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Has there been any sort of headway in regards to bringing commuter rail to Atlanta yet? Or are all of you just speculating?
...Not only has there not been any headway in bringing commuter rail to Atlanta, but there has actually been some regression as not only has the State of Georgia lost the funding from the Feds to help setup what was supposed to be the first regional commuter rail line in the Atlanta region on a low-traffic Norfolk Southern freight rail line south of Atlanta out to Griffin and Macon as jsvh stated.
Because of rapidly-increasing freight traffic volumes at the very fast-growing international seaport at the Port of Savannah, Norfolk Southern has told the State of Georgia that it will not let the state operate commuter trains on any of its existing freight rail tracks inside of the I-285.
Norfolk Southern also seems to have taken back its offer to allow the state to operate commuter trains on its low-traffic freight rail line south of the city between Atlanta and Macon.
NS is now saying that it is going to need all of that existing freight rail trackage to handle the substantially-increased freight rail traffic volume that will be coming out of the rapidly-expanding Port of Savannah.
Norfolk Southern's sentiment is completely understandable because NS does have what is reported to be the largest train-to-truck/truck-to-train intermodal facility on the Eastern Seaboard (and one of the largest intermodal facilities on the entire planet) in located in Austell, Georgia just west of Atlanta.
If the State of Georgia is ever going to see commuter rail service within its existing radial freight rail corridors, it is going to have to spend billions of dollars alone just to expand the amount of rail capacity within those existing freight rail right-of-ways so that both freight trains and passenger trains will be able to operate at very-high volumes at the same exact times as they both will be needing to.
In the meantime, there is maybe some very-faint hope that there possibly MIGHT be an increase in commuter bus service IF the State of Georgia ever moves forward on building a couple of long-overdue tolled carpool and express lane projects on a couple of very severely-congested sections of Interstate 75 both north and south of Atlanta as the State is claiming that it is doing despite a seemingly very-severe lack of funding to do so.
Right now there is very-little political will, particularly at the currently extremely transit-averse state political level, to move forward with any form of transit expansion no matter how overwhelmingly much it seems that it may be critically-needed.
Right now in Georgia the political climate is thoroughly-dominated by a group of people that are so ideologically opposed to transit (both bus and rail, but particularly rail) that they consider just the sight of buses and trains to be a highly-Marxist form of evil that threatens the traditional post-World War II American suburban way-of-life.
This extremely transit-averse group of people that dominates the political climate in Georgia prefers road expansion over transit...as long they don't have to pay for that road expansion with taxes or tolls and as long as the new roads they prefer are not built anywhere remotely near where they live.
This extremely transit-averse group of people that dominates the political climate in Georgia prefers road expansion over transit...as long they don't have to pay for that road expansion with taxes or tolls and as long as the new roads they prefer are not built anywhere remotely near where they live.
Someone needs to tell these idiot legislators that it's not 1980 and the Moreland/Rives/Shackleford-led GDOT is long gone (they would be laughed out of One Georgia Center these days).
It is getting pathetic to keep blaming the smoke filled room full of anti-transit boogeymen.
If transit is really something the people want, they can make it happen. It turns out, a majority don't want to invest heavily in it. There is no conspiracy. Take off the tin foil hat. To continue to ***** and moan about your unpopular, minority opinion with the self righteous demeanor you do isn't likely winning you much support from the majority.
It turns out, a majority don't want to invest heavily in it. There is no conspiracy. Take off the tin foil hat. To continue to ***** and moan about your unpopular, minority opinion with the self righteous demeanor you do isn't likely winning you much support from the majority.
I'm pretty sure the TSPLOST indicated pretty clearly that your polls are invalid here in the Atlanta area. People might be in favor of transit in theory, but when it comes time to pay for it, they vote against it.
I'm pretty sure the TSPLOST indicated pretty clearly that your polls are invalid here in the Atlanta area. People might be in favor of transit in theory, but when it comes time to pay for it, they vote against it.
In a vacuum, there are a lot of good ideas.
...It's interesting that you mention T-SPLOST as many people (particularly conservative and moderate suburbanites in politically powerful counties like Gwinnett, Cobb, Cherokee, Fayette, etc) voted against it because they thought that the funds would be used to fund even more traffic congestion-inducing automobile-oriented sprawl than has already been built.
T-SPLOST funding of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension in Gwinnett County was one of the absolute main reasons for the overwhelming failure of the referendum because of how many sprawl and congestion-averse suburbanites and anti-road environmentalists thought that the road was a resurrection of the unpopular Northern Arc freeway that was shot down by an angry public a decade ago.
Much of the public (the same public that overwhelmingly opposed the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc proposal a decade ago) mistakenly thought the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension between GA 316 and PIB was a resurrection of the Northern Arc because of how the road was being built in the same right-of-way as the Northern Arc, which Gwinnett County had preserved and kept free of development so that they could build an extension of Sugarloaf Parkway between GA 316 and PIB.
