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Old 05-19-2018, 05:03 PM
 
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Damn...I added more in the time you responded...

Quote:
Originally Posted by jsvh View Post
Each should be valued for their abilities / costs to move people. It doesn't mean we have no cars in the city, it means that our most congested and highest utilized routes need to be prioritized for higher-capacity solutions.
So, are those methods for people or not?

Quote:
I am not sure I agree that Atlanta's transportation network is fine as is if that is what you are suggesting.
I have never suggested that, and don't know how you could possibly derive that from what I said.

Quote:
There are certainly many places where roads are fine as they are. And in places where capacity is not a concern such as rural areas, car are the most efficient way of getting around. But there are many places we do need to look at adding higher capacity options. Almost all those situations will require cars to give up some of their dedicated RoW.
And in many situations, it could likely create more problems than it solves doing it that way, but...I guess we'll see. I think we need to beef up some of our arterials to make them more efficient, thus freeing up some other routes for transit ROW.

Quote:
"Efficiency" (as I am using) it is not how quickly we can get one person between A and B, but how quickly and cost-effectively we can get all the people between their many destinations. In large cities that requires a much more diverse transportation network than just roads and parking lots.
It does, but it's rarely quicker. So, it's not really more efficient overall, just possibly more cost-effective (while being more heavily subsidized).

 
Old 05-19-2018, 05:06 PM
 
10,974 posts, read 10,816,726 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samiwas1 View Post
Scenario time:[indent]You have a city of 1 million people.
80% use cars to get round. 20% use alternative methods. (that's pretty good for alternatives!)
The roads are generally at capacity. (Boo!)
Over 20 years, you add another 500,000 people, meaning you now have 1,500,000 residents.
You go on a huge alternative transportation building spree, and convince 25% of existing car-using residents (giving alternative methods now 40% share of existing residents) and 50% of new residents to use alternative methods. That's a pretty massive undertaking.
Now, you have 850,000 people driving, and 650,000 using alternative methods. That's a 43% share using alternatives. Absolutely phenomenal, outpacing every metro except NYC.

BUT...before you had 800,000 users on the road, and now you have 850,000 users. But, in your infinite wisdom, you've removed lanes and closed roads to achieve the other result. This would create a much larger problem, and does not create "freedom".

If roads are already at capacity and you are further reducing road capacity how could there be more road users?
 
Old 05-19-2018, 05:19 PM
 
5,633 posts, read 5,324,162 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jsvh View Post
If roads are already at capacity and you are further reducing road capacity how could there be more road users?
I said "generally".

gen·er·al·ly
ˈjen(ə)rəlē
adverb
1. in most cases; usually.
"the term of a lease is generally 99 years"
synonyms: normally, in general, as a rule, by and large, more often than not, almost always, mainly, mostly, for the most part, predominantly, on the whole;
But, to answer your question...it could mean that your highways and arterials are pretty full, so users start using neighborhood roads and other roads as other options get removed.
 
Old 05-19-2018, 05:34 PM
 
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The bigger point of my question was to show that people will only fill what transportation options are available / reasonable.

Your scenario is hypothetical, but many real world downtown areas are seeing zero growth in car usage despite large population & job growth. Even here in Atlanta our downtown master plan expects zero growth in car usage (see page 237) despite projected surges in jobs and residents. And many city centers are prohibiting personal cars from larger and larger areas. Cars simply can not handle the capacity in many large cities and get in the way of higher capacity transportation options.

It is not reasonable to expect the "freedom" to choose to take rail transit direct to every destination in the countryside just as it is not reasonable to expect to take your car direct to every destination in the city.

Last edited by jsvh; 05-19-2018 at 06:05 PM..
 
Old 05-19-2018, 07:01 PM
bu2
 
23,888 posts, read 14,684,834 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jsvh View Post
The bigger point of my question was to show that people will only fill what transportation options are available / reasonable.

Your scenario is hypothetical, but many real world downtown areas are seeing zero growth in car usage despite large population & job growth. Even here in Atlanta our downtown master plan expects zero growth in car usage (see page 237) despite projected surges in jobs and residents. And many city centers are prohibiting personal cars from larger and larger areas. Cars simply can not handle the capacity in many large cities and get in the way of higher capacity transportation options.

