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That office building/lot predates the MARTA station.
Yes, but that massive parking lot is underused and making no money. A developer could easily build a TOD and help pay to open the northern end of the station for direct connection to the development.
I do think rail needs to get outside 285. Otherwise, few people outside will ride it as they will have to fight the traffic tieups where 285 merges with the other freeways. So MARTA should go beyond the airport, preferably the Clayton line (even though that is not planned). The Stonecrest extension should be built. The west extension should be at least to Charlie Brown airport, rather than the roughly 1 miles extension they have proposed.
I do think rail needs to get outside 285. Otherwise, few people outside will ride it as they will have to fight the traffic tieups where 285 merges with the other freeways. So MARTA should go beyond the airport, preferably the Clayton line (even though that is not planned). The Stonecrest extension should be built. The west extension should be at least to Charlie Brown airport, rather than the roughly 1 miles extension they have proposed.
FIB corridor needs rail service, the buses that depart HE Holmes are sometimes standing room only.
FIB corridor needs rail service, the buses that depart HE Holmes are sometimes standing room only.
There's a lot of potential for redevelopment and more intensive commercial and residential use around Charlie Brown. There's a fair amount of empty land as well. Residential is not going to be high end with the airport nearby, but all the new apartments don't have to targeted to higher income people.
Born2roll.
We'll see an outer perimeter sooner than you think. The exurbanites who opposed the northern arc have been overwhelmed by new arrivals in the last 15 years, turning the area into suburbia and the pain of the commute in that area is a whole lot worse.
Yes, the politicians fear it, but there was a proposal a couple of years ago to build a Northern road connecting I-75 and I-85 (specifically NOT called an "arc") along with an western loop from Cartersville. Hall County is working on something and Gwinnett keeps expanding Ronald Reagan Parkway. The NIMBYs are loud and strong, but not as strong as they were.
I suspect we will see a western loop first. That will help get some of the trucks off 285. The northern part is really more needed for locals. Other than Chattanooga there isn't a lot between Nashville (with I-40) and Atlanta (with I-20), so there's not a massive amount of through traffic that needs to get between I-75 and I-85 north of Atlanta.
Its expensive, but its doable. Houston is building its third loop as a toll road. They opened 17 miles in 1994, roughly 7 in 2008, 15 in 2013 and will open another 38 miles in the fall. 37 more miles are scheduled to go under construction later this year. There are about 70 additional miles to the south that are scheduled (less firmly) to get built as well.
Atlanta has more through truck traffic that can very effectively use another loop. And there's no mass transit that can deal with that type of traffic. For that matter, there's no mass transit that can effectively deal with the commuter traffic that far from the core.
I remain highly skeptical that an Outer Perimeter highway (particularly a Northern Arc-type highway) will ever be built because of rising fear by Georgia's current supermajority party, the Republican Party, that Georgia's seemingly accelerating demographic changes will put the currently dominant GOP at risk of being placed back into a semi-permanent minority position at sometime within the next 10-15 years or so.
Just like the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc proposal played a starring role in helping to bring about the end of Democratic Party dominance and competitiveness in Georgia politics in the early 2000's, Georgia Republicans are understandably very concerned that adopting what would likely become an unpopular Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc-type of road construction proposal could help accelerate the process in which Georgia Republicans will already likely lose their total domination of the state's political climate.
After losing the Governor's office in 2002 for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, Georgia Democrats eventually completely collapsed into a politically bewildered superminority party that controls only about 4 Congressional seats, only about 33% (or only one-third) of the seats in the state legislature, no statewide offices and almost had the utilities cut-off back in early 2013 at their party headquarters in Atlanta.
Georgia Republican Party leaders are deathly afraid of the state's quickly-changing demographics helping to push them to a similar fate in the not-too-distant future if they are not careful....And pushing a road proposal in the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc that has proved to be wildly unpopular in the past is not the way that Georgia GOP leadership thinks that the party can stay competitive in a political environment where the party is sure to face significant headwinds from Georgia's aforementioned accelerating demographic changes.
