MARTA Beefs Up Its PR Effort
Decatur Metro | August 27, 2009The AJC reports this morning that MARTA is pouring more money into it’s PR efforts after the economy tanked and we discovered that our state legislature thought that MARTA was some sort of optional Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
According to MARTA – relayed through the AJC – the word around the state house was that MARTA “needed more people down here” during the struggle to allow the agency to use infrastructure money for slumping operating costs. So, MARTA has decided to submit to the game and take $592,000 of its operating budget and put it towards “PR”.
(I’m picturing a smiling MARTA bus cartoon mascot with a voice like Barney saying “It’s smarta to ride MARTA kids!” It’s all about the kids.)
Of course, MARTA can’t redistribute, let alone spend any money, without raising the ire of some state reps. I bet you can guess who’s about to be quoted…
[Rep. Jill Chambers] added that she was disturbed at the spending decision. “If they are so short of operating funds, it concerns me that the board will continuously vote to spend more on issues that are not transportation related,” Chambers said.
Ah yes. Nothing like driving past the premise of an argument and straight to the result. I hope this lapse in rational thinking can be attributed to the AJC’s editing process and not to Chambers lack of actual solutions for MARTA’s state legislature-caused troubles.
Oh politics, is there anything you won’t do?
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Chambers has no solutions, only complaints. Why does the Legislature get involved in a local entity, which is the largest in the country without state support?
Is this the same State Rep whom the Ga. Dept of Revenue has reported as delinquent on her taxes and whose wages have been garnished because of that?
Yes, except I’m not sure of the garnishment thing because I think she’s a business owner.
Amen, Steve. Furthermore, don’t anyone mistake an investment in PR as some silly quest to land random warm and fuzzy feature stories. More likely, it’s lobbying-based, as in MARTA’s on the quest for alternate sources of funds since the state’s conveniently unavailable in that regard. As a supporter of MARTA, I consider that money well spent. Perpetually cutting service, then raising fares on an inferior product, is never gonna make the type of system that will attract a critical mass of people with choices. It’s a downward spiral.
Doing a quick Google search on that Rep. gives an interesting few hits. This is why I hate thinking about our state politics.
Nothing like penny-pinching advice from the Dunwoody rep. [edited]
Seems like question to someone devolving to sarcastic pokes. Why not give her a boost along her path to enlightenment?
Poor MARTA can’t win. If it asks for money from the legislature, it is told to sustain itself like a business. If it tries to act like a business and promote itself, its services, and its accomplishments, then it’s told not to spend its money that way.
Do legislators have to pay for parking when they come in to downtown Atlanta? If not, they should be. They need to face the same choices that their constituents face getting to and from downtown every day.
Probably not. When I worked for state government my parking cost $14 a month in a state subsidized lot. It made me mad, because at the same time the legislators were refusing to subsidize public transit!
More evidence that almost all levels of “our” government are corrupt. MARTA didn’t get treated well because they didn’t have teams of lobbyists wining and dining at the State Capitol? Are you kidding me? God forbid our elected representatives actually take a position on an issue for free.
Um. She may have a point here. I can’t speak to her politics, but the last MARTA “upgrade” I remember was putting televisions on the bus. TVs? On the bus? Perhaps, just perhaps, that money (as well as the PR money) could be spent to make MARTA actually go somewhere. I appreciate the difficulties of parking downtown and that MARTA is a great solution to that. BUT…if MARTA wants to attract a loyal, daily ridership, they should consider actually going somewhere besides downtown and the airport. A very small percentage of the Atlanta population works downtown or at the airport. People want stops that are not 10+ blocks away from each other with some variety. What ever happened to the light rail discussion?
And by the way, the TVs on the bus only have the volume on when the bus is moving. When it stops (frequently), there is no sound. In what alternate reality does that make sense?
I ride a MARTA bus nearly every day. I use it to go to work. I do not work downtown or at the airport. The video screens you gripe about are not TV’s. It sounds like you don’t know what you are talking about.. Oh, and guess what, if you are writing about the Belt Line, the biggest road block to date has been state government.
