How “efficient” should MARTA be?

That’s the real question behind this morning’s AJC investigation which reports that of the 40 bus routes scheduled to be cut this fall, five “carry fewer than one person on a bus per mile on weekdays”.  Also fare “revenues on six of the weekday routes are so low they pay for less than 10 percent of the cost of running the route.”

And while we’re only talking about five or six routes out of the 40 cut, it’s good to keep things in context…

Measuring by fare revenues, MARTA’s bus system was more cost-efficient than the national average, with fares paying back 26.5 percent of the route costs, compared to 21.2 percent nationwide, according to 2008 figures from the American Public Transportation Association.

Depending on your own personal feelings on public transit, Ariel Hunt’s article will either leave you incensed at the “inefficiency” of some MARTA bus routes or at the AJC for letting a few bus lines – which make up just around 3% of the total budget cuts – overshadow the larger cuts and cutbacks of a system, which is already pretty good with its money compared to nationwide averages.

In such an inefficiently built city, I surely wouldn’t want to be charged with building and maintaining a transit system that could be deemed totally and absolutely “efficient” by those who do such deeming.