Design Your Own MARTA Expansion (Marietta, Lawrenceville: places, most expensive, map)

[jpatlanta]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Long-term parking at all stations are cheaper than the airport. The only thing that annoys me is luggage in the aisles or blocking doors. There are places for luggage on all trains.

Yeah a lot of the riders with luggage have no train etiquette. Amazing how rude they are with a bag on a second seat when there are no seats to sit on.

In NYC or London if you did that you would get put straight pretty qucik

[cqholt]

Yeah a lot of the riders with luggage have no train etiquette. Amazing how rude they are with a bag on a second seat when there are no seats to sit on.

In NYC or London if you did that you would get put straight pretty qucik

I have wanted to so many times, but I do not want those people to think that people who ride MARTA are rude and never ride the train again or think poorly of those on the train. I mean no one wants to steal those people's clothes. I try and remember that we are in the south and have manners, no matter how much those people have no train etiquette. There should be a YouTube video on train etiquette!

[JPD]

Originally Posted by cqholt

I have wanted to so many times, but I do not want those people to think that people who ride MARTA are rude and never ride the train again or think poorly of those on the train.

That's the problem with so-called "Southern Hopspitality." It's basically an invitation for others to walk all over everyone else. You are considered the rude one of you ask someone to stop doing something that is actually rude.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Long-term parking at all stations are cheaper than the airport. The only thing that annoys me is luggage in the aisles or blocking doors. There are places for luggage on all trains.

But not many. And there are even fewer when the train is crowded during rush hour.

[Joke Insurance]

I like this one that I found on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/21124725@N00/3274639142/

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by Joke Insurance

I like this one that I found on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/21124725@N00/3274639142/

Am I the only one that wishes MARTA's maps would have this London Underground style...



instead of the current map design?



Although, in fairness, they sure do look better than those ugly orange and blue maps:

[Larry X]

That void to the north west just looks bad.

[MattCW]

Well, this isn't really expansion, but it's a neat map anyways and probably fits best here. It's a track schematic of the system.
world.nycsubway.org: MARTA Track Map
The only two omissions (due to it being an old map) are the lack of a crossover at North Springs, and the track to the Armour Yard. Of course the yard trackage itself is omitted for clarity.

Ok to make at least part of this post 100% on-topic, I'll post an idea for an expension, though I've mentioned it before, it's buried deep in another thread. Basically this expansion is for a route from Lenox to Five Points simply to provide extra frequencies in the core segment. From the track map, you can see why it has to be Lenox-Five Points, those are the only two good places with pocket tracks, unless you want to deadhead from Arts Center to Lindbergh to use its pocket track. You couldn't run revenue to Lindbergh, because you end up tying up the main track instead of shuffling off into a pocket track. Scheduling becomes a bit difficult. The first option is equally dividing the core frequency so you have trains about every 3 minutes, but then you'd run a lopsided schedule outside this between Five Points and the airport with headways of 3 and 6 minutes. The second option, is to keep the Red and Gold trains as they are, and make the core service the lopsided headways, which is still unattractive. The most attractive option, and also the most expensive, is to run the core service at double headways (5 minutes for the line itself) which puts the Lenox-Five Points headway at 2.5 minutes. The technology should allow this, WMATA was theoretically capable of 90 second headways (40 trains per hour), so 24 trains per hour should be doable given the similar systems. This is attractive for simply making MARTA an option for short trips within this core area as the wait won't be more than it takes to go from the faregates to the platform.

Ok, I'm done for now, but I'll post my own physical expansion plan later.

[arc-lang]

Originally Posted by Larry X

That void to the north west just looks bad.

I was going to post the same thing. It's almost painful how simple it would be to add feeder lines to fill in the Northwest and far North East areas, where most of the population influx has taken place. Most of the infrastructure is there for light rail lines with a commuter station hub in each region. Would actually be more cost effective than widening roads, not to mention more environmentally beneficial.

[erick295]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Am I the only one that wishes MARTA's maps would have this London Underground style... instead of the current map design?

I definitely don't wish that. Ours is more to scale, has highways for geographical reference, and shows a lot more information about the stations. There are a lot of lines on the Underground map that split in two, and it's not clear where you're actually going to end up.

Our map is much clearer. Of course, our system is also a lot simpler. Apples and oranges.