I remember some of the revived "Northern Arc" type proposals that you are talking about from the late 2000's (about 2006-2009) that spoke of pushing the proposed road further away to the north from Atlanta....But the Atlanta media and the state's deceptively powerful coalition of various anti-roadbuilding groups (environmentalists, North Metro suburban and exurban residents, Intown residents, etc) kept calling the road "the new Northern Arc" and talk of the road quickly disappeared from most of state government....That is, until the T-SPLOST debacle when the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club mistaked proposed funding for the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension and Loop in Gwinnett County in the T-SPLOST for funding for a revival of the Northern Arc.
The Sugarloaf Parkway Extension of course was not a revival of the Northern Arc proposal of the late 1990's/early 2000's....But just the mistaken belief and the rumor that Gwinnett's Sugarloaf Parkway Extension was a revival of the Northern Arc that was being funded with T-SPLOST money was enough to help sink the T-SPLOST referendum in 2012 along with the myriad of other issues (..."I hate this, I hate that AND I hear that the T-SPLOST will fund the construction of the Northern Arc, blah, blah, blah...").
The proposed Western Bypass road that you speak was proposed about a couple of years ago by Paulding County officials who want to bring in traffic from I-20 West and I-75 North to their new airport (Silver Comet Field/Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport) that they desire to build into a second major airport for Metro Atlanta....But Paulding County officials have not been able to get officials in neighboring Bartow, Douglas and/or Carroll counties or in state government to sign onto the Western Bypass concept because of the widespread unpopularity of the Outer Perimeter bypass concept in the past.
(...Bartow County residents just killed the last remaining section of the Northern Arc/Outer Perimeter road (the proposed 411-75 Connector just outside of Cartersville) back in December 2013 after a 30-year long court battle with the Georgia Department of Transportation....So it is probably not a stretch to think that Bartow County officials likely would not be too supportive of a new Outer Perimeter or Outer Bypass type of highway after their residents just won a very-costly 30-year court battle with the State of Georgia over the proposed road.)
Because of seemingly widespread public unpopularity with the Outer Perimeter/Outer Bypass concept, GDOT has been upgrading existing surface roads to be 'de-facto' bypasses of Atlanta.
The most notable examples of this are US Highway 27 through Western Georgia between LaGrange and Chattanooga where the State of Georgia has widened US 27 from 2 lanes to 4 lanes with the intent of handling truck traffic that wants to bypass Atlanta.....Though, one problem with this approach is that many through motorists are not aware of these 'de-facto' bypasses of Atlanta because the roads are not controlled-access superhighways and are not part of the Interstate system.
I like what Houston has done and is continuing to do in building 2 outer bypasses (the SH-8 Sam Houston Tollway and the SH-99 Grand Parkway) around the city in addition to the existing IH-610 Loop.
But the difference in political environments between Houston and Atlanta is like night-and-day when it comes to outer-suburban and exurban loop roadbuilding.
Overall, Texas is a state with a very-significant Libertarian bent not that is not too dissimilar from Georgia's significant Libertarian bent.
But because of the presence of the extremely heavily-wooded Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains in the area of North Georgia that is basically just north of Atlanta, environmentalists have much more political pull than one might otherwise think in a state as conservative as Georgia....Environmentalists (and anti-roadbuilding interests) certainly have infinitely more political pull in Georgia's conservative political scene than they do in Texas' conservative political scene.
That means that the routing of any proposed east-west Northern Arc-type Atlanta outer bypass highway farther north away from Atlanta only pushes the road deeper into the 'wheelhouse' of the environmentalists who have either successfully killed, delayed or altered multiple high-profile road construction proposals from Georgia officials through the decades.
The routing of a Northern Arc-type of road farther away from Atlanta only increases the ability of ITP/OTP environmentalists, OTP Libertarians and Intown Atlantans to block, stifle and/or kill the road proposal.
You make an excellent point that Atlanta likely has more truck traffic than Houston that can use an Outer Perimeter-type of road.
And while mass transit cannot reduce the increasingly heavy volumes of truck traffic and through traffic on Atlanta's regional Interstate and grade-separated arterial system, mass transit can give commuters a very viable and dependable option to traverse through high-capacity transportation corridors while major roads are gridlocked during peak traffic periods.
