If you run to Edgewood/CandlerPark, you can schedule a layover in the pocket track.

Completely unrelated complaint- I’m beyond annoyed with the many people peddling their various junk on the trains. Bootleg DVDs are the most common, socks, headphones, candy, all sorts of things. The fact they can do this so freely without the fear of being caught tells me there aren’t enough security officers on platforms or trains. But of course that’s obvious when you see the same exact people on the southbound trains everyday hitting up only the people with bags who look like they’re headed to the airport. What a great impression of Marta this must leave airport only riders with.

If Marta could somehow cap wait time at each station I use to a 7 min max during rush hour, I’d take it every day.

While we’re on it, here is a fun email response I received from John Weber, Marta Director of Rail Transportation and Station Services, on May 20th regarding an inquiry into early departures. Enjoy:

Good morning Mr. [redacted],

My name is John Weber. I’m the Director of Rail Transportation and Station Services. I first want to apologize for your experience on MARTA and also thank you for using the system.

Regarding your questions about early train departures. MARTA does everything we can to keep trains on schedule including early departures. We do not condone early departures but our current train control system does not prevent individual Operators from leaving individual stations early. (You might note too that train times are estimates as mentioned in the published schedules)

Our On-Time-Performance is measure from end to end, meaning from the first departure station to the end of the line. Not individual stations. By industry standards, MARTA measures our performance within a 5 minute window. A train cannot leave past 5 minutes or arrive more than 5 minutes late or that train is not considered timely. As you can see, if we have a 5 minute window, we do have some room for individual Operators leaving stations before their scheduled departure times. Our overall On-Time-Performance consistently exceeds our goal of 97.5%, but understand that is no excuse for trains leaving early.

As I said, we do not condone Operators leaving early and we remind them constantly, but to manual track all 38 rail stations departures is somewhat difficult. The good news is, with our new train control system being installed as we speak, we will be able to automatically know when trains are early and hold them at the individual stations. The system is much more granular than out current system.

So to answer all your questions, yes, MARTA is aware of the situation; no we don’t condone it; yes individual Operators are responsible for individual departures; yes, the schedules are correct; and lastly, we have a solution to monitor and prevent early departures in our new train control system.

In closing Mr. [redacted], I again want to thank you for riding MARTA and letting us know when we don’t meet your expectations. I take our customer’s comments very serious and use all feedback to improve the service.

Sincerely,

John M. Weber
Director of Rail Transportation and Station Services