Saturday, August 13, 2005

Where's the sun?

Here in Atlanta it has been either boiling hot or raining. On the MARTA trains people step out of the wet and shivver if the train car has air conditioning or let off light wafts of steam from their drying clothes if the car is hot. The train platforms are miserable because none of them have air, but at least they are mostly dry.

The train service on all lines has been cut back a bit, so the officers have given up on trying to stop people from loitering. There's no telling if someone is loitering, or just waiting for a train that is running later than it used too. The trains used to run ever 5 to 10 minutes during rush hour. They now run about every 15 minutes, and this has led to general ill-will, as the normal delays mean that trains *really* run every 20 to 30 minutes, depending on what the hold-up is on any particular day.

I wish someone would fix our transit system. Things really are getting quite difficult here in the city, and there's no relief in sight. The beltline project is at least 10 years into the future (supposing it goes forward, which I hope it will), and in the meantime we lose our train service and bus services by inches...

The only unpleasent thing about starting my new job in September is that I will have to drive 20 minutes each way. I resent this. I have lived in Atlanta now for two and a half years relying on public transit, and I've been pretty proud of that. Now I will have to drive. There is no public transit from my home (near a major retail center) to my new place of work (a small-ish academic place just off of I-75).

Ok, I admit that my resentment stems from the fact that I will be working in Cobb County, and I know Cobb had a chance to get train lines approved a decade ago and they chose not to have them. And now I have to drive. I hope every morning and afternoon my car sits right in front of someone who voted against the trains. I want a bumper sticker that says "I would be riding the train if you had one".

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