Though while recognizing the extreme challenges to the construction of an Outer Perimeter/Outer Bypass highway in a region that can be as averse to new road construction as Atlanta and North Georgia, I do agree with the logistical need for an Outer Perimeter/Outer Bypass highway around Atlanta.
But we should also recognize that mass transit, while it cannot necessarily perform the logistical functions of an Outer Perimeter/Outer Bypass road (particularly when it comes to long-distance through traffic), can help tremendously in the movement of radial commuter traffic through high-capacity radial transportation corridors between the urban core and outlying suburban and exurban areas that may be as far away as at least 115 miles from the urban core with regional commuter trains.
(...The Long Island Railroad (LIRR) operates very high-capacity commuter rail service over a distance of 115 miles between Long Island City (on the western edge of Long Island just across the East River from Manhattan) and the town of Montauk (on the very eastern edge of Long Island).)
We should also recognize that mass transit can aid in the movement of cross-regional commuter traffic between the different 'spokes' that are different high-capacity radial transportation corridors....Which is why the State of Georgia has proposed that an east-west cross-regional high-capacity transit alignment be built along the Top End of the I-285 Perimeter between Doraville and Cumberland by way the Perimeter Center area....A future east-west cross-regional high-capacity transit alignment that many are calling for to be extended to as far as Gainesville and/or Athens on the east end and as far away as Cartersville on the west end.
At some distance, rail is just not competitive with buses in cost or service for commuting unless you are a New York city with extreme density. I doubt Atlanta will ever be that way and certainly not in the life cycle of anything built now.
High-capacity passenger rail transit is not just intended to serve areas of "extreme density" like in New York City.
High-capacity passenger rail transit is also intended to provide critically important regional transportation links through high-capacity radial transportation corridors between outlying lower-density suburban and exurban areas and the higher-density areas of a large major metro region's urban core.
(...Like how regional commuter rail agencies provide regional passenger rail service between the high-density urban core and lower-density suburbs and exurbs of large major metro areas like New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, etc...)
(...And like how regional HRT agencies like the DC Metro and BART provide regional passenger rail service between the high-density urban cores and outlying low-density suburban and exurban areas of large major metro areas like Washington DC and Northern California's San Francisco Bay Area...)
(...The DC Metro has a regional HRT line under construction (the Silver Line) which when complete will provide HRT service over a distance of over 40 miles between Downtown Washington DC and the lower-density outer-suburban area of Loudoun County, Virginia...)
(...BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has a regional HRT line (the Pittsburg/Bay Point-SFO/Millbrae Line) that operates over a distance of over 55 miles between the higher-density areas of the San Francisco Peninsula and the outlying lower-density outer-suburban and exurban areas of the Sacramento River Valley.)
Atlanta is a good candidate (and most likely a very necessary candidate) for regional high-capacity passenger rail transit service because the Atlanta metro area's severely-constrained regional road network.
As has been discussed at great length in previous posts and threads, Atlanta lacks an adequate regional road network and apparently lacks the ability to acquire an adequate regional road network....The type of adequate (grid-based) regional road network seen in competing landlocked metro regions like Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver and even Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Those aforementioned metro regions with much more adequate regional road networks all are making significant investments in various types of LRT (Light Rail Transit) to help supplement their grid-based regional road networks.
Atlanta with a very inadequate regional road network and the apparent inability to significantly expand its inadequate regional road network, most likely needs to make some very heavy investments in its regional multimodal transportation network to compensate for its inability to significantly expand its very inadequate regional road network.
With a regional road network that is likely more inadequate than most large major metro regions outside of the Northeastern U.S., Atlanta appears to need an extensive regional rail transit system much more than any of its aforementioned landlocked competitors who all seem to have much more adequate regional road networks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
Rail is vastly more expensive than buses and HOV/HOT lanes.
You make an excellent point that rail is expensive, but toll lanes are very expensive, too.
The network of toll lanes that the Georgia Department of Transportation had proposed for the Atlanta metro region back in the late 2000's had an estimated cost of no less than $16 billion.
