Don’t Take My Ride!

At a rally to protest the MARTA cuts in Atlanta, transit workers painted large “X”s on some buses and trains to represent the percentage of vehicles to be taken out of service. “We are just crawling out of a recession,” former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell told the rally, “but we will be knocked back into another one if the salespersons are not behind the store counters, if the restaurant workers are not in the kitchens, if the office staff are not behind their desks.”

Responding to pressure, the state legislature relaxed a law requiring MARTA to spend no more than 50 percent of its sales tax revenues to operate buses and trains for three years. Sales taxes are MARTA’s chief source of funding, making it the only large transit system in the country that receives no state funding for operations.

MARTA’s Cheryl King says the flexibility in spending restrictions along with a slight upturn in sales tax revenues means the transit cuts won’t be quite as severe. Only 41 bus lines will disappear, instead of 65. “But we’re not out of the woods.”

MARTA held an extensive series of meetings with transit riders to consider how cuts could be implemented with a minimum of pain. Helene Mills, of course, was there speaking for the Sweet Auburn neighborhood and advocating more funding for transit. The planning department has made cuts to the 113 bus route. Mills and many of her neighbors are getting more worried.

Jay Walljasper, senior fellow at Project for Public Spaces and co-editor of the OnTheCommons.org, is author of The Great Neighborhood Book and the forthcoming All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons Today.