MARTA? Who Cares?
Decatur Metro | April 5, 2009As Steve posted in a comment earlier, the AJC quotes MARTA chief Beverley Scott saying that the GA legislature’s inability to pass funding reform for MARTA is “Armageddon.”
And here’s the worst part of the whole thing.
Scott put the failure down to “high politics,” not policy opposition. “It wasn’t about MARTA,” she said.
So its not because anyone had any substantive reason not to give MARTA greater control over its funding. Its just got caught up in the whole transportation-overhaul mess.
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As someone opined on the previous Marta thread, why doesn’t Marta go ahead and defy the 50/50 rule and force the state to act and defend their inaction? What would happen?
Seems like they could come up with some creative accounting to make it look like they were just borrowing from the other 50%.
I’m really tired of seeing buses on every other street in DeKalb carrying at most two passengers if any.
From Jay Bookman’s blog on ajc.com:
Legislature to metro Atlanta: Go play in traffic
6:48 am April 5, 2009, by Jay
The 2009 state Legislature adjourned without addressing the transportation funding crisis that has afflicted metro Atlanta for years now. They just don’t give a damn. All the region asked was the right to tax itself by vote of the people, but state leaders — Gov. Sonny Perdue, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker Glenn Richardson — couldn’t manage to do even that much.
And then there’s MARTA. It faces a $20 million deficit because of collapsing sales-tax revenue, but has $65 million of its money sitting in its accounts ready to be used. However, a technicality in state law requires that money to be spent on capital projects rather than operations, and the Legislature in its infinite wisdom — or malign neglect — also refused to change that technicality.
They just don’t give a damn. It really is one of the more amazing displays of governmental incompetence and arrogance I have seen, and I’ve been in this business a long time.
To FM Fats – I don’t know where, or at what time, you are seeing buses with only two people on them. If you go to any train station, e.g., Decatur, and observe the number of people getting off and on buses and waiting for buses, you will see the volumes of people riding these buses. At certain times, it is standing room only, especially during rush hours when people are trying to get to and from work.
Watch the buses going into and leaving the East Lake station…virtually empty coming and going. Maybe it is because there are THREE subway stops within our city limits?
Smaller buses are needed for low ridership.
This is what the AJC calls a newspaper story? Not one quote from a legislator who voted against this? Not even a “our calls were not returned by press time” line? In other words, they did not even try to present both sides of this. And then Bookman adds in his blog that there’s no conceivable reason for the no vote, aside from “some people just don’t care.” Oh those mean republicans; they are just so totally mean! An utterly pathetic performance for our local paper.
The cap ex bill is a band aid at best. Maybe some of these legislators want to see MARTA present a viable long-term plan as a condition of letting MARTA drain its cap ex budget, thereby setting the stage for yet another crisis 12 months hence when MARTA still can’t fund its operations and then has no cap ex money to boot. I wish I knew, but the AJC can’t be bothered to tell me.
DEM–if you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And as a result, the revenue MARTA is getting from the sales tax (one of its main sources of income) is sharply down. So that’s why MARTA is in a gigantic hole right now. And it needs some way of getting by right now. So if there is any time to spend the money, it’s now, during an economic downturn.
Marta is doing this to scare the people and the government to give me what they want. They need to work on the budget in a much better way to cut down on the cut without cutting down on the service. Why does it take 6 Marta police officers to watch pedestrians take less than 8 steps to cross the street while Marta is completing upgrades at Kensington Train Station? The buses run in a totally different area and the people have to stand in the hot sun or rain to wait for their bus. When you see Marta buses running with only two or three people on them, you don’t know if they just let off plenty of them before or picking up plenty after. You can just assume. Marta has the technology to know how many people they are picking up, because the breeze cards allow them to do that. I use Marta to go and from work.