The simple fact is that transportation as a whole (toll lanes, rail, bus, surface roads, etc) is expensive in a large major metro region like Atlanta.
There just is no way around infrastructure costs.
Delay paying infrastructure costs and those costs go up (...like in the case of the I-285/GA 400 interchange where by waiting 25 years to reconstruct the interchange, the State of Georgia is likely going pay about 40-50 times more than what it likely would have paid if it had just come up with the money to reconstruct the interchange at the time that it built the GA 400 Extension inside the I-285 Perimeter back in the early 1990's).
Refuse to pay those infrastructure costs completely and your economy suffers (...like how areas without high-capacity transit service seem to be at an increasing disadvantage in a 21st Century marketplace that places increasing value on close and direct access to high-capacity transit service).
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
With all the intermediate stops, buses are faster. Buses can let you off closer to your destination as rail can't do too many stops.
But as far as intra-regional travel goes, buses can be even faster when buses only have to serve as a form of 'last-mile connectivity' for high-capacity passenger rail transit lines.
(...Example: On a 25-mile trip, ride a regional train 20 miles along a high-capacity corridor and take a bus the last 5 miles of the trip along a lower-capacity corridor.)
Which is why it is important that the regional transit network of a large major metro region be a multi-modal transit network....Because we don't just need rail and we don't just need bus....We need BOTH rail and bus service to work off of and in conjunction with each other along with local shuttles, vanpools, carpools, Zipcar and hired car services (Uber, Lyft, limo, taxicab, etc).
It is critically important that the population of a very large major metro region like Atlanta be able to adequately utilize multiple modes of transportation and not be either overly-dependent or solely-dependent upon only one mode of transportation....Like most of metro Atlanta is now in being both overly-dependent and solely-dependent upon SOVs (Single-Occupant Vehicles) on an inadequate regional road network....An over-dependency on one mode of transportation that is clearly not sustainable going forward.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
The question is what is that distance for Atlanta. 285? Smyna/Roswell? Kennesaw/Alpharetta? I'm pretty sure Cartersville/Canton/Gainesville and Athens are too far out for rail to be a reasonable alternative.
That is a good question.
Heavily-developed and heavily-populated areas like Smyrna, Roswell, Kennesaw and Alpharetta that are located in core metro Atlanta counties like Cobb and Fulton are clearly in need of regional Heavy Rail Transit service at this point in time.
Canton has been targeted to be the northern terminus for regional Light Rail Transit service to and from Downtown Atlanta in past Atlanta Regional Commission 'Concept 3' studies.
But because Canton is located in a very fast-growing area in along the road space-constrained I-575 North corridor in fast-growing Cherokee County, Canton would be a good beneficiary for self-funded regional Heavy Rail Transit service to and from the Atlanta Airport.
Cartersville is a city in Northwest Metro Atlanta and Northwest Georgia with a surprisingly large amount of commercial (retail) and industrial development that would be an excellent candidate to be the stop on a future regional commuter rail line between the Atlanta Airport and Downtown Chattanooga.
Though because Cartersville is in a fast-growing outer-suburban/exurban county (Bartow) that generates much regional traffic on I-75 through Metro Atlanta during peak hours, and because Cartersville is only about 11 miles beyond Acworth (a Cobb County community that would most likely receive regional HRT service under a future regional high-capacity rail transit scheme), Cartersville would also be a good candidate to be the future northern terminus of self-funded regional HRT service to and from the Atlanta Airport.
Cartersville would also be a good candidate to be the future western terminus of self-funded east-west regional HRT service to and from Gainesville by way of the heavily-developed and severely-constrained Top End I-285 Perimeter.
Because Gainesville is such an important city in Northeast Metro Atlanta and in Northeast Georgia (Gainesville is the business and political center and leading city of the Northeast Georgia Mountains region), and because Gainesville is located in a very fast-growing area (at the north end of a very fast-growing area along the I-985 corridor in Southern Hall County) and is only about 13 miles outside of the very heavily-developed and very heavily-populated metro area urban core county of Gwinnett, Gainesville would be a good candidate to be the northern terminus/eastern terminus of self-funded regional HRT service to/from the ATL Airport and to/from Cartersville (by way of the Top End I-285 Perimeter).
