The “Elite Eight” of Parking Madness: Atlanta vs. Dallas

Okay, the preliminary stuff is over. It’s round two of Parking Madness — our hunt for the worst parking crater in an American downtown. By the end of this week, we’ll be ready down to the Final Four. But first things first: Atlanta takes on Dallas in our first Elite Eight match-up.

As a refresher, we’ll post the photos and descriptions we showed in the first round.

This is the picture that helped Atlanta beat Denver in the first round:

Atlanta transit advocate Ashley Robbins sent us this description:

One MARTA stop south of Five Points, the downtown epicenter of Atlanta, stands the Garnett station in a sea of underutilized parking. The Garnett plaza garden over the heavy rail and Greyhound stations, while being near the federal building, the Atlanta Municipal court, and the popular Castleberry Hill neighborhood, is surrounded with unkempt parking, abandoned buildings and is known for lurid activity, giving Garnett one of the worst reputations of any MARTA station.

Now let’s look at Dallas.

This truly gargantuan crater put Dallas past Los Angeles in our first round competition.

James Howard Kunstler used this image in his ongoing “Eyesore of the Month” feature, calling the area around the cube-shaped Perot Museum of Science and History “a wilderness of surface parking, freeway ramps, and pointless ambiguous ‘green spaces.'”

Voting will be open until 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday.