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I'll take my shot without the excellent maps like TollBooth and 4thwarden did.
The vision is that we need both roads and transit if Atlanta continues to grow. An Atlanta metro of 8 million needs a lot more roads and a lot more transit. I won't address roads here other than to say an outer bypass is essential.
Outer suburban areas will be served by park-n-ride buses using HOT lanes. HOT lanes will be in I-85, I-75, I-575, I-20. Due to the constrained ROW inside 285, 400 will rely on HRT.
Since Atlanta already has an excellent HRT system, I will build on that. The inner portion looks a lot like Tollbooth's. Commuter rail is cheap if you can use existing tracks, but it doesn't appear that the local railroads are particularly cooperative. I don't propose building a big new infrastructure for light rail just so you can make people transfer from one mode to the other. And light rail on streets strangles auto traffic. The idea is to help everyone, not disadvantage the nearly 90% who use cars or regular buses (Atlanta is less than 1% walk/bike, 4% mass transit including buses and about 7% telecommute).
Commuter rail will be only the Atlanta-Athens line. That will be part of an Atlanta-Charlotte-DC-NE corridor high speed rail link (or at least semi-high speed).
The Gold line will supplement I-85, the red line 400, the blue line I-20, the green line I-285 and the new purple line I-75. The new pink line will service the inner city.
Phase I will use current plans, but not necessarily currently planned technology.
A) Red line will be extended to North Point Mall per the current plan.
B) Blue line will be extended to Stonecrest Mall to the east per the current plan.
C) Blue line will be extended to MLK to the west per the current plan.
D) Clayton line will be built from East Point to Jonesboro per the current plan, but using HRT instead of commuter rail. This will make MARTA useable for a whole swath of the south metro. Realistically, MARTA is not accessible below the airport. And the commuter rail forcing a transfer doesn't really change that. This will be the purple line and will run from Jonesboro to Lindberg.
E) Clifton corridor will be built from Lindberg to Avondale per the current plan but using HRT instead of light rail. With all the tunneling and elevated track in the current plan, the cost will not be dramatically different. And the ridership and benefit will be much higher than the light rail stub they are planning. Like Tollbooth's plan, but using the Clifton Corridor instead of going to Tucker, it will connect to the green line. Employment in the Clifton Corridor is heavily from SE DeKalb and Gwinnet County. With the Green line going to Avondale and Doraville, those populations will be better served.
Also build HOT lanes on 20, 75, 85 and 575 at least to the edge of the 5 core counties.
Phase II
A) Extend the Gold line into Gwinnet County to Gwinnet Place Mall along the Buford Hwy corridor.
B) Extend the Red line to Alpharetta with 3 additional stops per the current plan. Given the difficulty in putting in HOT lanes, HRT will be extended in the 400 corridor and will also provide service opposite peak flow to the Alpharetta tech corridor.
C) Extend the Green line along 285 from Doraville to Perimeter Center to Cumberland Galleria. Stops would be similar to the revive 285 corridor plan although it would not go down to medical center. It would go west from Perimeter Center.
D) Extend the Blue line east to 6 flags along I-20 with a stop near Charlie Brown airport on Fulton Industrial Blvd. This will provide better service to South Cobb, Douglas County and points west (no I don't care that some is not in the 5 county transit authority).
E) Build HRT on the Highway 41 corridor in Cobb County to Dobbins AFB. This will run to Cumberland/Galleria, together with the green line along 285 to Perimeter Mall and then down to Lindberg where it will join the purple line.
Also extend the streetcar through Inman Park to the Inman Park station.
Start a high speed rail to Charlotte by completing Atlanta to Athens to Augusta.
Phase III
A) Extend the Gold line to Sugarloaf Mills.
B) Extend the Purple line to Kennesaw St. Colleges are excellent places to put transit.
C) Complete the Green line loop by connecting from Cumberland Galleria down I-75 to Bankhead with stops at Mt. Paran, W. Paces Ferry, W. Wesley and Howell Mill.
D) Realign the northern section of the purple line with a 3.5 mile subway serving lower Peachtree. The purple line will run south from the Cumberland Galleria instead of along 285 and turn east at W. Paces Ferry in a subway with a stop at Northside and the next on Peachtree just south of Paces Ferry. It will then run south under Peachtree to Lindberg and then turn east to Lindberg. This section of Peachtree is one of the most heavily developed parts of Atlanta without MARTA. Yes this is very expensive. That's why its phase III when presumably the population and congestion will both be worse than now. That's also why I'm extending the Gold and Purple lines so far instead of relying on park-n-rides.
E) Extend the Gold line south to Palmetto along I-85. This will serve South Fulton and the presumably much grown Fayette and Coweta Counties. Stops will be at Flat Shoals, Jonesboro and Georgia 74.
