Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll
We need BOTH bus and rail service, NOT just bus service....Though, make no mistake, bus service is a critically-important part of the multimodal transportation equation in a very-large, fast-growing and road infrastructure-constricted major metro region like Atlanta.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
I agree. I just don't agree we need rail over the whole metro. A lot of those people in Gainesville, Flowery Branch, etc. aren't going into central Atlanta. They are going to Gwinnett or North Fulton or other places.
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That's an excellent point that a lot commuters from outlying areas like Hall County, etc, are not commuting into (and out of) Central Atlanta but are commuting into and out of areas outside of Central Atlanta like Gwinnett, North Fulton, Cobb, etc.
But there are some pretty major regional centers of activity and employment in outlying areas like Gwinnett, North Fulton and Cobb counties.
(...Gwinnett County has existing major regional activity and employment centers like the Norcross/Peachtree Corners area and rising major regional activity/employment centers like the Gwinnett Place Mall/Duluth/Suwanee/Buford corridor along I-85 NE, the GA 316 corridor...
...North Fulton County has existing major regional activity and employment centers like the Perimeter Center and Alpharetta areas and rising regional employment centers like the Johns Creek area...
...Cobb County has existing major regional activity and employment centers like the I-75 NW Corridor (the Cumberland, Elizabeth/North Marietta and Kennesaw/Town Center areas).)
The fact that so many people commute and travel between the I-85 NE and I-75 NW corridors by way of the severely-constricted I-285 Top End Perimeter corridor (and the severe lack of east-west cross-regional alternatives to the I-285 Top End Perimeter roadway) is the reason why a self-funded cross-regional high-capacity passenger rail transit link is needed between Gainesville in the I-85 NE corridor and Cartersville in the I-75 NW corridor by way of the I-285 Top End Perimeter where the state has already proposed to implement high-capacity transit service between the Doraville MARTA Station and Cumberland Mall.
Here are some links to the state's proposal to implement cross-regional high-capacity transit service between Doraville and Cumberland by way of the I-285 Top End Perimeter:
Transit Station Planning
http://www.revive285.com/f/TSPSAInfoSheets.pdf
Extending the proposed I-285 Top End Perimeter cross-regional high-capacity transit corridor to connect to Cartersville on the west end and Gainesville on the east end would highly-beneficial to cross-regional mobility on the Northside because a Cartersville-Gainesville high-capacity passenger rail transit corridor would connect so many important activity and employment centers like:
> The Kennesaw/Town Center/Kennesaw State University area (...the Kennesaw area has been reported to be home to the largest concentration of industrial property in Cobb County while Kennesaw State University has the 3rd-largest enrollment of any university campus in the state of Georgia)...
> The Elizabeth/North Marietta area which is home to a large cluster of industrial businesses and the largest hospital in Cobb County in Wellstar Kennestone Hospital which is one of only 2 major hospitals serving what is now a large urban county of nearly 720,000 residents...
> Historic Downtown Marietta, which is the site of the seat of government for a fast-growing large urban county of nearly 720,000 residents in Cobb County...
> The campuses of Southern Polytechnic State University and Life University...
> The massive Lockheed Martin industrial plant just north of Dobbins Air Reserve Base, the industrial installation that originally sparked the massive growth of Cobb County from a sparsely-populated far-flung rural agricultural community into a heavily-populated large urban county...
> The Cumberland/Galleria area which is one of the major activity and employment centers of the Atlanta metro region...
> The greater Perimeter Center area (including stations in Sandy Springs, at Northside Hospital (one of the largest and busiest hospitals in the entire Southeastern U.S.) and at Perimeter Center Mall) which is also one of the major activity and employment centers in the Atlanta metro region...
> The Norcross/Peachtree Corners/Technology Park area which is home to major concentration of commercial and industrial development and is a major regional center of employment...
> The Gwinnett Place Mall area which is home to much commercial development...
> The Gwinnett Center/Sugarloaf Mills Mall area...
> The Suwanee area which is home to a rising concentration of industrial development...
> The Mall of Georgia (which is one of the largest regional shopping malls on the entire Eastern Seaboard) and surrounding area...
> Historic Downtown Buford which is home to a rising artists' colony and a rising cultural scene...
> The popular recreational and resort area at Lake Lanier which is one of the most-popular inland recreational and resort areas in the Southeastern U.S. outside of the resort areas of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Florida and the coastal areas on the Atlantic Ocean...
> The fast-growing Gainesville Campus of the University of North Georgia in Oakwood which is a small exurban town that has plans to redevelop its currently virtually non-existent downtown into a mixed-use transit-oriented development around a future high-capacity passenger rail transit station:
Oakwood 2030
> Central Gainesville which is a major center of business, industry, employment and politics in Northeast Georgia and is home to Northeast Georgia Medical Center which is a large hospital that serves Northeast Georgia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
Choice riders in those areas (basically all the riders in those areas) won't take transit for short trips because it simply doesn't make sense with the wait times. So most of the commuters won't even consider transit. You just don't have the numbers. Noone other than New York and Chicago and to a lesser extent the Bay Area, which has several dispersed major employment centers, does rail to those distances--for good reasons.
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That's why we would tailor the expanded high-capacity transit network to cater to and target choice riders by offering low headways, short wait times, minimized transfers, faster trains, express trains (with the use of zone service where needed and as needed), extensive last-mile connectivity in the form of local shuttle services to and from train stations, and multiple tiers of transit service (from lower-cost basic and economy levels of service to higher-cost premium levels of service that also come with larger donations and the purchase of larger sponsorships by both corporations and individuals).
...That's because everyone benefits (particularly transit-dependent riders) when a transit system is highly-attractive to and popular with choice riders.
