Tag: marta

MARTA pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Atlanta Magazine recently interviewed the new CEO of MARTA, and a couple of things caught my attention.  Primarily:

Most recently, (Jeffrey) Parker was vice president at infrastructure and design firm HNTB Corp.’s Atlanta office, where he ran the company’s Georgia practice. His base salary with MARTA is $350,000.

$350,000??  For running MARTA?  AKA installing some wi-fi hotspots on trains, putting up some signage to report bad behavior, but otherwise doing jack shit towards the grander spectrum of, y’know, expanding, or growing the network?

I don’t discount the grandiose accomplishments of former CEO Keith Parker, as it must have been true yeoman’s work getting MARTA’s books into the black.  But as far as Jeffrey Parker is concerned, a massive undertaking has already been taken off of his plate.  He’s not going to have to start in the red, because Keith had already brought the entire agency out of it already.  But at the same time, that means the microscope will be even more magnified, because Jeffrey won’t have the cushion of “well, I need to stabilize financially” to fall back onto when he inevitably does absolutely nothing, for years, and banks $350,000 per, along the way.

This bothers me more than the story of Kasim Reed blowing $500,000+ of taxpayer funds on his way out the door on crony bonuses (including five figure prizes for an ugly sweater karaoke contest).  I mean, most everyone already knew Reed was incompetent and a stooge of a mayor in the first place, so flagrantly blowing taxpayer money isn’t really that big of a surprise.  For the matter, most everyone already knows MARTA is a joke of a transit authority, but at least I didn’t, know that the CEO was making fucking $350,000 a year.

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When in doubt, change the name, make logos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s the Atlanta way.  Or rather, announce news that declares some grand unification of transportation agencies in order to mask that some other umbrella-shell company is being created that will pay off a whole lot of new people for doing jack shit.

Fresh on the heels of my last post where Google put a spotlight on the unintentionally-official meaning of MARTA comes this news that Georgia is going to create a regional transit governing system that will oversee the mass transit authorities across the entire Metro Atlanta area; including MARTA.  The solution?  A new name!

The Atlantaregion Transit Linkauthority, or The ATL!  And they invented new words in the process because they don’t know how acronyms work!

In other words, the goal on paper is that supposedly by 2023, all buses, from Cobb’s CobbLink, Gwinnett’s GRTA, MARTA, and any other regional buses in Clayton or DeKalb will all be re-branded ATL buses.  All MARTA trains will be re-branded ATL trains.  The ATL transportation options will hopefully be consolidated under one brand and identity, with the theory that it will supposedly actually help boost economic viability.

What’s actually going to happen is that by 2019, the teats of all these regional transit authority will be milked by a few people who came up with this brilliant idea, they’ll make a lot of money, by 2021, The ARTLA will be all but forgotten 2022, Cobb and Gwinnett will still be afraid of black people and oppose the rebranding of their buses and in 2023, MARTA will still be MARTA, GRTA will still be GRTA, Cobb will still be vehemently opposed to black people, and Google will still spit out Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta in their queries for the meaning of MARTA.

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lol MARTA, #896

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR – when queried to what MARTA stood for, Google’s response was the politically incorrect acronym

Ironic hilarity ensued.

Known by many, spoken aloud by none; except among closed trusted company.  When I came across this story, my jaw kind of did a quarter-drop; it was one of those stories that was tailor-made for the MARTA criticism that I love to spotlight like it were sport.  If not for the simple fact that I’ve been slammed at work and only came across it during the few minutes I afford myself to surf the internet while I’m eating at my desk, I probably would have vomited out a ton of words in knee-jerk reaction to it, prefaced with a hundred lols or rofls, but such time could not have been spared at that moment.

But really, this is kind of the epitome of the perpetual failure of MARTA; I’ll be the first to admit that former CEO Keith Parker did a fantastic job of improving the infrastructure of the company a considerable amount, and actually managed to get their finances into the black, but the one thing that even he couldn’t really overcome was the sheer perception of the agency as a whole.  And as we all are firmly aware of, perception is reality, and if the perception of MARTA couldn’t be changed, it’s hard to say that that much improvement had actually really occurred.

