Opinion: Failed Gwinnett vote shouldn’t mean we fail to act

Under normal conditions, this theater date is potentially a half-day commitment.

But on this particular Tuesday, the Chapmans were a one-car family.

So to make this work, I would need to depend on public transportation for at least one leg of this trip.

Here’s what I did.

I left my job by car at 3 p.m. to beat the traffic. I got home that night after midnight. In between I had to navigate rush-hour-type traffic during supposedly non-rush hours. Take a bus. Take a train. Take a train again. Then, I had to swipe a vehicle that did not belong to me. Just to make it back home.

Getting around shouldn’t be this hard.

One understands that big-city living comes with big-city traffic. But in this big city it should also come with more options to help us move around.

This is where we talk about last week’s failed Gwinnett transit vote. I am neither a supporter nor an opponent of the plan rejected by voters. But I am a guy who lives in Lawrenceville, who leaves the county each day for work and who, on occasion needs to go in town to attend an event or do my job.

I need more options.

And I’m sure my neighbors, who have the same daily experience and frustrations, would like to have more options when they need them most. Even a few of my neighbors who voted “no,” I suspect oppose the particulars of the plan more than they opposed the idea that we need transit.

The commute from Gwinnett means I spend up to 3 hours a day in the car traveling between Lawrenceville and Dunwoody. It seems that no matter how well I plan, making it to work at a certain hour or making it home in time to have dinner with my family or attend curriculum night at the school, is never a guarantee.

The transportation options are limited. I could take an Xpress bus to work. But there are only three morning pick up times: 5:35 a.m.; 6 a.m.; and 6:25 a.m. To catch the same bus home, I’d have to wrap my day by 5:35 p.m.

Surely, we can do better than that.

We must.

Doug Hooker, executive director of The Atlanta Regional Commission told reporters David Wickert and Tyler Estep this in a story in today's edition of The AJC: "As a region, we must provide more options for getting around town beyond driving alone in a car if we are to improve quality of life and remain economically competitive."

He’s right.

But why did Tuesday's vote, an effort to solve the problem, fail? Our Gwinnett reporters Estep and Amanda Coyne spent weeks talking to voters about their views. Voters who rejected it did so for one of a handful of reasons. Either they opposed raising taxes, they had poor experiences on public transportation or they were convinced MARTA would mismanage the money and not deliver quality service.

It’s critical that MARTA and leaders in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett work harder to address those trust concerns. That is the key to finally solving this shared misery.

Voters everywhere need to be convinced that regional transit planning will be managed by accountable local governments and led by elected officials unafraid to incorporate new thinking that accounts for shifting consumer behavior and new technologies.

Let’s go back to that Tuesday.

Normally, I don’t head home from Dunwoody until after 7 p.m. Even then, when rush hour is supposedly retiring for the evening, it sometimes takes nearly an hour to get home. One hour to travel 20 miles, 80 percent of which is Interstate highway.

Understanding this, I left the AJC offices at 3 p.m. The commute home was, as expected, shorter than what it would have been at 5 p.m. But far from blue sky and open road.

So I touch down in Gwinnett just after 4 p.m., in time to say “Hi” to my wife, with time to answer a few emails before hitting the road again.

My wife dropped my daughter and me off at Sugarloaf Mills, where we caught the No. 10 Gwinnett bus. An hour and 20 minutes — and 14 miles later — we were at the Doraville MARTA station. About a half-hour later, we were at the Arts Center MARTA station, which is behind the Alliance Theater.

Here’s where it gets tricky.

The No. 10 Gwinnett bus that delivered us to the Doraville MARTA station stops running at 9:30 p.m.

We saw “Goodbye Tyler,” a terrific play about a young man who is killed and gets to see how his loved ones react to his passing. It ended at nearly 11 p.m.

So we hopped back on MARTA and took the Red line to Dunwoody. Getting home meant borrowing one of the AJC’s three fleet vehicles.

Thank goodness I had the keys to the AJC vehicle.

What does all this mean?

Obviously, I love my baby girl. And I will travel under any conditions to keep my commitments to her. But does it have to be this hard? That’s a question for us all.

Deputy Managing Editor Leroy Chapman Jr. is in charge of the AJC reporting teams that oversee local, state and federal government and politics. Email him at Leroy.Chapman@ajc.com.