MARTA goes somewhere. Its travels between lots of parking lots!
The TVs were not paid-for by MARTA. They were paid-for by an outside firm, with the promise of bringing in additional advertising revenue. There’s a long story behind that, but let’s just say the whole deal didn’t work out like the folks at MARTA were hoping.
By the way, MARTA doesn’t just go to Downtown and the Airport. It also goes to places like Buckhead, Dunwoody, and some little place with a funny name… um… Decanter? De Caterer?
Well, in any case, it just so happens that out of the Atlanta region’s five largest work centers, MARTA rail goes to four of them. I’d say that’s not too shabby a situation. (Side note: the Cumberland area — the work center without rail — has the disadvantage of being located in Cobb County, where the voting population rejected MARTA a very, very long time ago.)
Eh… no one rides MARTA anyway, right? Then again, no one lives, works, shops or eats in Decatur either, do they?
I’m glad to hear the TVs weren’t paid for by MARTA. It would have been an enormous waste of money in my opinion.
Here’s the big problem in my mind. For a rapid transit system to be effective, it needs to go to places that are not just work related. We need ridership at all times of the day, not just during rush hour. Admittedly, reducing rush hour traffic is a noble cause on many fronts. I don’t work downtown, but would use MARTA for shopping, errands, and entertainment if only it was more effective. Trains run every 20+ minutes on the weekends! By the time I have made it to the station and waited up to 20 minutes (or more depending on if they are on time or not) and enjoyed the ride to my destination, I could have driven, parked and walked the many blocks to get where I need to go. This doesn’t count time waiting for a bus that may or may not arrive on schedule.
To go home, I arrive at a station and wait (and wait and wait) to catch a bus that drives right by my house. There have been numerous times I have waited so long for the bus in downtown Decatur that I could have easily walked the mile or so home. And would have had it not been for small children in tow.
Another point is that for folks who are so unlucky as to have to live in the suburbs (or chose to), the drive to get to the nearest MARTA station or the park & ride option takes nearly as long as sitting in rush hour traffic in many places. Think Alpharetta & Gwinnett – huge populations that create massive amounts of traffic.
So, let me revise my point. Perhaps, MARTA should spend this PR money creating a more reliable and efficient system for people who would like to use public transportation to do something other than just go to work and back. For the work riders, perhaps more frequent “stations.” Mind you, stations do not need to be elaborate systems of platforms, tunnels, and buildings. They can be a glorified bus stop with a ticket kiosk.
And I couldn’t agree more about Cobb County. Stupid stupid move on their part. I guess they are paying for it with their own bus system.
I think you are making a great argument for more density in our development patterns, something Decatur and in town Atlanta, seem to be accomplishing, but the rest of Atlanta, and especially the suburbs, resist. For us in town residents, MARTA bus schedules and routes are not that bad. I have not owned a car since we invaded Iraq. I get pretty defensive when I hear people slamming MARTA, who sound like they have never used it.
Yes, more density would be great, Rick. I think the bottom line is that MARTA needs state support. In order to get that support, they need to prove themselves useful. In order to be useful, they need to address the larger population group that works and plays all over the city. I don’t think MARTA needs a PR campaign. They have what many advertisers consider a dream scenario. Atlanta area residents see “MARTA” everywhere! A huge component of advertising is visibility and MARTA has that in spades. I would take an “if you build it they will come” approach to the system.
And, I can understand getting one’s dander up. I’m an easy target for that. I do, however, ride MARTA occasionally when it makes sense for me to do so. Now, if they would only ask us how to fix their problems
I ride Marta several times a week, bus and rail, and my biggest complaint by far is the wait times, especially on the weekends. I think in order to get people out of their cars, Marta needs to run trains every 5 minutes, all the time. This will require subsidies, at least initially, but a “make it faster and they will come” argument will eventually prevail.
“This will require subsidies, at least initially”
MARTA is “subsidized” now, as is all public transportation including highways. But, it remains the largest public transit system in the country with no state support.