The piece of transportation that I chose to do my research on was the Atlanta Street Car which is located in downtown Atlanta. The designers of the Atlanta Street Car began construction for their new project February 1, 2012 and opened to the public December 30th, 2014. Upon moving to the city of Atlanta I had never seen the Atlanta Street Car before. I remember driving through the city one day and looking in my rear view mirror and seeing this gigantic dark blue train-looking object coming at me at a fast pace. Of course, I panicked a little bit and swerved out of the way. I did not realize until later on, that the Atlanta Street Car is meant to drive on the road with other cars.
To go along with my new experiences with the Atlanta Street Car, I wasn’t aware of where you had to go to get onto it. Later, I finally figured out that the Atlanta Street Car has 12 stops that it makes at different locations. I got onto the Atlanta Street Car at the Woodruff location which is located right beside the 25 park place building. As soon as i got on, the first thing I noticed was how plain the interior was. This plain interior reminded me of my experience with riding Marta. One thing that that separated riding the Marta train and riding the Atlanta Street Car is the fact that Marta has an old-fashioned type of feel to it and the Atlanta Street Car feels more modernized and new. The air that I experienced while riding Marta was a dingy/musty type of smell and the smell that I experienced while riding the Atlanta Street Car was the smell of newness.
The majority of people that I saw riding the Atlanta Street Car were mostly middle-aged lower class minorities. This makes sense though, because to ride the Atlanta Street Car it costs only one dollar and that just started January 1st, 2016. There was an interesting statistic that was reported by WSB-TV that said that since the one dollar price hike, ridership has fallen by almost two-thirds since last year. In January 2015, there were 64,448 riders and when the price went up in January 2016, only 21,818 riders rode the Atlanta Street Car.
The Polar Express or Atlanta Street Car
Overall, I enjoyed my experience riding the Atlanta Street Car. My advice to people reading this would be despite the perception that the Atlanta Street Car may give off, to not be afraid to ride on it. I was in that same boat when I was first thinking about getting onto the Atlanta Street Car and I ended up being just fine. Although I had a mainly positive experience, I would definitely recommend that the Atlanta Street Car try to be more inclusive to middle class people and younger people if they want to be more profitable. The Atlanta Street Car is a fantastic tool to navigate your way throughout the city and it should be beneficial to all people.