Maybe passengers were heeding MARTA’s plea to carpool or get dropped off at stations.
Or maybe tornado warnings kept more people at home.
Whatever the reason, the I-85-spawned parking crunch at MARTA stations remained intense Wednesday morning . . . just not quite as intense, apparently, as on Monday and Tuesday.
MARTA tweeted that parking was gone just before 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday at North Springs and Doraville, the northernmost stops on the red and gold lines respectively.
As bad as that news was for riders coming from the northeast and north central Atlanta suburbs, it was slightly better than the situation earlier in the week: North Springs' vast parking structure was full up by 7:20 a.m. on Monday, some 20 minutes earlier than on Tuesday. Doraville also ran out of parking just past 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday.
On Monday morning, a MARTA employee had redirected cars attempting to enter the full-up North Springs parking structure to the next two stations down the line, Sandy Springs and Dunwoody. By 8:30 on Monday, though, the only parking that remained at Sandy Springs was half of the sixth level; it was a similar situation on Tuesday, when MARTA tweeted that Sandy Springs was all out of parking at 8:50 a.m.
Yet nearly an hour later on Wednesday, some 50 spaces still remained available there, according to MARTA (Sandy Springs finally filled up around 10:30 a.m.). The situation was even better at Dunwoody:
Still, the shutdown of a busy stretch of I-85 for the next several months has injected masses of new riders into the MARTA system and parking clearly remains an issue all over the north-south and east-west lines. At 8:30 a.m., passengers looking for parking at the College Park south of Atlanta got the word that only paid spots remained available:
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Just before and after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, passengers looking for parking at Chamblee, Avondale and West End stations got the bad news that spaces were all gone. And around 9:45 a.m., Edgewood/Candler Park ran out of parking.
MARTA is aggressively using social media not just to let riders know where not to go, but also what other options exist nearby:
Along with providing regular updates, MARTA said earlier this week it would reach out to businesses, malls, churches and other entities located near stations in hopes they will allow daily passenger parking in their own lots during this one-of-a-kind crisis. Time is of the essence: With many school systems on spring break this week, the transit system is well aware that next Monday will swell the ranks of riders even more and it hopes to have updates to provide soon on parking, a spokesperson said Wednesday morning.
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