It is not reasonable to expect the "freedom" to choose to take rail transit direct to every destination in the countryside just as it is not reasonable to expect to take your car direct to every destination in the city.
Well if you make it too difficult for cars, businesses will simply move their jobs elsewhere. Atlanta's relocation people have spoken about how Atlanta often gets eliminated because of traffic.
 
Old 05-19-2018, 07:02 PM
bu2
 
23,888 posts, read 14,684,834 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jsvh View Post
You are, your car is not.

The priority is options to get you and the many other people in Atlanta where you need to go as efficiently as possible. That is a different goal from providing enough room for cars. Cars take up far more space and there is simply no way we can provide for a majority of the people to get around by car and have space to store thei car in front of every destination.

Hence why we should focus on maximizing space for and movement of people and stop enforcing requirements & subsidies to provide for cars.

Every car lane could potentially carry many times that number of people if it was dedicated to other modes besides cars. And every parking space is potentially another housing unit for a person.
And there is no way we can afford to provide transit to get people from every point to every other point in a reasonable amount of time.
 
Old 05-19-2018, 07:19 PM
 
10,974 posts, read 10,816,726 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
Well if you make it too difficult for cars, businesses will simply move their jobs elsewhere. Atlanta's relocation people have spoken about how Atlanta often gets eliminated because of traffic.
Any examples of that happening in a major city you would point to? Many major world cities continue to limit more and more car access in favor of higher capacity options and they continue to thrive.

I would say major relocations within metro Atlanta happening next to transit only further demonstrate the solution to traffic is to offer higher capacity options that can bypass traffic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
And there is no way we can afford to provide transit to get people from every point to every other point in a reasonable amount of time.
Agreed. Nor does transit need to. There is also no way we can afford to provide cars to get people from every point to every other point in a reasonable amount of time. But it is not like the city has to choose between 100% car or 100% transit.
 
Old 05-19-2018, 07:53 PM
 
5,633 posts, read 5,324,162 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jsvh View Post
Any examples of that happening in a major city you would point to? Many major world cities continue to limit more and more car access in favor of higher capacity options and they continue to thrive.
I don't think there are any examples because almost none have gone that route. I wonder why. Tiny congestion zones in cities with already-huge public transit services aren't very good examples.
 
Old 05-19-2018, 08:35 PM
 
10,974 posts, read 10,816,726 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samiwas1 View Post
I don't think there are any examples because almost none have gone that route. I wonder why. Tiny congestion zones in cities with already-huge public transit services aren't very good examples.
Here is a list of hundreds of places where cars are straight up banned (including many areas that are home to tens of thousands of people): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places

Many more bans are planned to take effect in the next couple of years in larger cities such as Oslo and Madrid.

What is the boundary for "anti-car" that you fear that will be crossed resulting in economic collapse?

Last edited by jsvh; 05-19-2018 at 08:45 PM..
 
Old 05-19-2018, 09:19 PM
 
10,347 posts, read 11,357,816 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
After moving here from Houston, I swore never to complain about Houston traffic again. It really is an "easy" city.


I know they won't do it, but they should separate 75 and 85. 85 could be toll and run north of Atlantic Station, down (with a short distance possibly being tunnel) to the west side of Ft. McPherson and then out Langford Parkway to 285 to the existing 85. What they may do and should ASAP is build east and west outer perimeters. On the west from Cartersville to I-85 to Griffin and on the East from 85 in Gwinnett down to I-75 to Griffin. For all the controversy about the Northern Arc, that mainly would have helped people who live up there. The other routes would help traffic in the city by routing a good bit of through traffic outside the city.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
Actually, Atlanta's policy is to force drivers to go down residential streets. I would prefer quieter residential streets.

There are VAST stretches of empty land outside 285 where additional roads could be routed. The neighborhoods are dropped in like a ink blot painting. Atlanta's urban area has only 60% of the density of Houston or Dallas, let alone Los Angeles or cities in the northeast.


As for inside 285, there are a lot of industrial areas. And sometimes you will have to condemn land. Other cities do it all the time. There are also some really large lots on arterial roads, like LaVista. Atlanta should have been requiring developers along Lennox Road to leave ROW for expansion. I can't believe the mall owners haven't been pushing that. Lots of Briarcliff could be widened without taking homes (some couldn't). There is some talk of extending Cliff Valley near the new Children's Hospital across I-85.

I saw Houston do massive improvement of arterial roads with a major plan from 1982. And Houston was probably denser then than Atlanta is now. Austin, which is a very green city, turned 183, 71 and 290 into limited access highways and has extended Hwy 1 and created Hwy 45 as limited access highways relatively close in, let alone Hwy 130 further out.


