On a daily basis, 424,000 Cobb Countians commute to work. On average, it takes them 30 minutes.
In this sprawling, suburban county, most households have a car, and only 44% of residents live within a quarter-mile of a bus route. Those buses, should you choose to take them, usually come on a half-hourly or hourly basis.
In that system, transit can’t compete with the speed of driving. The result is that 70% of Cobb drives to work, alone, and just 0.7% takes transit. Some 20% now work from home.
But for those 30,000 or so who commute via transit, the CobbLinc bus system is crucial to their paycheck.
“It’s a great option to have,” said Derrick Thompson, who lives off Delk Road in Marietta. “… Some people don’t want to take it because it’s inconvenient, sometimes it might be raining, sometimes it might be too cold. … But at least it’s a way to work and home. … And the fare is not bad.”
In a few weeks, Cobb will consider a historic investment in transit. On the Nov. 5 ballot, residents countywide will vote on a 30-year, 1% sales tax to fund public transportation projects. The centerpiece of the proposal is bus rapid transit.
If approved, the transit system Cobb plans to build would be vastly superior to what exists today: faster and more frequent service, more extensive routes, dedicated bus lanes, high-quality stations and more.
If that enhanced system can match the speed of driving, it could attract many more riders, though supporters and opponents of the tax disagree on how many. The county, for its part, projects there would be 40,600 weekday rides by 2050, up from 10,400 in 2020.
For now, the conventional wisdom in Cobb is that transit is an option used mostly by people who have no other choice.
In interviews, CobbLinc users said the same thing — they would drive themselves if they could.
“I wouldn’t normally do it,” said Thompson, who is taking the bus because his truck broke down. “... I get tired of it when I don’t have a car, and while I have a vehicle I never take it.”
Riders, however, also said they were grateful to have the buses, and had few complaints about how CobbLinc is run.
If the transit tax is approved, Cobb’s sales tax would increase from 6% to 7%.
Known officially as the Mobility Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (M-SPLOST), the tax would collect $11 billion to construct 108 miles of rapid bus routes, half a dozen new transit centers and a countywide system of on-demand “microtransit” service.
None of the riders who spoke to the MDJ had heard of the transit tax referendum. But all were intrigued about the possibility of better transit in Cobb.
Who rides transit?
Much of the federal funding CobbLinc receives — which paid for 48% of operating costs in 2022 — is contingent on the system serving its most vulnerable passengers.
“A lot of the folks that utilize our system are transit-dependent,” Cobb Transportation Director Drew Raessler previously said. “… A lot of the (federal) funding requires it, but we make sure that we’re operating a system that takes care of those that absolutely need it.”
Greg Erhardt, a civil engineering professor at the University of Kentucky, told the MDJ earlier this year that transit has two main benefits: taking cars off the road, and providing transportation to those who don’t have a car or can’t drive.
“That tends to be low-income people,” Erhardt said. “In particular, it’s disproportionately minorities, and maybe someone who’s in a wheelchair, this sort of thing.
“Even though it’s a relatively small share of the population in a lot of places in the U.S., those are important trips to serve, in part because it enables people to work. … If you don’t have a car, and you can’t get to work, there’s costs both to that person, and to society as a whole.”
County assessments of CobbLinc have found the “transit-oriented” population is most concentrated along existing bus routes: along the Interstate 75 corridor from Cumberland to Kennesaw, along the Austell Road corridor from Marietta to south Cobb, in the Fair Oaks area west of Dobbins Air Reserve Base, and near I-20 in Mableton.
“I am adamant about us optimizing transit here, for particularly those who are dependent on transit,” Cobb Chairwoman Lisa Cupid previously told the MDJ, in an interview about the tax.
Antonio Johnson has lived with his mother in Cumberland since moving to Cobb from Louisiana five years ago. He works at a Wendy’s near the Big Chicken.
He used to have a car, but lost it in April because he couldn’t pay $5,000 for a new transmission. And while his mother has a vehicle, she needs it to commute to her job at the Atlanta airport.
So every work day, Johnson takes CobbLinc’s Route 10 up Cobb Parkway to work. Occasionally he’ll use ride-hailing apps, but that can run him $15, compared to a $2.50 bus fare. He likes that it’s a straight shot, and his only real complaint is dealing with “crazy people.”
“It’d probably be nice,” he said, upon learning about the M-SPLOST. “I’m going to definitely look into it.”
Another transit commuter is Jerchari Clark of Mableton, who works at a liquor warehouse off Fulton-Industrial Boulevard. He owns a car but lost his license, so he relies on CobbLinc and MARTA buses for his 30-minute commute.
After his 10-hour shift, which runs from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m., he takes an Uber or Lyft home, since the buses aren’t running.
Nahiam Burden, a CobbLinc driver of 20 years, drives the 50 Route.
