I took MARTA for the first time (Atlanta, College Park: transfer, buy)

[Prickly Pear]

Hey yall.

Some background on me: I have been living in the Atlanta metro area for the past year and a half or so. For Thanksgiving, I flew to see my family, and since the Park n Flys were all booked up (did a last minute flight booking, my wallet hates me) I decided to use MARTA.

I was worried about TSA at ATL for the holiday, so I decided once I got off work on Wednesday last week to drive to the College Park station, park at their long-term parking deck, and then get to the airport from there. My anxieties about getting to ATL was somewhat subsided since MARTA's website said there was still plenty of parking at the College Park station (I missed my last flight out of ATL in October due to shenanigans on the I-85 and also bad TSA and desperately wanted to avoid this). It took me an hour+ drive to get to the college park station.


Overall Thoughts:


College Park station: lots of the parking is under construction. At night when I was driving, I got lost because I could not find the entrance into the long-term parking garage. This delayed my time quite a bit, but I managed to figure it out. Lighting really needs to be improved here. Overall once locating the garage, getting a parking ticket and getting a spot was easy. Walking from the garage to the actual station, and vice versa, was kind of a pain. The sidewalks are not designed with the intention of "people with luggage or handicap might go through here" and so there wasn't a real ramp between some of the curbs in a way that getting to the garage was convenient. MARTA should work on improving this and making it easier. The station felt outdated, mostly the pay kiosks, and Marta would benefit from improving these to include a "tap to pay" function. However, the kiosks were pretty straight forward on getting the right ticket one would need, so the software was good for its intended purpose. College Park is not necessarily the best part of town, and I was there late at night on Wednesday, as a single woman with luggage, I did not feel like I was being targeted or unsafe. Coming back on Sunday, I knew more about what I was doing and even though there was more people, I felt more comfortable with the experience there.

MARTA Trains: The train schedule (which I wasn't keeping track of) was actually pretty good here. Almost within seconds of my arrival on the platform did the train show up. Luckily I was able to get my phone out in time to get a video of it rolling into the station going southbound. It departed the station pretty quickly, and was overall a smooth ride to the airport station. It probably benefited that any gold or red train could serve my purpose here. However on the way back last night, I got on a red line train only to sit at the station for quite some time (about 8 pm or so) at the airport before it departed to College Park. I sat maybe 5 minutes or more, not sure why. The trains are also very outdated! So I can see why Marta is working towards getting new ones.

Airport station: Arriving here off the train and getting into ATL was no problem. It drops you into the non-Delta side which fortunately is where I needed to go (I still get lost inside ATL). The downside for me as a Southwest passenger is that their bag drop-off is quite literally the other side of the building which is quite a walk, but it is what it is. However it is in an ideal location for a non-Delta arrival who needs to come from baggage claim. For some unholy reason, ATL wasn't that busy on Wednesday night, which was favorable but the times I have seen a busy ATL this trek would have sucked. The station could probably benefit from a Southside entrance though, into the Delta side. Last night on my return, my experiences were a bit different. Over half the pay kiosks weren't working, so there was a line, and only one of them was actually marked out of service. By the time I got to pay for a ticket and to get to the platform, there was a line to use the elevator to get up to the platform (escalators were all down). When I got there, there was a Red Line MARTA stationed there but like I said I waited for over 5 minutes. The Airport Station, like the College Park station, felt outdated but this was incredibly stark against the relatively modern and nice upkeeping of the ATL airport. MARTA should collaborate with ATL to create a station that is streamless and flawless and modern, which should honestly benefit both parties as it immediately doesn't look sketch to use MARTA coming from ATL, and doesn't appear to others that it is "sketchy" outside the airport.

From Wednesday night to Sunday night, I paid $40 long-term parking + $7 for two one-way tickets. This was significantly cheaper than to do park and fly or Uber, which both quoted me around $120.

Results - MARTA was a nice enough and smooth experience to warrant using it again, especially at such reduced costs versus other methods. However since I was nervous about making my flight, I drove all the way to College Park from Buford and then did the one station transfer. Moving forward, I will continue to use MARTA for my last mile purposes in relation to the airport, but I will be parking at Doraville and then using the Gold Line all the way through. However, Marta would benefit on modernizing and performing better maintenance on the facilities as a whole in both of these stations.

[Datdudebrah]

Thanks for sharing, its always cool to hear others opinions about the system.

