MARTA Doesn’t Slay Our Labor Day Visitors
MARTA did not win customers this weekend. On one of the busiest weekends of the year, MARTA decided to single track. Further, they ran a number of trains on the opposite site of where they usually arrive confusing tons of out of towners.
Here’s what happened this weekend:
- The Braves were in town
- Falcons played
- Georgia Tech Played
- African American Gay Pride
- Oh, Yeah, the 60,000 people that went to some part of DragonCon!
All of these events meant that trains were packed. Often they were so full, that if you tried to get on at a station south of Lindbergh you couldn’t. Moreover, during the day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they did not run all the trains to the airport, doubling the demand for southbound trains.
People griped. Worse, Klingons griped! You don’t want to be stuck in a MARTA car between an angry Klingon, a Wookie, and a Mets Fan.
Of course MARTA has to do maintenance, but events such as DragonCon are high profile events that bring lots of tourists to town. Those folks will go back to work Tuesday and help determine whether more conventions come to here. Their negative MARTA experience will not help. Surely, MARTA management, the local sports teams, and the ACVB can coordinate events so that maintenance is done at night and on weekends when nothing is happening in town.
Moreover, MARTA needs to make a guarantee. If you wait more than 20 minutes for a train ever, that ride is free. How can they do this? Tap out. The system knows where you got on. They know how long it takes to travel on MARTA to your destination. They know when you tap out. Hence if your time traveled plus twenty minutes is greater than your tap in and out, the system can credit you.
Such a guarantee would encourage MARTA use and put pressure on operations staff to keep things well maintained. It can also go into the Union goals as a benchmark for them to hit and that will also please the MARTOC committee. When the customers win, the politicians are satiated and efforts are made to increase the economy of the product, we’ll get better results both in transit and in economic development terms.
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
When did MARTA start running trains to South Bend, Indiana?
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
We went to the Decatur Book Festival this past weekend. Our experience was fine. Trains did not seem to be running any less frequent than normal (according to their web site:Weekend (Saturday and Sunday) Service: Approximately Every 20 minutes).
The longest we waited for a train was 13 minutes, and while the trains were full, I did not see “overcrowding”. Granted, we were traveling on a Sunday.
While holiday weekends may be an obvious exception, I would argue that there is usually something going on in Atlanta, so it would be hard for MARTA to schedule around everything. I’ve heard of plenty of overlapped weekends where people are told not to drive downtown, take MARTA. MARTA construction has deadlines, and those deadlines are tied to money. Extending a project can cost more money. I’d like to see them stay in the black, finish their maintenance on time and run the trains efficiently. We may have to settle for inconvenience if they can only hit two out of three.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:23 am
GT was away this weekend.