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I don't follow. Getting 5,000 cars off the road each day isn't worth it? Yes, it's expensive, but it's in an area where transit really is the only option, and obviously this area is extremely important in a regional sense considering it contains the headquarters of the CDC, one of the most prestigious Universities in the South, and three major regional medical centers.
Getting 5,000 cars off the road is a great thing- but not at a cost of $200,000 per car. And if transit is "the only option" how are these people getting to work now? Sounds like cars are working just fine at the moment. Buy them each a Chevy Volt for $40k, or a Vespa scooter for $4k- we're talking about short commutes, so either one would work fine and reduce air pollution, and at a much lower cost.
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Originally Posted by shivtim
If I-75 really isn't ever crowded during that stretch (I find it a bit hard to believe that this part of I-75 doesn't ever have traffic congestion), then you may be right that the transit would have initial limited usefulness.
Then you obviously don't drive that route much. I-75 gets most of it's congestion from the trucks that are coming South in the morning and getting onto 285. The congestion is mostly around Delk Road. Once you get close to 285, it opens up, and there's little to no traffic until you get down onto the connector. If you have to drive to Cumberland to catch a train, it's not solving a problem.
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Originally Posted by shivtim
Keep in mind the transit runs both ways, so it will allow people across Fulton/Dekalb better transit access to the 30,000 jobs in Cumberland..
There's virtually no traffic heading North in the am/South in the pm, so the people in Fulton/Dekalb already have excellent access to the 30,000 jobs in Cumberland if they want them. Also bear in mind that those jobs aren't packed into three skyscrapers that would sit on top of the train station- they're spread out in campus settings. Once you got off the train, you'd still potentially be quite a ways from your office, so it's not the ideal scenario to take the train to work in Cumberland.
Stick to the facts. Who cares about MARTA's recommendation if that isn't what is on the ballot. Only $225 million is proposed for "I‐20 East Transit Corridor Investments." Hell, more than that is proposed for MARTA electrical rehab ($248 million). Heck, $90 million is proposed for MARTA escalator and elevator rehab. That sure sounds like a regional transportation issue that needs immediate attention . Oh wait... no. That sounds like something MARTA should fund themselves out of their operating budget.
Those are the facts, did you even read TIA final list of projects, or MARTA's website before you spout off with half truths? The $225 million can be combined with federal funds for the entire project. South DeKalb has asked DeKalb county commission to to set aside money from the 15% local money for the project to make it more competitive for federal funds.
MARTA is very restricted with the 50/50 funding put forth by the state of GA, that doesn't give them a dime. A lot of these upgraded transit projects are fishing for federal funds to help complete the full transit build-out.
Getting 5,000 cars off the road is a great thing- but not at a cost of $200,000 per car. And if transit is "the only option" how are these people getting to work now? Sounds like cars are working just fine at the moment. Buy them each a Chevy Volt for $40k, or a Vespa scooter for $4k- we're talking about short commutes, so either one would work fine and reduce air pollution, and at a much lower cost.
I said transit is the only option for reducing travel times to the area and increasing the amount of people that have access to the area. You're suggesting adding 5000 MORE cars to the already heavily congested area around Emory, when it is completely infeasible to expand the existing roads in the area? Where do these extra cars park? What happens when gas prices go up? In the case of an electric, who pays the electricity bill, and what about all of the pollution from the coal power plants providing the power? Who pays insurance and maintenance on the cars? What about the elderly, the young, and others who can't drive? Where are you going to find the political will to pass a plan like this? The whole "just buy them cars" idea is a tired conservative argument that has been rebuffed again and again.
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Originally Posted by BobKovacs
There's virtually no traffic heading North in the am/South in the pm, so the people in Fulton/Dekalb already have excellent access to the 30,000 jobs in Cumberland if they want them.
Why are you assuming people have cars and are able to drive? Many riders are transit-dependent, and currently have very limited access to Cobb.
I said transit is the only option for reducing travel times to the area and increasing the amount of people that have access to the area. You're suggesting adding 5000 MORE cars to the already heavily congested area around Emory, when it is completely infeasible to expand the existing roads in the area? Where do these extra cars park? What happens when gas prices go up? In the case of an electric, who pays the electricity bill, and what about all of the pollution from the coal power plants providing the power? Who pays insurance and maintenance on the cars? What about the elderly, the young, and others who can't drive? Where are you going to find the political will to pass a plan like this? The whole "just buy them cars" idea is a tired conservative argument that has been rebuffed again and again.
No- you said that we'd be taking 5,000 cars off the road- I'm not adding 5,000 cars, I'm just replacing the ones you said are going to be replaced by rail. And now you're throwing the "elderly, yound and others who can't drive" into the mix- so which is it- are we taking 5,000 cars off the road with this $1 billion line that's going to have 5,300 riders, or are we serving some new population of people that doesn't currently travel the Clifton corridor? $200k/rider is pretty steep in either scenario.
Those are the facts, did you even read TIA final list of projects, or MARTA's website before you spout off with half truths?
Son, read the list of projects (see bottom quote taken directly from the Project Fact Sheet) to see how the $225 million is allocated. I don't care what MARTA hopes to do with the possibility of maybe kinda getting some federal matching funds. I deal with facts, not fluffy proposals contingent on a series of dominoes falling correctly in order for the plan to come to fruition.
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The $225 million can be combined with federal funds for the entire project. South DeKalb has asked DeKalb county commission to to set aside money from the 15% local money for the project to make it more competitive for federal funds.
