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The vast majority of the 'tourists' going to the MLK site is students from schools in METRO Atlanta and surrounding states.
Last time I was there I saw a lot of tourist. Some from foreign countries, but the vast majority was American tourist. Its a very nice museum and setup, its a living history museum with people living in homes and conducting business inside the national historic site.
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Look at this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Atlan...172.47,,0,5.61 Who would honestly think this is in a downtown area?? I bet you'd never find something like this in NYC, SF, or Chicago...even D.C. Pathetic, but the same excuse: 'But they built after WW2!!!' will come up. They still had the opportunity to build zero lot development.
I think GSU bought that land for a new student residential tower?
Let's all be real for a sec, I favor HRT but we don't need HRT stations EVERYWHERE because ATL just isn't dense enough. Emory.. yes, up 400.. yes, Cumberland.. yes, I-20 East.. yes, Fulton Ind Blvd.. yes and there are others. Gwinnett of course and even in Clayton. Outside of that there aren't really other either dense or commuter heavy locations that could support it. But for a streetcar rail system we can support it. That is why the Beltline is so important and so is the other proposed streetcars.
That's the idea I was proposing in the thread about the Peachtree streetcar before it got closed down.
A streetcar is excellent for closing the "last mile" in areas that are already heavily developed and populated. The Peachtree corridor, from Midtown through Buckhead, is an ideal location. As I indicated earlier, you don't even have to have a continuous network to start with. A few miles of streetcar track here and there will go a long way toward reducing auto dependency, especially if we leverage connections to MARTA and the Beltline.
I'd start with the low hanging fruit -- for instance, it would be easy to start a line at the Bennett Street Beltline connection, and take it down Peachtree through south Buckhead. It could then connect with the Arts Center station, and ideally cruise on over to Atlantic Station. You'd be linking all those dense residential neighborhoods and commercial areas in south Buckhead with Midtown and Atlantic station, as well as providing mobility within south Buckhead itself.
Another easy one is the Lenox MARTA station to the Buckhead Village/Garden Hills area. That's only about 3 miles but you've got tons of residents, hotels, shopping and two MARTA stations.
You simply add another car, it add capacity. With buses you'd have to pay another driver, plus benefits, OT, etc.
Adding cars has nothing to do with frequency. For the same cost, you can have a bus come three times as often as a streetcar (without the major capital expenses of the streetcar). If there are literally people bursting out of the doors on 3-car street cars running at 3 minute headways, then the city needs to be focused on building a real, separate grade light rail or subway line (do you think the streetcar will have people bursting out of the doors, btw?). It shouldn't be wasting its time with a streetcar that's ultimately not getting people anywhere faster than a bus.
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Originally Posted by cqholt
Streetcars are providing the last mile connection. You have to understand that in the South there is a stigma about riding buses. Demand riders would choose streetcar, or any other rail-based transit, over a bus even if they followed the same route.
Well, it's the cart before the horse, if you ask me. Transit does not generate its own demand (especially symbolic transit). For people to give up driving, the benefits of transit have to substantially outweigh the costs of driving. I just don't see that being the case in Atlanta, particularly considering that a lot of people still opt to drive in cities with dense downtown cores. I don't blame Atlanta for building a streetcar if Uncle Sam is footing the bill, but as a practical matter, I don't think streetcars are very useful. But I think people have fallen so in love with that particular mode of transit that there's really not much changing their minds on it. They're more in love with the tool than the project the tool is supposed to be building.
You don't need a streetcar to accomplish either goal. Baltimore has a transit network centered largely around buses. DC had a transit network based almost exclusively on buses until the opening of Metro in 1976. And that was with much higher densities than Atlanta has ever had.
Ok, so if bus was doing so well in DC why did they even bother to build the rail system? And we can't compare Baltimore to ATL because Baltimore's system doesn't have nearly as much ridership as ATL when you look at rail and bus ridership even though Baltimore is a bigger city (not bigger Metro area though unless you look at only Fulton and Dekalb). I wonder why Baltimore, a larger city and way more dense than ATL, has less ridership? I wonder if it has anything to do with more rail within the service areas?
