MSFT for MARTA

Has MARTA considered approaching MSFT to help it survive instead of descending ever so slowly into oblivion? Evidence (see below) suggests that the big M might already have support for the ill-fated transit system in its popular operating system

itsby bitsy piecey

It's nice to know that your tax dollars are being put to such good use as to (soon) make it illegal for TV commercials to be louder than whatever it was you were watching before the commercial break.

The next stage in the slow and painful decay of the transit system in Atlanta is upon us. MARTA is celebrating with changes in its service. It's another greatest hits release: Bus schedules are changing, bus routes are being eliminated, some RideStores and restrooms are being closed, reduced customer service. MARTA's Facebook wall is a good place to see raw reactions along with fairly balanced responses from the staff at MARTA that have been cast to the wolves by their corporate bosses. Cobb County has decided to match the fares of MARTA (a tribute, no doubt, to "price matching") and will raise fares to $2 a ride. Gone are the days that you could use start on a CCT bus and use a transfer to get onto a MARTA bus and save a few cents. CCT has also eschewed all the euphemisms that MARTA chose and aims straight for your throat with the headline on their list of changes: fare increase service reductions and customer service changes.

super power gets cycle-savvy

According to a Wired article, the Federal government of the United States of America has now decided to consider pedestrians and cyclists to be as important as motorists when deciding which projects to fund as far as infrastructure and the like (you know, roads, mass transit, rail). It's been so long since 1776 that you realise the big draw of the USA is not that the government has a better sense of what is required to improve the quality of life (communities of people instead of isles of isolation and over-emphasised privacy, connected places, more than one way to get from place to place). The big draw has always, IMNSHO, the dollar. The big bucks. Take that away and let's see what happens. Let's not even start with "health care" (what a paradoxical phrase).

local boo

Creative Loafing, the generous rag of witty riches, has filed for Chapter 11. This isn't as newsworthy as the mess in Wall Street (in which taxpayers lose their money while the executives of the bailed-out AIG partied at St. Regis Resort). Meanwhile, one of those space-filling op-eds on the state of MARTA shows up in the AJC. Insufficient funding and unfair restrictions. Blah blah. The piece doesn't talk about the complete lack of monetary input from the County of Cobb to MARTA, despite the progressive presence of MARTA buses at Cumberland Mall (especially on Sundays when the good ol' boys governing Cobb deemed it fit to shut CCT down). The presidential candidates, meanwhile, continue to "debate" offering more text that should be fed through text retrieval engines -- heck! build a tag cloud -- instead of really promising anything useful. It's the two Joes (Sixpack and Plumber) at one end and "despite being articulate he seems to have that cocky air that cost Al Gore the election to the friendly neighbourhood apocalypse." All they say is like some of those papers you study in graduate school or like abstract poetry -- you make your own meanings; they are essentially saying what you want them to say. They ain't talkin' nothin' that'd help me. Streamline the management of work permits and work visas. Fix your data management systems so that the DHS, USCIS, IRS and SSA resemble a homogeneous governing ecosystem instead of a tragically fractured version of Babel. Project Mayhem makes more sense than any of the drivel about "fixing" health care. Stop running it as a business. Same thing for this gasoline "crisis." It's all hopeless. Everything's a business. That rickshaw driver back home asking for "half return" ain't got a thing on governing bodies that just don't understand the importance of transit in resolving a problem of consumption. Oh well.

rises and correlations

The US economy is sagging and the price of gasoline has nudged the $4-for-a-gallon mark (and even passed it by in some cases). A rise in the use of public transit (link courtesy: Amogh) is the kind of thing you'd read about. Paramnesia is justified -- when the prices had nudged the $3 mark in an economy that wasn't doing so badly, similar articles had made their way to readers. You have to discount transit-friendly places like New York City and Boston and think of sprawls like Atlanta, where the commute still sucks, where MARTA has failed to be the saviour to consolidate transit initiatives across counties (and CCT continues to have no service on Sundays) and doesn't look like it doesn't want to shake off the "goes from nowhere to nowhere" label. The Atlanta regional transit plan didn't get much of a boost when SR 845 failed to find support for funding. The crusaders have moved on. Yet another survey indicates that residents were warm to the idea of the 1 percent tax. But the man who had boarded the train to solicit votes opposed the idea, arguing that a new sales tax would be unwise in a slowing economy and would unfairly burden rural residents who shop in urban areas. In addition, he said it would be a mistake to pump more money into a state Department of Transportation in need of a major overhaul.

