Avalon expansion is set to open on 4/13 (Atlanta, Marietta: sales, lease)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by arjay57

You have to recall what the ATL was like when MARTA was created, Ansley.

Forsyth had 15,000 people -- roughly the same as, say, Jeff Davis County, Georgia, or Converse County, Wyoming. And it was still decades away from a residential or commercial boom. Lake Lanier had only been around a dozen years and Forsyth is where people went to spend a weekend fishing or hunting.

Were there issues of race and white flight? Yes, of course. But even without those factors, heavy rail mass transit simply made no sense for most of the Atlanta and certainly not for very rural areas like Forsyth.

MARTA barely squeaked by even in the "urban" counties of Fulton and DeKalb. Outside the city limits, Fulton only had a population of maybe 110,000.

Atlanta really carried the region then.

[primaltech]

Let's note though that all the rules might be changing in the next few years, as leaders put together this "regional transit system" plan.

It's at least possible that rules about where MARTA can operate could change. For one, because MARTA might not even be the same MARTA, but some larger and different entity. And it might be called something else.

Now that I think about it, those administrative changes will probably take effect before any new MARTA stations are built.

[arjay57]

Just to follow up on the essential fairness of requiring the business community to participate in transportation funding.

Take this quote from Dr. Paul Roberts:

This is an important difference that is not easy to understand. Classical economists defined “unearned income” as “economic rent.” This is not the rent that you pay for your apartment. Economic rent is an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the recipient of the income stream.

For example, when a public authority, say the city of Alexandria, Virginia, decides to connect Alexandria with Washington, D.C., and with itself, with a subway paid for with public money, the owners of property along the subway line experience a rise in property values. They owe their increased wealth and their increased incomes from the rental values of their properties to the expenditure of taxpayer dollars. If these gains were taxed away, the subway line could have been financed without taxpayers’ money.

It is these gains in value produced by the subway, or by a taxpayer-financed road across property, or by having beachfront property instead of property off the beach, or by having property on the sunny side of the street in a business area that are “economic rents.” Monopoly profits due to a unique positioning are also economic rents.

As I have norted before, the business community profits tremendously from mass transit. They get large density bonuses, reduced parking requirements, greatly increased property values, higher tenant rents, access to much larger customer and employee pools, and so on. Their large business model also makes it vastly easier to distribute costs.

Why do we insist on giving them a pass and letting them off scot free?

Are we just too timid to even ask?

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by arjay57

...the business community profits tremendously from mass transit.

Because they don't have to directly fund the construction and expansion of the mass transit system. If they did, the huge expenditure would cancel out the increased revenue gained from having it. And thus negating the entire point of why they're interested in mass transit.

[arjay57]

Au contraire. These big developers and institutions spend billions of dollars on things they deem desirable all the time.

Why does the very regressive burden of transit have to fall exclusively on the little people, even though massive economic benefits flow to the big guys?

[primaltech]

But it's not important enough to you for you to actually do anything about it. Sorry, I'm not inspired.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Sorry, I'm not inspired.

I understand. Most people don't want to rock the boat or risk getting the stinkeye from the big guys.

In the meantime I'll press on with my multi-level advocacy. At my age you don't worry as much about what people say about you.

[primaltech]

I wish you luck with that, because I do like the idea of PPP's and CID's funding public transit.

[JMatl]

Originally Posted by primaltech

At the time of that legislation (1965), everybody who didn't live in those 5 counties was basically... the KKK.

You can't be serious with this statement?

[chiatldal]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Just to follow up on the essential fairness of requiring the business community to participate in transportation funding.

Take this quote from Dr. Paul Roberts:



As I have norted before, the business community profits tremendously from mass transit. They get large density bonuses, reduced parking requirements, greatly increased property values, higher tenant rents, access to much larger customer and employee pools, and so on. Their large business model also makes it vastly easier to distribute costs.

Why do we insist on giving them a pass and letting them off scot free?

Are we just too timid to even ask?

They are already providing jobs to the community

remember Atlanta is competing against other metros and cities.

This stagnate companies and make them consider moving or locating to other places, places that the local government are not against them and will build infrastructure.

Also the CID's were for the 2012 referendum so they clearly don't mind a slight increase in taxes for transportation.

CID are self taxing they are already taxing themselves for them to even exist, they do help transit projects, studies and beatification projects with in their districts but it's only so much they can do on their own. Also while transit stations would be in their districts there will also be some outside as well as most of the lines themselves.