We're Not In Switzerland, Dottie

Guess when the 12:18 from Lausanne to Geneva departs the station? That's right. At 12:18. Not 12:30. Not even 12:20. It leaves at 12:18, with or without you. And here's a mystery yet to be solved in Atlanta: they run non-stop express trains and multi-stop trains on the same tracks at the same time. That's right, they've figured out how to get trains to pass other trains. Wow. Those half-blind watch-making elves have made their whole world one big clock.

Now our little international city's Olympic sized ego is going to dethrone the Swiss. MARTA is taking over the white elephant* known as The Streetcar with this cornerstone to righting the rails:

And it may align transit schedules to make it easier for passengers to hop off a MARTA train and use the streetcar for the last legs of their journeys.

Have these people even used their own service? Don't they know that MARTA never runs on time? Note that tardiness even applies to the first train of the day departing the North Springs station. How can that be given:

“Transit is our core competency,” MARTA Chief Operating Officer Richard Krisak told the MARTA Board of Directors on Thursday.

Because the most important word in the first of these AJC quotes is "may," not because it is aspiration but because of the political cover offered by the implicit "may not."

* Isn't it interesting in this world of hyper-sensitivity where so many words and phrases are virtual cyanide that one can still say white elephant? At least in Atlanta.