[Rickertsen2]

As an atlanta resident and a regular MARTA patron, i am ashamed of this if it really did occur as the story reports. More than a few times i have ridden MARTA, some bum has come up to me and tried to sell me overpriced tokens. I have never seen the MARTA police do anything about it even if they are standing and watching. Another variant of this is that they stand by broken token machines (which are very common) or machines with very long lines (common during concerts and sports games). Tokens are $1.75. They sell you a token but unless you pay them with exact change, they hassle you and try to get you to let them keep the change. Its rather annoying. Looks like for once MARTA police decided to enforce this rule at an innappropriate time. This is not a case of cops attempting to avoid "favoritism". I personally will not let this article scare me.

I do have a funny story about the MARTA cops. One time we decided to take our robot on MARTA which was an idea that i was not to keen on but went along with it anyway. We got into the station fine. Once a train pulled up and we went to get one the train, the train driver notices our robot. Over the intercom he tells us not to get one his train, promptly closes the doors and speeds off. We hear an announcement over the intercomm "rail control code 54" or something like that. After about 5 minutes some MARTA cops come and start hassling us, detain us and ask us questions. They tell us that one of the drivers told them that somebody tried to bring an "airplane wing" on the train.
I don't really see the resemblance between our robot and an airplane wing. After much questioning they decided we weren't bringing and "airplane wing" or a bomb on the train and decided it was ok.