Gwinnett's preservation of the Northern Arc right-of-way to build a locally-funded variation of the project is unlike Forsyth and Cherokee counties which both intentionally permitted high-end residential development in the right-of-way of the road as a means of slowing it down and/or stopping a road they never wanted built out of fear it would turn them into something that resembled overdeveloped and nearly built-out Cobb and Gwinnett counties and their multi-family developments (apartments) full of lower-income residents.
Link to Georgia Sierra Club article illustrating their concerns that T-SPLOST funding of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension was actually T-SPLOST funding for a resurrection of the unpopular Northern Arc freeway: GA Sierra Club: Article
Link to an "open letter" from the Sierra Club to Atlanta Regional Commission affiliates and officials "insisting" that T-SPLOST funding be diverted from road projects like the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension and the Tara Boulevard Super Arterial to rail transit projects in the I-85 North Corridor and the US 19-41 South Corridor (Atlanta-Griffin commuter rail line): https://secure.sierraclub.org/site/A...Action&id=7015
It was Sierra Club opposition to the road projects on the project list that combined with Tea Party opposition to spending on transit (and spending on developmental roads as opposed to spending on commuter routes) and NAACP opposition to lack of transit spending in black-dominated South Metro Atlanta as well as overall South Metro opposition to what they perceived to be too much spending in the Northside to sink a highly-flawed T-SPLOST.
...It's interesting that you mention T-SPLOST as many people (particularly conservative and moderate suburbanites in politically powerful counties like Gwinnett, Cobb, Cherokee, Fayette, etc) voted against it because they thought that the funds would be used to fund even more traffic congestion-inducing automobile-oriented sprawl than has already been built.
T-SPLOST funding of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension in Gwinnett County was one of the absolute main reasons for the overwhelming failure of the referendum because of how many sprawl and congestion-averse suburbanites and anti-road environmentalists thought that the road was a resurrection of the unpopular Northern Arc freeway that was shot down by an angry public a decade ago.
Much of the public (the same public that overwhelmingly opposed the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc proposal a decade ago) mistakenly thought the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension between GA 316 and PIB was a resurrection of the Northern Arc because of how the road was being built in the same right-of-way as the Northern Arc, which Gwinnett County had preserved and kept free of development so that they could build an extension of Sugarloaf Parkway between GA 316 and PIB.
Gwinnett's preservation of the Northern Arc right-of-way to build a locally-funded variation of the project is unlike Forsyth and Cherokee counties which both intentionally permitted high-end residential development in the right-of-way of the road as a means of slowing it down and/or stopping a road they never wanted built out of fear it would turn them into something that resembled overdeveloped and nearly built-out Cobb and Gwinnett counties and their multi-family developments (apartments) full of lower-income residents.
Link to Georgia Sierra Club article illustrating their concerns that T-SPLOST funding of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension was actually T-SPLOST funding for a resurrection of the unpopular Northern Arc freeway: GA Sierra Club: Article
Link to an "open letter" from the Sierra Club to Atlanta Regional Commission affiliates and officials "insisting" that T-SPLOST funding be diverted from road projects like the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension and the Tara Boulevard Super Arterial to rail transit projects in the I-85 North Corridor and the US 19-41 South Corridor (Atlanta-Griffin commuter rail line): https://secure.sierraclub.org/site/A...Action&id=7015
It was Sierra Club opposition to the road projects on the project list that combined with Tea Party opposition to spending on transit (and spending on developmental roads as opposed to spending on commuter routes) and NAACP opposition to lack of transit spending in black-dominated South Metro Atlanta as well as overall South Metro opposition to what they perceived to be too much spending in the Northside to sink a highly-flawed T-SPLOST.
It is getting pathetic to keep blaming the smoke filled room full of anti-transit boogeymen.
...No "anti-transit boogeymen" my friend, just a shrinking but still very politically-dominant faction of culturally-ultraconservative anti-transit outer-suburbanites who believe that transit of any form, particularly rail transit, is pure evil and a mortal threat to the American way-of-life in the suburbs.
As I mentioned earlier, as an aside, many of the same people who think that transit is pure evil only want larger-scale road expansion if they do not have to pay for it and those roads are not expanded on a large-scale anywhere remotely near where they live (...see the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc episode of a decade ago which received intense opposition from many of the same ultraconservative suburbanites that opposed the T-SPLOST for its transit spending).
See controversial former Georgia State Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers and his full-on embrace of the Agenda 21 Theory as a way of pandering heavily to the anti-transit and anti-density ultraconservatives on the very far-right of the political spectrum. The Marietta Daily Journal - Rogers defends Agenda 21 session
Quote:
Originally Posted by gtcorndog
If transit is really something the people want, they can make it happen.
