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.
What does Houston and Dallas have to do with Atlanta's need for transit?
SO...
Your points are so pointless.
You sound like my child complaining she has to be in bed by 9pm, because "her friend's dad lets her stay up til 10pm"
"So... I'm not her dad, but I am yours and in THIS house, you need to be in bed by 9..."
That's what your point equates to.
It's called unfair expectations. You expect Atlanta to do one thing or else it's a failure but you don't have the same expectations for it's peers.
That show bias. It means the goal post are constantly being moved.
Malcontents complain about the new stadium because they're dumb.
Really? First, I would take exception to you characterizing opposition to a plan as being a "malcontent" in the first place. It's your job and responsibility as a citizen to scrutinize your government and to speak out when you feel they aren't doing things in your best interest. Now, as we've seen, that may end up getting your taxes audited or getting your email read, but that's on the people in gov't who should be in jail, not on me or you.
As for the substance of the issue, I don't have a problem with a private business like the Falcons building a new stadium. I have a problem with a private business like the Falcons putting its hand out for hundreds of millions of dollars from the govt.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the GA Dome, which was built just 20 years ago. It may not be the latest and greatest venue, but it's good enough. If the Falcons and the NFL feel that it's not, then they should foot the bill. The function of govt is not to subsidize private businesses or individuals. We have gotten so far off track, to where govt throws money at all kinds of things to which it should never been throwing it.
I feel ya... Honestly, somewhere deep inside, I feel this little sting when I travel around to all these other airports and see how nice and efficient they are... Then I think back to that horrible, whoever designed should have their toe-nails snatched out in public, tan and orange warehouse looking building we call Hartsfield and just feel low, and don't understand how come so many things in Atlanta are just so often... ......... eh....... I don't have a word for it. But just think about the exterior of the Georgia Dome, the exterior of Hartsfield, the interior and lack of windows of Hartsfield, the massive, flat, open parking lots everywhere, the grass & weeds growing up through the pavement of empty parking lots just blocks from the 0 mile point at the center of the city, the tragically under developed railroad gulch area and all its history that was destroyed just to make room for more parking, the (instead of building the freeway UP, or to go around) downtown connector that destroyed several historic neighborhoods just to cut straight through the city and break up the continuity of the city's core, the peach-pass lane actually causing MORE traffic, tragic mistake of creating a retardedly large parking lot over the site of the late Fulton County Stadium (when it could have been something much greater like a mixed use community (WITH underground parking) or a park or something. ANYTHING but just a flat parking lot)... ETC... The list can go on... And these are the things that acutally get done, while all the really good ideas get holes poked in them by Atlanta nay-sayers and pessimists until the ideas fold and never happen.
Wanna know what a World Class airport is like, fly to Minneapolis. Fly to Denver. Fly to Singapore...
...Good points, but even though seemingly not necessarily not though has been put into design standards and historic preservation and making structures visually and aesthetically pleasing in this town, things are improving and getting better and things will continue to improve and get better as more people continue to move back into the city.
Downtown obviously is not where we want it to be, but there are signs of significant improvement with the continuing expansion of Georgia State University and the impact it is having on the area as far as filling the streets of Downtown with tens-of-thousands of college-aged students on most days of the week, particularly the in the areas around Woodruff Park and Hurt Park.
We can also probably look for the continued growth and expansion of Georgia State University to have a positive impact on the Five Points area, the historic area of Fairie-Poplar and maybe even possibly into the Underground Atlanta over the long-term.
Things will also get better as continued high rates of population growth and the increasingly inability to further expand Metro Atlanta's effectively built-out and overcapacity road network forces the region to invest heavily in a dramatically-upgraded mass transit system that is centered on and anchored by heavy rail transit lines, not just light rail transit lines or commuter rail transit lines.
I know its frustrating because being a city and metro area that grew up in the automobile-dominated post-World War II era, like other Sunbelt cities, Atlanta's growth has been driven largely by automobile-oriented development.
But despite development patterns being designed almost exclusively (and often poorly) around the automobile, unlike most other Sunbelt cities, Atlanta has a surface road network that is viewed by many to be worse than many transit-dependent Northeastern cities.
