Stats that show the Atlanta Streetcar was a complete and utter failure of epic proportion (Marietta: shop, move)

[MattCW]

So your entire life becomes one of perpetual shopping. Yea, sorry, I have better things to do than go to the store every single day of the week just because you don't like cars.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by MattCW

So your entire life becomes one of perpetual shopping. Yea, sorry, I have better things to do than go to the store every single day of the week just because you don't like cars.

I hate shopping. You spend a lot less time shopping this way. Go straight in grab what you need and get out in five mins. None of this winding up and down every aisle spending hours in the store because if you forget something you wont be back in a week or two! Crazy. I grew up doing that and don't know how people stand it.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by jsvh

I hate shopping. You spend a lot less time shopping this way. Go straight in grab what you need and get out in five mins. None of this winding up and down every aisle spending hours in the store because if you forget something you wont be back in a week or two! Crazy. I grew up doing that and don't know how people stand it.

I spend 30 minutes every two weeks. To be any faster mathematically, I'd have to spend less than 2 minutes a day shopping if I went every day. If I only went 10 out of 14 days, that's 3 minutes even. If I went 5 out of 14, that's still only 6 minutes. You can hardly enter, grab something off the rack at the checkout and be back out in that amount of time. Maybe you should try using a list and go straight to what you need each time. Perhaps try learning the layout of the store so you don't end up wandering.

[krogerDisco]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Done it. Since you go multiple times a week you can carry the few groceries in one had and an umbrella in the other. Or even better you can put off going for groceries until the rain stops since you go so frequently. You will get wetter trying to load all those weeks worth of groceries in your car.

But OK. Pay $30k for a car so we don't have to listen to your cat on the train the maybe twice a year you have to take him to the vet.

I love the rediculous obscure examples car-dependant people come up with about why life without owning a car is impossible. I mean you can get an Uber or rent a car for these weird cases you keep thinking up if you really need to.

Life is pretty great without being car dependant. If you choose not to do it, that is up to you.

And I love how the anti-car nut jobs go to ridiculous lengths to show how life is manageable without a car. Housewives can get to the back of their SUVs and find some shelter from the rain under the liftback as the load the groceries in the back. Besides, grocery shopping and taking the pet to the vet are not obscure examples. Cars have greatly expanded our economy to give us the highest standard of living humans have ever known.

And cars will not go away. Elon Musk and others a pushing the boundaries of electric cars, so we need not lose our SUVs. Nothing beats individual transportation.

[jsvh]

No, I never said cars will go away or that they are not fine for some.

But you need to accept that car-free offers a better quality of life for many. In fact thanks to Elon Musk, Uber, Google, and others pursuing self driving taxis many many more will learn the joys of not owning a car in the coming decades.

[primaltech]

All our various forms of transportation should complement each other, and be implemented in their appropriate settings.

Metro Atlanta has to find a balance, where cars and transit meet and interact. Need regional and local transit options. Need parking decks and MARTA commuter rail in the north Atlanta suburbs. Need streetcars and bikes and pedestrians in Midtown.

I like cars, I like transit, I like it all. I don't like having no worthwhile transit options. Which doesn't mean I'd ride the train every day, or even every week. But having the option sure would be very useful. Especially if you can hop on it and ride down into a denser, more urban Atlanta, where you can hop of the station and walk to everything, or take the streetcar/ light rail.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by jsvh

No, I never said cars will go away or that they are not fine for some.

But you need to accept that car-free offers a better quality of life for many. In fact thanks to Elon Musk, Uber, Google, and others pursuing self driving taxis many many more will learn the joys of not owning a car in the coming decades.

At that level though, you're idea of "quality of life" becomes subjective rather than objective. To a certain point QoL is certainly objective, the access to and quality of education, safety, health is pretty measurable. But at the point we're talking about now of car vs. car-free, QoL is entirely subjective. I prefer having a balanced option, a good transit system for the times where I have one destination with minimal cargo, but good roads and my car for when I have multiple places to go, especially if they're close, and when I need to haul a lot of things. That's why a high QoL for me would be living in the mid-suburbs (Clarkston-Norcross range vs Conyers-Duluth [far] or Decatur-Vinings [near]) with high-capacity transit into the city for my job, but good local roads for the evenings and weekends. Someone else's high QoL might be living right downtown where they walk most places, take a streetcar/bus to a few, and the high-capacity transit if they need to go to the airport or a suburb. Still someone else's high QoL might be living in the far suburbs, driving 10 minutes to work, and only driving down into "the big city" once in a while when absolutely necessary.

