Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2005 > November > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USWhy MARTA fails
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The news promo implored viewers to stay tuned Sunday night for a story on how MARTA was training to protect its riders from terrorist attacks.
Well, if there’s ever an actual attack on this region’s mass transit system, take this advice: Fend for yourself. Run. Do something. Just don’t count on MARTA employees to save your behind.
Last Thursday, my son and I had tickets to the Hawks-Clippers game. We made it to the MARTA Chamblee station in plenty of time to make it to Philips Arena. Parking was a nonissue, and even though it was rush hour, few people were arriving or leaving the station.
I slipped a $5 bill into one of three token dispensers. It spit it back at me. Ditto for the other two machines. I had three more $5 bills in my pocket. I inserted each of them as the diagram instructs — with Abe facing up. All three machines rejected all three bills.
We looked around for other dispensers. They were boarded up with plywood.
Finally, we spotted what appeared to be a MARTA employee. It was hard to tell. He was yucking it up with another young man. His hair was braided. He had a skull cap pulled over his ears. The only thing that hinted at MARTA was a walkie-talkie strapped to his leg, of all places.
I hopped over the turnstile. So did Miles. Wrong move.
Before I could speak, the employee admonished me for breaking the law. We weren’t sneaking in, I assured him. We were having a hard time buying tokens and needed help.
He said there was nothing he could do to help me. I told him he must be kidding. He reached in his pocket and gave me a $5 — in exchange for one of mine, of course.
“Try this,” he said.
We did. Three times. No dice. We hopped over the turnstile for a second time, and approached the same dude. He and his friend were still chatting. I asked if there was a change machine in the complex.
“Nope.”
I asked if there was an office or a supervisor where we could buy tokens and forego trying to use the dispensers.
“Nope.”
He pointed to the taxi cabs parked out front. “Go get change from them,” he said.
A woman who was waiting for someone to pick her up had seen the exchange. “It’s like this all the time,” she said, shaking her head.
And if it is, that explains a lot.
It’s part of the reason Gwinnett commuters don’t ride transit, at least the regional system. It’s not worth the personal hardship to patronage a system that takes you so few places and does it hit or miss.
Maybe MARTA ought to train its employees in customer service. To say, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” To dress in a way that’s presentable when on the clock. To treat people like the paying customers that they are.
We read too many stories about MARTA’s bigger problems — financial, ridership, cutbacks and scheduling. But until the folks who run the mass transit understand the importance of little things, all those larger issues really won’t matter.
Comments
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By Becca
November 15, 2005 12:43 PM | Link to this
Preach on! Marta employees are horrible. They should go work at Wal-mart where all the other people lacking job skills and customer service work. I used to live in gwinnett and now moved intown, but I won’t ride Marta. Just like I won’t shop at Wal-mart. Custoer Service IS IMPORTANT.I am not going to pay to be mistreated.
By Bob
November 15, 2005 03:07 PM | Link to this
You wouldnt give a crap about anyone either if you got paid six dollars an hour. The trolls at Walmart dont count as real people. MARTA is trash, it seems to be planned by a chimp after a long night of drinking and stops where ever it wants and doesnt go to anything useful outside the dome or the airport.
By SHAKAI
November 15, 2005 08:16 PM | Link to this
AT ONE TIME I WAS PROUD TO WORK FOR MARTA BUT THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS IT SEEM LIKE MARTA DON’T CARE FOR IT’S RIDERS OR WORKERS.BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE,DRESS CODE NONEXITENCE.NO CHANGE BOOTHS IN ALL STATIONS.ALL I CAN TELL TO DO IS CALL MARTA CEO COMPLAIN LOUDLY.
