Atlanta Streetcar (Downtown Loop) progress (Arlington: subway, area, building)

[bfarley30]

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

Because DC is so dense that it makes sense to have a subway system. Where is there in Atlanta that looks like this? You'd be lucky to find a city block that looks like that in Atlanta little less 25 contiguous square miles of that kind of development.

Probably no where honestly. Bet again you are comparing an apple (DC) to an orange (Atlanta) that were built during 2 different time periods and different styles. Atlanta can support rail only because of just the population and number of people here.

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

How do you figure that? I see Baltimore listed as No. 17 on this list. Atlanta is listed as No. 30.

List of U.S. cities with high transit ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This is skewed in a sense. One, Baltimore is a larger city than Atlanta and much denser. Two, this talks about ridership per every 100,000 folks not actually number in ridership. I'm sure the percentages included areas of Atlanta where MARTA isn't even allowed.

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

You can connect them by bus for a fraction of the cost. And you clearly don't need a streetcar to support density (i.e., Atlantic Station, Baltimore, MD). Hell, even Annapolis, MD has more walkable density than Atlanta and that has no transit beyond bus service. There are all types of shiny new buses like this and this. Atlanta could take it a step futher and equip every bus with Wi-Fi and BOOM, you've got yuppies on it like that!.

Again, Atlantic Station was built with streetcar in mind and yes Baltimore and Annopolis probably can support bus service a lot better than Atlanta because they were both built in a time where walking and using transit was what people did.

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

Streetcars don't clog the roads? I mean, if you had streetcars running at the same frequency, then the roads would be even more clogged, right? Besides, who ever complains about buses running more frequently? And couldn't the improved service possibly take cars off the road? People always complain about buses not being there, but if a bus is coming by every 5-10 minutes, than what's the big gripe? There are some bus lines that run that consistently.

Most street cars have dedicated lanes within the street or in the median of the street just for that reason to not clog streets. I would love to see buses in ATL running 5 minutes but only a few routes could do it.

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

Well, extending the train, imo, is always the better solution. But the costs can make it impractical. So then the question becomes whether you sink money into a bus or a streetcar. Considering that buses can run more frequently at less cost, I vote buses. I mean, is your solution to have everyone standing at a streetcar stop for 30 minutes until there's a large enough crowd to fill it to capacity so as to not overload the streets?

My solution is to have SC that run every 10 minutes in dedicated lanes to move people AND promote development of the area into something better. SC can do that; buses can not do that unless it is BRT and that is made more for being folks in from the burbs. Do I think a SC is needed for every major street, no. For every neighborhood, no. But for downtown yes and it's going to change the area.



But this is no knock on the bus. The streetcar, as its name implies, runs in traffic. So you should penalize the streetcar equally according to your analysis.[/quote]

Streetcar means it uses the street, not always in traffic.

[cwkimbro]

Wow! Thread Hijack alert!

Bajan,

Your arguments are all over the place. At this point you're not being fair and you're just throwing around arguments to inflame people and ignore most of the original issues.

I read the last several pages, every time someone responded to you....you changed the argument or the metric.


As far as street cars it is apparent you know nothing about the overall plans our region it trying to piece together a little bit at a time.

We already have bus routes, but we are also trying to rehab old delivery RR tracks to accept LRT, as well as build future LRT lines that are mostly grade separated into some of our suburban areas. These areas are also in the process of being zoned to be high-density areas and are becoming so with a great deal of success.... incidentally not too different from the streetview pictures you showed us north of Dupont Circle (which... you were wrong about that development going on for miles... one block in either direction was single family homes, but that is not uncommon in most cities... you have denser nodes, even in residential neighborhoods)

In both cases we would like to route them directly into our core to produce more circulation w/o transfers. So streetcar tracks in our core can serve multiple purposes.

The streetcar tracks are designed with the curve radius to accept LRT vehicles.

and yes... operational costs matter. We are targeting the highest use corridors for streetcars... not putting them everywhere.

