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'ATLANTA'S MARTA CUTS'

 
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Mr. Linsky
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Location: BRENTWOOD, CA. - WOODMERE, N.Y.

PostPosted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 5:16 pm    Post subject: 'ATLANTA'S MARTA CUTS' Reply with quote

'ATLANTA LEADS PROTESTS OF TRANSPORTATION CUTS'

Using big red X's where bus and train service might be lost



By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: April 20, 2010 The New York Times


ATLANTA — When Danielle White boarded her bus to go to work on Tuesday morning, it was emblazoned from top to bottom with a giant, painted red X. Ms. White knew what that meant.

“This is one of the buses that’s getting cut,” said Ms. White, a security guard at the Georgia Aquarium. “I’m going to have to figure out how to get there.”

On Monday night, workers and officials at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority volunteered to paint the X’s on a third of the system’s buses and trains to symbolize the 30 percent cut in service the agency is facing because of a decline in sales tax revenue and a Republican-dominated Statehouse that has been slow to help.

On Tuesday morning, with a parade of X’d-out buses stopping on the street behind them, more than 200 public transit workers and riders gathered at the system’s main hub, Five Points. They were kicking off a week of rallies, telephone campaigns and other events in 11 cities across the country coordinated by the Transportation Equity Network, an advocacy group based in St. Louis, to protest transportation cuts and fare increases.

“We are just crawling out of a recession,” said Sam Massell, a former mayor of Atlanta, “but we will be knocked back into another one if the salespersons are not behind the store counters, if the restaurant workers are not in the kitchens, if the office staff are not behind their desks.”

About 46 percent of the more than 100,000 people who use Marta to get to work each day say they do not have access to other forms of transportation.

More than 80 percent of the nation’s transit systems are considering or have recently enacted fare increases or service cuts, including those in Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., according to a survey released this month by the American Public Transportation Association.

But Marta, the ninth-largest system in the country, faces a particular difficulty because it is the only major system that does not receive any dedicated money from the state. Instead, it depends on fares and a one-cent sales tax in only two of metro Atlanta’s 28 counties, Fulton and DeKalb. While Atlanta chokes on traffic, Georgia ranks 49th in per capita government spending on transportation, according to a report commissioned by Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The agency has requested one significant change in its spending rules that would not require any new state money: a release from a requirement that half of Marta’s sales tax revenues be set aside for capital projects. Though the agency ranks very high in efficiency measures, lawmakers seem to think its distress was caused by more than the recession.

“I’ve been trying to understand how Marta got in the problem they’re in,” the speaker of the State House, David Ralston, said in an interview with WABE radio this month. “I think that we have to have a better understanding of what brought us to this point before we know how to get out of the problem.”

This is the second year that Marta, which faces a $120 million shortfall in its $400 million operating budget, has been in severe financial straits. Last year, the agency raised fares to $2 from $1.75, decreased services, cut health care benefits to employees and required furloughs. This year, in addition to the 30 percent cut in service, it may have to increase fares again and lay off as many as 1,500 of its 5,000 employees, said Beverly A. Scott, the agency’s chief executive.

Photo by Kendrick Brinson for the Times.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, NY

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