You may have seen mentions in the press of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s recently published “Regional On-Board Transit Survey”, which claims to be the largest such study ever conducted in the nation with over 50,000 participants.  (Actually, I think I was one of the participants a while back.)  Riders of MARTA and six metro area bus systems were surveyed.

As such, it’s a big dang report and a variety of Atlanta news outlets have been highlighting different elements of it.

Of particular note is the AJC’s rather odd chicken-or-the-egg perspective at the lack of suburban riders who utilize mass transit on Thursday.  (See the map from the report above, which indicates where transit rider commutes began.)

I say, draw your own conclusions.  Here are a few interesting summary tidbits ripped straight from the final report…

• VEHICLE AVAILABILITY: Over 40% of transit riders surveyed indicated that they have no access to a vehicle. Almost a third (32%) have access to one vehicle, and about 27% have access to multiple vehicles. None of the transit riders surveyed indicated access to more than 3 vehicles.

• VEHICLE ACCESS: Consistent with the vehicle availability question; over 40% of those surveyed have no access to a vehicle. Of the remaining 60%, over half said that they could have used an available vehicle for their trip – making them transit riders by choice.

• HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENT: Most (52.9%) of the transit riders surveyed are from households with 2 or more employed persons. Households with no employed persons represented only 8.6% of those surveyed. The most frequent responses were those for two worker households (39.3%), and one worker households (38.6%).

• EMPLOYMENT: Almost three-fourths (74.5%) of all the riders surveyed indicated that “Yes” they were employed. The remaining fourth (25.5%) of riders indicated that they were not employed.

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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.

Wheatley reports over on the Loaf about an Atlanta Business Chronicle story that teases the transit-minded with visions of a revived Peachtree streetcar, thanks to that debt-driven dreammaker, the Federal Stimulus package.

But is a Peachtree Streetcar the best use of Atlanta transit money?  A commenter on Freah Loaf argues that transit should instead focus efforts toward expanding into Gwinnett, Cobb and Cumming (and ignore the desire of voters, apparently).

To me, this dilemma strikes at the heart of competing Atlanta visions.  City-lovers are inclined to support the streetcar, which would strengthen public transit in-town and give the city a much-needed iconic image (without employing Calatrava).  In contrast, metro-visionaries see the streetcar as putting the train before the engine at this stage since the reality is still that 4 out of 5 people in the metro-area live in the tragically transitless ‘burbs.  These folks call for a much larger MARTA network.

At a high-level, transit advocates agree that both these components are key to Atlanta’s overall transit vision, but which is more important and therefore should receive priority in the current battle over dollars?

If suburbanites wanted, instead of feared, MARTA, it might actually be a tough call.

According to the American Public Transportation Authority, from April to June 2008, MARTA saw the largest ridership increase (15.6%)  vs. same period year-ago (21.5 million vs. 18.6 million) among all heavy rail systems nationwide.  (and yes, I’m overlooking San Juan, Puerto Rico  primarily because its an unincorporated territory, not a state, but also because its so freaking small that a 20% gain is much easier to accomplish).

Whether these increases will decline along with the recent drop in the price of oil is yet to be seen.  But regardless, one thing seems certain..compared to other U.S. cities, we Atlantans seem to be the most motivated by the price of a gallon of gas. OR could it possibly be that we were just the most inclined to forgo riding, not because it is overly inconvenient (though that’s a favorite excuse), but because we’re just not comfortable with the idea of interacting with others on the way to work (even if its just an occasional “excuse me”) .

Thanks to Creative Loafing for paying Thomas Wheatley to scour these numerous “Association” websites to come up with this stuff.  I hope they provide a good vision plan.

Johnny Issakson is reaching across the aisle again, this time to some Senator from Massachusetts, to jump all-aboard a proposal to build a high-speed passenger rail-line from Birmingham, thru Atlanta to D.C according to the AJC’s Political Insider. (Birmingham??)  There’s no mention of any further connections to NYC and Boston, but one would assume that a Boston to D.C. rail would also be a priority.

This, compounded with the announcement that the federal highway trust fund will run out of money this month, may make a lot of financial conservatives cringe.  How can we spend any more money on some speculative project when we can’t even keep our millions of miles of highways and bridges from crumbling?  Well, the argument that our highway system is unsustainable in the long run is a conversation for another day.

But right now, let’s think about this from an selfish Atlanta perspective.

Atlanta, like other train towns such as Denver and Chicago (post-Erie canal), is located where it is because of its topography.  Sitting on the edge of the piedmont, just south of the Appalachians, was/is an ideal central southern hub for rail (looking past all the old city rail wars that determined ultimate supremacy).  So guess what Atlanta?  Though most of your transients love to ignore your rail birth and history like the lonely Atlanta train depot, which sits almost comically outside Underground below a mural of whales painted on the side of a parking deck, you’re all about rail.

A high-speed connection to the nation’s financial hubs could potentially be a boon for the city, and really help catapult Atlanta into the top tier of cities.  With topography and history on our side, its little wonder why Issakson is on board.

And yes, building new things does cost money…but I’d argue that its just as big a gamble to continue to allow 85% of all federal transit funding to go to our highway system, while oil prices continue to rise and mass transit continues to nibble at the scraps.

Acting now, as Issakson is doing, could one day help Atlanta regain its national standing as a rail mecca (this time for passenger trains)…and not just a gridlocked mess.

h/t: Fresh Loaf