This is most definitely bad news for Atlanta: Keith Parker set to resign as CEO of MARTA, after five years of trying to improve the maligned transit authority
I know I’ve often been the first guy to offer un-constructive criticism or unnecessary sarcasm to just about everything Keith Parker has done, or just about anything pertaining to MARTA. But the truth is, I really should have eaten a good measure of my words throughout the last five years, because in spite of the snark and wise cracks, Keith Parker accomplished more with MARTA than I ever would have anticipated.
It’s easy to be jaded about things related to infrastructure in Atlanta, because this is a major market in the United States, but often times feels like it’s operating like the Podunk town that those not from the south tend to associate to places located in the south. The politicians in the city are flagrantly abusive in their privileges, yet nothing ever seems to change. So something like MARTA, the near-pointless metro service in the city always exists as an easy target for criticism, and when Keith Parker came to town, it was always easy to assume another crooked stooge was taking a notable position to likely flounder, make promises that would go unfulfilled, pad his pockets, and then get the fuck out when things are at their worst (like the Beltline).
But over the last five years, Keith Parker has made some tangible improvements to MARTA, despite the fact that I would champion all the flops but none of the real successes. Ridership did improve, although it got a massive assist when I-85 burned to the ground earlier in the year, and the general consensus of riders seems to show improvement, and not nearly as much shithead behavior on the trains, allegedly.
Expansion doesn’t happen to MARTA all that often, but under Parker’s watch, the bus service made its way down to Clayton County, which then helped improve the rail service numbers, since those people would ultimately take the bus to a train station to utilize.
Allegedly, MARTA stopped hemorrhaging money under Keith Parker’s rule, and is actually operating in the green, or rather not necessarily the red anymore. That’s something I would never have imagined would have happened to be frank.
The bottom line is that really-truly, Keith Parker did a tremendous amount of good for MARTA. So it’s a tremendous loss and a shame that he’s leaving the company that he really did accomplish some truly yeoman’s work while leading them.
What’s interesting to me is that in the interview he gives WSB, there’s almost a twinge of sad irony in his choice of words when he states that “We (MARTA) simply don’t go enough places.” I mean, that’s something everyone already knew in the first place, but I get the sense that Parker probably had very large, big-picture plans for expansion and hopes of growth, but as all Atlantans already know, expansion is hard to come by when there are places in the Metro area that simply refuse to have MARTA in their hallowed lands.
I kind of have to assume that after five years, even a tenacious guy like Keith Parker simply reached his wit’s end with red tape, racist counties and cities that don’t want transit to encroach upon their properties, and all the sandbagging done by bureaucrats and politicians. And because it’s often times the same song and dance in Atlanta, Atlanta manages to drive away real visionaries like Keith Parker.
Make no mistake, this is really, really bad news for MARTA and the City of Atlanta as far as I’m concerned. Once Parker is transitioned out, I think there’s going to be a pretty predictable timeline for when MARTA starts stumbling again, the budget creeps back into the red, and then eventually budget cuts will let workers go, service starts to suffer, and then with reduced infrastructure, crime rises, and MARTA turns back into the ironically sad joke it was before Keith Parker came to town.
As sad as it that Keith Parker is throwing in the towel, this isn’t something that’s tremendously surprising. Siding with MARTA is basically fighting the streets, and as the sage wisdom of Fast & Furious has taught us – the thing about street fights is that the street always wins.
