MARTA Upgrades (East Point, College Park, Decatur: low cost, bills, wealthy)

[primaltech]

I do find trackless trams to be **dreamy** (which I don't consider to be a bus):



I swear, if we'd only adopt and embrace that concept right there.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

MARTA can't better serve Cumberland without Cobb joining it. Even so, Atlanta's Hashtag BRT plan does include BRT to Cumberland.

The Clifton Corridor won't be a stub, since it will stretch from Lindbergh to Avondale and not termenate along. Not only that, it will connect to other Light Rail services at Lindbergh, extending potential one-seat rides to elsewhere on the city's Light Rail and Streetcar network.

There WAS a plan for significantly improving Buckhead's service via light rail through the Peachtree St. corridor that the CID itself chose to be removed from, but which still shows up in plans as future corridors.



Cool, and we get the money for that from.....? In the mean time, we do have money for the light rail that's spent decades being planned and reviewed over and over and over again.



So... now it's okay to build light rail? Cool, we'll just keep up with the light rail plans that we have and which are funded, then.

The Clifton corridor was originally planned as HRT. NIMBYs got MARTA to change. In their 2013 proposal (the latest has significantly more tunneling), they were going to spend nearly $2 billion on 8.5 miles of light rail (almost $230 million a mile). In their first analysis around 2010, they showed HRT getting double the ridership of light rail. In 2013, miraculously, all their dramatically different proposals showed between 25k and 28k in ridership, only a 10% difference.

Like at a lot of these analyses, it really looks like they come up with the answer and manipulate the numbers to support it. And their review in 2016 used a scale and, at least in the data presented to the public (maybe if you went down to their offices you could get the actual numbers), they gave no figures on the estimated cost of their 7 proposals, just rating it from green to red. Yet they had those numbers in 2010 and 2013.

As I said, the employment, according to MARTA's documents, mostly comes from the northeast and southeast, so connecting to the Beltline doesn't give many people a one seat ride. In any event, it would double the distance many of those people would travel, instead of heading against flow down DeKalb Ave., Ponce or Rock Springs.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by primaltech

I do find trackless trams to be **dreamy** (which I don't consider to be a bus):



I swear, if we'd only adopt and embrace that concept right there.

What benefit do you see with this over larger buses? I doubt this can go as fast.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by jsvh

What benefit do you see with this over larger buses? I doubt this can go as fast.

Steel wheels on steel rail provides less resistance and lower energy usage as well. O/M costs are lower for the life of the vehicle.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bu2

The Clifton corridor was originally planned as HRT. NIMBYs got MARTA to change. In their 2013 proposal (the latest has significantly more tunneling), they were going to spend nearly $2 billion on 8.5 miles of light rail (almost $230 million a mile). In their first analysis around 2010, they showed HRT getting double the ridership of light rail. In 2013, miraculously, all their dramatically different proposals showed between 25k and 28k in ridership, only a 10% difference.

It would be amazing to carve out 9% of that $2 billion and immediately put 200 new, sleek high-tech, zero-emission buses on the road.

You'd still have over $1.8 billion left for light rail.

That would be some serious transportation.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by arjay57

It would be amazing to carve out 9% of that $2 billion and immediately put 200 new, sleek high-tech, zero-emission buses on the road.

You'd still have over $1.8 billion left for light rail.

That would be some serious transportation.

MARTA's current bus fleet is very modern, with free WiFi, low emission CNG and diesel ; yet modern buses along are not attracting riders.

[MattCW]

You're right, we need frequency and coverage. Both of which what Arjay's suggesting would greatly aid.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

It would be amazing to carve out 9% of that $2 billion and immediately put 200 new, sleek high-tech, zero-emission buses on the road.

You'd still have over $1.8 billion left for light rail.

That would be some serious transportation.

Originally Posted by MattCW

You're right, we need frequency and coverage. Both of which what Arjay's suggesting would greatly aid.

Once again, come up with a plan that doesn't siphon away from already scarce transit funding to make it happen. Why don't you go target GDOT's $2 Billion truck-only lanes? After all, then they'd still have $1.8 Billion left!

[Atlanta Scientist]

Originally Posted by cqholt

MARTA's current bus fleet is very modern, with free WiFi, low emission CNG and diesel ; yet modern buses along are not attracting riders.

Agreed. There is nothing wrong with MARTA's bus fleet. But then again, I don't need to be tricked into riding a bus. No one really rides the streetcar but that's because its destinations are limited.

More rail and actual BRT.

Instead of widening interstates, we should be thinking about building a better network of roads, making our roads multimodal, and fixing our street grid.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by MattCW

You're right, we need frequency and coverage.

That's the real key.