When choice riders want to ride a system, everyone wants to ride....And everyone can ride because the system is taking in enough revenue from choice riders to fund a high level of transit service for everybody across the socioeconomic spectrum from higher-income choice riders to lower-income transit-dependent riders.
But when choice riders don't want to ride a system in very-large numbers because of an inadequate and/or bare-bones level of service (or even just the pervasive public perception of an inadequate level of service), transit-dependent riders will often also not want to ride unless they have no other choice and will 'escape' from a transit system that they consider to unsatisfactory at the very first opportunity they receive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
And if you build it, the developers won't necessarily come. Its still got to be a good location.
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This is a good point, though a transit company itself (like MARTA) will not necessarily be the party that is doing the building.
Either a private outside development company or a public transit company's private investment partners will be the parties that will be paying to build development on transit-owned real estate along high-capacity transit lines (...like MARTA has done with the revenue-generating development that was built on the land it owns around its Lindbergh Station and like MARTA wants to do on the land its owns around (and in the air space it owns above) many of its other stations on its Heavy Rail Transit system).
And many of the areas where MARTA's stations and land holdings are located (particularly in Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, Perimeter, Chamblee, Doraville, Intown East Atlanta, near the world's busiest airport, Fort MacPherson, etc) are considered to be prime locations for future mixed-use high-density transit-oriented development.
The problem is that until now (with the exception of the Lindbergh Station), perennially cash-strapped MARTA has really never seriously entertained the thought of leasing-out the land it owns at and around its stations for the construction of revenue-generating transit-oriented development on a large scale.
Leasing-out transit-owned land at and around stations for transit-oriented development is important not only because it helps a transit agency to generate revenues off of land that it owns from leases/rents, property taxes and fares from increased ridership.
Leasing-out transit-owned land at and around stations is also important because the transit-oriented development that is built on transit-owned land also helps to generate more transit-oriented development around and near a station on land that the transit agency does not own, helping to change the entire community around a transit station for the better with increased high-quality development and street activity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
There's basically no high density employment areas on the east/west lines except downtown and Decatur. And those lines have been there for decades.
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There are few high-density employment areas on the East-West Lines largely because MARTA never leased-out the land for the construction of Transit-Oriented Development at and around almost all of its stations until very-recently when MARTA leased-out the land around the Lindbergh Station to be developed in the mid-2000's.
...And MARTA did not lease-out the land around its stations for revenue-generating TOD because the State of Georgia did not correctly setup the agency at its inception by mandating that the agency collect critically-needed operating revenue from prime real estate assets along transit lines...
...MARTA was setup incorrectly from the start and both the agency and Metro Atlanta have been paying for it ever since with a transit service that has never come close to reaching its full potential...
...MARTA was basically unintentionally setup as a bare-bones operation that was largely funded primarily with the revenues from a 1% countywide sales taxes that only operated buses and trains on lines intended to be regional HRT lines with only large park-and-ride lots around most outlying stations targeted at automobile-oriented suburban commuters.
MARTA's flawed setup as a revenue-constricted regional HRT system targeted at suburban commuters in a politically-polarized region (polarized between the predominantly white and ultraconservative suburbs and the predominantly black and ultraliberal city) has hampered it from its inception.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
I think we need to focus high density employment on a limited number of locations that can be easily be served by mass transit. That means 285 and closer in with maybe an exception for North Fulton in Roswell along with a place or 2 in central Gwinnet and Cobb. We need to build on the existing high density centers.
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I agree that we need to attempt in the best way that we can to focus and concentrate employment in areas of higher-density development....And one excellent way to attempt to focus and concentrate employment in areas of higher-density development is with the development of a self-funded extensive high-quality regional high-capacity passenger rail transit system complimented and supplemented with high-quality regional and local bus and shuttle service.
Though, we also need to keep-in-mind that not all employment is necessarily of the type that can be concentrated in high-density areas that can be easily served by high-capacity transit.
There is much employment and industry (particularly manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, distribution, trucking, etc) where the facilities must be located in relatively lower-density areas that allow for physical growth and relatively-easy access to controlled-access highways for logistical purposes....Critically-important business activity which generates much cross-regional commuter and non-commuter commercial traffic on a severely-constricted regional road network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
Transit operations are expensive. Rail transit is enormously expensive. We can't serve the needs of taking everyone everywhere.
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Not only are transit operations enormously expensive, but multimodal transportation costs in general are enormously expensive....That's because being a very-fast growing and very-large major metro region on the international stage is enormously expensive.
But the fact that transportation costs are enormously expensive does not mean that we should use expense as a convenient and comfortable excuse to not fund our pressing multimodal transportation needs.
The fact that transportation costs are expensive means that we need to concentrate on finding creative and innovative ways of raising the revenue that is needed to adequately fund all of our multimodal transportation needs so that our economy and our quality-of-life will not suffer at the hands of a severely-underdeveloped multimodal transportation network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
We can't serve the needs of taking everyone everywhere.
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You make an excellent point that we can't serve the needs of taking everyone everywhere. But we should not and cannot use that as an excuse to throw up our hands and do nothing.
Transportation is not something that can be addressed just one time and never tended to again. Transportation is something that needs constant improvements, upgrades and maintenance.
We have to face the reality that transportation solutions are going to be neither cheap nor easy.
If we think that we can have a high-quality multimodal transportation system on-the-cheap because we are too lazy to raise and collect the needed funds from the private sector, real estate development and user fees, we aren't fooling anyone but ourselves...
...Just like with the I-285/GA 400 interchange that the State of Georgia thought that it was saving money by not reconstructing 25 years ago when it constructed the GA 400 Extension through Buckhead but will likely end up paying nearly 10 times what it would have cost if the state would have built the project when it built the GA 400 Extension.
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