Gasoholics Anonymous

A few weeks ago I took a "car free" trip to Atlanta. Of course I flew on an airplane, and that involved burning some fossil oil fuel. I also ended up driving my car to the airport. But I wanted to, as much as possible, travel around Atlanta without burning oil.

The Atlanta airport is south of the city, and my hotel was right off the beltway on the north side. I didn't have time before the trip to figure out the mass transit in Atlanta, so I ended up taking a taxi from the airport. The airport has both shuttle bus and taxi services, but I wasn't able to figure out the shuttle bus system, and ended up taking a taxi. At the San Francisco airport they have a simple and easy to navigate system with the shuttle bus operators, you go to the waiting area and whichever shuttle bus is next in line will take you wherever you're going. But in Atlanta there was nobody to guide me through the process, there were no signs explaining anything, and it was late at night, so I went for the individualized taxi. Oh well.

After arriving at my hotel I learned that Atlanta has a decent intra-city rail line. The rail line is essentially a north-south line, and an east-west line, and they converge in the center of Atlanta not far from the CNN offices. This is nice if you live close to the rail lines, but there is a vast swath of Atlanta between those lines. Further the lines barely go beyond the outer beltline, and Atlanta is growing well beyond that highway.

Fortunately my hotel was a short walk from the rail line. I was able to walk to the station and for less than $10 buy a two-day pass. With that I could ride as much as I wanted. The first day I rode downtown and saw some sites, such as the Centennial Park where the bombing took place. The train is pretty nice, and appears to be the exact same car design as BART uses.

I didn't really know much about what sites to see in Atlanta, meaning I didn't know the best places to go. Surely there's some areas with historical significance, since Atlanta was the capital of the Confederate USA. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything about that history. One of the rail stops is right near the house of the author of Gone With The Wind, but heck it looked like a typical old house and I couldn't muster up any desire to go inside and take a look. Towards the end of the day I figured out the train could have taken me to see a Martin Luther King memorial, but it was late enough in the day it didn't seem doable.

My recommendation? Do some research about what you want to see before you get there. It's possible the train could have taken me to some interesting places, but since I didn't know anything to see I didn't know where to go. The bus system is also available to take you places that the train doesn't go.

You can rent a segway for a tour in several cities including Atlanta. The Segway Guided Tours directory shows even more segway-touring availability.