So what's the big difference: I think Cobb's system has done a better job of adapting. Not only adjusting and adapting to their riders needs, but being able to address aging equipment and underused routes. Now all they need is rail...
Cobb Community Transit is a success story
By MIA TAYLOR
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ben Gray/AJC
Latrice Cook (right) rides two Cobb Community Transit buses in commuting from her Marietta home to Clark Atlanta University. Her seatmate is Erum Prasla, whose homeward trek from Georgia Tech includes one leg on CCT's busy 10 bus.
Related:
• FORUM: Do you ride Cobb Community Transit?
• Cobb community page
A construction worker in a hard hat and dust-covered jeans is dozing in a back seat of a Cobb Community Transit bus, waiting for it to pull out of the MARTA Arts station in Atlanta.
College students file on and scatter throughout the midsection of the bus.
Nearly all the remaining seats fill as well, with commuters from a variety of backgrounds -- office workers, hospital employees in pastel scrubs and people dragging luggage.
It's 4:30 on a weekday afternoon, and nearly all of the 40 seats are filled on the Route 10 bus to Marietta.
By the time the bus creeps into traffic, heads up Cobb Parkway and crosses the Chattahoochee River, passengers stand shoulder to shoulder in the aisles, shifting their weight carefully to counter the stops and starts.
They are riding the Southeast's busiest bus route.
Neither the route nor the transit agency that runs it existed 15 years ago. Both were born out of a conservative suburban county's ambivalence about Atlanta: Cobb wanted the city's jobs, but not its transit agency; the benefits of being near a large metropolitan area, but not the crime it feared Atlanta buses and trains might bring.
So 20 years after Cobb voters rejected becoming part of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, the County Commission created Cobb County Transit. It would be the anti-MARTA, financed not by sales taxes but by business license revenues.
Initially its bus fleet would service a few routes in Cobb, and two routes would cross the Chattahoochee. In the early years it carried 500,000 passengers annually and was disparaged by riders. Buses often had broken air conditioning and leaking windows; some were late and some never showed up. Its drivers went on strike at one point.
Somehow, like its buses creaking up the Cobb Parkway hill toward Cumberland Mall, Cobb County Transit kept going. It got better buses, fixed those it had, changed its maintenance staff, smoothed out problems with its drivers, and reconsidered some routes.
This year, for the first time, it broke through the 3 million ridership mark, on par with cities like Colorado Springs and Stockton, Calif.
The three park-and-ride lots -- two in Marietta and one near Town Center mall -- are so jammed, county officials are working on establishing three more, in Powder Springs and Acworth and an additional one for Kennesaw.
The system covers an area mostly west of I-75, from Cumberland Mall north to Town Center, but also includes a route that stops in the Wildwood business campus and ones in northeast Cobb County along Roswell Road.
With a $10 million budget, 17 routes, 60 buses and 15 vans, CCT is getting to be a model for newer suburban bus systems, particularly those launched in Gwinnett and Clayton counties over the past two years.
"We certainly have tried to learn from their experiences," says Tim Collins, transit manager for Gwinnett's 2-year-old bus system, which runs five routes in the county and four express routes to Atlanta.
The state booster of getting cars off the road, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, thinks so much of CCT's success that it is negotiating to have the Cobb agency run about 15 GRTA-paid buses, which would double CCT's fleet of express buses.
"CCT is very much a success," says GRTA Director Jim Ritchey."And we think it can grow considerably more."
As Rebecca Gutowsky talks of the growing ridership, the Cobb bus system manager takes a letter from the desk in her Marietta office and offers it as evidence of CCT's improving reputation and service.
The letter is signed by 14 riders of the Route 101 6:10 a.m. express, which runs from the Cobb County Transit hub in Marietta to downtown Atlanta.
The riders express "sincere gratitude" for the hard work, timeliness and customer service provided by a bus driver they know only as Lynne. "If she is the example of CCT's . . . commitment to the citizens of Cobb County and the state of Georgia, it is a pleasure from all of us to continue to support CCT."
After dealing with much early skepticism and years of rider complaints, Phil Secrist might have a hard time believing those words.
He was County Commission chairman when the bus system began.
"I personally felt it was needed and that gradually it would gain ground, and it has."
Identifying productive routes and revising underused ones, and linking with MARTA rail stations in Midtown and on Atlanta's west side, helped during a shakedown that lasted a decade. Aiming buses at the new regional shopping malls and burgeoning business campuses in the Cumberland area seemed obvious as the county population grew from 425,000 in 1989 to 600,000.
"Overall, I think people are finding a reliability that wasn't always present in the past," said Gutowsky. "We've added some trips. We've done a better job of customer service." In a sense, the transit system is earning money for Cobb and metro Atlanta by keeping cars off the road.
"CCT keeps us compliant with the Clean Air Act, which makes us eligible for many more millions of dollars for transportation projects," said Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens. "Without Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton starting these systems, there's no way we would be compliant with the Clean Air Act."
For some people, the expectations are simpler.
David Wright, 40, a construction worker, walks 30 minutes to a Cobb Parkway bus stop from his Delk Road home.
"The buses are comfortable and everything," says Wright. "But they don't run early enough and I've got to walk a mile to get there."
Gutowsky promises more changes.
In the 2004 county budget, CCT received money for more buses along some of the most popular routes. Route 10 soon will go from running at 30-minute intervals to every 15 minutes. And the once-an-hour Route 30, which is packed during rush hour and runs from Marietta through Austell and Mableton, soon will run every half-hour.
