February 25, 2000 -The Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University hosted a premiere showing of Academy Award cinematographer Haskell Wexlers' Bus Riders Union, a new documentary that traces three years in the life of the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union's frontal assault on transit racism in the nation second largest city. The grassroots group built a powerful multiracial movement and won billions of dollars for real mass transit for the masses. In addition to Atlanta, the film has premiered in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Toronto.

Two of the film's stars, Eric Mann, who directs the Labor/Community Strategy Center, and Barbara Lott-Holland who is a member of the Bus Riders Union Planning Committee, attended the Atlanta premiere and fielded questions after the screening. The event was part of Black History Month and a kickoff activity for the Atlanta Transportation Equity Project. Not surprising, most of the questions from the audience centered on the similarities between Los Angeles and Atlanta. "Atlanta and LA have very similar problems with transit racism. Groups on the ground have to demand that dollars are spent on transit that improves the mobility of the transit dependent" says Mann. He also placed modern transit struggles in a historical context. "In Atlanta and LA today, Rosa Parks could not take a train to get to where she needed to go, she'd have to take a bus" says Mann. For Barbara Lott-Holland , the key to success is organizing transit riders to understand that they have a right to clean, efficient, convenient, and affordable public transportation. "We have to move beyond code words that equate transit with 'dirty buses.' Poor people have a right to ride in comfort just like folks in the suburbs," states Lott-Holland.

The Bus Riders Union film has important implications for multiethnic organizing around transportation equity issues in Metro Atlanta. "I moved from LA to Atlanta five years ago. We hope that the transportation policy work at our center and the groups organizing on the ground in Atlanta will learn from the LA model," says professor Robert Bullard, who directs the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. Bullard also serves as the principal investigator on the transportation equity project, a multi-year project funded by the Turner Foundation and the Ford Foundation. This project examines strategies to assess the impact of transportation decision making, planning, and investments on Metro Atlanta's low-income and people of color communities.

On February 18, 2000, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority or MARTA officials proposed raising one-way fares from $1.50 to $1.75, a 17 percent increase. The MARTA fare increase is proposed to offset a $10 million shortfall associated with the openings of Sandy Springs and North Springs stations, two northern suburban stations. The proposal also calls for increasing the weekly transit pass from $12 to $14 and the monthly pass from $45 to $52.50. While the increase of $7.50 a month may not seem like a lot at first glance, it could do irreparable harm to a $5.15 per hour minimum-wage transit user. The fare increase would fall heaviest on the transit dependent, low-income households, and people of color who make up the majority of MARTA users. Because MARTA receives federal transportation dollars, it is required to hold public hearings before any fare increase takes effect.

MARTA's operating budget comes from sales tax (46%), fares (34%), the Federal Transit Administration and other sources (20%). Only Fulton and DeKalb County residents pay for the up keep and expansion of the system with a one-cent MARTA sales tax. Revenues from bus fares generated $5 million more revenue than taken in by rail in 1997. Currently, the regular one-way fare on MARTA is $1.50, up from $1.00 in 1992.

A proposal by the Los Angeles MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) to eliminate monthly bus passes and to raise fares sparked a grassroots movement. In 1996, the Labor Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union (a grassroots group of transit users) sued the Los Angeles MTA over its plan to raise bus fares and build an expensive rail system at the expense of bus riders, who made up 95 percent of transit users. The MTA bus system, comprised largely of low-income persons and people of color, only received 30 percent of the MTA's transit dollars. Grassroots organizing and the Bus Riders Union's legal victory resulted in $1.5 billion for new clean-fuel buses, service improvements, lower fares, a landmark Civil Rights Consent Decree, and a vibrant multiracial grassroots organization of over 2000 dues-paying members.

A ten-member delegation from the Atlanta coalition visited Los Angeles in early February. The primary mission of the four-day trip was to observe and gather information on the ground-breaking organizing, technical, and legal transportation equity work of the Labor Community Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union. Coalition representatives attended Strategy Center-hosted workshops, participated in a class of the National School for Strategic Organizing, and rode the MTA buses and trains to observe firsthand the problems and concerns (such as overcrowding and users getting passed up by buses) of LA transit users.

