Free MARTA!…or A Token Effort Would Help
Who wants to ride MARTA for free? Sure! We all do!
And now, here’s how! Go to the Inman Park- Reynoldstown Station! Why? Because all the fare gates are broken. All of them. Tokens don’t work. Transcards don’t work. Change does not work…. & apparently, hasn’t for days.
The MARTA person on duty did not even take my token. She just told me to come on through and when I offered my token, she just shook her head.
Now, I am a big MARTA supporter. I want the system to succeed and I think people should pay to ride it. Having a station where all the fare gates don’t work does not help me make my case for a broader funding model. Even if this is temporary, having people collecting the revenue in person would be a plus twice over. It would show that MARTA is serious about making people pay and it would bring in revenue the system needs! Two out of two ain’t bad!
October 6th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
So… give me an opinion. I had been debating over whether to turn my post about the broken turnstiles into a letter to the AJC. I was all gung-ho about it, and then Joe posted the link about the new fare system, and I thought maybe it was pointless to write what would just seem like a ranty letter to the editor. However, I still feel like something should be said… because yeah it’s great that this new system is coming, but 1) what about the riders NOW? and 2) why should we believe things will be managed any better with the new system than they are now?
October 6th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Marta is the most horrible transit system in the US. Why are they
replacing the turnstiles when they don’t even maintain the ones they
currently have? The new turnstiles are jump-proof. This means once the new
ones start to break and aren’t maintained; nobody will be able to get
into the stations. Nobody will be riding. Does this make sense? Remember
how Marta rolled out the “onboard entertainment systems” on the trains
and buses with great hoorah? (an obvious attempt to distract us from
the horrible service)Well does anyone notice how these have not been
maintained and the majority are now broken. Even the semi-useful next train
arrival, and status announcement on the boards in the stations are
broken. Where the announcement used to be on the bottom of the screen, is
an announcement that the former arrival announcement is broken. Next
point: does anyone at Marta understand or care that some of us use the
system to actually get to destinations; and need to be at these
destinations at given times? The bus that “services” the office park I work in
only runs 6 times daily-3 morning times and 3 evening times. On Tuesday
the 5:30pm bus did not show up until 6:30pm. The bus that did show then
proceeded to pick up passengers for the 6:40pm time. I did not get
home-12 miles away until 8:00 pm. At other times the 5:30 bus has
completely failed to appear. There has also been instances where the driver
assigned did not know the route, and has asked passengers for directions.
In one of these instances I and my fellow passengers ended up in Cobb
County up near the Galleria. How about the service times with the trains?
30 Minutes between trains at rush hour during the week? This happens
frequently-it happened to me last night at Lindbergh. No apology, nor
anyone from Marta explaining how long it would take for a Doraville train
to arrive. Just constant announcements that there was a service
delay-DUH! What a waste of intercom airtime. I have used public transit in
D.C., Chicago, San Fran, San Jose, none are run with the incompetence that
Marta is.
October 7th, 2005 at 9:03 am
Feeling a little ranty here?
October 7th, 2005 at 10:00 am
A couple days ago the onboard entertainment system was showing the news from August 11th.
I’ll give MARTA credit: that next-train crawl, when it works, is pretty awesome. Even when you’re waiting for a southbound train and they keep flashing info about the next northbound train, to distract you from noticing that they don’t actually have info about your train. But it hasn’t worked for, what, two weeks now?
October 7th, 2005 at 11:53 am
As you’ll see here, one of the folks working on the problem happens to also be a Flickr user
October 7th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
sweet! free transportation to the falcons game this sunday.
October 7th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
So? Letter or no letter?
I’m leaning toward yes.
October 17th, 2005 at 11:41 am
About a year ago, one of the handicapped gates at the Midtown station (the side of 10th that has the two small entrances on opposite sides of the walkway) was broken and nobody - I mean NOBODY - actually paid to go into that gate.
One day I dropped a token into the slot and a dude sitting outside of the gate said “Man you are the first person in 30 minutes to actually pay to get into this gate.” This was the case for at least a month. We can whine all we want about how the suburbian counties retarded MARTA from the get go, but the management of this organization is atrocious. It’s like evey single employee needs to be fired.
October 17th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Yes. That’s exactly right. They should all be fired while they’re in the middle of replacing said broken system with something that will actually work. Shame on MARTA for trying to fix anything.
October 24th, 2005 at 11:13 am
Joe, I hear you, and I’ll be really glad when the Breeze system is installed. And if they get the Breeze early next year as predicted, that’ll be aweesome.
It would help if they had signs posted at each station saying what, exactly, the construction was for — the website says the Brookhaven construction, which has the station all torn to pieces right now, is for the “fare collection project” (Breeze?), but the actual signs there say it’s for the GaGaN project.
Also, MARTA? If you’re not going to be able to fix the nifty train info service “as soon as possible,” then take that damn text off your crawl, as it gets fairly irritating after a month or so.
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I think we shouldn’t have to pay ,our tax dollars are paying for that right I mean come on now that’s a lot of money I mean what are they spending our money onn any way new system.