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
You must really think streetcars are magical. They don't run any faster than buses do. They can't maneuver like buses can. And you ultimately need more of them to run the same headways as buses. Who cares if a streetcar has more capacity than a bus if it only comes every 15 minutes during rush hour? For every streetcar you buy, you could potentially purchase three buses, thereby cutting headways by 2/3rds. That's rapid transit. Not waiting on a prettier form of transportation that's not faster.
No, I actually am not a hugh fan of streetcars, but I do understand their importance. The downtown streetcar isn't about getting from Edgewood to Centennial faster it's about connecting both areas and developing them into denser more lively areas and the streetcar will be a connector for both to MARTA HRT. It's about eventually connecting the city with other streetcar/LRT projects and providing an investment in transit that will be more favored and supported and leave a more lasting mark than running a bus. Do you remember MARTA's tourist routes: bus 100 and 101. They ran for a year or two and were yanked. Even though you can stop streetcars it's less likely because of the investment made and more will be willing to keep that form of transit running and let other bus routes go. Who cars if they can't maneuver like buses because most have their own lanes and signal light priority anyway, which will probably be the case even with the downtown streetcar.
And whats the point of having more buses coming faster if they just clog the roads more? Have you noticed they have taken all the express buses in downtown off Peachtree. Why? Because all the buses were clogging the roads. Heck, I'll give you some NYC examples since your location shows Brooklyn. In Queens where my family is from, Hillside Ave and Francis Lewis Blvd has about 5 bus routes (not including the LI bus, well the NICE bus now) and the streets are always jammed packed with 3 and 4 buses at a time approaching the stop and most of the buses running about 3 to 7 minutes apart. Wouldn't it be smarter to just extend the F train from 179th to Francis Lewis? Look at the M15 on Second Ave; that bus comes every 90 seconds and they use articulated buses and that still isn't good enough. Now because NYC is much more dense they are now building HRT service underground. Now this is HRT transit but again we know ATL isn't as dense as NYC so our rail will be SC or LRT in most intown areas. Rail 1/Bus NONE!
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
That's not an inherent feature of a streetcar. If you gave a bus a dedicated lane, it wouldn't get stuck in traffic either.
You missed the whole point; most planners aren't going to chose to give a bus a dedicated lane over a rail system. Look at MARTA's BRT service now. The have small dedicated lanes at intersections only to let the bus go first but other than that the bus still rides with traffic. If there was a SC or LRT there would be a dedicated lane or median where the trains would run the entire length of Memorial and only have to slowdown at intersections to go through with their priority lighting.
I do agree with Bajan in some ways. The streetcars are being so overhyped right now. I'd much rather have more HRT lines then Street car lines. Problem is, areas are so developed at this point that it's hard to put in another subway line.
I don't see that as being the problem. They're building a subway line in Manhattan right now and that's obviously much denser than Atlanta. The real problem in the short-term is $$$. And the other problem is that a lot of people may just drive all around the subway system because driving is faster and more convenient.
As Donald Shoup said in L.A. Magazine:
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L.A. has the highest density of parking spaces in the world. “You can’t have the number of cars we have in L.A. without our parking lots,” says Shoup. “And you can never create urban density with the parking lots we’ve built.” They make driving too easy.
As much as some people may want to believe that people will get all giddy at the prospect of riding trains, most people will not if it's easy to drive. If I can park at work, the Cheesecake Factory and the Cobb County Galleria for free, why would I ever take transit. It makes even less sense to take transit because I can't tailor my route to my specific commuting needs. Transit works in very structurally dense cities because there's literally no space for cars, and the little space that does exists carries a premium. Once you're staring down the barrel of $36 per day parking fees, the decision to take transit becomes a lot easier.
Adding cars has nothing to do with frequency. For the same cost, you can have a bus come three times as often as a streetcar (without the major capital expenses of the streetcar). If there are literally people bursting out of the doors on 3-car street cars running at 3 minute headways, then the city needs to be focused on building a real, separate grade light rail or subway line (do you think the streetcar will have people bursting out of the doors, btw?). It shouldn't be wasting its time with a streetcar that's ultimately not getting people anywhere faster than a bus.