Clearly, public transit in Los Angeles and Metro Atlanta is inadequate. Race and class dynamics are intricately intertwined and implicated in both cities. For example, MARTA serves just two counties, Fulton and DeKalb, in the ten-county Atlanta region. In the 1960s, MARTA was hailed as the solution to the region's growing traffic and pollution problems. The first referendum to create a five-county rapid rail system failed in 1968. However, in 1971, the City of Atlanta, Fulton County and DeKalb County approved a referendum for a one percent sales tax to support a rapid rail and feeder bus system. Cobb County and Gwinnett County voters rejected the MARTA system. In 1989, Cobb County created Cobb Community Transit or CCT, a separate bus system. In 1999, Gwinnett and Clayton counties embarked on creating their own separate suburban bus systems.

A recent rider survey revealed that 78 percent of MARTA's rail and bus riders are African American and other people of color. Whites make up 22 percent of MARTA riders. Over 45 percent of MARTA riders live in the city of Atlanta, 14 percent live in the remainder of Fulton County, 25 percent live in DeKalb County, and 16 percent of MARTA riders live outside MARTA's service area.

The majority (58%) of MARTA's weekday riders are on their way to work. The second highest use of MARTA was for getting to medical centers and other services (21%). Other MARTA riders use the system for attending special events (8%), shopping (7%), and school.

MARTA has grown from 13 rail stations in 1979 to 36 rail stations in 2000. Two additional stations (Sandy Springs and North Springs) along the north line are under construction. These two new northern stations are expected to open in December 2000. With its $270.4 million annual budget, MARTA operates 700 buses and 240 rail cars. The system handles over 534,000 passengers on an average weekday. MARTA operates 154 bus routes that cover 1,531 miles and carry 275,000 passengers on an average weekday. MARTA's rail lines cover 100 miles with rail cars carrying 259,000 passengers on an average weekday.

MARTA provides nearly 21,000 parking spaces at 23 of its 36 transit stations. Parking at MARTA lots is free except for the overnight lots that cost $3 per day. MARTA provides 1,342 spaces in four overnight lots. All of the overnight lots are on MARTA's North Line. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a parking space in some MARTA lots. A recent license tag survey, "Who Parks-and-Rides," covering the period 1988-1997, revealed that 44 percent of the cars parked at MARTA lots were from outside the MARTA Fulton/DeKalb County service area.

Getting metro Atlantans out of their cars and into some form of coordinated and linked public transit may well be the key to solving a major part of the region's traffic, mobility, and air quality problems. Realizing the urgent need to address traffic gridlock and metro Atlanta's growth problems, gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes promised to create a "superagency" to handle transportation. One of the first acts the newly-elected Governor Barnes pushed for was the creation of the Georgia Regional Transportation Agency or GRTA. The GRTA received final approval from the Georgia General Assembly on March 1999. A 15-member GRTA board was appointed by the Governor in June 1999. Governor Barnes cautions Atlantans not to expect the GRTA to be a "miracle cure" that brings immediate relief to gridlocked commutes and the thick smog that blankets the skyline. He states: "This is not the end of problems. . . . It's not even the beginning of the end. But its does give us the tools to begin with."

The GRTA board has the authority to coordinate projects in the metro region; fund and operate a new mass transit system and coordinate existing systems; withhold state funding to counties to motivate participation in regional transportation; veto regional development and transportation projects; provide loans or construction agreements to industries that contribute to lowering air emissions; and, identify nonregional air pollution sources impacting the region and offer assistance or bring them under authority auspices.

 

Transportation investments played a major role in keeping the region racially, economically, and spatially divided. For years, I-20 in Metro Atlanta served as the racial line of demarcation in the region, with blacks located largely to the south and whites to the north. The bulk of the region's job growth in the 1990s occurred in the northern suburbs where public transit is virtually nonexistent. Public transit in Metro Atlanta has taken a back seat to the region's aggressive road-building program that has resulted in congested freeways, wasted energy, polluted air, threatened public health, and suburban sprawl. Atlanta's poor and people of color, like Los Angeles, could greatly benefit from improved public transit within the central core and extended into the job-rich suburbs.

For more information on the Atlanta Transportation Equity Project click here.