Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Georgia > Atlanta
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 12-13-2012, 02:09 PM
 
348 posts, read 434,480 times
Reputation: 260

Advertisements

http://digitalcollections.library.gs...id/219/rec/128

Dang, they had vision back then. I know Atlanta was no where near the size it is now and they still had trains in the burbs. What happened to the vision? One of the main things that caught my eye was that they stated it should be "grade separated" and not this stupid mess of having your commuter trains mixed in with traffic. Now, I'm all for the Beltline and the modern street cars. I'm more so talking about the light rail line from Marietta to Midtown and the one that was planned for Gwinnett. Even the Emory line light rail. These need to be heavy rail so that they don't get slowed down by traffic. Dang ATL, some of these anti-transit folks messed it up for us today and still are!!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 12-13-2012, 02:21 PM
 
Location: Kirkwood
23,726 posts, read 24,866,786 times
Reputation: 5703
Quote:
Originally Posted by bfarley30 View Post
http://digitalcollections.library.gs...id/219/rec/128

Dang, they had vision back then. I know Atlanta was no where near the size it is now and they still had trains in the burbs. What happened to the vision? One of the main things that caught my eye was that they stated it should be "grade separated" and not this stupid mess of having your commuter trains mixed in with traffic. Now, I'm all for the Beltline and the modern street cars. I'm more so talking about the light rail line from Marietta to Midtown and the one that was planned for Gwinnett. Even the Emory line light rail. These need to be heavy rail so that they don't get slowed down by traffic. Dang ATL, some of these anti-transit folks messed it up for us today and still are!!
I love the futuristic 1960's graphics on the reports.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 02:23 PM
 
Location: I-20 from Atlanta to Augusta
1,327 posts, read 1,912,498 times
Reputation: 607
Wow imagine if the city had that freeway layout.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 02:26 PM
 
Location: Kirkwood
23,726 posts, read 24,866,786 times
Reputation: 5703
Quote:
Wow imagine if the city had that freeway layout.
It would look like LA and be horrible. The current freeways did enough to destroy vibrant, urban neighborhoods, building more would have killed intown Atlanta. That's why there is only 1 crosstown freeway N-S and E-W.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 02:30 PM
 
10,974 posts, read 10,875,645 times
Reputation: 3435
For those that are not up on the Atlanta Freeway revolts: Atlanta freeway revolts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 03:28 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
3,573 posts, read 5,309,880 times
Reputation: 2396
Yikes. The NIMBYs have a lot of power.

Too bad no one advocated in any meaningful way to stop the I-75/85 connector from essentially destroying the beauty of Auburn Ave.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 04:34 PM
 
32,026 posts, read 36,788,671 times
Reputation: 13311
Quote:
Originally Posted by AcidSnake View Post
Yikes. The NIMBYs have a lot of power.

Too bad no one advocated in any meaningful way to stop the I-75/85 connector from essentially destroying the beauty of Auburn Ave.
So true. Then they turned around and ran it smack dab through the middle of Midtown. A couple of decades later they ram another freeway right through the heart of Buckhead.

Once the government decides it's going to do something the little man has had it.

Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 04:56 PM
 
Location: City of Trees
1,062 posts, read 1,218,082 times
Reputation: 595
Not sure if this was in the report, but check it out:

Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 05:57 PM
 
32,026 posts, read 36,788,671 times
Reputation: 13311
Quote:
Originally Posted by bfarley30 View Post
http://digitalcollections.library.gs...id/219/rec/128

Dang, they had vision back then. I know Atlanta was no where near the size it is now and they still had trains in the burbs. What happened to the vision? One of the main things that caught my eye was that they stated it should be "grade separated" and not this stupid mess of having your commuter trains mixed in with traffic. Now, I'm all for the Beltline and the modern street cars. I'm more so talking about the light rail line from Marietta to Midtown and the one that was planned for Gwinnett. Even the Emory line light rail. These need to be heavy rail so that they don't get slowed down by traffic. Dang ATL, some of these anti-transit folks messed it up for us today and still are!!
I think we did a pretty good job of getting this done. We got nearly all those proposed freeways built, and more.

They envisioned 60 miles of rail and we've built 48 of them. We taken additional steps with the streetcar and the Beltline. There has really been no way to push rail into Cobb or Gwinnett, in that they have steadfastly opposed it.

Of course it was much easier to plan a transit system back then. In 1960 Atlanta was considerably denser than it is now, and downtown was still the business hub. As we've dispersed into a more decentralized, lower density model it's difficult to make rail work on a large scale.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-13-2012, 10:01 PM
 
Location: Savannah GA
13,709 posts, read 21,924,564 times
Reputation: 10227
I can't open the report on my iPhone, but don't really need to to know that this is typical of many of the "pie-in-the-sky" visions of the future that were common during that era. During the post-WWII boom of the 1950s and 1960s there was lots of "Jetsons" type speculation about the future, practically NONE of it grounded in reality. We hadn't even figured out how to put a man on the moon yet for crying out loud, but we were going to turn all of America's cities into these futuristic "la-la" lands? I always laugh looking at the original planning vision for Peachtree City, for example. According to the 1960 renderings, it was supposed to be a fully self-contained city by now with a population between 80,000-100,000 people and buildings that look oddly like Disney's Tomorrowland!

These old documents are fun to look at and speculate on, but hardly worth crying over.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Georgia > Atlanta

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:31 PM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top