My car-free 36-hour trip to Atlanta

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Before the trip

This weekend, my partner and I are traveling to, around, and from Atlanta without driving or flying. I’ve never been to Atlanta and want to enjoy the city without worrying about its notorious traffic.

Our plan is simple– we’re taking the train from Durham to Greensboro on Friday evening and catching the connecting overnight train from Greensboro, putting us in Atlanta the following morning. That gives us the entire day in Atlanta to do whatever we please (we have tickets to see the Nationals play the Braves!) before we catch the overnight train back to Greensboro that evening. We’ll then catch a connecting train from Greensboro to Durham the following morning.

So Atlanta, Georgia… notable, walkable city? Let’s find out.

After the trip

Oh dear God.

No, it wasn’t actually that bad. There were a few hiccups along the way, but overall we had a wonderful weekend trip to Atlanta.

We had a really fun time Friday evening during our layover in Greensboro. The downtown area was easy for us to navigate from the train station so that we were only ever a 10-15 minute walk away for when our train arrived. The train to Atlanta did arrive over two hours late that evening, but we could afford to weather the delay in downtown while we explored bars and breweries. Once our train did arrive, we went right to sleep and woke up eight hours later in Georgia.

The Amtrak station in Atlanta is very disconnected from other modes of transit for a major U.S. city (North Carolina peeps: think where the Amtrak station in Charlotte is). Our train arrived in Atlanta at 11am only for us to discover that there wasn’t any method to purchase bus tickets there and that our best bet was either calling a rideshare or making the walk into Midtown. 

Our time in the city sans issues with MARTA, the regional transit system, was wonderful. It was very moving walking through the MLK Jr. historical sites, including the church he served as a pastor at and his childhood block. The Beltline area was really cool as well- it has a very similar feel to Charlotte’s South End, so lots of cool shops and restaurants, though the new, gentrified development had a bit of a cold and corporate feel to it.

The church where MLK Jr. preached

Although we didn’t have issues navigating the MARTA rail system itself–it is four lines, with routes running almost entirely along the cardinal directions–, it didn’t connect to where we needed to get to between the Amtrak station and the baseball stadium. There are no easy public transit options from downtown Atlanta to the Braves stadium in Cobb County (more on this in a future post) unless you buy bus passes through a separate transit authority, so we opted to call a rideshare to the stadium and find a bus back after the game was over.

Truist Park, home of the Cobb County Braves, was an awesome stadium with an electric fan environment. The surrounding Battery area had tons of cool bars and shops as well, and it was encouraging seeing glimmers of mixed-use development in a region as sprawling as the Atlanta metro. It was my 16th ballpark I’ve been to, and I’ve never felt more welcome as a fan of the opposing team (though it helps the Nats lost 6-3).

Our view at Truist Park

That being said, our departure from the stadium was fraught with roadblocks. Our first bus to the transfer station never arrived, meaning we had to walk a half hour across the busy Cobb Parkway to catch our second bus back into Atlanta proper. This second bus never showed either, and we ultimately caught a Lyft back into Midtown to grab dinner before our train back to Greensboro.

Our harrowing adventure to catch the bus that never arrived

Between traffic and lengthy, failed bus connections, we spent nearly three hours, or a fourth of our time in Atlanta, in unnecessarily long transit. All of this time took away from what was otherwise an extremely pleasant and much-needed day trip to Atlanta.

I want to specify- this by no means is an indictment of the city or people of Atlanta. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with folks we came across and reminiscing about 2010’s baseball with Braves fans at the game. The city has so much to offer to folks visiting for the weekend and I just so happened to catch the city at its less strong points.

I’m planning a follow-up to this blog post about why exactly we faced these challenges on our trip to Atlanta this weekend, and why millions of Atlantans spend more time in car traffic than any other population in the United States. I understand that I may not have the authority to speak on a metro area I spent all of 12 hours in; however,  this page has always been about sharing my observations and perspective as a car-free individual in this country and nowhere else has this issue come to a head for me than it has in Atlanta.