A carnival of technology

Shut up.

The temperature dropped back below freezing here in the thirteenth American colony, and damn were my hands cold today. I actually stopped at one point to warm my fingers back up since they kind of hurt a lot. I don’t know a lot about physiology, but I figure that pain and numbness is probably bad. I managed to make it to the MARTA station (where I was unable to catch a train, but that’s a story for a couple paragraphs down) without losing any digits, but my hands were pretty uncomfortable. I know the solution to this problem, though: new gloves!

This time, rather than seeing what REI has on sale this week, I decided to support local business and went to Roswell Bicycles. They have a clothing shop above the main store in what I guess used to be the “Sprockets Cafe.” I never knew the restaurant, but a part of me is kind of sad to see the death of a bike-oriented restaurant. Clothing is nice, though, and there’s only so much space available, so I guess this is better for the store or something. This disconnected upstairs clothing section was pretty small, which I don’t mind. They’re a bike shop, not a costume shop. The selection of gloves was a little disappointing, but I think that this is because I’m starting to exhaust my options. They had several varieties of the linerless shells in an assortment of shapes and waterproofness, much like I have, but the only things they had as far as insulation were big puffy ski-gloves and a few glove liners. I ended up buying a pair of liners in the only variety they had with sizes that fit me, and they’re ok. My hands were still kind of cold going home, but not to the point where I was worried about frostbite. To anyone looking to buy me something for Christmas, I’d kind of like a pair of warm gloves that can protect me from asphalt and allow me to use my fingers.

And now for MARTA: HOLY CRAP A TRAIN DERAILED. I rolled into Medical Center around 9am, as is my wont, but today something was different. The fire trucks that preceded me were the first clue that something was wrong, and the big crowd of people shivering outside in the tiny bus bay was the second. From what I’ve been able to piece together from news reports and press releases, the mess all started with a train that started having mechanical difficulties (they didn’t say which variety, but I’d suspect one of those breaky Bredas is the culprit). It went out of service north of Medical Center and the rest of the system started single-tracking around it. I don’t know for sure if there were passengers aboard at this time, but, judging from the number of ambulances, I suspect that there were. So the train is being operated manually at this point, the switches are set to bypass the broken train, and apparently someone screwed up somewhere, since the broken train hit a switch that was going the wrong way and went off the track. No one was hurt, but it sure did mess up MARTA service for a good while.

While at Medical Center I was told by MARTA employees that northbound train service was not running from that station and that I should take a bus. There were at least a hundred people waiting for buses, and I already had some means of transportation, so I decided to just ride up to Dunwoody station. At Dunwoody, another MARTA employee explained that there were significant delays for both north and southbound trains, no one really knows when the next train is going to arrive, and I probably should take one of the buses up to Sandy Springs. Fortunately, one of the northbound trains (operating on the southbound platform) came by before I got into the elevator, so I managed to catch that to North Springs. Once there, I found where all those extra bus routes between stations were coming from.

I usually get to North Springs with plenty of time to catch the 140 bus that leaves at 9:30. I could catch the 9:00 if everything works out, but I dawdle while leaving the apartment, so I bring a book and wait. Today I arrived at 9:40 or so, in time to see an overcrowded bus pull out onto 400. One of the people I recognize from the usual trip, who I saw talking to the driver before I got up to the bus, told me that the northbound bus service isn’t running anymore while shrugging a lot. I think he just decided to take the day off. I probably should have done the same, but I instead called a coworker with a pickup truck to pick me up at the station. The MARTA website during the day had information on the train delays and bus options around it, but it never really explained how this affected the bus routes. I saw another 140 bus do some crazy manœvres between the two halves of the bus bay (North Springs is split between routes that exit onto 400 North and routes that exit onto Peachtree-Dunwoody), picking up passengers before finally exiting on the ground roads, while waiting for a ride, so it seems like the buses heading north of North Springs were instead pulled into these emergency bus bridges. The 85 was still running as far as I could tell, but that bus takes the scenic route through Roswell, and I didn’t want to wait for that.

The thing that upsets me most about the whole ordeal, besides the fact that derailments really shouldn’t happen, is that bus service was sacrificed to supplement a train service that was, though crippled, still running. Only one platform was inaccessible the whole time, and northbound trains were able to use the southbound line between Medical Center and Dunwoody. The buses were only used to mitigate the 30+ minute delays for trains. I can understand why they did this: the trains are what most people think of when they think about MARTA, and the train is the fastest and most fun way to use Atlanta’s public transportation. My problem is with the 140 route being taken out of service. The 140 goes from the North Springs station to the Mansell Park & Ride lot, tools around Alpharetta for a little bit and then goes to the Windward Park & Ride lot. Its intent is basically to provide bus service beyond the end of the rail line to bus stations beyond the reach of the MARTA rail system. Both the Mansell and Windward lots should be rail stations.

Public transportation is expensive. Having a public transportation system not run at loss is impossible, since if fares were high enough to cover all costs, no one would use it. MARTA receives its funding from fares and a 1% sales tax in Fulton County, DeKalb County and they city of Atlanta. There is no state or federal funding, despite the economical benefits that a robust transportation system in the state’s capital would provide to the state as a whole. Opposition to MARTA, to overgeneralize a bit, comes from both local and distant sources: people in metro counties like Cobb and Gwinnett have voted against MARTA expansion mostly out of fear that black people would ride it to their suburban utopias and steal their big-screen TVs, whereas people in Georgia outside of Atlanta often view Atlanta as a kind of tumor on their rural state, sucking away some uncertain amount of resources while providing no obvious benefit. The Cobb County commissioners recently voted to allow MARTA to extend its Route 12 service beyond the county line up to the Cumberland transfer center, so it’s possible that the metro counties could eventually join the transportation club, but there’s still the problem of state funding. The MARTA tax districts voted not to extend the sales tax beyond 2032 in an effort to force the state to provide funding, but in the meantime this means that MARTA can’t issue the 30-year bonds it would need to make rail extensions, so, though they are currently eying a site either in Roswell or Alpharetta for a new station, they will not likely be able to extend rail service farther north for some time. The only concessions that the state has made so far are to allow variations in their absurd control of the MARTA budget to permit more of the sales tax revenue to be used for operational expenses. The current 55-45 split between operations and capital improvements, I believe, expires in 2009.

What I’m trying to say here is that my morning was ruined by some asshole from Tifton. Thanks a lot, Georgia Assembly.