Home > Opinion > Commutants! > Archives > 2005 > November > 08
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
The crow can’t get there from here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Plotting out my 20-mile commute set me to thinking of Billy in “The Family Circus.” His mom sends him on an errand, and the cartoon traces Billy’s steps with a dotted line that covers most of the panel before he’s finished.
That’s how I envisioned my trip downtown from the Stone Mountain area of Gwinnett, near U.S. 78. “Can’t get there from here” definitely applies. It’s as the crow flies, but only if the crow has avian flu.
Gwinnett County Transit does me no good, unless I want to leave home at 7:15 a.m. and drive to the Indian Trail Road pickup by 8 a.m. But I don’t. Too early.
So I left home at 9:50 a.m. Monday and drove the 12 miles to MARTA’s Avondale station in 20 minutes. Copy editors by nature are anal-retentive, so I worried all the way about finding a parking space for my aging sedan (no, intowners, it’s not an SUV). But there was plenty of room.
The MARTA trip itself was pretty uneventful and not unpleasant. It ended up taking me about 55 minutes from my house to my desk at the AJC, probably 15 minutes more than if I’d driven all the way. And the amount I saved on gas (I estimated that at $1.60) was more than offset by the $3.50 round-trip fare for one day.
My MARTA trip home Monday and trip in Tuesday went just as smoothly. I followed the other passengers’ lead and treated the train as a horizontal elevator, making sure to avoid eye contact.
All in all, I found two positives from my MARTA experience: I cleaned most of the quarters out of my change cup, and I was able to listen to my Brad Paisley country CD. The aforesaid aging sedan lacks a CD player, and my sons quickly object when I try to listen to country music at home.
Posted Tuesday night, based on Monday’s and Tuesday’s commutes.)
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Kevin Braun
But make no eye contact!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My Friend, can you see your carriage has rendered you a fool? Come, lay down your keys and I will share the subterranean awes of MARTA.
Ah, my poor Driver! You seem cold to the pleasure of waiting 40 minutes for your train. Why, these stolen moments are a gift! Compose a poem. Ruminate. Recall your grandparents’ faces. Can your books on tape truly compete?
And why do you recoil from the sensory delights of our public rail? Hark - a cavernous wind picks up! Our column arrives on the cry of a banshee! See how many doors open to us? A shame we cannot explore them all!
And now, our journey begins! We are moving while standing! We are a living appendage of the public corpus! But make no eye contact!
Alas, our destination has come too soon. Our only obstacles now are the vulgar herds of wheeled beasts manned by your own people. We may be menaced by their reckless steerage, but remember this: they are to be pitied.
So come, my Friend. Join me in one last act. Let us shake our fists and shout into their rearview mirrors:
“I am the Future! I am a Pedestrian! And YOU must yield to ME!”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Pete Corson
Regular Guys are radioactive
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Since my husband, Bo Emerson, also works at the paper, my daily carpool starts in my driveway.
There are drawbacks - most notably Bo’s attachment to the Regular Guys, the arrested adolescents who host the morning drive show on at 96rock. (Remember the pasty-faced goons who sat behind you in algebra and flicked boogers at their friends across the aisle? Well, now, they’re on the radio.)
Anyway, today they degenerated into a spoof about killing puppies and that’s when I exercised my veto power. We switched to talk radio on WSB. Bo has the same power; he exercises his whenever Neal Boortz says the words “fair tax.”
I think carpooling helps the environment; I’m just not sure it enhances relationships.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Maureen Downey
How we travel and who we are
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Transportation, especially in this town, is about a hell of a lot more than simply getting from point A to point B. It’s also about race and class, though not necessarily in that order.
In just two days since I stopped driving in from South DeKalb, I’ve seen clearly that people with fewer transportation choices (meaning they don’t own a car) are second-class citizens in a world-class town.
There are few sidewalks in my neighborhood, MARTA’s schedules are more guesswork than clockwork, and the lack of police on buses and trains encourages crude behavior, especially among young and often black riders who act like they don’t have much home training. (For the record, I’m black, not that it should matter.)
