Some MARTA layoffs: drastic or long overdue?

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Director of transit-oriented real estate development, who made $103,000 a year: Cut.

Landscape architect, $80,000: Cut.

Employee relations manager, a catch-all job including oversight of health fairs, weight-loss challenges, team-building, $90,000: Cut.

These are among the first cuts MARTA made as it planned to eliminate 734 positions and lay off more than 300 employees, in response to falling revenues from the 1-cent sales tax it receives from Fulton and DeKalb counties. The cuts are in progress and will trim $63.8 million from the fiscal year 2012 budget deficit, according to MARTA spokesman Lyle Harris.

MARTA leaders had already bemoaned how thin their service was, and emphasized how drastic the cuts will be.  Transit service will drop more than 10 percent -- meaning longer waits and fewer routes -- as mechanics, administrators, 110 bus drivers and 57 train operators take their leave.  Including overtime, the drivers make on average $45,700 per year, according to MARTA.

However, the fact that highly paid landscapers and development managers were ever employed by MARTA  -- and that it plans to keep many other positions that have little to do with moving passengers from point A to point B -- irks some who fear the public transit authority is prone to overspending until checked by a recession, and who accuse the agency of overreaching its responsibility.

For its part, MARTA insists the jobs retained in its 4,000-plus workforce, and even many of those eliminated, are more necessary than they may appear.

As the economy forces more efficiency, that dispute goes beyond MARTA's Fulton and DeKalb county bus routes, with national policy advocates arguing over what role government transit agencies really ought to play.

Whether it's planning or other divisions, MARTA officials argue that the future of mass transit demands thinking outside the box and sometimes paying visionaries to do that.

For example, activities like health fairs were meant to boost employee morale and health, hopefully driving down MARTA's health benefits costs, said Deborah Dawson, assistant general manager for MARTA's human resources.

MARTA officials acknowledge that $80,000 for a landscape planner may seem high, but they say that particular employee, a non-union position, rose through the ranks for more than 25 years, and they add that it was a sensible cut. Most of the daily landscaping is done by workers who make a top rate of $15.52 per hour, they said.  As to planning expansions, they said, if they don't plan they can't win federal grants for projects.  And whatever else they may do, they added, transit service remains paramount.

“What I can tell you unequivocally, unequivocally, is that before an administrative head is added, service would be added first” if things improve, said Ted Basta, MARTA’s chief of business support services.

But more than that, MARTA and its allies across the country say, if transit is to thrive and attract travelers who can afford to choose, it must make the experience pleasant and safe.  But it also means efforts much bigger: building denser developments near transit stations where condo-dwellers will hop from doorstep to fare gate every morning, and in the process shape a new kind of city that reduces suburban sprawl.

It's not free. MARTA's beautification program is complete, but landscapers who maintain stations and clear more than 100 miles of track area will continue to do that, on a budget of about $1.4 million a year. MARTA’s planning division will retain 44 positions, including those working on future possibilities such as an Atlanta streetcar, and four real-estate development employees who together cost $436,000 a year.  MARTA's assistant general manager for planning, Cheryl King, emphasized that half of her staff work on changing and distributing daily route schedules, and some of the others work on mundane functions related to land MARTA already owns.

For the other planners, MARTA makes no apology.  To make up for some of the personnel it is losing, King's division is adding a new senior land-use planner at a salary of $73,000 a year, and it is keeping positions such as an $85,000 real-estate development manager.

Some of that spending rankles Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), who chairs the legislative committee that watches MARTA.  The committee gets information about MARTA and can make recommendations, but it can't make law.

“The focus at MARTA’s got to be on providing transportation to the customer,” Chambers said. And that doesn’t mean planning real estate developments, better landscapes or a raft of expansion projects, she believes. “Begonias are pretty to look at but they’re not going to get anybody to work or to school,” she said.

Some of MARTA's work on station appearance, transit-oriented real estate development, and planning for future expansion places MARTA in the midst of a national and local controversy.

“This is a longstanding debate in urban transit circles ... should you focus a lot of resources to expand to so called choice riders," said Bob Poole, the principal founder and transportation policy director of the free-market Reason Foundation.  "If that’s coming at the expense of bus riders with low incomes, I think that’s the wrong tradeoff."

As to development, Poole said, if the market conditions really exist to make it happen, “A lot of developers will see the opportunity without having to have a whole cadre of planners at MARTA telling them how to do that.”

On the other side of the debate are environmentalists and advocates of "sustainable development."

"It’s essential to focus on more than just moving people from A to B but to focus on the built environment around the transit environment," said Michael Replogle, founder and global policy director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.  As for the landscaping, it's "highly cost effective," he added.  "If you have ugly unsafe places then people will flee them. They’ll get back into their cars and that makes the traffic congestion worse.”

It's not a new idea. The Federal Transit Administration offers funding for transit-oriented development, and a 2004 report by the Transportation Research Board found more than 100 projects in the works nationwide.  The Georgia Department of Transportation, with MARTA’s help, is planning a public-private real estate development that could help fund a big passenger terminal in downtown Atlanta.

MARTA leaders say the idea behind its developments is not to get the lease income, and they don't track those profits. They said they expect $4.5 million in revenues in the fiscal year 2011, and say the cost of running the program is $529,000.

While many of the eliminated positions are currently vacant, including the development director, more than 300 people will lose their jobs.  That will still leave MARTA with a deficit of $69 million for the coming year, which it will pull from reserves.

But recently MARTA's forecasts for sales tax revenues took a turn for the better.  Will that mean hiring back some of the positions it has cut?  Ted Basta, MARTA’s chief of business support services, said it's too early to say, and that safety and service come first.

All the same, he said, "You don't plan for the future, you die in the present."

MARTA ax falls

- 734 positions cut, some already vacant, more than 300 layoffs

- 71 of 131 station agents eliminated

- Bus service cut from 1,479 miles to 1,034 miles

- Train waits increase by up to five minutes

- Nighttime trains carry fewer rail cars

- Weekend trains begin 6 a.m., no longer 4:45 a.m.

- Lenox and Lindbergh cashier offices close (Lindbergh reduced fare office for the disabled remains open)

- Reduced call center and information booth hours

- Closing all but 9 station public restrooms

- No annual raises