Oh, I definitely agree and Atlanta's generally done well recently at building more things nearer to the stations. That said, unless you live in one of the areas

Oh, I definitely agree and Atlanta's generally done well recently at building more things nearer to the stations. That said, unless you live in one of the areas you just mentioned, there's not a lot you can do. There's a ton of Atlanta along 85/75 that's mostly unserved by MARTA, let alone a lot of stuff outside of 285. Atlanta has a pretty rough last-mile problem just due to its density. Outside of midtown/downtown, a lot of the stations are pretty far apart by NYC/Euro standards. You mention Midtown to Buckhead, which is 3 stops on MARTA, being half the length of Manhattan. That's more than the length of Battery Park to Penn Station, which is 12 stops on the 1/2/3 line. MARTA is fine if you're mostly going from major area to major area, but if you want to go to somewhere like Little 5, you're kinda out of options in a way that the MTA seldom has issues with. I don't so much see this as something MARTA could really fix, but more just innate to Atlanta's sprawling geography. It's getting better, but MARTA pretty much cannot be what people want it to be.