NIGHTMARE ON PEACHTREE STREET

Many Atlanta residents have found it ironic, to use a polite term, that instead of helping MARTA with its financial problems, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is subsidizing new non-MARTA bus routes bringing suburbanites into the city. That may have been the subtext for the controversy that erupted when GRTA's new express buses from Hampton in the south and Conyers in the east started rolling into Atlanta turning Atlanta's legendary Peachtree Street into what Journal-Constitution columnist Colin Campbell called "an elongated bus terminal." While the number of GRTA buses using Peachtree is relatively modest right now, plans call for a gradual increase that could result in 22 bus trips per hour in six years. "GRTA claims this volume will not have a significant impact on downtown traffic, but it is hard to see how that could be true," noted a Journal-Constitution editorial. Referring to the MARTA rail subway that run beneath Peachtree, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin wrote that the influx of buses "negates the smart decision to tunnel MARTA." GARP supports bus service as part of a balanced transportation system, and the current controversy may be eased by rerouting GRTA buses to a parallel street a block away from Peachtree. But the problem on Peachtree Street illustrates the pitfall of GRTA's insistence on putting all of its transportation eggs in the bus basket. Last year the Georgia Rail Passenger Authority estimated it would take 360 buses to provide the daily passenger capacity of just three commuter rail lines. If Atlanta ends up using buses for virtually all its suburb-to-city transit, Peachtree Street isn't going to be the only Atlanta-area thoroughfare resembling a bus terminal. The obvious solution is to do what most other major US cities do: use buses to connect passengers with commuter trains, and let the trains bring people downtown.

Source: The Peach State Xpress
Jim Dexter, Editor