ValnaoDespite Atlanta being choked with cars, many Georgia politicians hate public transit
Georgia public transport is shaped by racism and class politics. When Atlanta first started building MARTA, Cobb county didn’t want it so they established a 300 foot wide township that ran along the border of Cobb and Fulton counties. The only law this township had was that no public transit could be constructed in it. The township effectively blocked MARTA from reaching into Cobb county.
Why did this happen? Because when civil liberties came to be Atlanta experienced a “white flight” where white people moved in large numbers out of the city. Most of the white flight landed in Cobb county and wanted to keep black people out.
That’s one of the major hurdles that mass transport has had in Atlanta, there are plenty of others.
It was even wilder than that – Chattahoochee Plantation, established in 1968, was only 10ft wide by 30 miles long, the entire length of the border between the two counties. It had no city government so it didn’t have any laws.
But, GA law doesn’t allow annexation across city borders (Atlanta would have to annex the unincorporated parts of southern Cobb to build MARTA at the time), so this 10ft wide “city” stopped the expansion.
The charter for the “city” was quietly revoked in 1995.