That's because the Atlanta area is heavily-overdependent largely upon a surface road network that is made up mostly of two-lane roads converted out of ancient Indian trails with no real grid or pattern to speak of other than something that resembles a plate of spaghetti.
That's as opposed to other Sunbelt metros like Dallas or Houston whose road networks consist heavily of parallel 4-6 lane divided roads every mile or less apart on a north-south east-west grid pattern.
Because Atlanta seemed only to partially want future heavy growth (mainly from land spectulators and real estate developers) did not necessarily expect heavy growth or really want it as a whole like other Sunbelt cities (Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, etc), Atlanta did not plan for its future heavy growth (as is evidenced by the conspicuous lack of an adequate road or water infrastructure) and thus has developed rather randomly and even kind of haphazardly with growth being driven pretty much exclusively by where land spectulators and real estate developers think or know they can make the most money.
This is the case in Atlanta even moreso than in other low-density automobile-dominated Sunbelt city/metros because of the non-existent surface road pattern and the multitude of county governments (the urban core of Metro Atlanta consists of FIVE counties...something which is much more similar to transit-heavy Northeastern cities...while the urban cores of other major Sunbelt cities mostly consist of one built-out central county which has most of the metro areas population and a big chunk of its land area).
Atlanta is pretty much an East Coast city (lots of county governments covering the urban core of the metro, severely-limited road network, critically-pressing need for transit, etc) that has somewhat tried to be and thinks that it is similar to a Sunbelt city that is west of the Mississippi (Atlanta thinks that it is like an L.A., Houston, Dallas or Phoenix when it has a limited road infrastructure and a governmental setup that is similar to or worse than a Boston or a Philly or a D.C.).
Because society is changing and more people are desiring a more transit-oriented urban lifestyle, Metro Atlanta's conspicuous land spectulation and real estate development community is also changing and building more high-density development where it expects there to be more transit in the future.
With changing free market demands that require more high-density and transit connectivity, Atlanta, the ultimate free market region, will change and offer more and more high-density development in village-like areas developed around transit stops (think more Vinings Village or Marietta Square than Town Center Mall or Mall of Georgia moving forward).
Atlanta is changing for the better, just be patient and give it time and it will become a much more desirable place because it will have no choice.
It's called unfair expectations. You expect Atlanta to do one thing or else it's a failure but you don't have the same expectations for it's peers.
That show bias. It means the goal post are constantly being moved.
Okay, you want me to judge the peers also?
Houston SUCKS. Dallas sucks. Phoenix ought to be ashamed of itself for having not acted on a real rail system having grown to the 6th largest city. Etc... The list can go on...
But, in the end, I could care less about those other cities failures. Doesn't make things in Atlanta any better they are failing as well. It's the complaining teen defense.
Again, Those cities are not my hometown, but Atlanta is. I am only concerned with Atlanta...
Actually, I'm getting off subject. The POINT of this all is that when an idea is proposed in Atlanta, you can EXPECT it to be poked and picked apart by the majority until it just does not happen. I am surprised that a project moves forward far more than I'm surprised that a project fails here. Other places I've lived, I it seems to be slightly the other way around or more even. Things that I witness that get proposed in DC, more often than not, happen. And more often than not, the people and atmosphere is "good for DC, I think we should do it"
Doesn't seem like TOO much gets proposed in Phoenix, so I don't know, but then again, I don't care either.
San Diego seems to get a lot done also.
But in Atlanta............ Propose it today, it will fail in a landslide "no" vote in 20 years because people are afraid of paying a tax that was never going to happen... (slightly exaggerated, but it makes the point of my perspective).
Houston SUCKS. Dallas sucks. Phoenix ought to be ashamed of itself for having not acted on a real rail system having grown to the 6th largest city. Etc... The list can go on...
But, in the end, I could care less about those other cities failures. Doesn't make things in Atlanta any better they are failing as well. It's the complaining teen defense.
Again, Those cities are not my hometown, but Atlanta is. I am only concerned with Atlanta...