Meanwhile, a ranting rider on the train isn't helping MARTA's image at all [uncensored video here].

update [May 18, 2008]: Soulja Girl has been arrested.

transit goes great guns

Georgians (that is to say, residents of the state of Georgia in the United States of America) with concealed weapons permits could carry guns on MARTA trains, and into restaurants as long as they don't drink, under a bill that passed the Senate ... [more].

update [May 18, 2008]: Things like this could happen.

is this good or bad for atlanta's public transit?

On Wednesday, January 23, 2008, a 22 year-old woman robbed a Wachovia Bank, ran across the parking lot to a Quizno's, got sprayed with orange ink when a dye bomb exploded, tried to store her sullied clothes and the money in a women's bathroom in a Publix nearby, changed her clothes and ... wait for it ... went to the MARTA bus stop at Dunwoody Place and Hope Road to wait for a bus. She was spotted and arrested, thus being denied of tasting the success she had with a similar move before. [sanitised AP report that mentions no names | AJC report with more juicy details]

The question now is: does this represent something good (look, she got arrested only because she was waiting for a bus instead of driving away in a car ... imagine if we had more buses around; we'd be able to catch more people while they're waiting for a bus to make a getaway) or something bad (there you go; didn't I tell you that having buses around is going to cause more crime?) for public transportation in Atlanta?

gas [that's US::gasoline] blues

If you wanna run cool
Yes if you wanna run cool, you got to run
On heavy, heavy fuel
-- [Heavy Fuel/Dire Straits]

So after Hurricane Katrina was done, the ill-fated situation of gasoline in the United States of America got worse. The disruption caused by the hurricane propelled rising gas prices to the $4-$5 mark. The South-East was most affected thanks to problems with incoming gas pipelines (let's not talk about Iraq now, shall we?) causing some gas stations to go dry, others to gouge their prices like bellies at McDonald's. All this causes panic. Inevitable, perhaps. And what about the frustration? The futility of being reminded yet again of the stupidity of car-fuelled (no pun intended) suburbia that has ramped up (to borrow an Americanism) over the years. The gasoline situation is just a hint of the inevitable. People are going to pay for contending that although public transportation is a good idea, they would prefer to spend $$ on gasoline, and sit burning it off waiting in dead lines on clogged expressways (while doing the needful to the environment in the process). People are going to pay for encouraging the development of pedestrian-unfriendly accessibility-challenged city[sic] development[sic] projects. People are going to pay for letting this complacent fatalistic attitude bubble up to their representatives in power, who continue to turn a blind eye to everything except personal gain through political means. Politicians will continue to make the best of the situation. The common person, however, will slide down the tube into an empty tank of gasoline. What country should we attack next to remedy this situation? How about Peru's Chincha Islands? There's a great supply of guano there.

a sample elsewhere: Atlanta Gas Insanity

Even the library system seems to have gone into panic mode ...

On an unrelated note: Could someone let me know if any of the bus services running in Sprawlopolis (aka Altanta) has an extension to the automatic all-in-one machine (swipe passes; submit cash, get ticket; get transfers) that gives you change in case you are unable to furnish it? Currently, the MARTA and CCT buses have machines that are more than willing to take your money, no questions asked. Which means the buses have a steady thin stream of accessory income. Of course, commuters are usually annoyed (or they just shrug and bear it), but who cares? This could be regarded as an incentive to purchase passes (which, I have to agree, are really really convenient if you use the buses for more than simple 1-leg clean trips). But sometimes, basic mathematics will tell you that a pass doesn't give you a decent profit margin for simple 1-leg trips.

the future of public transit

Picture a long dark tunnel. Peppered with short bursts of painfully ephemeral illumination provided by the occasional terminally ill 50 watt bulb mounted on the wall. Imagine that this illumination follows exponential decay, which means that the illusion of light persists, yet it's actually getting darker. That my friends is the future of public transportation in the US of A. My point of reference will be Atlanta, since that's where I exist as the satyakaam of transit travel.

What we have is an idea called "Atlanta". Why an idea? Because in cities like Chamblee or Marietta (which fall in different counties as well), you can get by with an "Atlanta" in your postal address. Which means that "Atlanta" extends to accomodate and supersede other cities. Which aids the idea of a sprawl very well. And what a sprawl. The dregs of the city and the expanse of the suburbs have colluded to make this interstate highway-based "living[sic] space" a challenge for public transit.

