Sports writer calls MARTA “grossly mismanaged”
A writer for sports website The Bleacher Report (owned by Turner Broadcasting, incidentally) answers the question “Atlanta Falcons: Why Is the Georgia Dome Empty Early in Games?” with this barb: “the transit system is grossly mismanaged.”
Apparently the writer was late to last weekend’s game because the train was off schedule and late to arrive at the Sandy Springs station. MARTA is doing track repair and single tracking during weekends in October.
Two things:
- You can’t call an entire transit system mismanaged just because of a late train on a Sunday. From my experience, the trains largely run on time during the weekday commuter rush when they are most heavily used.
- Yeah, MARTA could do a better job of getting the word out about service interruptions on game days. But the info is on the website.
I know it’s crappy to be stuck waiting for a train when you’re in a hurry and there’s track work slowing the arrivals. I’ve been in that situation on the weekends. However unfair it is, it’s tempting to make generalizations about MARTA when you have a bad experience like this.
I wonder how many suburbanites have been similarly turned off of MARTA by bad weekend-service experiences like this. On a PR level, it may be worth it for the agency to make an exception on Falcons game days when it comes to doing track work.
MARTA photo from Flickr user ScottFillmer