Well, it's the cart before the horse, if you ask me. Transit does not generate its own demand (especially symbolic transit). For people to give up driving, the benefits of transit have to substantially outweigh the costs of driving. I just don't see that being the case in Atlanta, particularly considering that a lot of people still opt to drive in cities with dense downtown cores. I don't blame Atlanta for building a streetcar if Uncle Sam is footing the bill, but as a practical matter, I don't think streetcars are very useful. But I think people have fallen so in love with that particular mode of transit that there's really not much changing their minds on it. They're more in love with the tool than the project the tool is supposed to be building.
In the long run, buses are most costly than streetcars. Buses not last a long, tires, fuel, and if more capacity is needed more drivers had to be hired or OT paid. Streetcars last longer, look at the PCC running in Philly and SF, require less maintenance, and don't need extra operators for more capacity, simply add a car.
Its not the horse before the car. If you knew anything about transit in Atlanta, one of the biggest concerns is last mile connectivity. People can ride MARTA, but its that last 2-4 miles from the station to office, home, restaurant, venue, etc.
Uncle Sam is always footing the bill. He's done it for 60 years with freeways and even today the gas tax doesn't cover maintenance on existing roads.
I do agree with Bajan in some ways. The streetcars are being so overhyped right now. I'd much rather have more HRT lines then Street car lines. Problem is, areas are so developed at this point that it's hard to put in another subway line. I have this bad feeling that the streetcar will be popular for the first few months, then it'll be like the MARTA buses, empty after a certain time riding on Peachtree Str. I have a bad feeling it will fail in the longer run. Notice how NYC does not have any streetcars. They have such an extensive subway/HRT system, there are no need for streetcars. I just don't think that any tourists are going between donntown and the O4W/Marta Luther King area. The vast majority of the 'tourists' going to the MLK site is students from schools in METRO Atlanta and surrounding states.
Also, i love Bajan for spelling out the truth. Atlanta has soooo many parking lots in Downtown. It's insane how you can almost park in front of your workplace tower in what is supposed to be the densest part of the city. Manhattan only has parking lots on the outer fringes of Midtown and even, they are extremely limited and generally small. Atlanta has suburban like development within it's downtown area lol.
Look at this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Atlan...172.47,,0,5.61 Who would honestly think this is in a downtown area?? I bet you'd never find something like this in NYC, SF, or Chicago...even D.C. Pathetic, but the same excuse: 'But they built after WW2!!!' will come up. They still had the opportunity to build zero lot development.
It's sad that more of Atlanta isn't modeled after Peachtree Str. in between Ellis and Baker...by far the best and most densiest part of the city. One of the only impressive areas...the others being Fairly Poplar and Marietta St.
Another apples and oranges comparison. The fact is that Atlanta was built during a time when cars were king and parking lots and decks were wanted. So we should tear down building just to rebuild them without parking decks? The fact is NYC and other big cites were build when walking and taking transit was king and cars weren't. Most newer cities have learned and are focused on building denser areas that are more transit and pedestrian friendly. But the fact is they will have decks. Even all the development planned for MARTA stations. Why? Because this is still a car dominated area and the areas around all this dense development a lot of times is still going to be very non dense. A lot of ATL is not dense and people are going to drive. It's a shame you have your location as "Atlanta sadly" because there are a lot of people that would love to take your place and not all of them are focused on driving everywhere.
Another apples and oranges comparison. The fact is that Atlanta was built during a time when cars were king and parking lots and decks were wanted. So we should tear down building just to rebuild them without parking decks? The fact is NYC and other big cites were build when walking and taking transit was king and cars weren't. Most newer cities have learned and are focused on building denser areas that are more transit and pedestrian friendly. But the fact is they will have decks. Even all the development planned for MARTA stations. Why? Because this is still a car dominated area and the areas around all this dense development a lot of times is still going to be very non dense. A lot of ATL is not dense and people are going to drive. It's a shame you have your location as "Atlanta sadly" because there are a lot of people that would love to take your place and not all of them are focused on driving everywhere.
If they live in NYC, D.C.,SF, LA, or Chicago, then let's switcheroo. I need to start a new life. Really tired of being here. That's my goal after graduating.
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