The chapters for this week, Make the Bus Walkable and Dignified and Make the Bus Fair and Welcoming, focused on the factors beyond frequency and reliability that impact the transit experience. Here are the highlights.
Disconnect between walkability and transit.
The ability to walk safely and efficiently to a bus stop, and then have a safe place to wait for the bus once you are there, is in no way guaranteed in Atlanta and metro area. Some examples: in Cobb County, bus stops are placed the length of a football field (300 feet) from intersections so they do not interfere with turn lanes, forcing bus riders to choose between unsafe mid-block crossings and walking far out of their way, usually without sidewalks. One participant, who lives off Northside Drive, described a harrowing road-crossing experience to get home: to cross Northside and 10th, only some of the four legal crosswalks have markings, and for those, lights are not timed for pedestrians. It can take 5 minutes or more simply to cross the street.
Bus shelters and benches
Higashide discussed a study in which transit riders were asked to rate how long they perceived their wait at a bus to be, which was then compared to the time they actually spent waiting (surreptitiously recorded by the scientists). Quantitatively, when conditions were adverse — cold, wet weather; noisy, dangerous traffic; no place to rest — participants thought they had waited much longer than they actually had. One of the things that can ameliorate this perception is access to a bus shelter. The MARTA standard for adding a shelter at a bus stop is 25 or more boardings per day, if a suitable place can be found. Yet, one of the participants shared his experience of trying to get a bus shelter placed in front of his storefront. It met all the criteria and was added to the list of bus shelters to be placed, a year and a half ago. There is still no bus shelter. Other participants recalled bus shelters in Midtown and Downtown that had been removed in order to prevent homeless people from using them, which brings us to the next item:
“Equitable transit requires equitable politics.”
Each of us has experienced things we wish would change about transit in our respective corners of Atlanta, yet, as one participant mused: “How much do I advocate for what I want outside my front door, versus what the whole city should have?” Another countered that this isn’t an either-or: fundamentally, we want to advocate for a shift in priority for transit funding. This comes down to winning the fight for transit and specifically for buses: per dollar spent, an investment in the bus network has the potential to be transformative for mobility across Atlanta.