Because Athens is a very important town in North Georgia and in the state of Georgia as a whole (being that Athens is home to the flagship campus of the University of Georgia system), Athens would be an excellent candidate for self-funded very high-frequency regional commuter rail service to and from the Atlanta Airport.
(...The much-touted "Brain Train" by way of the Atlanta University Center, the future MMPT at/near Five Points, the Georgia World Congress Center/Centennial Olympic Park/CNN/Dome/Philips Arena area, the up-and-coming Marietta Street NW corridor, Georgia Tech, Atlantic Station, Brookwood/South Buckhead area, Emory University, Northlake Mall area, Tucker and Georgia Gwinnett College...)
(...A future ATL Airport-Athens/UGA line is a line that has the opportunity to be a massively successful transit line and a line that would be exceptionally transformative for mass transit and transit in general in metro Atlanta, Georgia and the Southeastern U.S.)
(...Because of all of the major points-of-interest and major points-of-importance that would be served by a future ATL Airport-Athens/UGA line, it would be a line that would be capable of being a truly MASSIVE transit ridership and revenue generator....This would be a line that would have the potential to be one of the most famous and most popular transit lines EVER!!!!....Which is why a future ATL Airport-Athens/UGA high-capacity passenger rail line should most likely operate with a very high-frequency of train service....This would definitely be the Atlanta region's 'flagship' rail transit line.)
That 411 extension wasn't the "residents" stopping it. It was one very rich, powerful family that opposed the road going through their land. It was the Rollins who founded Terminix. There were some articles about it in the AJC a couple of years ago.
Mass transit loses 25-40% of its ridership every time there is a transfer. To be effective, transfers have to be minimized. Transfers cost time and they make the process less convenient and less simple (it doesn't have to be "complex" to discourage use). What you have to keep in mind is there may be a transfer at the start. The rider may have driven to (or been dropped off at) a bus stop. So getting from a bus to a train is a second transfer. And they may need to do a long walk or get on a local bus at the end-a third "transfer." And few will do a really long walk. Transit experts view a 1/4 mile radius as the limit that people will walk to reach transit or their destination. And in many places in Atlanta's chaotic grid, a 1/4 mile radius is pretty generous as it takes a much longer walk than that.
So every time I hear multi-modal and then see a plan forcing riders to do transfers (like the Cobb BRT, Gwinnett light rail and Clayton commuter rail that ends at East Point), it strikes me as transit just for transit, not a realistic plan that will get choice riders.
That 411 extension wasn't the "residents" stopping it. It was one very rich, powerful family that opposed the road going through their land. It was the Rollins who founded Terminix. There were some articles about it in the AJC a couple of years ago.
Yep. GDOT is currently looking at alternatives to the Rollins alignment.
DC isn't a relevant comparison because the federal government is paying for it.
The East Bay lines of BART do go out pretty far (35-40 miles). But the Bay Area is very dense and geographically constrained for future development, neither of which apply to Atlanta.
Dallas is more like Atlanta, but still denser, and has the longest light rail system in the US. They have rail lines out to Plano and DFW Airport. But that is only about 20 miles. They also have pretty low usage. Their boardings per mile are below 1200. Only a few cities have lower figures among the top 25 light rail systems (Baltimore, New Orleans trolley, Pittsburg, St. Louis, San Jose, Sacramento). Portland is 2,190 per mile. Houston is 3,539. LA is 2,856. Atlanta's heavy rail is 48 miles and 4,876 per mile. List of United States light rail systems by ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For Atlanta, Alpharetta is 26 miles and Kennesaw 27, both further than anyplace connected to DART. Athens is 59 miles, Gainesville 55 and Canton 41, the latter 3 further than anyplace connected to BART. If much denser and constrained San Francisco isn't doing it, I don't see how it could make sense for Atlanta. By comparison, the densities of the urbanized areas:
San Francisco 6,266 per square mile
Dallas 2,879
Atlanta 1,706
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