F) Build a south beltline loop, the Pink line, serving transit dependent SW Atlanta as well as SE Atlanta. It will follow existing tracks from Inman to Ashby and then the Beltline around the south meeting the Red/Gold/Purple lines with a new stop at the Beltline. Other stops will be Cascade, Metropolitan, Peoplestown, Boulevard/Grant Park, and Glenwood/East Atlanta. Some tunneling will be needed between Glenwood and Inman. Stations on this will be smaller scale but with room to grow if necessary. For those who want transit on the Beltline, the Purple subway will serve the problematic north sector (railroads are using that part of the beltline), the green line will cover the west and the pink will cover the southeast and southwest. Only Inman Park to Lindberg won't be built.
How are sections of some counties included but not others? I would think include Villa Rica, that one little section of Bartow county and southern Hall.
Well many of those systems involve different states.
Atlanta involves one metro area in one state.
I think the 5 core counties need to be in one system. The polls indicate that most of Gwinnett favors joining MARTA. That just leaves Cobb County. You deal with the politics by making sure one area doesn't have too much influence. The population is spread around enough that can be done by making seats based on population.
I used to think that the 5 core metro counties should be in one system.
But the more I thought about it, the more I started drifting away from that "train of thought" (pun intended).
A big problem traditionally that continues on today is that conservative Republican-dominated suburban areas like Cobb and North Fulton (and Gwinnett, Cherokee, Forsyth, etc) don't want to (and never have wanted to) share political power over a single regional transportation agency with liberal Democratic-dominated areas in Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties.
With traditionally white, conservative and Republican-dominated Gwinnett County currently having a population that is nearly 60% minority and growing, Gwinnett might be much more amenable to sharing political power with the political interests in Fulton, DeKalb and now Clayton that control MARTA....Particularly if the ongoing demographic changes in Gwinnett change the county's political scene from predominantly white, conservative and Republican to predominantly minority, liberal and Democratic.
But with minorities and liberal and moderate white votes currently not participating in county elections at rates that are anywhere near the rates that they dominate the county's population, it is not necessarily clear when the political climate in Gwinnett might actually change enough for MARTA to be accepted into the county by Gwinnett's political leadership.
I think that minority/Democratic domination (and by extension, pro-MARTA domination) of Gwinnett County's political structure is likely still more than a decade or so away because of a very weak two-party system.
(...A very weak two-party system in the form of a shrinking Gwinnett GOP that has not reached out to minority, moderate and centrist voters on the level that they should be doing; and a still very weak Gwinnett Democratic Party that also has not reached out to new residents like they should be doing in a county as explosively fast-growing as Gwinnett has been in recent years....Both major political parties have been very disappointingly weak and completely underwhelming in this department in recent years during a time of generally very explosive growth in Gwinnett County.)
Still predominantly white and Republican North Fulton County has actively been trying to breakaway from predominantly liberal, black and Democratic South Fulton County for decades so they might not necessarily be the best regional transit-governing combination.
With a population that is now 45% minority, Cobb County (which has never really been on friendly terms with the government in neighboring Fulton County), has changed quite a bit over the last couple of decades or so from when the county was over 90% white and wanted absolutely nothing to do with Fulton County or the City of Atlanta.
But Cobb County is still quite far behind Gwinnett County in its demographic shifts, so it will still likely be near or beyond the end of the next decade before the county has changed enough politically to accept wanting to share governing power with an urban transit agency like MARTA.
Not to mention that residents in South Fulton, South DeKalb and now Clayton counties who dominate local governance of MARTA are not really itching to share political power with conservative suburbanites in North Metro areas like Cobb, North Fulton and Gwinnett.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
I don't think the rest of the metro needs to be in MARTA. Only Fayette, Douglass and Cherokee would make any sense for transit in any reasonable time frame and they aren't essential.
I agree with your assessment that the rest of the metro area does not need to be in MARTA and that Fayette, Douglas and Cherokee are not essential for high-capacity transit expansion beyond Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties.
Though, I do believe that a predominantly white and conservative outer-suburban county like Cherokee would likely be much more accepting of high-capacity transit expansion if it were to partner with a neighboring GOP-dominated powerhouse OTP suburban county like Cobb then it likely would be if it had to partner with predominantly-Democratic urban core counties like Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton.
Fayette County, which often takes a separatist stand on regional issues that is similar to the separatist stands that Cobb County used to take in previous decades, likely would not buy-in to the regional high-capacity concept until it saw that it was being bypassed and left behind while transit was extended to other Southside locales like Coweta and Henry....Only then would Fayette County likely want to get in on getting high-capacity transit expanded into its county along with the rest of metro Atlanta.