By Albert
November 16, 2005 08:31 AM | Link to this
After traveling recently to Australia, I was amazed at how extensive the mass-transit train systems are in Sydney and Brisbane. The systems in place there take you pretty much anywhere you need to go within and outside the city areas. And the employees at those stations were extremely nice and helpful, making sure we knew exactly which station we needed to go to, what train to take, what the schedules were, and even accompanied us to the ticket booth to ensure the booth operator sold us the right tickets. MARTA is primitive by comparison. After experiencing this, I can’t understand why a city as large and supposedly advanced as Atlanta could have such a woefully inadequate train system.
By Rick Badie
November 16, 2005 09:54 AM | Link to this
White Flight? Good morning. I’m sure many of you read the AJC story by reporter Brian Feagans about the start of a white exodus from Gwinnett. Statistics provided the foundation for the story, but I’ll bet my last nickel that this issue goes deeper than that. I suspect that blacks and other minority groups who can are jumping ship, too. In fact, I am thinking about exploring that idea in tomorrow’s column. Any insight from any of you regular bloggers would be greatly appreciated. FYI: My deadline is 4 p.m. today. PEACE. Be safe. RB.
By Gregg
November 16, 2005 12:23 PM | Link to this
Rick
You’re right, it should be called tax paying, law abiding, property maintaining citizen flight. Most everybody other than the AJC is way past putting a racial tag on everything.
By Barbara White
November 16, 2005 12:28 PM | Link to this
Gwinnett on the surface looks good with beautiful parks, refurbished town greens, new schools, a fairly new Justice Administration Building, malls, business growth and healthy tax revenue but beneath the surface a different Gwinnett has emerged.
An overcrowded, traffic clogged Gwinnett filled with drivers that don’t have insurance, drug problems, illegal immigrants, increased children in our Foster care system, horrible gangs that paint their graffiti on our property and neighborhoods where people want to move out of because they feel unsafe.
All of us, legislators, educators, parents, and neighbors have not corrected the underling problems. I don’t know what the solution is but I do know that I don’t feel safe going out by myself at night and I don’t look forward to growing old in the community that I loved so much.
The sad truth is that I too have thought about relocating but if I do will it only happen again?
By pat
November 16, 2005 02:09 PM | Link to this
Rick, That’s nothing. I’ve been commuting on MARTA daily for about seven years. The problems are many. My current pet peeve are the spit and cigarette butts I must walk through to get from the parking lot to the train. You are right. A person should never be counting on MARTA in a serious situation, like a terrorist attack. It’s total chaos during minor breakdowns.
By Michael H. Smith
November 16, 2005 06:51 PM | Link to this
I got a few questions to ask of you Mr. Badie in regards to this excerpt taken from Mr. Feagans article.
Louise Stewart is fed up with the “Spanish-language business signs�, “backyard chickens� and “overcrowded homes� in her Norcross-area neighborhood. (Notice the picture of a fence covered in Graffiti)
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/gwinnett/1105/15metgwinnett.html
Does this excerpt, in your mind, represent the America you grew up in as a youth in South Georgia?
If your house were located in a sub-division where chickens were kept in the backyard, surrounding houses where over occupied, cantina music played loudly, car horns honked early in the morning to pick day labors routinely, visiting friends of the over occupied house urinated in the front yard before your wife and children and fences where embellished with Graffiti (written in mostly gang-garbage) would you be: Concerned, annoyed, indifferent or ready to get the heck out of Dodge?
In your opinion do you feel our country has failed to execute a uniform immigration policy as pertaining to the numbers and nationalities received? Which in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, does, in good faith, turn the immigrant into an American?
In your opinion, what if any failure exists in immigration, what would you change and why?
By Tom Doniphon
November 17, 2005 03:22 AM | Link to this
MARTA sucks because it does not extend into Cobb & Gwinnett. Snooty white people in Gwinnett voted it down time & again. 20 years ago a Gwinnett commisoner said he didn’t want MARTA in Gwinnett becuase he didn’t want Gwinnett Place ruined like Lenox Square had been. He then admitted he hadn’t been to Lenox Square in years. (Probably scared off by the Mary Shotwell Little incident.) Well, Lenox is still going strong, and Gwinnett Place has gone to seed.