We need to talk about the hundreds of MARTA bus cancellations in a day

By Matt Garbett & Darin Givens | Feb 4, 2025

470 cancelled MARTA bus trips in a single day. And the day isn't over yet. This is insane. Also, why isn't this headline news?

How many people were late to work? Late to get home? Late to pick up their kids? Late to a doctor's appointment? Late to a movie?

These aren't abstract numbers. 470 cancelled MARTA bus trips impacted thousands of people's lives. I

Not MARTA board members or executives or Atlanta elected officials who don't rely on MARTA for anything besides an event. Not them.

But thousands of other people's lives were impacted.

If we can't find a way to lower these cancellations, the improvements from the new bus system redesign are going to be severely limited.

But to find that way, the people that actually make the final decisions have to care. See the people waiting at the bus stop as human beings to be seen, not just people to be driven past. If they're even seen at all.

There are a great deal of fixes that need to be made. Some easy. Some difficult. But the first and most important one is giving a damn about the people whose lives are impacted on a daily basis.