And no, we don't need to be more hostile to cars. Our arterial road network throughout the metro area is not the best already. It is already fairly hostile and the reason so many people use the freeways/need to use the freeways.

We need to bolster our arterial roads just as much as we nee to increase transit accessibility and TOD redevelopment.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by JoeTarheel

You're wrong...I don't really care if you think you're right and I'm not going get into a situation where I need to prove it to you. Think what you want, but those areas are not very few...they are more common than you think.

How about you prove it? Atlanta is 132 sq. miles. Show me 50 streets like that on Google. It shouldn't be hard if those areas are as common as you say.

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

How about you prove it? Atlanta is 132 sq. miles. Show me 50 streets like that on Google. It shouldn't be hard if those areas are as common as you say.

Trust me. Atlanta does not lol. They even admit ATL and those other cities weren't built at the same time. Many Atlanta posters are very stubborn.

Even Midtown doesn't look as dense as SF does 2-3 miles outside of the CBD. That's how pathetic this city is as far as walkability and urbanity.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Trust me. Atlanta does not lol. They even admit ATL and those other cities weren't built at the same time. Many Atlanta posters are very stubborn.

It's not just Atlanta posters. It's C-D posters in general. A website about cities will naturally attract people have very pro-density, pro-transit, liberal views. Those views obviously are not very widely held in the region if every single county in the metro area voted down the most recent transportation measure.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

It makes a big difference when it's spent. Would you just go ahead and give the IRS all of the money you were projected to be taxed on over the course of your career right now because you'd have to pay it eventually? That makes no sense. You'd have to operate streetcars for years and years and years to recapture that capital expenditure.

Actually yes, I would, but since unlike a transit project my taxation is very likely to vary widely over my life, it's impossible. I might start using transit and can get a transit credit for five years, then I might be unemployed for two and have no income, then I might donate my car to a charity, who hires me with a substantial salary so I pay more taxes. If you're buying a car, do you pay $500 to the sketchy salesman on the corner just to have to turn around and buy another car a few months later? Or do you put out for the higher quality now?

[brownhornet]

The thing is, not everywhere in DC is as dense as the areas pointed out here. Having actually lived there, I can tell you that firsthand. Regardless of the density, the metro covers 106 miles where as Marta only covers 48. So essentially, Marta covers HALF the area that the metro does. If you made it even and doubled marta's rail coverage it would still cover a substantially larger area than what it does now regardless of the density.

[brownhornet]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Trust me. Atlanta does not lol. They even admit ATL and those other cities weren't built at the same time. Many Atlanta posters are very stubborn.

Even Midtown doesn't look as dense as SF does 2-3 miles outside of the CBD. That's how pathetic this city is as far as walkability and urbanity.

And what do you get in return for that density and walkability? Would you like to have to pay SF, DC or NYC prices to live here in exchange for the city being more compact? I'm going to guess not which is the main reason so many of the people from those areas people keep touting are constantly relocating here.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by MattCW

Actually yes, I would, but since unlike a transit project my taxation is very likely to vary widely over my life, it's impossible.

Well, that pretty much says it all right there.

Originally Posted by MattCW

If you're buying a car, do you pay $500 to the sketchy salesman on the corner just to have to turn around and buy another car a few months later? Or do you put out for the higher quality now?

Why would you equate a bus with the $500 lemon? I don't think that's the proper analogy. The bus is more like a base model Honda Civic. The streetcar is like a $50,000 Accord with all types of extra silly features that have no bearing on performance. You could get three Civics for the price of that Accord.

Comparing a streetcar to a subway line is like comparing that Accord to a Lear Jet.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by brownhornet

And what do you get in return for that density and walkability? Would you like to have to pay SF, DC or NYC prices to live here in exchange for the city being more compact? I'm going to guess not which is the main reason so many of the people from those areas people keep touting are constantly relocating here.

Philadelphia is dense and walkable and costs probably about the same as Atlanta. The high COL in the cities you mentioned has more to do with the fact that they have a lot of high-income earners (and independent wealth, too).