State of MARTA Breakfast Recap

On Thursday I went to the third annual State of MARTA breakfast. Sold out, full house, with invited members of the press and local organizations. I'm summarizing a few highlights in this post, and below I'm including the #MARTAredefined Twitter feed for the event.

#MARTAredefined Tweets
For the highlights:

• The new imperatives for MARTA are S.E.A.T.: Service, Economy, Arts, Technology.  
• MARTA board chairman Robbie Ashe quoted to say "we can't efficiency ourselves to expansion." Moves to push referendum in City of Atlanta, Fulton, DeKalb to build the rail line extensions to Alpharetta, Stonecrest, and the Emory/Clifton line.
• MARTA employees were recognized, as well as retired couple who helped a student fix his tie on MARTA.
• Guest speaker and Stanford professor Tony Seba explains the disruptive nature of energy technology on transportation (price point, efficiency, electric vehicles) and that car ownership in cities will decrease over time. New technologies will enable on-demand transportation.
• MARTA CEO Keith Parker announces a MARTA Arts task force, systemwide WiFi for 2018, and hints at a fleet of MARTA autonomous cars that could take you from a transit stop to your final destination.  He speaks of moving from "Happy MARTA" to "Transformed MARTA" to "Super MARTA."
• MARTA Army announces new program for crowdfunding of transit amenities, where communities around select bus stops will be able to pool money towards purchase and maintenance of benches and shelters.

Topics that could have been more developed:

• CEO Parker mentioned about the comprehensive operations analysis and a resulting service overhaul, but still no word yet on what the outcomes are going to be.
• Parker mentioned about the gap between rail and bus customers. I would have liked to hear more about streamlining connections between the two modes.

In conclusion, it was a well attended event with recaps of the initiatives taken to date and directions for future improvements that we can't wait to happen. Good job MARTA!