Local

Lack Of Reliable Transportation Still Haunts Some Atlanta Residents

June 28th, 2018

Atlanta’s rising cost of living, along with the city’s public transportation infrastructure, is leaving some residents who don’t have a car in a pinch.

Maya lives in an apartment in Decatur with her 4-year-old daughter and has a job in Midtown. But what she doesn’t have is a car.

“I’m on MARTA and if you miss one bus, you’re late,” she said. “On the weekends the buses and trains run every 40 minutes. So, you miss one bus you’ll be two hours late.”

Maya, who didn’t want her last name to be used, said that makes it hard to get anywhere on time, especially with a child and an hourly job.

“I have to leave two hours early just to be able to pick up my baby on time,” she said. “Or I have to leave the house two hours early just to get to work.”

She works at a restaurant in a booming part of Atlanta. With rising real estate prices, the cost of living within walking distance to her job is too high.

The lack of affordable housing makes it harder for low-income people to live in the city or sometimes near their jobs.

Dan Immergluck, a professor at Georgia State University’s Urban Studies Institute, said the rising costs of living makes it even harder for people without cars.

“That pushes lower income people who don’t have cars often out into really transit inefficient places,” Immergluck said.

For Maya, she’s caught in a hamster wheel when it comes to finding housing with better access to transit.

“If I don’t work enough hours then I won’t be able to get housing,” she said. “And I can’t work enough hours because of the transportation situation.”

She said on weekends, she doesn’t even leave the house because of the bus schedule. To handle her grocery shopping, she relies on rideshare services like Uber or Lyft.

Maya said she feels she is also being pushed out of her current apartment because of new developments there.

She figures she has a couple of years before she’ll have to pack up and move further away from the city to find affordable housing.

This story is part of the WABE series “Still Struggling.”