Thoughts on MARTA Forum @ Lindbergh February 6, 2010

Thank you MARTA for hosting a forum to meet with us, your riders.

Many attended the brainstorming session today at Lindbergh. I'd estimate there were approximately 100 attendees during the break out session. More were there earlier I think.

The forum was touted as a brainstorming session. But little time was devoted to actual brainstorming. Rather, it became a pitch for money while offering just a glimpse of their budget expenditures. Only a brief customer brainstorming session actually took place. Afterward, MARTA eliminated the opportunity for the teams to share their ideas because they were behind schedule since some presenters spoke too long. And they almost forgot to collect the material that each team created.

MARTA's message is that a reduction in service in inevitable given the current economic crisis. But they offered little explanation of how things became this bad or what measures they have taken.

But this was a good first step at listening to the customers. Hopefully these sessions will continue and improve.

Some suggestions:

• Allocate more time for customer feedback and interaction. Devote much more time to brainstorming and Q&A. Reduce the time for MARTA presenters or make presentations more effective. MARTA could better leverage the resources of people in attendance and could capitalize on the opportunity to have customers participate.

• Slides were difficult to read. Sliders were text heavy, with small font and poor use of color. And I sat in the 1st row! Better use of graphics would have been helpful.

• MARTA presenters took precedence over customer feedback. Once the MARTA presenters ran behind schedule, the time for customer Q&A and brainstorming was slashed as a result. Especially given that we only had a small break out session for customers to submit their ideas.
  

• Engage customer interaction. MARTA missed the opportunity for the customer teams to share their ideas and participate. And they almost forgot to collect the material that each team created.

• MARTA needs to make better case to justify a budget increase. What measures have been taken? We merely saw tables of numbers with budget and expense. But there was insufficient details on the expenses.
  

• Brainstorming sessions could be more focused. Our table didn't have a facilitator and we spent valuable time determining our goal. Perhaps we could have multiple workshops where we brainstorm on ways to solve the budget crisis. Then another focusing on ways to improve services?