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lol MARTA #189

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Wrong for so long, it’s pretty much been forgotten: Oakland City MARTA station still does not have an elevator, 33 years later

33 years??  I’m 35 years old.  This is practically something being promised to me when I was born, and still not delivered after over three decades.  It’s no secret to how inept MARTA is, but for something to not be solved in 33 years, that could very well be among its longest-lasting fuck ups in organizational history.

I mean Keith Parker went gangbusters on MARTA improvements; it’s hard to imagine that something like installing a single elevator could actually slip under his radar.  But given the fact that Parker himself is somewhere in his 40s, I’d guess it’s not difficult to miss something that’s been a problem when it was already neglected into being the norm when he was still in high school.

Regardless, this story is still ironically hilarious in only the manner in which MARTA could make ineptitude funny.  I think the best part is the fact that they don’t have an elevator, but they have space saved for one, and the shaft already ready for the installation of one.  It’s just the fact that over the last three decades, MARTA has just failed to actually put an elevator into the space, alienating the handicapped and those with strollers and/or luggage from being able to traverse from one floor to the next.

It’s like a car person buying a car to restore from the ground up, meticulously constructing and putting it together, but then not installing an engine into it, and then letting it sit for 33 years.

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Oh, MARTA #100

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, I can’t have entitled this “Oh, MARTA #1,” because I’ve been chronicling MARTA fuck up stories for a few years now, but at the same time, I didn’t feel that this particular incident could just be summed up in the arbitrary numbers that I make up on the fly that make it sound like MARTA fucks up way more often than they actually do although it’s not really that much of a stretch to believe if they did.

So much like they do in comic books or any sort of regular periodical, I figure to just let’s just call this commemorative #100, because it truly was a MARTA incident that can’t simply be recognized with some made-up number.

As the story goes, since it all happened while I was overseas, the long-awaited implosion of the Georgia Dome, as covered by The Weather Channel, had their video feed utterly and completely ruined by a MARTA bus that just so perfectly timed its arrival into the shot right as the initial charges went off and the Georgia Dome came crumbling down.  Usually, I like to believe that I’m capable of coming up with way better headlines and descriptions of events than popular media does, because I don’t have to play by the rules of censorship or any sort of policing.  But when scuttlebutt declared the event as “The most Atlanta thing to ever happen” or something along those lines, I simply had to shake my head and just agree.

Seriously, I can’t really think of something more symbolic of Atlanta than a MARTA bus photobombing a momentous occasion.  And you know the driver had no fucking clue of its actions, as it was probably some wage slave just doing their daily job, trying to keep to the schedule and continuing to move . . . people, routinely through Atlanta.  But to the people at The Weather Channel who were completely banking on this footage, this was a cockblock that not even a Michael Cera film could have possibly executed. 

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Looks like MARTA is headed back to the dark ages

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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.

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Obvious answers to obvious questions

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

CBS46 Atlanta asks: How will MARTA ridership change with I-85 open? In spite of Keith Parker’s diabolical efforts to destroy roads, induce sinkholes, and cause agonizing gridlock throughout Atlanta roads to boost MARTA ridership, the answer to the question is about as obvious as finding out Cobb taxpayers will be on the hook for some Braves-related expenses despite countless promises that they wouldn’t.

Errbody ‘gon get their asses back in their cars and back on the streets and in no time, clog up I-85 and sit in traffic rather than ride MARTA.

I mean, the proof is already in the pudding, as it’s not even been one full day, and MARTA stations are reporting a wealth of available parking spaces, despite the fact that just weeks ago, ridership was up massively and warranted the need for additional parking.  In that regard, I actually kind of feel bad for MARTA, because they seemed to go all-in with trying to improve service and become the commuting savior the city needed, even if they probably were the ones behind it in the first place.

But $3.1 million reasons existed why the I-85 repairs were going to get done ahead of schedule, and I have to imagine a guy like Keith Parker is incensed with the notion that such a generous bonus came into play to get people to actually do their jobs in an expedient manner.  He did so much, destroying roads, causing gridlock as well as improving MARTA ridership, and now the whole plan kind of goes to pot now that I-85 was repaired as fast as it was.  It wasn’t even adequate time for riders to reinforce and get used to MARTA being the norm, and their asses are already back in cars, preferring to slog through traffic and have the freedom that cars bring, rather than ride MARTA.

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