There’s an an excellent article on MARTA in the new issue of Atlanta Magazine, from writer Rebecca Burns: “Can CEO Keith Parker make MARTA cool? Amid its first major expansion in 40 years, MARTA faces a bigger challenge: convincing Atlantans that they want to ride.”MARTA has struggled with cutbacks and declining ridership in recent years during a time when other US transit systems have had big gains in riders. But as the article points out, some recent numbers on ridership are promising. A quote from the article:Last year, ridership inched up, increasing by 1 million trips a month in July, August, and September…Usage boomed at the Buckhead station and along bus routes in the northern suburbs.In addition to this rise in use, other good things are on the way such as upcoming transit-oriented developments at several stations, plus the recent addition of Clayton County to its service area (and tax base). There’s cause to believe that the agency is facing a future that’s much brighter than it’s past. Riding the bus and the train in Atlanta could very well become accepted as “cool” by a much larger group of people as time goes by, and not just for the current pro-transit crowd. But what about the suburbs beyond the MARTA service area? Is there any hope for transit to be cool in those outer counties?Challenges & successes in the suburban environmentThe Atlanta Magazine piece notes that one of the things that seems to be a determining factor in transit ridership in the metro area is the availability of both rail and bus, rather than just bus service. In regard to ridership of the various metro transit agencies: “use is highest in counties that offer bus and rail service, such as DeKalb and Fulton. In areas with only a bus system, like Cobb County, ridership is anemic.”This kind of anemic usage is not necessarily a reflection on attitude towards bus service or transit in general among people living in the suburbs (in fact a 2014 survey found support for new public transit options throughout the metro). The culprit is the existing built environment in places like Cobb County — as I know well from having lived in Cobb for the first 25 years of my life — is very much focused around cars. These days, engineering standards demand sidewalks for many new arterial roads in car-centric parts of the metro, but use of them (from what I’ve seen) is sparse, given the sprawling nature of the surroundings that are built specifically for long-distance car travel and not pedestrian connectivity. Not many people are going to feel “cool” walking to and from bus stops in a setting that makes pedestrians feel so second class. Many people over the years have complained that “MARTA doesn’t go anywhere.” But it only seems like that because the metro goes everywhere — it sprawls in a low-density pattern in all directions, creating environments that are inefficient for any mode of transportation other than personal cars. When you build environments specifically for car travel, you exclude other options from being retrofitted into them later on, barring a large-scale redevelopment effort with compact infill. The good news: some of those large-scale redevelopments are happening. Downtown Woodstock, GA, in the northern metro, is a great example of mixed-use infill. Just recently it was announced that Kennesaw would be getting $38 million worth of new mixed-use development in its downtown. And Mark Toro, the developer behind the Avalon project in Alpharetta, touts MARTA-bus access to it as being a big benefit. Why suburban views on transit should matter to intownersInterstates and highways that lead to the city center were designed to serve suburban commuters driving in to get to Atlanta offices, events, colleges and more. Pedestrian activity is directly affected, in a negative way, by the streets leading to and from these highways that are made to accommodate heavy car traffic above all else.Much of the center of the city through Midtown and Downtown is marred not only by these car-centric roads but also by the enormous amounts of parking infrastructure built to serve drivers. This creates urban landscapes like the one below:This is Peachtree Center Avenue in Downtown Atlanta. I took this photo during the end of the work day when people were headed to their cars from offices. The area is covered in these monumental parking facilities with blank walls that create dead spaces with no “active” uses at the street level — meaning no restaurants or stores at the bottom to create a lively urban scene. Instead we get a grim situation where people are dwarfed by concrete car housing. It’s not a place where good urbanism is going to happen.The more people, all across the Atlanta region, who can come to view public transportation as “cool,” the better off we’ll all be. But we need people in both the city and the ‘burbs to live and work inside built environments that can efficiently accommodate transit lines and that can provide safe, attractive experiences for walking to and from them — thus reducing the amount of infrastructure needed for cars. Otherwise, the pedestrian environment in the city center and elsewhere will continue to have major challenges when it comes to offering a cool experience around transit stops.All photos by me