In Georgia, Democrat doesn't necessarily mean "liberal". not in the traditional sense anyway. Yes I know that has changed somewhat with the Georgia "Republican Revolution" at the state house, but I really do not see many of our Clayton County Democrats being "flaming liberals" regardless of their ethnic group (our "interesting" sheriff included, LOL) Most Democrats and Republicans here in Georgia seem "conservative" fiscally and socially when ranked on a national scale regardless of which county or "side" of Atlanta they hail from. Cynthia McKinney seemed the most ardent liberal of recent vintage of Georgia politics, and we all know what happened to her.
About your map, I noticed the Peach Line jutting a bit to the west of the Red/Gold Lines from Five Points to about Lindbergh Center. Are you suggesting adding stations at the Georgia Aquarium or GA Tech, by chance?
A COMMENT ABOUT THE BLUE LINE:
Honestly, unless people are fine transferring to a Cobb bus to Six Flags from Adamsville station, it would probably be more beneficial to extend the Blue Line to Six Flags (to creep out of that comfort zone most call I-285). To quote bu2, "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..."
I agree that ideally, both a MARTA and a GRTA should be folded together.
....But the differing politics of the Atlanta region do not necessarily allow for two metropolitan transit agencies like MARTA and GRTA to be folded together at this time.
Atlanta would not be the first very large major metro region to have two or more large metro/regional transit agencies providing high-capacity transit service to different parts of a metro region.
New York City notably has multiple transit agencies providing transit service to different parts of the greater metro region.
> The NYC Subway provides HRT service to the area inside of the corporate limits of New York City...
> The Long Island Railroad (LIRR) provides very high-frequency regional commuter rail service to Long Island...
> The Metro North Railroad provides very high-frequency regional commuter rail service to suburbs and exurbs north of NYC...
> The Port Authority operates trains, buses and ferries through water crossings over, under and on the Hudson River between the states of NY and NJ...
> The Staten Island Ferry provides ferry service to/from Staten Island...
> The Staten Island Railway provides an HRT line on Staten Island...and...
> NJ Transit provides Light Rail Transit and regional commuter rail service throughout the North New Jersey suburbs and exurbs west of NYC.
Chicago has four major transit agencies that provide transit service for the Chicago (Chicagoland) region...
> CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) provides bus and HRT service for the City of Chicago and its closest inner-suburbs...
> Metra provides regional commuter rail service for most of the Chicago region and a couple of Wisconsin outer-suburbs north of Chicago along I-94...
> The South Shore Line provides commuter rail service over a distance of about 95 miles between Downtown Chicago and exurban South Bend, Indiana...
> Pace provides bus service to suburbs mostly outside of the I-294 Tri-State Tollway bypass (a bypass road that is somewhat similar to Atlanta's I-285 Perimeter loop superhighway).
Washington DC has 3 major transit agencies that provide transit service in its metro area...
> The DC Metro provides local and regional HRT service...
> MARC (Maryland Area Regional Commuter rail) provides regional commuter rail service between Downtown Washington DC and its Maryland suburbs...
> VRE (Virginia Regional Express) provides regional commuter rail service between Downtown Washington DC and its Northern Virginia suburbs and exurbs.
Toronto has 2 major transit agencies in the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) that provides bus, LRT and HRT service in Toronto's urban core and GO Transit which provides bus and regional commuter rail service throughout the greater Toronto metro region.
In any case, I am not necessarily sure that trying to force both the mostly ITP urban core and the mostly OTP suburbs and exurbs of the Atlanta region into one large singular region transit agency may be the right approach....Particularly when both the urban core and outlying suburbs/exurbs have differing transit needs, wants and desires.
In the end, I think that all transit in the greater Atlanta metro region, both urban and suburban/urban should be funded by the State of Georgia through very large-scale P3's (Public-Private Partnerships), distance-based fares, Value Capture taxing and TODs.
But trying to force MARTA-style urban transit service onto the suburbs/exurbs and/or trying to force GRTA-style suburban/exurban transit service onto the urban core just does not seem to be a winning formula for transit expansion in metro Atlanta and North Georgia.
Some of the other aforementioned large major metro areas like NYC, Chicago, Washington and Toronto had significant differences in the transit needs of their suburbs/exurbs and urban cores, which is why they operate different transit systems for their suburbs/exurbs and urban cores (and even operate different transit systems for different parts of their suburban/exurban areas).