I've already said where I thought a separate I-85 should be routed (and that I doubt Atlanta would do it). Much of that is industrial. The only significant development is between Westview cemetery and Ft. McPherson. 675 could very easily be routed up to I-20. Most of that area along Moreland is almost rural. The Stone Mountain Freeway could be extended a mile without disrupting anything but old buildings in the process of being redeveloped.
That is an excellent point that the lack of both surface and controlled/limited-access arterial routes often motivates motorists to drive down residential streets to attempt to get around traffic congestion on the few major arterial routes there are, particularly within the I-285 Perimeter.

The Georgia Department of Transportation actually did attempt to build new controlled-access arterial routes both inside and outside of the I-285 Perimeter in past decades.

After the initial construction of GA 154-166 Lakewood Freeway and the Interstates ITP (Interstates 75, 85 and 20) and their devastating effects on Intown neighborhoods, GDOT's attempts to build new controlled-access arterial routes inside of the Perimeter were largely thwarted by a public backlash against continued freeway construction ITP led by the Freeway Revolts of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.

Because of the MARTA rail transit line that was constructed in its median that was a favorite with otherwise anti-superhighway transit activists and because of the determination of the real estate development community to push the project to fruition, the Georgia 400 Extension ITP of the early 1990's was the only exception to the lack of new freeway construction after the public backlash and freeway revolts of the 1960's-1980's... And even the GA 400 Extension ITP came with a very high political cost that eventually helped lead to Georgia Democrats falling completely out of political contention when the public revolted against the increasingly unpopular Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc freeway proposal of the late 1990's and early 2000's.

Because many area residents and local, regional and national environmental groups view much of the Atlanta metro area/region and North Georgia as being part of the heavily wooded foothills of the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian mountains region, it often can be exceedingly difficult (if not just outright impossible) for government (particularly at the state level) to proceed on large-scale road construction projects like the never-built ITP extensions of the Stone Mountain Freeway, I-675, and I-420 as well the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc.

(...National environment groups view the North Atlanta suburbs and exurbs as the last line of defense against the encroachment of heavy development on the beloved Blue Ridge/Southern Appalachian mountains wilderness region of North Georgia, Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee and have demonstrated that they are willing to fight tooth-and-nail to the death to keep new roads like the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc from being built... Something which further complicates any attempted to build new superhighways outside of the I-285 Perimeter in metro Atlanta and North Georgia.)

The Freeway Revolts against almost all continued freeway construction ITP during the 1960's, '70's and '80's pretty much assured that there would be no new large-scale road construction projects ITP after the completion of the ITP Georgia 400 Extension in 1993 and Freedom Parkway back in 2000...

...While the fierce public backlash and revolt against the proposed Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc highway back in the late '90's and early 2000's (and resulting massive political meltdown of the Democratic Party that it contributed heavily to) pretty much assured that new large-scale road construction projects OTP likely would be far and few between after the Turn of the Millennium.

Also, in regards to I-85... The state and the Feds likely would never agree to build a new alignment of I-85 just simply because the current alignment of I-85 runs directly past the world's busiest airport and directly and indirectly connects that facility with the central business districts (Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, etc) of a top-10 major metro area/region in Atlanta.

The state and Feds likely also would never agree to build a new alignment of I-85 through Intown West Atlanta because of the exceptional political difficulty of proposing to run a new freeway through predominantly black Intown neighborhoods like Bankhead, West Lake, Mozley Park, Westview and the S.W.A.T.S. ("South West Atlanta Too Strong").

I know that the lack of roadway infrastructure and the extreme reluctance to build new roadway infrastructure in the Atlanta area can be extremely frustrating for motorists, especially for someone like you who comes from a state like Texas where there seems to be very little hesitation to build new roadway infrastructure as might be needed.

But that is one of the quirks about living in metro Atlanta and North Georgia... The public just does not like or respond well to large-scale road construction proposals in North Georgia.

ITP and Intown residents take pride in fighting large-scale road construction projects tooth-and-nail and even to the death, if needed, while OTP residents will fiercely fight anything that they think might disturb or destroy their beloved North Georgia Blue Ridge/Southern Appalachian foothills scenery.

I know that there are lots of possible examples of irony with those lines of reasoning against new road construction, but that generally is the way it is in North Georgia.
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