I grew up in New York, where, when it came to getting around, it didn’t matter where you lived or how much you made or the color of your skin. Mass transit was not only a fact of life, but a point of pride. It wasn’t perfect, but it was much more like a democracy. Atlanta is clearly an auto-cracy – the car is king.
This isn’t a debate about which city’s transportation is better. But what I’ve seen in the last couple of days speaks volumes about what our priorities are.
Note at 5:30 p.m. Folks: As of 4:45, we removed some remarks from this blog that we deemed overtly racist and temporarily closed the commenting function. It is now open again.
Please note that Lyle Harris did not censor his blog, as some people have (understandably) suggested. Those decisions were made by me, Richard Halicks, the editor supervising the Commutants experiment. I’m sorry to those who believe that I shut them out unfairly. My aim was not to halt the conversation but to try to improve the tone of it. Literally scores of you have made thoughtful comments that contribute to the discussion. Thanks for that.
Permalink | Comments (264) | Categories: Lyle V. Harris
The (auto) body politic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
   |
Today’s inbound commute was a breeze — from Peachtree City to the East Point MARTA station and on into work. Only 25 minutes longer than the usual drive.
But on this Election Day morning, I was struck not by the mutation of my own commute but by the spectacle of three of our mayoral candidates doing their last-minute campaigning alongside Georgia 74. (That’s the fast and busy four-lane that leads from PTC to I-85.)
This is politics in a commuter city: You don’t campaign door to door anymore. Instead, you stake out a spot on the approach to the interstate and wave like a madman at all those voters streaming out of town. Not sure that gets you any votes, but then again, I found myself wondering where the two other candidates for mayor were. Do these three want it more because they’re ingesting pure exhaust while waving at a blur of SUVs blowing by at 70 mph?
Guess we’ll find out tonight!
I’ll have mine easy over, please
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Day Two of the Grand Tour (Cobb to downtown Atlanta by bus and Marta train) was a little smoother (you can translate that as faster). The tightwad in me is also coming along: For $3 a day, roundtrip, I couldn’t buy gas, let alone pay for parking. Now, if I can convince Cobb Community Transit to offer fresh bagels, coffee and a pillow to rest my head on, I’l have it made. Oh, and would you tune into NPR for me?
Lost in South Fulton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Actually, it might be more accurate to say I ONCE was lost in south Fulton, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see … Because taking mass transit was not nearly as bad as I’d expected it to be.
I live in unincorporated south Fulton County, and I’m not within walking distance of the bus or the train, so I had to use my car to get started. I left the house at 11:55 a.m. and drove 9 miles to Camp Creek Marketplace, where I parked in the Lowe’s lot, trotted across the street and caught the No. 82 bus, which arrived right on time at 12:20 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, I was at College Park MARTA station, waiting for a Northbound train, which pulled in a 12:38. By about 12:50, I was walking toward the escalators at Five Points!!
My 20-mile drive to work normally takes 30 minutes; my MARTA commute took nearly twice as long. But it sure was relaxing. (I have a feeling, though, that this morning’s experience was not the norm. Everything was just a bit too perfect. Even the weather was unreal.)
Here’s another indication that my charmed experience may be misleading: I was touched by a dose-of-reality conversation I had at the bus stop with a young woman who — like me — was a first-timer aboard a MARTA bus. Tomeka Lee, 29, is from Memphis, and she’s looking for work — a task made all the more difficult because she doesn’t have a car. (It’s in Memphis) For a while, she stayed with a sister in Alpharetta, where, she said, “if you don’t have a car, you can’t even get to the train station.” She said one day she spent $42 in cab fare just to go to the bank and take care of other errands.
“In Memphis, they have bus routes even in the expensive neighborhoods,” Tomeka said. “That’s what I don’t understand about here. It’s not fair. Not everyone can afford a car, and what about people with health problems who can’t drive?”
Her priority now? “To find a job and make enough money to go back to Memphis to get my car, because this [relying on MARTA]is not going to work.”
(Posted this morning based on Monday’s commute.)
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Michelle Miller
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
