Atlanta has been my home for 4 decades, and I've watched it grow from a sleepy, small city to a sprawling metropolis. Unfortunately, one of the biggest failings of our local government has been the inability to garner consensus on public transportation.
Originally, I was going to discuss the politics behind the traffic Hellscape that is Atlanta, but C suggested that I don't get political on this blog. If you're interested, here's a great article explaining the long, sordid, and storied history of MARTA and, in my opinion, the reason that Atlanta will never transition to a world-class city.
Below is a current map of the MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) train system:
I'm not sure how anyone can believe that these overlapping train lines in the 4 cardinal directions are supposed to move 5.7M people through the city, daily. Our highways are clogged, our surface streets stagnated and potholed, and Atlantans get the distinction of living in the 4th worst traffic city in the US and 9th worst in the world. Most people I know spend 2 hours daily (minimum) just waiting and wading through traffic, so I don't know where this 71 hours a year came from; that seems more like a monthly total.
Tonight I had a meeting 6.3 miles away from my home at 7:45. I left at 6:40 and spent 48 minutes in my car listening to Waze calculate and recalculate how much time I would be sitting in traffic.
This I promise you, I won't miss the traffic, nor the root cause of it, for one second.