I have lived in Gwinnett County since high school, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve heard that MARTA has been kept out of the county because residents wanted to keep shady characters out of the area.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed a man who said, “That place has a reputation for murder and rape — the wrong people. We don’t need ‘em, we don’t want ‘em.”
He’s talking about people from the capital coming into Gwinnett. That’s a very thinly veiled way of saying you don’t want people of color in the area.
Well, it’s 2019 now and Gwinnett is paying the price for its narrow-minded thoughts. It’s been 30 years since MARTA has asked the county to partner up and now it seems we’re finally on board, but who will benefit from this change if the county agrees to hop on board?
Last week, Student Government Association President Franklin Patterson spoke with The Signal’s Zach Salling on this issue pertaining to a student’s perspective. Patterson said, “We’ve been getting mixed reviews. If it affects students personally, that’s when they care about [the referendum]. Most [students Patterson has spoken with] are against it. They believe it’s going to bring the wrong type of people to Gwinnett.”
So, what’s the “right” kind of people?
As a commuter student, it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to travel from home to campus every day. I travel by car anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes to the closest MARTA station, Kensington. It’s about a 30-minute ride to the Georgia State Station. If there is an accident or delay on the train anywhere along the way, add another 30 minutes to my commute. And then I’m late for class or work.
I would love to have the option of taking the train and transferring to a bus to commute back and forth between school and home. I feel so separated from my peers because I have that commute to worry about to get home. But the stress of beating traffic would almost melt away if I could just ride MARTA home.
As a band-aid, Gwinnett has joined Xpress, a part of Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, and Gwinnett County Transit, the public transit system, for Gwinnett to bus residents from the county to the city. Xpress has 33 routes that all lead to either Downtown Atlanta or Midtown. The GWT has four local and five express routes that also carry residents from outside the perimeter to Downtown.
It sounds nice, but there is a very pricy catch. Because these alternatives are outside of MARTA, you can’t use the same plan for these buses interchangeably. If you buy an Xpress package, you can transfer over to a MARTA bus or train after, but it doesn’t work the other way around.
Isn’t it interesting that all routes lead to Downtown? There’s all this animosity about “the wrong people,” but residents of Gwinnett desperately need transportation to Downtown. You can’t have it both ways; something’s got to give and after 30 years, it might be time Gwinnett County steps up.
