Why doesn't MARTA recieve state funding?? (Atlanta, Macon: rental car, rental, mover)

[southgeorgia]

Originally Posted by PeteyNice

That isn't true at all. Atlanta metro subsidizes the rest of the state. We pay much more in taxes to the state than we get back.

you didn't understand the context of my post.


i said "me". not the rest of the state; as in, "i pay a lot of taxes, have fun spending it".

[atlantagreg30127]

Ok folks - let's spend less time explaining who really meant what, yadda yadda and get back to the topic at hand. If there's nothing NEW to add to the discussion I can close things up so new stuff can have space.

[luckysnap]

I love public transportation, however I was threatened once at the Hightower station. I will still ride Marta, but they need many more police officers and public bathrooms.

[B Wagner]

I have written about this before but people who have not read it here it is again. Yes, Atlanta would probably be better with a transit system completely in place. That said, let’s talk about the history of MARTA in the Atlanta area and why metro Atlanta doesn’t want anything to do with MARTA.
When they started MARTA back in the 70’s Atlanta’s government had their hands in the pie. The political system here was corrupt and there were a lot of contracts that were awarded to friends of friends and the good ol’ boy network was alive and well. In the 1st year the contract for the manufacturing of the train cars was awarded to a cousin of a city official that owned or was part owner of the company in Italy where the cars were manufactured. After they supplied the first trains and replacement trains, within a year they went out of business and took off, leaving MARTA with broken down train cars and no parts or supplier for replacement cars or parts.
There was a lot of property that was done the good ol’ boy way also for MARTA to locate its stations. About this time they were awarding airport contracts and everybody was making money off all this. I won’t get into that here; that’s a whole other story.
It was decided that the rail would run down the old Southern Railway line through East Point and College Park to the airport. Both East Point and College Park had very big business thoroughfares, with business up and down Hwy. 29 and were very prosperous. In this construction MARTA destroyed those two cities. The construction bogged down all business and drove them all to other places or out of business altogether. Both cities went downhill over a decade. People moved away and both have never been the same. Both cities are just now are getting rebuilt. The West End side of town has never recovered from this construction. It took years longer and had cost overruns that were enormous.
MARTA was always over budget and every time they ran out of money they looked to put in another line to somewhere and drain that area’s money. They marched into Dekalb and built there. They looked to Gwinnett and to Cobb and have been turned down a half dozen times by both. Recently the two counties have opened up there own bus services to service MARTA and help the system work for their counties.
The City of Atlanta and the Fulton County government is the reason that the people in the burbs don’t want anything to do with MARTA. It has been corrupt and mishandled MARTA from its inception.
For all of you who have moved here from another state and want MARTA to get around, I don’t see it happing here unless they start another independent system to hook up with MARTA at existing stations like Alpharetta or the Airport.
There has been talk recently about running a rail line to Chattanooga on the northwest side and down to Lovejoy on the southeast side, but people here still remember the problems that came with MARTA and really don’t want them again.
Atlanta has no natural boundaries and will continue to sprawl out. It will continue out to the coast on the east and as far north as Chattanooga and as far south as Macon in the coming decades. Atlanta could use another MARTA expansion and another perimeter outer belt highway to open up things.

[RZaakir]

Very interesting B Wagner. To hear some people talk, you'd think that corruption in Atlanta city government was a new thing. You'd also think that suburban redneck-types were the ones against its expansion. The parts about East Point, College Park, and West End are particularly fascinating.

[netdragon]

Originally Posted by B Wagner

Atlanta has no natural boundaries and will continue to sprawl out. It will continue out to the coast on the east and as far north as Chattanooga and as far south as Macon in the coming decades. Atlanta could use another MARTA expansion and another perimeter outer belt highway to open up things.

I agree with everything you said but this. The distance a car can commute in a day is the "natural" boundary until other activity centers grow up somewhat outside the influence of Atlanta traffic, and the gasoline price will go up again and traffic increase to shorten that distance. Cobb Galleria is too close to Atlanta to be a new activity center that can cause further sprawl. Kenessaw and Norcross are also too affected by Atlanta traffic to allow growth much further out. We are probably looking at cities like Cartersville and Newnan needing to develop into employment and activity centers before the next wave of expansion, though it won't be so tied to Atlanta. They are just tiny cities right now. Athens is probably the only close-by city that can grow to the point it causes any type of sprawl in the short term. Furthermore, most of that will probably be along the interstates, which are further and further apart as you move out from Atlanta, making it much less likely they will be filled in-between at greater distances.

If looking for further sprawl to be the incentive for rail expansion, I don't believe we'll see it. Rail expansion needs to be the incentive for smart growth going forward.

[netdragon]

All, I saw some interesting articles a few days ago on how Georgia doesn't have a spending problem -- it has a revenue problem (called a "structural deficit"). We actually underspend compared to most states and continue to cut, cut, cut, cut -- killing our services. We don't produce enough revenue because of overgenerous corporate tax incentives to lure corporations that further push our infrastructure to the limits. This just forces local state governments to fund things the government won't fund, so in the long-run taxes aren't really saved.

2009 Georgia General Assembly struggles with budget, gridlock | Atlanta | News & Views | News Feature

It mentioned we give over-sized tax incentives to corporations to lure them here, but don't think about the infrastructure improvements we'll need as a result.

Another article (can't find) mentioned Jekyll Island near Brunswick, where corporate tax incentives caused a rash of condos to be built but the infrastructure on the island couldn't support it, and funding had to be diverted to support it.

[AcidSnake]

Originally Posted by netdragon

All, I saw some interesting articles a few days ago on how Georgia doesn't have a spending problem -- it has a revenue problem (called a "structural deficit"). We actually underspend compared to most states and continue to cut, cut, cut, cut -- killing our services. We don't produce enough revenue because of overgenerous corporate tax incentives to lure corporations that further push our infrastructure to the limits. This just forces local state governments to fund things the government won't fund, so in the long-run taxes aren't really saved.

2009 Georgia General Assembly struggles with budget, gridlock | Atlanta | News & Views | News Feature

It mentioned we give over-sized tax incentives to corporations to lure them here, but don't think about the infrastructure improvements we'll need as a result.

Another article (can't find) mentioned Jekyll Island near Brunswick, where corporate tax incentives caused a rash of condos to be built but the infrastructure on the island couldn't support it, and funding had to be diverted to support it.

Interesting! We have corporate tax breaks on the one hand that's supposed to lure the big businesses to Georgia, while on the other hand it's the lack of tax money to pay for building and/or maintaining the infrastructure that would make the same big businesses think twice about moving to Georgia.

And somehow though, the common working man who already doesn't have much to begin with, will be regressively taxed even more in order to patch up that worn-out infrastructure. If that's what "conservatism" is supposed to do for us, you can have it...

[coolyfett]

Originally Posted by RZaakir

Very interesting B Wagner. To hear some people talk, you'd think that corruption in Atlanta city government was a new thing. You'd also think that suburban redneck-types were the ones against its expansion. The parts about East Point, College Park, and West End are particularly fascinating.

I don't think the South Line is the only one that runs parallel to other freight tracks. But I do notice that the cleanest stations are the ones north of Art Center Station....It like their janitors purposely clean some stations better than others.

[AcidSnake]

Originally Posted by coolyfett

I don't think the South Line is the only one that runs parallel to other freight tracks. But I do notice that the cleanest stations are the ones north of Art Center Station....It like their janitors purposely clean some stations better than others.

I thought I was the only who noticed... MARTA becomes practically a pedestrian paradise when you get to the Sandy Springs/North Springs stations. The MARTA police are everywhere in those stations. Everyone else is SOL...