TOK, the issue is not just right now. MARTA has admitted that it has a very big long-term fiscal problem. So, again, giving them the Car Ex money does not fix MARTA’s fiscal mess. It just pushes the day of reckoning down the road. It’s like giving a homeless person $10. he eats today, needs more money tomorrow
My point was that maybe the “no” voters on this bill did not want to give MARTA this short-term solution while not addressing the long-term problems. That is a reasonable position to take, and so is the contrary position. What doesn”t help is (a) pretending that letting MARTA spend down the cap ex budget will make all this better, and (b) assuming that opposition to MARTA’s plan springs solely from sheer bias or reckless inattention to transportation needs. The AJC article comes close to doing (a) and unabashedly accomplishes (b).
Transportation funding was not passed for the third year in a row. If that isn’t reckless inattention, I don’t know what qualifies.
The only thing long-term in this state is the uselessness of the GA legislature.
AMB’s comment made me go back and re-read the article. I had thought the bill was voted down, but it wasn’t. Exactly what killed it in the house wasn’t clear, but it seems like it was being traded off as part of a much larger transp. bill, the details of which are not explained.
DEM, you are correct. Nothing was voted down. The issue is that no action was taken, thus leaving the 50/50 split that has existed for more than 30 years in place. It started out as a separate bill, but got blended in with the transportation sales tax bill(s), which ultimately died.
I’m not saying that all of MARTA’s problems are a result of the current downturn. But before this year, MARTA wasn’t facing anything close to the current deficit, which would call for the sort of drastic measures being floated. MARTA could probably have done a lot of things better, and I agree that they need to think about their long-term finances. But hoarding money right now, with the result that services are sharply curtailed in the middle of the giant economic crisis, would be incredibly stupid. Now is the time to dip into those funds to get through the downturn, and then you build up capital in boom times.
Your analogy to the homeless guy might–might–apply to Grady Hospital in the past, for instance. They’ve had huge fiscal problems, and even if some of those problems weren’t Grady’s fault–they’ve had to treat a bunch of uninsured folks that don’t pay–people balked at giving them more and more money through repeated crises without some evidence that they had a plan for trying to correct the fundamental issues. But MARTA isn’t Grady. MARTA has problems, but once sales tax revenue recovers, they won’t be facing the scale of problems they have right now.
Here’s Maria Saporta’s blog for today – it says it so well
Dysfunction junction: State leaders unable to help MARTA, transportation funding:
http://saportareport.com/blog/?p=505
Jim Galloway’s blog on ajc.com – report on Cagles speech to Atlanta Press Club:
Cagle: ‘We’re about to see what can happen when MARTA has to cut days of service’
3:02 pm April 6, 2009, by Jim Galloway
Imagine the Atlanta Braves — knock on wood — still in the hunt come September, when MARTA says it could be implementing cuts to service.
Perhaps eliminating rail and bus service on Friday. Imagine the headlines.
“We’re about to see what can happen when MARTA has to cut down the days of service…they are providing,” Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said Monday at the Atlanta Press Club.
Two days after the close of the 2009 legislative session, Cagle made what must be considered his first speech of the 2010 race for governor.
He preferred to talk about taxes — and his dedication to adding as few of them as possible. And confirmed that his chief of staff had sent a memo to office staffers warning them to expect up to five furlough days in the coming year.
But the topic of transportation was unavoidable.
The failure of the General Assembly to pass a sales tax to fund more roads and rail made the biggest splash.
“We were certainly disappointed in that,” Cagle said, predicting talks with House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Gov. Sonny Perdue this summer to reach a consensus.
But the most important untied shoelace of the session may have been the failure of S.B. 120, a bill that would have given MARTA complete access to funds raised by the Fulton-DeKalb county sales tax for the transit system.
State law currently prevents MARTA from using more than 50 percent of the cash for operating expenses. The remainder must go toward capital improvements.
The bill passed the Senate. The House declined to act.
MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott warned that the transit agency would undergo severe cuts without access to the extra cash — even as some state lawmakers assumed that she was overstating the situation.
“It’s Armageddon,” said Scott after the session ended without passage on S.B. 120. “That’s what it is. My board’s going to have some very difficult decisions in front of them.”
Cuts could include cessation of service, probably on Fridays, possibly starting in September.