So there isn't a firm plan as part of the TSPLOST vote to pay for the entire expansion, just a wishy-washy "we kinda want to do this but we don't have a firm plan to get it done." Just because it can be combined with federal funds, it doesn't mean it will. In case you didn't know the country is in a bad fiscal situation. A lot of those federal hand outs are going to start drying up quickly and banking on having federal funding is a foolish strategy.
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MARTA is very restricted with the 50/50 funding put forth by the state of GA, that doesn't give them a dime. A lot of these upgraded transit projects are fishing for federal funds to help complete the full transit build-out.
Don't care and that is irrelevant to the TSPLOST.
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This project uses TIA funds to start a phased implementation of investments in the I‐20 East Corridor by constructing future stations of a fixed guideway system as identified through the long‐term vision for the corridor of providing fixed guideway service between the Mall at Stonecrest and Central Atlanta.**Funding is provided for park & ride / transit center infrastructure investment and bus transit operations designed to increase transit market share.**Bus services are anticipated to include all day services between the transit centers and Downtown Atlanta, Perimeter Center, Cumberland, and the Airport employment centers to increase the employment opportunities available to residents of South DeKalb and expand the workforce available to employers in Fulton, Clayton, Cobb and DeKalb counties.** Services will be provided for at least 18 hours a day with a 15 minute peak and 30 minute off peak initially.**Services will be adjusted once in place to meet demand and performance standards.**ARC regional travel demand model calculations indicate the project will result in 11,400 daily transit boardings along the corridor by 2025.**Contingent upon additional funding, this project may also provide a fixed guideway rail service along a route generally parallel to I‐20 and connecting in with the existing MARTA system either in downtown Atlanta or at the Indian Creek station.**The total cost of the project is $225,000,000, which will be entirely funded under TIA.
It is giving people choices in commuting to one of DeKalb county largest employment center. That corridor is extremely congested, buses get caught in traffic. Having LRT connect Lindbergh to avondale will enable people from north Fulton, gwinnet, buckhead, and south DeKalb to use transit to reach the CDC and Emory.
Table 2 is employment within 3 miles of the center of the area. For example, if you draw a 3 mile circle around downtown Atlanta, there are more than 200,000 jobs. This overlaps with the 3-mile circle around Midtown, which explains the apparent discrepency. This type of metric allows for more of a geographic apples to apples comparison. So the larger "downtown Atlanta" area has just over 200,000 jobs, while the larger "Cumberland" area has a little less than 100,000 jobs.
The numbers I cited were the number of jobs completely within the regional employment center, as defined by the ARC. So downtown Atlanta proper has 110,000 jobs, Midtown has about 45,000 jobs, Perimeter about 70,000 jobs, Norcross 25,000, and so forth.
By either metric, the central downtown/midtown area of Atlanta is easily the largest job center in the region, and also easily the highest residential density of any job center in the region.
This matches the spreadsheet you posted. If you add up lines 2-5 on the "census tract" tab, you get 103,000 jobs for the census tracts of downtown Atlanta. This also matches the number in cell B6 of the "superdistrict" tab. Using census tracts is a slightly different geographical area, but at least for downtown Atlanta it gets a very similar number to ARC's definition as a regional employment center. The spreadsheet also shows that across the entire sprawling 20 county region, about a third of jobs are located in Fulton county alone.
I agree that Fulton County has by far the largest number of jobs if you include Hartsfield, North Fulton, the CBD, Sandy Springs, Buckhead, Roswell, etc.
However, that doesn't mean all or even most of those people are working downtown. If you add up the city's commercial core (Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead), you have 284,747 jobs.
That equals 43% of Fulton jobs, and 13% of jobs in the ten county region as a whole.
But compare that to some of the major OTP employment centers. If you take Central and North Gwinnett, Sandy Springs, Norcross, Cumberland, NW Cobb and Marietta, that's 549,262 jobs, or about 25% of the region as a whole.
That's not to say the COA's commercial core doesn't have a lot of jobs. It certainly does, and they are in a compact area. However, the vast majority of Atlanta jobs are outside the city. The hub and spoke model centered on downtown really doesn't address where people live and work these days.
It is giving people choices in commuting to one of DeKalb county largest employment center. That corridor is extremely congested, buses get caught in traffic. Having LRT connect Lindbergh to avondale will enable people from north Fulton, gwinnet, buckhead, and south DeKalb to use transit to reach the CDC and Emory.
Buses already provide that service. Spend $20 million to buy an additional 40 buses. Set aside another $20 million to pay their operating costs for the next couple of decades. Problem solved.
18 years from now, MARTA expects a nearly $1 billion investment to yield just 5,300 new transit riders. That is absurd. How do you have any faith in an organization that thinks that is a good investment?
BobKovacs, the Clifton rail line would take the equivalent of 5,000 cars of the road. That doesn't mean it would physically magically make cars vanish. Jobs are increasing in this employment center, and we need a way to get people to these jobs. Expanding roads and adding simply isn't feasible. The Clifton Corridor is explected to add 47,000 jobs and 30,000 additional residents by 2030. How will these people travel? Emory University is the third largest employer in the entire region (only Delta and Walmart employ more), and it's growing. Without adding transit to this area, we will be severly hampering the economic growth of the region.
I don't understand what you're talking about when you say "I'm not adding 5,000 cars - I'm just replacing the ones you said are going to be replaced by rail." Your plan was literally to buy 5,000 cars for people. How is that not adding more cars to the road? It doesn't make any sense.
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