Boston is an example of a large major metro region where both the urban core bus/HRT service and suburban bus/commuter rail service (along with ferry service) is operated by one large regional transit service in MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority).....But Boston and Massachusetts have a political environment that is vastly-different from Atlanta and Georgia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fourthwarden
It's important to note that none of the HRT services share extended sections of track (they may within stations, but I don't think so), as you were suggesting. The commuter rail is a bit of a different deal since the North East Corridor, where there're the most overlaps, It's either Nationally (Amtrak) owned, or state DOT owned (save the MTA section).
I was not suggesting that those transit systems had sections of track where HRT trains share tracks with regional commuter trains.
I was giving examples of large major metro regions where more than one major high-capacity transit agency operates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fourthwarden
What you were suggesting with GRTA operating HRT on MARTA tracks just screams operational nightmare to me. Especially in the political climate that you mentioned. There's no need to try and wedge the systems together. If GRTA got commuter rail set up, that'd be one thing, but HRT is one heck of a stretch.
Under a future regional transit scheme where a future GRTA regional HRT system and the current MARTA HRT system had to share HRT tracks along selected stretches, some stretches of existing HRT track might have to be expanded to accommodate the additional HRT train movements.
Though, many sections of existing HRT track likely would not have to be expanded as the existing MARTA HRT system is reported to be capable of operating with headways as low as 2 minutes between trains.
If GRTA regional HRT trains were to be added to existing MARTA HRT tracks, the system could be upgraded and modified so that there could be headways as little as a minute or so between HRT trains along the sections where GRTA and MARTA would have to share HRT tracks.
The operations of the different transit systems multi-tiered regional HRT network would be coordinated by one entity (preferably a state-funded regional oversight entity) so that the train operations of the different agencies would be in sync.
Like I mentioned before, I don't have any objections to regional commuter train service being implemented.
But with many stretches of existing freight rail tracks throughout the Atlanta metro region being completely gridlocked and experiencing sharp increases in freight rail traffic volume, regional commuter trains would most likely need their own tracks so that they could operate much more effectively than they would on tracks shared with freight trains in a region with severely-heavy freight rail volumes and a severely-constrained network of freight rail tracks.
The extremely limited capacity of the Atlanta region's existing freight rail network is one of the major reasons why the MARTA HRT system was established....Because unusually forward-looking past transportation planners in the Atlanta region saw that freight rail traffic volumes would spike through the roof by now....Though current freight rail volumes seem to have completely shattered the expectations of those forward-looking transportation planners of the 1950's and '60's.
In Georgia, Democrat doesn't necessarily mean "liberal". not in the traditional sense anyway. Yes I know that has changed somewhat with the Georgia "Republican Revolution" at the state house, but I really do not see many of our Clayton County Democrats being "flaming liberals" regardless of their ethnic group (our "interesting" sheriff included, LOL) Most Democrats and Republicans here in Georgia seem "conservative" fiscally and socially when ranked on a national scale regardless of which county or "side" of Atlanta they hail from. Cynthia McKinney seemed the most ardent liberal of recent vintage of Georgia politics, and we all know what happened to her.
Those are some excellent points.
In Georgia, Democrats have traditionally been conservative for the most part.
Though there have been some relatively very liberal enclaves in the City of Atlanta (and DeKalb County) in the decades since the Civil Rights Movement.
Though, in the current political climate in which there are no Democrats in office at the statewide level and in which Republicans and GOP-affiliated conservative groups thoroughly dominate Georgia's political scene, Democrats are almost often always affiliated directly with liberalism these days.
Even if a Democrat may be fairly conservative in their personal political stances, in Georgia's current political climate, just the word "Democrat" is almost often equated directly with being very liberal.
Heck, in the current political climate, many Republicans are often regarded as being liberal.
With the state's continuing massive demographic shifts in and around the traditionally white and conservative Atlanta suburbs, it appears that the state's political calculus may be in the very, very early stages of transitioning away from conservatives and towards moderates and even liberal/progressives to some extent.
Now whether those demographic changes are enough to change the political calculus where the traditionally white and conservative suburbs want to share governance and political power over an expansive regional transit agency with the traditionally more black and liberal urban core remains to be seen.
Whatever the case, I just can't see the traditionally hostile governments of GOP-dominated Cobb County and Democrat-dominated Fulton County voluntarily wanting to jump in bed with each other to create a regional transit agency.
Cobb County does not want anything that Fulton controls in Cobb and Fulton does not want to share the power over something it controls (in MARTA) with Cobb.
Under this two-tiered regional operating scheme GRTA and MARTA HRT trains would operate along the same tracks (tracks expanded to handle a vastly-increased level of HRT service) along some stretches of HRT track but would largely operate along their own HRT track alignments in many areas.
Which agency controls the train movement in the core? When an issues arises and trains have to be single tracked around a station during peak hours, who controls that? Which trains take priority?
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