Episode 48: Bringing Joy With Transit And TOD

On the podcast, Collie shares background about Atlanta’s bus system redesign, which is in process, while Jacob delves into the work of the agency’s transit-oriented development (TOD) program.

Collie describes the effort to make sure the bus system project started off with a full understanding of the area’s physical, historical, racial, fiscal and political landscape. Engagement with an array of stakeholders set the tone and established “the challenge of really facing a landscape built on a racist framework and committing to an anti-racist result.” The bus and BRT, he says, are core elements of the region’s transit expansion because they reach more households, especially households in poverty, and more jobs.

Looking to the future, he talks about the new Five Points station and the vehicles that will serve it. “It’s my hope that in the next five or ten years, you won’t recognize the old place,” and transit will be valued as “social force and a beacon of the community it serves.”

Jacob details the efforts of the TOD program to focus on housing affordability and attracting developers to MARTA’s south and west lines, which serve predominantly black communities. This idea of new investment, he says, brings with it a lot of fear on the part of local residents. “There is a trust gap.” He talks about efforts to listen to the communities and build their concerns and desires into RFPs, including requirements for more affordable units pegged to the Area Median Income of the zip code not the region. He describes partnerships with JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs dedicated to providing capital to support greater affordability and to preserve existing affordable housing.

The podcast captures the dynamic of an agency working hard to bring transit planning, operations and TOD into “lock-step.” Collie and Jacob talk about the potential for transit and TOD to be a source of joy and delight and freedom for the community. And they describe the commitment to details and basics on the part of MARTA staff, top to bottom, that makes that vision come to life.

“I think it’s just really important that we recognize that today’s inequity is not just evidence of yesterday’s problem, but it’s the source of tomorrow’s embarrassment if we don’t do anything about it. So these days you do have to strive for equity, but you also carefully have to convey to everyone that systemic inequity and its racist underpinnings are still real. And it’s not a condemnation of individuals. It’s more of a focus on the landscape that we happen to exist in.”
— Collie Greenwood

“You can’t deliver transit without thinking about displacement and what it’s going to do to the people. Having the community development arm in lockstep with the transit planning design is really critical, so that you have the ingredients of an equitable transit development project.”
— Jacob Vallo