“That could be hurtful,” Cagle admitted to reporters after his Press Club speech.
Asked whether a special session of the Legislature would be required to address the matter, Cagle said he hoped not — but that it’s not his call.
“That would be up to the governor to make that determination,” the lieutenant governor said. “I would hope that we can find other ways to remedy this issue.”
Cagle said MARTA’s situation was partly self-made because of some faulty investments. But the lieutenant governor said he did recognize the significance of the dilemma.
“MARTA is a vital part of what gets done in metro Atlanta, particularly with tourism and the convention business,” he said.
Go, Jay Bookman. Love the “play in traffic” header. Does it strike you that we have some conflicting conversations going on? Some say buses are nearly empty, while others on Decaturmetro complain about sitting at the North Decatur intersection while they go gray. Perhaps there is a better way of more efficiently using the bus system (while expanding the rail service). Cutting service on Fridays certainly ain’t it.
“Cagle said MARTA’s situation was partly self-made because of some faulty investments. But the lieutenant governor said he did recognize the significance of the dilemma.”
CAGLE IS 100% WRONG ABOUT THIS. Not one single penny of tax payer dollars have been lost on bad investments. In fact, without investments in Transit Oriented Developed and Asset Lease Backs MARTA would have been broke years earlier. He probably got this misinformation from Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Dunwoody).
Carolyn, sit outside at Kavarna on the weekend or in the evening and watch the empty buses pass by on East Lake and Oakview. I don’t deny that there are times and routes with good ridership. I think that others need to be looked at closely to see if they are cost efficient. I often also see buses with one or two passsengers in my neighborhood at the south end of 2nd Avenue, and empty buses on residential streets between McAfee and Tilson during non rush hours.
Having smaller busses at certain non-peak times, or on less utilized routes would help, but it raises complications. Firstly, if MARTA doesn’t have smaller busses it’s a huge financial outlay to buy them (although I guess it has $65m towards it if that’s classed as a capital project?). Secondly, switching equipment around throughout the day can turn into a logistical nightmare – smaller busses fulltime on less utilized routes is a lot easier to handle than rightsizing equipment based on hourly demand patterns. ..
It would be interesting to know the cost advatage of a small bus over a large bus? Most MARTA busses seem to run on natural gas – I have no idea what the costs might be?
Who blended it into the sales tax bill and why? That’s the question if we’re looking to point fingers…which is one of my favorite things to do.
Due to the improved fuel efficiency of todays buses it only takes about 5 passengers on a bus to yield air quality and energy use benefits.
You can blame the legislative leadership and the executive leadership for getting the sales tax and MARTA on the same bill. Like I said before, start with Speaker Richardson and Lt Gov Cagle – they appointed the conference committee members, and Gov Perdue for lack of his leadership on transportation in general.
But you have no idea how many passengers they are picking up and dropping off along the way. MARTA is the only means of transportation for a lot of low-income people and what’s going on has the potential to impact thousands of people.
Thanks Steve. Maria suggests a special legislative session to pass MARTA and transportation legislation. That’s what we now have to push. And push hard.
Perhaps this is something metro-area mayors could organize?
There is something like a Metro Atlanta Mayor’s conference and I think Mayor Floyd is either the current or immediate past President.
And then every Republican Metro Atlanta legislator in a district where MARTA is present should be targeted for defeat even if that legislator is percieved to be “moderate.” Electing these folks enables the right wing leadership that runs this state to do what they do … and what they do is poke a finger in the eye of the interests of Metro Atlanta, particularly intown Atlanta, every opportunity they get.
DEM,
That was a AJC blog entry from an editorial writer, NOT a newspaper story from a reporter, so it’s essentially an opinion piece. Read Saturday and Sunday’s paper. Lots of quotes from both sides on this issue. The AJC did alright on this story.
And that’s why these routes need to be looked at carefully. We don’t have any idea how many passengers are getting on and off along the way. But we also don’t have any idea how many buses are running an entire route without a passenger. I imagine these statistics are easy to come by; in fact I wonder if they’re out there as public record. Anyone know?