Actually, I'm getting off subject. The POINT of this all is that when an idea is proposed in Atlanta, you can EXPECT it to be poked and picked apart by the majority until it just does not happen. I am surprised that a project moves forward far more than I'm surprised that a project fails here. Other places I've lived, I it seems to be slightly the other way around or more even. Things that I witness that get proposed in DC, more often than not, happen. And more often than not, the people and atmosphere is "good for DC, I think we should do it"
Doesn't seem like TOO much gets proposed in Phoenix, so I don't know, but then again, I don't care either.
San Diego seems to get a lot done also.
But in Atlanta............ Propose it today, it will fail in a landslide "no" vote in 20 years because people are afraid of paying a tax that was never going to happen... (slightly exaggerated, but it makes the point of my perspective).
Those cities have good job markets and wages. How do they suck?
If Atlanta was this high tax liberal ideologue paradise companies would not be relocating here. The economic outlook for Michigan is brighter than Minnesota... hmmm... Look at Michigan vs. Minnesota leadership.
Because the poster sounds like a single issue voter and that one issue is: 'choo choo trains = happy'
Not so, it's not about trains. We were getting side tracked. Still are, cause here we go about to start talking about other cities... I'm going to just ignore the sidetracking now.
The point is, projects that fail in Atlanta because the people just aren't happy or satisfied with them. Obviously others share the same feeling of frustration with people that I do...
Houston SUCKS. Dallas sucks. Phoenix ought to be ashamed of itself for having not acted on a real rail system having grown to the 6th largest city. Etc... The list can go on...
But, in the end, I could care less about those other cities failures. Doesn't make things in Atlanta any better they are failing as well. It's the complaining teen defense.
Again, Those cities are not my hometown, but Atlanta is. I am only concerned with Atlanta...
Actually, I'm getting off subject. The POINT of this all is that when an idea is proposed in Atlanta, you can EXPECT it to be poked and picked apart by the majority until it just does not happen. I am surprised that a project moves forward far more than I'm surprised that a project fails here. Other places I've lived, I it seems to be slightly the other way around or more even. Things that I witness that get proposed in DC, more often than not, happen. And more often than not, the people and atmosphere is "good for DC, I think we should do it"
Doesn't seem like TOO much gets proposed in Phoenix, so I don't know, but then again, I don't care either.
San Diego seems to get a lot done also.
But in Atlanta............ Propose it today, it will fail in a landslide "no" vote in 20 years because people are afraid of paying a tax that was never going to happen... (slightly exaggerated, but it makes the point of my perspective).
I think you are looking way too much at what has not gotten done versus some major things that have been done.
Tell me how many cities have built an entire new areas like Atlantic Station in less than a 10 year time period?
Or how many cities were the FIRST to get rid of their worst ghetto crime infested housing projects all across the city?Do you remember Techwood Homes?East Lake Meadows?Perry Homes?Bowden Homes?
Do you remember when the area where Centennial Olympic Park,the Aquarium,etc was all warehouses,vacant buildings,parking lots etc.. and not a place you would want to be at anytime of day?
Remember when Old 4th Ward was just a violent crappy thoroughfare to get from Downtown to Midtown but not there is a beautiful park neaby?
There is a streetcar being built as we speak and already there has been money allocated to expand it before its even finished!
The Beltline is in progress even if it is not finished.There IS ACTUAL signs of progress.
If NONE of this matters,and things were so slow and not being done in the city,then WHY is the population growing?Why are people moving into the city on par with the suburbs for the first time in decades?
Almost any issue, no matter what the issue, no matter if the deal is a sweet deal or not, it always seems to me like the people of Atlanta (generally) jump out complaining about it...
(and it usually seems to be centered around a fear of new taxes. EVEN when the project won't cost them any new taxes, they still just want to complain).
And on another note,
Will Atlanta ever have a sense of civic pride???
Simple: people not happy about progress in this city aren't Atlantans. Real Atlantans have civic pride, but it hard to tell over the screaming naysayers. Luckily, we're progressing, for the most part, without them!
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.
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.
