Other cities look to infill stations for a transit solution
It turns out that MARTA isn’t the only transit agency in the United States considering infill stations.
A Bloomberg Citylab article notes that systems in Washington, Boston, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area are among those that have already opened new stations between existing stations on heavy-rail lines in recent years.
As Benjamin Schneider writes:
Infill stations are an increasingly popular solution in US cities whose rail transit systems were originally designed to shuttle suburban commuters to and from downtown. At a time when laying new tracks can be prohibitively expensive, they’re an affordable way to make the most of infrastructure that’s already in place.
Systems like Bay Area Rapid Transit, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and MARTA in Atlanta were hybrids between traditional urban metro systems and longer-distance commuter rail networks. Their target demographic was suburban white-collar workers traveling to downtown offices several miles away. This focus meant that even in some densely populated urban neighborhoods stations can be miles apart.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced last month that the city and MARTA would work together to install four such stations at points where MARTA heavy rail crosses the Beltline. The first of these is to be built along the south line at Murphy’s Crossing, where a developer chosen by Atlanta Beltline Inc. has announced plans for mixed-use development including 1,100 housing units. Infill stations at Krog Street, Armour Drive and Joseph E. Boone Boulevard may follow.
There are potential drawbacks. By adding stops, the new stations are bound to add time to trips. That, in turn, could reduce the number of riders.
In one case, however, the benefits seem to outweigh any drawbacks. In 2004, Washington’s Metrorail finally opened a new station on the Red Line in the rapidly growing NoMa neighborhood, according to Schneider. The NoMa/Gallaudet University station is now ninth busiest of 98 Metro stations.
Equity is a driving force behind the push. Schneider notes, for example, that low-income East Oakland residents “have launched a campaign to construct a new [Bay Area Rapid Transit] station in the San Antonio neighborhood, in the middle of a 2.7-mile stretch of tracks without access to the system.”
At a time when suburbs were largely White and central cities were mostly Black, it was clear whom these systems prioritized as they skipped past potential riders in transit-dependent neighborhoods.
No less than Martin Luther King Jr. called out this phenomenon in 1968. “The rapid-transit system has been laid out for the convenience of the white upper-middle-class suburbanites who commute to their jobs downtown,” wrote the civil rights leader of initial plans for MARTA in “A Testament of Hope,” one of his final essays before his assassination. “The system has virtually no consideration for connecting the poor people with their jobs.”
Schneider quotes Beltline streetcar advocates who insist that rail-service on the Beltline through wealthy neighborhoods should be the priority. But, he notes, “the infill stations could bring rail service to the west side section of the BeltLine, where there’s currently no plan for light rail.”
Read the full Bloomberg article here.
— Ken Edelstein
