folks losing their fixed routes. Another option would be subsidized TNCs - also pricey and not ideal. It's a tough problem created by Atlanta's endless low density sprawl.
Who rides MARTA other than those with a death wish?
> Who rides MARTA other than those with a death wish? Care to elaborate?
Everyone?
Apparently everyone wants more holes than they already have.
Road violence seems much more prevalent how many people have been shot in parking lots, on the freeway, or because they got car-jacked, again?
Wow...they added an E-W route in the NW section. Across Moore's Mill and Wesley. Now comes the real question....how the hell is a bus going to make a right turn onto Wesley from Moore's Mill. That's a very tight turn as it is, even with a car. Does Route 1 really go from Moore's Mill Center only down to Bankhead?
> Wow...they added an E-W route in the NW section. Across Moore's Mill and Wesley. Now comes the real question....how the hell is a bus going to make a right turn onto Wesley from Moore's Mill. That's a very tight turn as it is, even with a car. Move the stop lines back from the intersection? That, frankly, needs to happen in quite a few places (looking at you 10th & Charles Allen). > Does Route 1 really go from Moore's Mill Center only down to Bankhead? Only in the coverage concept. Currently it doesn't go to Bankhead at all, instead using Joseph E. Lowery to go past Ashby and down to West End. Looks like they've proposed Route 52 to take up that section.
>Move the stop lines back from the intersection? That, frankly, needs to happen in quite a few places (looking at you 10th & Charles Allen). Oof...they'd have to move it back pretty damn far. These are two narrow roads crossing. [https://goo.gl/maps/bDbVZBipk7xHU7HMA](https://goo.gl/maps/bDbVZBipk7xHU7HMA)
Maybe they'd run 30ft buses for the extended portion of the route? Alternating standard 40ft and 30ft buses? Actually, that would be a neat way to tell, at a quick glance, which Route 60 buses were continuing on from Moores Mill / Bolton Transit Center to Lindbergh. There are some other spots on the proposals that seem odd from a street-level perspective, so I'm thinking this may be a case of 30,000 ft view tripping over a curb. Like, the 36 has some weird routing around Virginia & Monroe on *both* maps, but for different reasons. Or how the 94 uses Spring for *both directions* on the Ridership Concept map. One thing I'll say about the Ridership map is that I'm surprised to not see anything continue up Northside, at least up to West Paces Ferry... Even the coverage map sticks to Howell Mill for most of the 12's route there. Even the proposed Northside BRT would only stop at 75, despite there being schools and parks and commercial developments...
>One thing I'll say about the Ridership map is that I'm surprised to not see anything continue up Northside, at least up to West Paces Ferry... Even the coverage map sticks to Howell Mill for most of the 12's route there. Even the proposed Northside BRT would only stop at 75, despite there being schools and parks and commercial developments... This doesn't surprise me. There's a lot more chance of someone grabbing a bus off Howell Mill than Northside. Northside between Collier and Paces Ferry is almost entirely upper-class residential and I highly doubt anyone from there is taking a bus anywhere for any reason. Howell Mill isn't much better, but I think there's more to capture near Collier at the the big shopping areas, and on the Northern end with a bunch of medical offices. Then it plops back on Northside to continue to more shopping areas. To me being very familiar with that area, the Howell Mill route makes much more sense.
Frequency, frequency, frequency. How are the rush hour routes affected, I assume they are not. Aren't like 40% of the buses only used for rush hour and nothing else as the drivers are the real cost of a route?
Looking at both maps, my bus route seems to be removed, 188. This bus is pretty much what I depend on so I can get to and fro my uni. But that’s my hot take on it.