...You're right, people can make transit happen if they really want it, but even if people want transit they still need state government to facilitate its development on an intra-county or cross-regional level no matter whether it is privately or publicly-funded, just as government plays a major role in facilitating the movement of freight rail on both privately and publicly-owned freight rail lines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gtcorndog
It turns out, a majority don't want to invest heavily in it. I'm pretty sure the TSPLOST indicated pretty clearly that your polls are invalid here in the Atlanta area. People might be in favor of transit in theory, but when it comes time to pay for it, they vote against it.
...The idea of rail transit expansion actually polls pretty well in the part of the Metro Atlanta region outside of I-285, particularly in Cobb and Gwinnett counties which both have very-severe problems with peak-hour traffic congestion.
Polls from 5 five years ago showed that some type of large-scale rail-anchored transit expansion had the support of nearly 70% of residents in both mega-suburban counties as long as MARTA in its current wildly-mismanaged and severely-declining form was not involved.
When the idea of expanding MARTA in its current disappointing form into the two mega-suburban counties was mentioned, there unsurprisingly was not a plurality of support from residents in the county, though very-surprisingly just under 50% of residents were open to the idea of expanding MARTA into those two traditionally transit-averse counties.
Which was one of the (many) major reasons for the failure of the T-SPLOST, because many people wanted transit expansion, mainly in the form of either commuter rail to and from the urban core and/or a high-capacity rail transit line across the often severely-congested Top End of the I-285 Perimeter, but did not want T-SPLOST funds to pay to prop-up what is clearly a failing MARTA status quo.
People in severely-congested Metro Atlanta are for transit in more than just theory, but they do want to make sure that their hard-earned tax dollars are not being wasted on the wrong solution...wrong solutions like developmental roads (roads that are not designed to decrease traffic congestion but are instead designed to increase traffic congestion to spectulative real estate developments in already severely-congested overdeveloped suburbs) or propping-up a wildly-mismanaged and severely-declining MARTA or rail transit lines with no continued stream of funding that don't help to relieve traffic and provide non-automobile alternatives to the most severely-congested stretches of roadway (like the Midtown-Cumberland light rail line that was mostly in Fulton County but being paid for by Cobb County residents).
Quote:
Originally Posted by gtcorndog
There is no conspiracy. Take off the tin foil hat. To continue to ***** and moan about your unpopular, minority opinion with the self righteous demeanor you do isn't likely winning you much support from the majority.
...There may not be a conspiracy in the traditional sense of the word as in wide-ranging and unspoken, but there is clearly still a dominant cultural faction, largely on the far-right of the political spectrum, that remains extremely skeptical, if not outright openly hostile, about the effectiveness of transit (particularly rail transit, but buses too) in providing an alternative to and relieving extreme traffic stress from severely-congested roads in high-capacity traffic corridors.
That extreme skeptism of and hostility to transit remains strong on the far-right of the political spectrum despite Metro Atlanta's extremely severe traffic congestion on a highly-constrained road network that has definite political limits to how much it can be expanded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gtcorndog
In a vacuum, there are a lot of good ideas.
...Adequate transit options are not just "ideas in a vacuum" but are an absolute necessity in a fast-growing metro region of 6 million people where the severely-congested road network can no longer be expanded due to political limits.
A metro area of this immense size and population just simply cannot function properly both economically and logistically without a viable high-capacity transit system to supplement a constrained road network that virtually cannot be expanded on a large-scale at this point.
It is total insanity to think that a fast-growing metro region of over 6 million people will be able to continue to function at a high level with a maxed-out road network that cannot be expanded (a road network that showed signs of being maxed-out before the region's population had even reached 4 million...nearly 2.5 million people and 15 years ago) and a virtually non-existent transit system.
If this region is having these extreme mobility problems with a population of 6 million, what kind of even worse mobility problems is this region going to have when the population reaches 7 million (the population of the Greater Philadelphia and New England regions), 8 million (the population of the Bay Area), 9 million (the population of the Greater Washington-Baltimore region), 10 million (the population of the Chicago region), etc?
The Atlanta region is just simply not going to able to handle the increasing traffic from a growing population by only being dependent on a road network that has effectively reached its political limits of how much it can be further expanded at this point.
Whether with public investment or private investment or a combination of both, the Atlanta region and the State of Georgia is going to have to substantially expand its rail-anchored transit network to compensate for the new roads that it politically cannot build and seemingly has not been able to build for nearly 20 years now, unfortunate that reality seemingly has to be taken to heart the very hard way.
Very-large metro regions of 6 million or more people and severely-limited road networks just simply do not and cannot function without viable transit systems.
Polls have shown that the TIA failed due to public mistrust in government. Not a rejection on investment.
So posting a long rambling statement blaming the Sierra Club would be inaccurate.
Thank you for validating my statement.
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