On the kiosks, they are pretty old at this point and always seem to have problems. Marta rolled out the Breeze Mobile 2.0 app a few months ago, with the app you can buy and use your rides from your phone, so no need to worry about the kiosks at all. Marta is in the process of replacing all of them with something more modern, but that's years out.

Also Airport and College Park stations (and several others) are in the process of being renovated, hopefully they'll be a little more modern and include some QoL improvements like the ramps you mentioned.

[Prickly Pear]

Originally Posted by Datdudebrah

Thanks for sharing, its always cool to hear others opinions about the system.

On the kiosks, they are pretty old at this point and always seem to have problems. Marta rolled out the Breeze Mobile 2.0 app a few months ago, with the app you can buy and use your rides from your phone, so no need to worry about the kiosks at all. Marta is in the process of replacing all of them with something more modern, but that's years out.

Also Airport and College Park stations (and several others) are in the process of being renovated, hopefully they'll be a little more modern and include some QoL improvements like the ramps you mentioned.

The app is good, but too many folks coming in and out of ATL not having the app still need a decent kiosk. I didn't have the app set up with payment or anything at the time so I had to use the kiosk.


The stations felt like they were out of the 80s, at least these two, can't speak for all of them. I was a bit taken aback at how College Park (which I expected to be outdated) was in about a similar state as the Airport station. I honestly thought ATL would have intervened with that particular one sooner.

[MattCW]

Airport is the terminal station. Trains at the time you were taking them were probably only running once every 20 minutes. With the two lines on normal schedules, that's once every 10 minutes. The train sits there until the scheduled departure time. 5 minutes isn't bad. I've caught MARTA from terminals where I got there just after the previous train left so I had a 19 minute wait on the train.

[bethereds82]

Pro tip:

If you’re using the Marta app, make sure to turn the brightness on your screen all the way up at the correct turnstiles and hold your QR code still for about 2 seconds. (With app open)

I got so frustrated with the breeze app not working until a nice Marta attendant shared with me at the north sittings station that my brightness on my phone screen needed to be turned up. Since this interaction, I’ve had no issues with the app working properly. That is— as long as I use the app at the right turnstile—not every turnstile at every station has the ability to read the app.

[waronxmas]

You won't run into any issues using Doraville, and the trip to the airport usually takes 30 to 45 minutes.

[SEAandATL]

What MARTA seems to lack as far as availability/coverage throughout the sprawling metro, it seems to make up for in quality of the rides between the places they do run. It will even be better when they replace the new trainsets. Also compared to even some of the cities that have the best transit systems like DC and Chicago, MARTA seems to score better in reliability of the schedule and less mechanical/maintenance issues.

[ATL Golfer]

Originally Posted by SEAandATL

What MARTA seems to lack as far as availability/coverage throughout the sprawling metro, it seems to make up for in quality of the rides between the places they do run. It will even be better when they replace the new trainsets. Also compared to even some of the cities that have the best transit systems like DC and Chicago, MARTA seems to score better in reliability of the schedule and less mechanical/maintenance issues.

MARTA has two routes and is infinitely more simplistic than nearly ever train system in the country. Could you imagine how even more poorly it would need to be run to not score better in reliability?

MARTA is fine but its still so slow and will never beat a car to your destination. Maybe Friday rush hour in certain directions but that is about it. I live less than a mile from the Brookhaven station. If I take that to the airport it is just about an hour door to door. Or its a 25 min drive.

[ATL Golfer]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

You won't run into any issues using Doraville, and the trip to the airport usually takes 30 to 45 minutes.

It will be over 45 mins from the time you exit the car. Just over 40 mins sitting on the train. It is +/-40 mins from Brookhaven.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by SEAandATL

What MARTA seems to lack as far as availability/coverage throughout the sprawling metro, it seems to make up for in quality of the rides between the places they do run. It will even be better when they replace the new trainsets. Also compared to even some of the cities that have the best transit systems like DC and Chicago, MARTA seems to score better in reliability of the schedule and less mechanical/maintenance issues.

At this point it behooves us to not blame MARTA for it's lack of regional coverage. They aren't blameless, but the main problem has always been the counties that don't have service themselves for not doing enough. Hell, they don't even need to wait on MARTA and never had too. Counties like Gwinnett or Cobb, whom always said they haven't joined due to "poor management", have their own transit agencies and have done nothing with them beyond a few bus lines.