“Just regular everyday people, going to work, trying to take care of their families,” Burden said, describing his passengers. “... Common, working class people.”
Burden has always been a transit fan. As a kid in New York City, he loved taking the bus. He memorized the routes and would ride for fun, befriending drivers. He’d heard of the M-SPLOST, but didn’t know many details.
“That would be great, that would be nice,” he said. “… Not everybody can get around. There’s a lot of people with disabilities. … It would definitely improve traffic. But it all depends on if the people really want it. Because there’s a big stigma about buses.”
‘Yin and yang’
One of those disabled people is Shawn Creecy, who lives off Riverside Parkway in Mableton, and takes transit everywhere.
On a recent weekday, Creecy was taking the 30 Route to the H.E. Holmes MARTA station, then planned to take the train to downtown Atlanta for a medical appointment. The bus driver extended a ramp, allowing him to board in his wheelchair, before the driver folded up seats and used straps to secure the chair. As the bus began moving, the wheelchair lurched a bit, before stabilizing.
Creecy, 31, was shot in the back at 16 in Clayton County, an innocent bystander to a drive-by shooting. He’s been paralyzed from the chest down ever since.
Creecy used to have a car he operated with hand controls, but it was stolen. He lives with his brother and often visits family, but doesn’t like asking people for rides. Transit enables him to get around independently.
“I don’t like to depend on people anyway,” he said. “The buses, they help me out.”
Victoria Baucum lives in Atlanta’s Adamsville neighborhood, but previously lived in Cobb. She recently rode CobbLinc to get to a doctor’s appointment in Cumberland.
Baucum had a 15-year career in live events and worked at the Georgia World Congress Center. Then COVID-19 hit, and the convention business went up in smoke. She lost her job and wound up homeless. She was ticketed for driving without car insurance and spent time in jail.
After that, “I refused to drive for a year,” she said. “It was like this experiment I did. … It was the best and the worst year of my life, but it was interesting.”
During that year, she relied on bicycling and public transportation. While she enjoys biking, she’ll opt for driving when she can.
“You just sit in traffic here all the time,” Baucum said. “And on a bike, I’ve got my music, I’m out in the fresh air, I get in good shape. … But at the same time, if I have a car, I don’t bike at all.”
Baucum has an apartment now, and a resale business, picking up free items listed on the internet and selling them for a profit.
A recent car issue, however, led to her getting back on the bike.
Baucum was skeptical the M-SPLOST would pass — “nobody likes buses, people like trains.” But she resents the suggestion, made by some, that transit brings crime to communities.
“It’s yin and yang,” she said. “With all good things come a couple rough things. But there’s more good than bad.”
Wanda Billingslea of Mableton is a mother of five and doesn’t have a car. She relies on the bus when she needs to get to Marietta.
“It’s all right,” she said of the system. “It gets me where I need to go. It’s a lot of walking … before you catch the bus.”
Billingslea knows there are many in Cobb who never take the bus. But if the system were upgraded significantly, she could see that changing.
“Since they’re building up in Mableton and this area anyway, I think that’d be great,” she said. “… I think they (wealthier people) would be riding the bus a little bit more if it was upgraded.”
How many rely on it?
It’s not entirely clear how many people in Cobb are considered “transit-dependent.”
Cobb transportation officials said the county does not know how many people use CobbLinc on a weekly or monthly basis. The system only records passenger volume — the number of rides taken.
Some statistics help paint the picture, like the 30,000 workers who use transit to commute. There are others who use it to run errands, visit family, get to school or doctor’s offices.
The Census estimates that 3.5% of Cobb households — 12,000 households — have no vehicle. Another 31% — 98,000 households — have one vehicle.
The county has studied who lives near transit, and what percentage of them fall into certain groups. Cobb estimates that 33% of impoverished residents, 40% of zero-vehicle households, 14% of seniors and 27% of minorities live near a bus line.
If the M-SPLOST projects are built, those numbers would increase — 41% of impoverished residents, 50% of zero-vehicle households, 24% of seniors and 36% of minorities would live near bus lines.
Plus, the entire county would have access to the on-demand microtransit.
For transit tax opponents, the transit-dependent population is too small to justify the length and cost of the M-SPLOST.
“Is it right to do a massive taxpayer subsidy to reduce the amount of money that you spend to get from point A to point B?” said anti-tax activist Lance Lamberton. “Isn’t that responsibility in the hands of the individual to take care of? … To pay for it themselves.”
For Cupid and her supporters, the M-SPLOST can serve the transit-dependent, while also reducing congestion and spurring economic development.
“I would love to see us collectively have a different shift in the work that we do … in thinking about how we are investing and making Cobb County as great as it can be for everyone,” Cupid said. “… At some point, we’ve got to look forward in how we do things. And this is a great opportunity that we have to do so.”
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