And "public transit" is also an idea, instead of a wonderfully managed city or state-supported entity. We have disparte systems in place that intersect at politically defined rendezvous points: I know of MARTA, CCT, and Gwinnett County Transit. Note that the first entry in that list is the only one that does not betray its county (Fulton, BTW). Administrative granularity ensures that no one gets along. Counties supersede city and state regulations (very few of which seem to favour public transit, based on what I read on a regular basis). Your taxes do not help public transit in any way.

The only "transit" your taxes support is the kind that you sink $$$ into and get only frustration, hypertension, injury, high medical bills (aren't they always?) and death. And everyone seems to be fine with it.

A high percentage of Americans (the last I read it was about the same figure as the percentage of Americans who didn't have some form of health insurance ... but don't draw any correlations there). Yet people want to have their cake, eat it, and belch freely too. So people constantly rant about how allowing public transit into their area is going to infect it with undesirable social elements. Of course, they're fine with road rage and wasted time and $$$ getting to and from work (which occupies a bulk of their week). And their representatives in the administrative offices help to present this counter-argument to discourage any useful legislation in the support of public transit (see the end of this rant for more).

This "city" is already splitting at its seams (and running over) with traffic. And it's not multi-modal. Well, in a way it is, thanks to the large gas-guzzling vans and space vehicles that terribly incompetent drivers seem to hurl at you from different directions. Makes for a great horror movie. As long as you are not in it.

The only thing going for MARTA is the train. And they just slashed the schedules yet again. The reason the train gets more points is because the buses never offer a clear advantage. Buses have to share lanes with frustrated and frustrating drivers. Now, if you are stuck in traffic, wouldn't you prefer to be stuck in your own vehicle (and perhaps exercise some more options of escape) than in a bus? And guess what, the buses are being progressively slashed as well. It's a great way to reduce your losses. But it's also a great way to discourage people who want to use your system. Rest in peace.

The CCT buses are nicer than the MARTA buses. The latter have had fuelling issues with their CNG systems. The latter also enjoys the recent addition of Transit Television Network screens that only serve to add to the unwanted chatter you have to deal with in the bus (see also: jack- and jenny-asses talking ever so loudly on their cellphones in aggravating pitches and frequencies). Both bus systems share the same basic problem of trying to cover as many points with as few buses as possible. Which means that the routes taken are so sub-optimal, Edsger Dijkstra would collapse in shock several times over. All this happens for "cost optimisation" (put a 'z' there instead of an 's' if you're waiting on your green card).

I haven't used the GCT, but I don't expect a grand

And then there's the yet-another-attempt-to-unify-every-system from GRTA, which "works with those counties in Georgia that have been designated nonattainment under the federal Clean Air Act standards. Currently, there are thirteen counties in the metropolitan Atlanta area that are non-attainment for ozone. Those counties are Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Paulding and Rockdale." Good luck. All that has happened is akin to the creation of a committee to decide which committees need to be created. And it's no longer funny.

And why am I ranting in abandon? Because I saw a blurb on one of those tiresome screens at the MARTA train stations that play silly pixels for Cingular, The Home Depot and the iPod, in addition to providing MARTA Standard Time, and useful information about the next Northbound/Southbound train (while one chugs in and the announcer gets her timing wrong yet again). The blurb was about Clayton County and commuter rail. And I had to dig up the newsitem in question (you might have to sign your life away to read it; instead just use BugMeNot.com). Here's the relevant extract (let us pray that they are touched with the flames of wisdom or burnt to ashes as an alternative):

The Clayton County Commission has agreed with the Georgia Department of Transportation and the Georgia Rail Passenger Authority to take part in the proposed Macon-to-Atlanta commuter rail system.
...
But while Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell and three members of the Commission were happy with the agreement, Commissioner Wole Ralph was not.

Ralph thinks commuter rail is a good idea, but doesn't think Clayton County taxpayers should be saddled with paying the debt on it.

"I do not believe the state should ask the property owners of Clayton County to pay for rail services that will be used regionally by individuals from surrounding counties to provide them with increased access to Atlanta," Ralph said.

Ralph's thinking: metro Atlanta's traffic problem, specifically in Clayton County, is a regional issue and not one to be solved by county property tax owners.

Clayton County taxpayers will be on the hook for an estimated initial $4.5 million annual debt, Ralph said.

