A dramatically sidelined star thrust a public transit system suddenly onto center stage Friday for a captive audience.
MARTA got the spotlight moment it wanted a little over 12 hours after the unthinkable happened. A portion of I-85 collapsed and, just like that, the love-it-or-hate-it but-can’t-live-without-it roadway through the heart of the city was closed.
Enter Unthinkable Development No. 2: Like Midtown Atlanta resident Joanne Hughes, many people found themselves riding MARTA for the first time — or, at least, for the first time in a very long time.
The initial reviews were somewhat mixed.
Just past 8 a.m., Hughes disembarked from a Red Line train and looked around the Medical Center station.
“I just need to get my bearings,” she said with a resigned smile.
Much of metro Atlanta knew exactly how she felt.
Courtney Payne, waiting for a southbound Red Line train to depart the North Springs station, said “I, like, (usually) just drive in my car, just me in my car singing, horribly.” Normally, she’d be motoring down I-85 from her home in Sandy Springs to her job in the Old Fourth Ward. But,”now it’s me and my closest 500 neighbors.”
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Sounds about right. Ridership was up 25 percent on Friday, MARTA general manager Keith Parker said at a press conference near the collapse site. Sales of Breeze Cards, used to access trains and buses, was up 80 percent. Part of the increase may be due to MARTA phasing out its blue Breeze cards for new silver ones.
Erik Burton, a spokesman for the public transportation company, said said MARTA hopes to turn the bump in interest into long-term gains.
“We definitely want to capitalize on the opportunity to attract new riders,” Burton said, including advertising that would demonstrate the ease of getting around Atlanta on the train.
VIDEO: MARTA has increased bus and rail service due to highway collapse
In anticipation of a busy day, the transit system had increased service by running trains more frequently, and Parker reported the system was functioning well.
Not everyone agreed
Ashley Chupp is a daily MARTA rider whose commute normally takes about 25 minutes. On Friday, though, it took just over one hour, with the worst delays coming at the hub-of-it-all Five Points station. Meanwhile, it took Rose Washington and Zell Pettaway, sisters visiting from the nation’s capital, about half an hour to ride from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport to Peachtree Center — or, nearly double the 17 minutes Parker said the downtown-to-airport trip was taking.
Part of the problem may have been a mechanical issue at the West End station which caused delays on the north-south line until around mid-morning.
“We sat for a long time at the airport, then (the train) stopped a couple of times,” said Washington, who’d heard about the bridge collapse and was taking the whole transit experience in stride.
“It’s no big deal,” agreed Pettaway.
Easy for them to say. Repairs to both sides of that critical portion of I-85 could take several months, Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner Russell McMurry said. That harsh fact was enough to get Hughes studying MARTA routes and pulling on a pair running shoes Friday morning.
She'd always wanted to commute to work via MARTA, Hughes said. She lives near the Midtown station, after all. It's the other end that's always been the problem: Her workplace is located about a mile from the Medical Center station, and there's no shuttle service.
“I’m hoping the weather will be nice for the next couple of months and I can walk every day,” said Hughes.
A little farther south, Shawn Coleman had accepted reality and reintroduced himself to public transportation. It had been months since the Decatur resident had last ridden MARTA to an Atlanta Hawks game. But the roadway collapse had also put the kibosh on his normal commute to Buckhead; so he’d boarded the Red Line for what he imagined would be the first of hundreds of times in the coming months.
“This will add additional time and inconvenience for me,” Coleman said. “We’re a car city. We’re used to hopping in our cars doing whatever we want, whenever we want. Fortunately for me, this is the most active solution.”
RELATED: I-85 bridge collapse: First-time riders hit MARTA
Yet for all the newcomer-fueled ridership boost, some MARTA veterans were surprised the trains weren’t more crowded. While it was standing-room-only on a few trains headed downtown at the height of rush hour, it was hardly on the level of your average sardine-like ride on an SEC Championship weekend.
Maybe it’s because it was a Friday?
Which means, what will it be like on Monday? And for how many weeks and months after that?
“I thought it was going to be so much worse today, I left a half hour earlier than I normally would,” said Tom Brooks, who’d gotten on a southbound Red Line train at Brookhaven. Only about half the car’s seats were occupied around 10:15 a.m. as the train barreled towards Hartsfield and the start of Brooks’s Caribbean cruise vacation.
Nice. Especially if things are back to normal when he gets back.
"Please," Brooks chuckled. "I"ll only be gone seven days. Not seven months."
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