by Jessica Handler
I started taking public transportation in Atlanta because there was no other time to get my reading done. I had just enrolled in a graduate program, and had a reading list as grave as a time bomb. The summery idea of total book immersion didn't mesh with the reality of how tightly scheduled I was; balancing job, schooling, errands, and personal life from an aging Honda Civic in which I dodged monolithic sport utility vehicles, part of the traffic that shackles this city.
I reasoned that I could take MARTA to work. Riding Atlanta's rapid rail system meant trading driving time for unencumbered reading time. "Take MARTA, It's SMARTER" chided the transit system's advertising. A native Atlantan, I knew chapter and verse the outmoded excuses not to use public transportation, most of which were invoked by affluent car users obsessed with potential dangers of waiting on a train platform. It was humiliating to admit, but I didn't know where all the stations were, how much the fare was, or how often the trains ran. Besides, I only knew one person who actually took MARTA with any regularity. He liked it, but he only went four stops in a straight line.
The city of Atlanta exists largely because of transportation, and was originally named for its importance to rail traffic. Passengers and freight rolled in at a rapid pace, stepping in the 1850's into a hopping town then called Terminus, not far from where Atlanta's Five Points station is today.
The Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority rail lines run East and West, North and South. The hub is Five Points Station, near many of metro Atlanta's key tourism and economic engines like Underground Atlanta, The World of Coca Cola, CNN Center, and Centennial Olympic Park. To actually get to a job at Coke Headquarters, though, it appears that you'd have to drive or take a bus from that station, or change trains, travel to the North Avenue station and then walk a few miles. MARTA's press says that 25,000 people each day come through Five Points. At first glance this seems promising, but considering that the city's total population is over 2.5 million, 25,000 represents a mere one percent. MARTA's bus service covers a wider network of the city than the rail system. Casual observation shows that the buses, many of which are natural gas powered, are oddly nearly empty of passengers. What is it about Atlanta that piles more of us into our cars, and keeps us from using our clean and earnest public transit system?
An alarming smog index of 198, centered smartly in the "unhealthy" range, and a prematurely sweltering 95° day early in May pushed me over the edge. Asphyxiating along with my native city, I panicked and tossed selections from my class reading list, my wallet and 'office' shoes into a huge suede tote bag.(I know how to do this--I'm a hard core public transit user in Boston, New York and London). I grabbed a fistful of dollars and got into my car, determined to do my part to encourage use of mass transit.
I got into the car because I had to drive to the nearest MARTA station. It's 3.4 miles from our house, on the other side of an interstate highway, and nestled in the socially conscious neighborhood of Candler Park. The parking lot--park all day, free of charge--was less than 50% filled at 8:30 on a weekday morning. Uplifting classical music piped in through speakers as the escalator cranked up to the turnstile.
I spent 45 minutes travelling by MARTA rail to work, although I actually live less than ten miles from my office as the city pigeon flies. I'm not any later than usual getting to my desk on trial train day. It takes me just as long when I'm behind the wheel, but today, in my first MARTA foray to work, I'm wildly enamored of an Atlanta I've never seen before.
Zipping along toward downtown, the train soars over the congested traffic on the connector, giving me a bird's eye view of loft developments burgeoning in edge neighborhoods. There's almost no graffiti on this train, and the air conditioning is welcome. I'm seeing more of Atlanta than I'd ever see in a car. (I'm not reading, either, but maybe I'll tackle that on the return trip.)The Westbound MARTA train perspective rolls out beneath my window. There's historic Oakland Cemetery, where Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell is buried, and the hillside of anonymous Confederate tomb stones that looks like a winsome storybook illustration. There's the warehouse rooftop marked with tiny lakes of rain, where my best friends instituted guerilla performance art for commuters during the '96 Olympics. There's the historic home and garden where my husband and I were married, and look, a new restaurant has opened on the corner! I see new construction designed to match the elaborate Victorian "painted lady" homes in nearby Inman Park, and I see businesses with empty parking lots and businesses with bright new signs. The ebb and flow of human living patterns are very evident to me, shuttling toward the center of the city. They don't seem remarkable to the other passengers in the car. There are less than ten of them, a variety of city dwellers, and they each appear to be sleeping, or nodding to personal radios that buzz against their ears.
My commute took 45 minutes because I had to change trains, and there's where old Atlanta met new Atlanta. Heading out of downtown on a Northbound train involved following a small crowd from one platform to another, and then another, and trying to determine if the train that pulled in was headed where I intended to go.
This system, the seventh largest in the country, has a casual, Southern, somewhat unfocused approach to providing the immediate gratification of 21st century living. The two northbound train lines are each identified in identical orange on the metal wall maps, even though they split destinations halfway up the line. (East/West trains follow a blue line.) There is no easy way to catch a glimpse of the signs on the trains as they speed into the stations, so I could easily (and did) board the wrong train and remain unaware until I was long out of range of my debarkation point. The stations themselves, with the exception of Five Points, don't seem to be clearly identified. Riding Southbound, I sat next to an airline stewardess ending her shift. She was attempting to head Northbound from the airport. As we pulled into Five Points station, she asked me to identify the stop. When I did, she gasped, grabbed her suitcase and lurched through the automatic doors, announcing that she'd been doing this over and over for the past hour, and couldn't figure out how to tell which train would take her home.
…I've learned to identify where I am from the art in the station. MARTA is proud of its art collection, one of the largest in the south. The Five Points station displays as art the imposing terra cotta tiles and vigorous architectural pediments salvaged from our early downtown. It's a subtle acknowledgment of the elegance of an earlier Atlanta. I'm awed by the vertiginous escalator at Peachtree Center, which is the stop for the library and the Folk Art and Photography Museum. The graded rock sides confirm that I'm descending alarmingly far under the daylight world. Extending ten stories, it's the longest escalator in the Southeast.
Research cited by "Hands on Atlanta," a prominent volunteer organization here, shows that Americans are fed up with traffic and congestion, and Atlantans, in their cars, lead the pack. So why, then, is the decision to take the train or the bus not automatic, as it is in London, or Boston, or New York? MARTA rail does not serve enough of the city for me to use it to get to my yoga class, or to visit with many friends. Bus schedules aren't reliable enough for me to confidently take them to appointments. A well-meaning friend, a high school civics teacher, made a foray similar to mine, attempting to take a single bus line five miles to her classroom. Waiting for buses that didn't come, she missed half a day of work for her effort. We can, however, take the transit system train to the museum, to a sports event, to the airport (my mother, raised to use Boston's MBTA, prefers it to driving), and to the central library.
Conservative estimates put growth in Atlanta's ten county area at more than one million people in the next 25 years. In order to make city living attractive for newcomers and for natives, we need to make a habit of using the public transit that we have, be vocal about our likes and dislikes, and experience for ourselves how it should grow with us to meet our needs.
It may be because I think that I've struck a blow for living in the city, but I can breathe more easily today. If I don't look up from my books as the train hurtles between the Georgia State University station and the King Memorial station, I won't see the brown smear of smog obscuring Midtown and Buckhead beyond. The Clean Air Campaign cites 'greater happiness and improved peace of mind' as a benefit to using public transportation. I wonder, though, when I get to my stop, will I remember where I left my car?