"Those are not Clayton County roads," he said. "There's no reason Clayton County taxpayers should pay to alleviate traffic on state roads."

Other fantasies include the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers (not to be confused with a movie that included a scene about the importunate consequences of ill-timed ill-placed fellatio [see also: The Man Who Wasn't There]) and the promise of separate lanes for buses. It's time to listen to Aerosmith's Dream On chorus again.

mai.n MARTA jogii

Back on the bus after a few weeks of riding to work with a friend. A few changes immediately noted. In addition to the efficiency-improving TV screen, there's a new digital ticker in the top-middle of the front (facing inside, of course). This time scrolls (vertically) information about the day and time (so you can now know (a) that MARTA time is different from every other time you're used to [TV time, NTP time, the works] (b) exactly how late you're going to be). Another cute addition is a female voice that goes "stop requested" (replacing the more identifiable but perhaps less ear-friendly beep) every time someone pulls the stop-request cord. The other things remain the same: jammed windows; a refusal to turn on the air-conditioning inside so you can sweat, burn and die like a pig. And of course a refusal to improve "service" (unless these nuggets represent an improvement!). The newest thing about the train station comprised the ads for the new Atlanta wing of Ikea (I only heard about them thanks to Fight Club) opening near 17th Street.

I don't mean to give MARTA a hard time (if anything, it's the other way around): I'm sure legislation, a global lack of appreciation for the social benefits (which imply capitalistic losses) of public transit that pervades the state and national administration, and upper management (don't we always like to blame them?) are responsible in no small measure.

As smart thinkers would say: If I don't like it and can't deal with it, I should find myself a remedy (aka buy a car, kiss a chunk of my savings goodbye, die young of blood pressure) and shut TF up.

marta tv

I step into the bus that takes me from the train station to my workplace and-- lo! -- there are three flat-panel TV screens up and playing animated multiple-choice trivia, running ticker ads at the bottom, presenting news in dark text against a mostly dark background, secular videos featuring different ethnic communities, and reminding you that this is the Transit Television Network. I must applaud Marta on this splendid move to improving service. After all, the first thing that people in need of a good public[sic] transportation system would ask for is flat-panel closed-circuit(is it really closed?) television. Yeah, right on. Given the inevitable incumbent bankruptcy, they probably want to go down with a blast (no pun intended).

z o o and kudzu

My first visit to the Atlanta Zoo. On a day of good weather. The usual smells and cool sights. But it was a great walk. The giant panda took top honours (and it was heartening to know that they had better chances of survival in captivity). The black widow spider glass display was empty. Makes you feel safe, what? And the lion was definitely a self-ware star, weary of the trappings of stardom. The fighting lemurs beat the sound levels generated by the people that abound in the MARTA buses and trains. Pity, the Cyclorama nearby was closed when we walked out.

Another visit to Kudzu. This great discount book store has been forced to close out its other branches (both new and old) over the last two years, leaving the Peachtree Industrial Boulevard location alone in the battle against overpriced books. The computer section's promised refill hasn't happened yet. But I managed to get some more volumes of Projections.

notes

Vishal-Shekhar's songs for Shaadi ka Ladoo feature my favourite Sunidhi Chauhan, make for easy listening, but don't mark any new territory for the duo.

When I uncheck "Play a clip when RealPlayer starts up", I expect the stupid piece of software to *stop* playing that irritating opening fragment of music.

"Next Southbound train to the airport" is an automated announcement that you expect to hear as the train is pulling INTO the station, not OUT. Another boo for MARTA.

atl, GA cribs

The first (and hopefully last) time I saw Georgia Governor Sunny Perdue (not unlike the chicken) was when he was walking about in a MARTA train, accompanied by nymphets with faces drowned in garish makeup handing out cute little cards, peddling for votes the day before the election. Since being elected, he has proceeded to provide Bushian tormentertainment down here. The latest in his "exploits" is funding roads to nowhere.

And now, since it's such a beautiful day outside, let's all sing suprabhaatam, and then as the flute takes over the melody, move into Rahman's maargazhii puuve.

On the joys of public transportation

I love public transportation. At least in concept. In practice, there's usually a lot left undone, unfinished, half-done or patchy. Bombay (aka Mumbai) is an example of a system that serves the population well, but suffers from overcrowding. People commute everywhere by train and/or bus and in their hustle and bustle miss out on the simple joys of public transportation. Atlanta has MARTA.