I'm sure all of us in these examples want good access to education, in safe areas, with good healthcare around. But beyond that, we all have different lifestyles that we consider good.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by MattCW

At that level though, you're idea of "quality of life" becomes subjective rather than objective. To a certain point QoL is certainly objective, the access to and quality of education, safety, health is pretty measurable. But at the point we're talking about now of car vs. car-free, QoL is entirely subjective. I prefer having a balanced option, a good transit system for the times where I have one destination with minimal cargo, but good roads and my car for when I have multiple places to go, especially if they're close, and when I need to haul a lot of things. That's why a high QoL for me would be living in the mid-suburbs (Clarkston-Norcross range vs Conyers-Duluth [far] or Decatur-Vinings [near]) with high-capacity transit into the city for my job, but good local roads for the evenings and weekends. Someone else's high QoL might be living right downtown where they walk most places, take a streetcar/bus to a few, and the high-capacity transit if they need to go to the airport or a suburb. Still someone else's high QoL might be living in the far suburbs, driving 10 minutes to work, and only driving down into "the big city" once in a while when absolutely necessary.

I'm sure all of us in these examples want good access to education, in safe areas, with good healthcare around. But beyond that, we all have different lifestyles that we consider good.

Exactly.

If someone chooses to live out in Lawrenceville for example, then they're probably not that interested in visiting Atlanta every day, or weekend. Chances are that they like the quieter setting, car-scale, with abundant parking type of life, and they're not as into the urban scene. And they don't really need a lot of local bus transit in their suburb.

But, that doesn't mean that they don't need, or want, to go to Atlanta proper sometimes, for work or leisure or for the airport. So they should have a non-stressful, high-speed way to do that, via commuter rail. Via a Lawrenceville station with a large park&ride deck.

And then that doesn't mean that once they are in Atlanta, that they wouldn't be interested in riding the streetcar around. Especially if they're getting into town by transit and don't have their car.

But when at home in Lawrenceville, they prefer to drive everywhere. That's what I would do. There's no reason the suburbs need to change their character per se, they just need to be connected by transit to the city, and the city should be urban.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by krogerDisco

And I love how the anti-car nut jobs go to ridiculous lengths to show how life is manageable without a car. Housewives can get to the back of their SUVs and find some shelter from the rain under the liftback as the load the groceries in the back. Besides, grocery shopping and taking the pet to the vet are not obscure examples. Cars have greatly expanded our economy to give us the highest standard of living humans have ever known.

And cars will not go away. Elon Musk and others a pushing the boundaries of electric cars, so we need not lose our SUVs. Nothing beats individual transportation.

That's a very polite thing to say to those who have different opinions than yours.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Exactly.

If someone chooses to live out in Lawrenceville for example, then they're probably not that interested in visiting Atlanta every day, or weekend. Chances are that they like the quieter setting, car-scale, with abundant parking type of life, and they're not as into the urban scene. And they don't really need a lot of local bus transit in their suburb.

But, that doesn't mean that they don't need, or want, to go to Atlanta proper sometimes, for work or leisure or for the airport. So they should have a non-stressful, high-speed way to do that, via commuter rail. Via a Lawrenceville station with a large park&ride deck.

And then that doesn't mean that once they are in Atlanta, that they wouldn't be interested in riding the streetcar around. Especially if they're getting into town by transit and don't have their car.

But when at home in Lawrenceville, they prefer to drive everywhere. That's what I would do. There's no reason the suburbs need to change their character per se, they just need to be connected by transit to the city, and the city should be urban.

My city's built environment should not have to suffer to accommodate those people's choices. Eg: abundant, free, easy parking; wide roads that shuttle commuters at high speeds thru neighborhoods, freeways dividing the city up and destroying it's urban fabric.