GT Releases 25 Year Vision of Downtown Atlanta with Autonomous Cars, Removed Parking, Vibrancy (Mitchell: apartments, to rent)

[jsvh]

https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/55814

Some key pieces in the 123 page document:

• Dedicated lanes & streets for autonomous cars
• Replacing streetcars with autonomous transportation
• Converting streets to two-way traffic
• Complete streets and activating storefronts
• Fill in empty lots
• New buildings with little / no parking
• 132% population increase by 2040

Four "Future Neighborhoods":

• South Downtown - Arts District
• Fairlie Poplar - Bike-Oriented Development
• Five Points - Forest in the City
• Baker Street - Eco-District

[fourthwarden]

I need to actually read over it, but my initial sense is to be weary of their advice to ignore streetcars in favor of autonomous vehicles, while simultaneously predicting density, bikability, and walkability.
Autonomous cars are coming fast, and will change a LOT of things, don't misunderstand me, but there are some things they won't do well. The biggest example is moving massive amounts of people through dense areas.

Transit has the advantage of moving lots of people with relatively little street room. So, the average sedan can carry 5 people (maybe 6 if you make it a pair of benches), and is roughly 10.5 ft long. The articulated MARTA buses are 60ft, and can carry up to 120. The Streetcars are 80 ft, and can carry 195. That means that, for the same amount of road space, a bus can carry 3.5 times as many people, and a streetcar can carry 4.3 times as many people as the cars. That's assuming they were bumper to bumper, which doesn't allow any actual safe spacing.

At a certain density, the problem becomes one of how you're best using your available road space. This is especially true if you have decent commuter rail and bus networks in place as well, which operate on the same notion, and would drop large groups of people off in the core all at once anyway.

In a dedicated lane, with decent frequency, I would be surprised if transit didn't come out on top for moving more people per hour. Granted, that's assuming lots of trains and buses per hour, but I don't think that'd be too terrible a thing to get done.

[jsvh]

I agree. Transit will still have a role to play, probably even a larger role. Density will increase as all the parking lots go away and urban living improves.

The thing is transit will blur with autonomus vehicles. It is already happening with UberPool. The buses and trams will be autonoums. Your trip will be syncronized and timed. Through dense areas sharing a vehicle with multiple people within its own dedicated RoW will be a nessity. You will then have your next vehcile waiting to transfer to when you arrive at the station.

[Sualpine]

Disgusting.

What to do is not theoretical.

New York exists.
London exists.
Tokyo exists.

[HayateWind]

I think it's interesting, but I think this report's practicality is severely limited by a couple of things:

It doesn't anticipate future capacity increases in transit in and around the area, like commuter rail, BRT, even MARTA expansions of any sort. It assumes "status quo" development in that regard and I swear if Atlanta doesn't have ONE communter rail line running downtown by 2040, we're certainly not going to have anything of what they're proposing.

I also think it's really, really near sighted to have the entire plan hinge around the eventual preference for "Robotaxis" for most personal transportation needs. I think it's laughable that someone is going to pay $2.50 (really, $2.50??) to go 18 miles as they so claim in these cars, and I think that if they were to proliferate, it would be much, much higher than that to compensate for demand. Installing AV lanes will just exacerbate the problem because it just becomes another reason that this sort of technology would become a premium item used by the city's premium class.

Would that sort of development pattern encourage density? Maybe. But I think that in the end we would have a lot of the same problems we have today, simply because you can't expect a metro twice the size of Greater London to embrace automated taxis?

[JMatl]

Originally Posted by Sualpine

Disgusting.

Totally predictable.

What to do is not theoretical.

LOL!

New York exists.
London exists.
Tokyo exists.

And?

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/55814

Some key pieces in the 123 page document:

• Dedicated lanes & streets for autonomous cars
• Replacing streetcars with autonomous transportation
• Converting streets to two-way traffic
• Complete streets and activating storefronts
• Fill in empty lots
• New buildings with little / no parking
• 132% population increase by 2040

Four "Future Neighborhoods":

• South Downtown - Arts District
• Fairlie Poplar - Bike-Oriented Development
• Five Points - Forest in the City
• Baker Street - Eco-District

Seems pretty neat. I think the idea that much of this will happen within 25 years is pretty pie-in-the-sky, but good on them if they can do even a quarter of it.


I am curious though about all the one-way to two-way conversions and how that makes things safer and more efficient.

[primaltech]

I'm sure Uber will continue to be more and more popular, and I'm sure autonomous vehicle tech will get better and better, and become more widespread. And I'm sure the transit situation will get better as well.

However, IMO none of that has to do with how to actually fix Downtown Atlanta, at all. (Or Atlanta in general, for that matter.) Here's how:

1. Eliminate all surface parking in the city. Period. Replace all of it with human scale buildings. Also there should be no dead or unused or undeveloped or empty anything, most especially anything near the Downtown core area. (Except parks and beautification/green space, of course.) Density, density, density is needed- and at actual human scale.

2. Stop building new stand-alone above-ground parking decks, and only keep the ones that look decent or are integrated with their surroundings well, and tear down any atrocious eyesore ones. Replace all of it with human scale buildings.

3. Put any and all new parking under the surface and totally out of sight, or integrated (tastefully) into the base of buildings, and in a way that doesn't kill the street interaction, with ground level retail.

4. Emphasize the pedestrian experience, in every possible way. Can't stress this enough. Wide sidewalks everywhere, not just on Peachtree St. Reduce lane counts as necessary to accomplish this.

5. Streets like Courtland and Piedmont and Spring and Ted Turner, are more like highways right now. Need to convert all or most of the main one-way corridors, to two-way. As well as any other traffic calming measures, anything that emphasizes cars driving slower through the city, which makes it safer for everyone, including motorists.

6. Downtown needs residential, residential, residential, residential, residential. Also, it needs supporting restaurants and retail, lining every street, that justifies the residential and makes it an attractive and desirable place to live.

7. Ditch the emphasis on tourism. The tourism will come naturally, if the city is worth being a tourist in. Instead of focusing on staged showroom pieces like Centennial Olympic Park, make the whole area desirable, so that you can walk in any direction from that park, or from Peachtree St, or whever, and enjoy wherever you end up. Absolutely must get away from the sheltered island effect that has plagued Atlanta, where you drive to a location, park there and enjoy that location. The city should act and feel like much more of an organic big thing.

8. Pour money and wealth and gentrification into the south side of everything. The poor south side. People don't really venture or walk south of Five Points for safety and other reasons, and that eliminates half the city. And that will all also come down to residential, retail, and restaurants. Mitchell St for example could be THE hip place to be, if there was stuff to do and see and eat and hang out and go to shows, and if there was a ton of apartments to rent and condos to buy.

9. Break up the huge super blocks with new streets, especially on the west side of Downtown. The grid in Downtown is awesome, but it could be better.

10. Cap over the Connector in at least 2 places - 'The Stitch' to the north, and the Capitol Green/Liberty Plaza block between MLK and Memorial. The Georgia State Capitol should be the center and centerpiece of pedestrian friendliness, not parking and freeways.

[jsvh]

Nailed it primaltech

[arjay57]

How about putting a moratorium on new building in Midtown? Much of Midtown's growth has come at the expense of its southern neighbor, downtown.

If this is done, it should be in conjunction with many of the measures suggested in primaltech's post above.