This year, MARTA marks its 35th anniversary as a combined bus and rail transit system, a significant historical milestone that we’re proud to celebrate. But even as we honor MARTA’s past, we’re taking steps to ensure we will be able to serve our community for the next 35 years and beyond.
MARTA’s Board of Directors recognized several years ago that we urgently needed to change course and improve our finances, control our costs and make our transit system more attractive to the riding public.
Through a series of corrective actions over the past several years, including engaging KPMG to do a multi-year, highly detailed set of financial, management and performance audits, and hiring Keith Parker as general manager and chief executive officer, we’ve made tangible progress achieving those objectives. After his first year on the job, we are very proud of Mr. Parker and his leadership team’s efforts to continue MARTA’s transformation.
Without any question, we still have a lot work to do. We’re not yet the transit agency we aspire to be. But today, MARTA is better positioned to make the most of the opportunities ahead and to demonstrate we’re worthy of the public’s ongoing support.
For the first time in many years, MARTA has ended the fiscal year in the black instead of drawing down our woefully depleted reserves. This development is a welcome and long-sought sign of meaningful progress for our turnaround. Our challenge now is to re-commit ourselves to the fiscal discipline, management reform and market-based revenue enhancement steps that have brought such positive news.
Fundamentally, our goal as a board — one we share wholeheartedly with our senior management, starting with Mr. Parker — is to make MARTA competitive again. First, we want to receive a growing ridership’s daily confidence in the product we deliver, and to be the option people choose. We also must compete as a recipient of public funds to ensure those precious tax dollars are being as well spent as possible, and to demonstrate to communities thinking about joining or partnering with us that we are a sound investment.
The opening of the 2014 legislative session offers a firsthand glimpse of some steps we’re taking to improve the public’s return on their investment. Our legislative agenda includes several measures that will make us more efficient, cost-effective and competitive in the marketplace for transportation services.
Even as we work for the passage of these legislative measures, our customers should expect to notice the ongoing benefits of the changes we began implementing since Mr. Parker’s arrival. Among these changes are shorter waits for trains; new, more comfortable and reliable buses; improved signage inside and outside of rail stations, and better customer service from our front-line employees.
And because improving MARTA’s bottom line is our bottom line, we’ll continue to advance other revenue-generation initiatives already underway, such as new advertising, expanding our in-station concessions programs, and vigorously pursuing the next generation of transit-oriented developments (TODs) on land we own on and around our stations.
In the coming weeks, MARTA will be making significant announcements about progress made in our new TOD program. By working with public and private sector partners, we are strategically leasing land to create transit-friendly, live-work-play communities that can help revive our urban and suburban centers.
As a native Atlantan who has watched my hometown evolve and mature, that’s very important to me. I grew up in Midtown, and still live there. Aside from college, I have lived and worked within a few blocks of MARTA stations my entire life and appreciate the freedom and mobility they give me and my family.
As chairman of the MARTA board, my colleagues and I invite you to keep watching, and even better, to keep (or start) riding. Our MARTA is going to make you proud.
Robert L. Ashe III is chairman of MARTA’s Board of Directors.
