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Old 08-24-2013, 07:23 PM
 
Location: Atlanta, Ga
2,490 posts, read 2,536,970 times
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Ugh just shut up and get over yourselves is all I have to say for them. Deal with the fact that you should deal with all kinds of people in a large city and take transit if you don't want to be sitting in traffic. Bring it on.
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Old 08-24-2013, 07:33 PM
 
32,004 posts, read 36,637,449 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mattee01 View Post
Ugh just shut up and get over yourselves is all I have to say for them. Deal with the fact that you should deal with all kinds of people in a large city and take transit if you don't want to be sitting in traffic. Bring it on.
Er, what transit would that be?

Remember, the vast majority of the traffic in that area is not locally generated. It's predominantly people driving in from other areas (often very far away) to shop, work, dine, etc.
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Old 08-24-2013, 07:52 PM
 
Location: Atlanta, Ga
2,490 posts, read 2,536,970 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Er, what transit would that be?

Remember, the vast majority of the traffic in that area is not locally generated. It's predominantly people driving in from other areas (often very far away) to shop, work, dine, etc.
That makes an even better case. They could park at a Marta station further away and ride to Lenox or Buckhead Stations.
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Old 08-24-2013, 08:24 PM
 
Location: Decatur, GA
7,348 posts, read 6,497,850 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Er, what transit would that be?

Remember, the vast majority of the traffic in that area is not locally generated. It's predominantly people driving in from other areas (often very far away) to shop, work, dine, etc.
And here's a perfect example of where transit that others ride would still benefit "me." The "me" here of course being the Buckhead residents. How many people go to Lenox and Phipps that would use transit if it were actually available? I know I drive to Indian Creek station if I'm going to one of those malls, but how many people after driving 20 miles just drive on? Getting people down from Cobb would be tricky, and without the Clifton Corridor I-20 and US78 folks would be iffy but it would work for bringing people in from other corridors.
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Old 08-24-2013, 08:32 PM
 
32,004 posts, read 36,637,449 times
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Originally Posted by mattee01 View Post
That makes an even better case. They could park at a Marta station further away and ride to Lenox or Buckhead Stations.
So you're criticizing the hordes of people who drive in from elsewhere?

Your previous post sounded like you were faulting the locals for not "just shutting up and getting over themselves."
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Old 08-24-2013, 08:39 PM
 
32,004 posts, read 36,637,449 times
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Originally Posted by MattCW View Post
And here's a perfect example of where transit that others ride would still benefit "me." The "me" here of course being the Buckhead residents. How many people go to Lenox and Phipps that would use transit if it were actually available?
Well, it's hard to criticize the North Buckhead folks for not making transit available. They've got two train stations -- one adjacent to Lenox and another one less than a mile away in the heart of their office district. They've also got the Buc shuttle and numerous bus lines.

What other transit should they be providing?
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Old 08-24-2013, 09:45 PM
 
Location: Decatur, GA
7,348 posts, read 6,497,850 times
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Who said I was criticizing the residents? I was simply pointing out that people should support transit even if they don't ride it because they will still benefit from it. This is a textbook example of that. There is more than adequate transit at the destination, but people can't get to the destination by transit so they drive, and cause traffic problems.
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Old 08-24-2013, 10:12 PM
 
32,004 posts, read 36,637,449 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MattCW View Post
Who said I was criticizing the residents? I was simply pointing out that people should support transit even if they don't ride it because they will still benefit from it. This is a textbook example of that. There is more than adequate transit at the destination, but people can't get to the destination by transit so they drive, and cause traffic problems.
Sorry for misunderstanding you.

Why can't people coming to the area simply take the transit that already exists? MARTA carries 124,000 people a day but it obviously has the capacity to carry several times that many.

If people driving into the Lenox area would ride the bus or the train, that would cut down phenomenally on driving. They can board the system in dozens of places.

I applaud you for using transit, but I don't understand why more people don't do the same.

Once they get to Indian Creek, they should just get aboard the train. It will zip them to the front door with only one transfer at Five Points.

By contrast, trying to drive from Indian Creek to Lenox by car is a major, nerve jangling trek. As they say, thar ain't no good way to get thar.
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Old 08-25-2013, 12:51 AM
 
Location: Decatur, GA
7,348 posts, read 6,497,850 times
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No apology necessary, my words could easily have been construed as coming down on the residents of Buckhead.

A lot of it is a phychological thing I think. Someone coming from the I-20 corridor will already be halfway to Lenox by the time they reach Indian Creek, it's a minimum of a 42 minute transit ride to Lenox, and any way you slice it, it is physically "out of the way." Either they have to deviate from their route through Atlanta and jog up to Indian Creek, or they have to go into Atlanta on MARTA if they were going to go down I-85. Either way, they've already made a large investment in driving, so why should they add to their time by stopping, buying the fare, waiting for the train, and taking longer to "get there." Sure, once they get into traffic around the mall they might have been better off driving hence "getting there" only refers to the area around the mall, but in my experience most people don't consider local traffic that much when making decisions. Unless there's construction, it's really only the local traffic causing backups since most shopping traffic is on the weekend and the highways would be clear (Christmas Eve and Black Friday might be slightly different in this regard).

As I said, a lot of it has to do with the time investment before they even encounter a transit option. Outside the Perimeter (even inside save a few routes) except for the GA-400 routes, MARTA's CCT's and GCT's buses are slow and meander (the latter two less so admittedly) so I won't even consider those as an option for weekend shoppers. But let's look at the major corridors and where they encounter transit.

On I-85 north, the first place is Doraville, and that requires getting onto I-285, then dealing with Buford highway. From I-85 just south of Pleasantdale Road to the Doraville station is 6 minutes with no traffic per Google, then 12 minutes via transit to Lenox not counting parking at the station and waiting for the train. It's only 12 minutes by road to Lenox also not counting parking.

For the Cobb County corridor, they're in the same boat as I-20 East, they could drive over to something like Dunwoody, but they're already mostly there. They could park at Cumberland, take route 10 (not on Sunday though!) down to Arts Center, then up to Lenox, but again, it's slow and out of the way.

For I-20 West, well people could park at H.E. Holmes, but it's not exactly known as the nicest area. It's a little more direct than all the others, but you've still driven most of the way there more than likely. I-75 and I-85 South are in the same boat, East Point and/or College Park aren't in the best of areas, and just getting to them requires substantial investment in driving on local roads.

GA-400 is a bit different since they have direct service from North Springs to Buckhead station. But, North of North Springs, you only have the bus routes which while good, aren't all that frequent on the weekends (not even really on weekdays either) plus they have two malls before they even get to Lenox. There's also the driving investment, but it's not as great.

The point I'm so laboriously trying to get around to is that until the driving time investment to get to places via transit is less than half the trip time, you won't see too many people change modes. If they could drive five minutes to the station, wait five more, then spend 1.5x the time on the train (or even bus) as driving (1.5 is anecdotal), you'd start to see a switch. MARTA is trying to move that direction with their GA-400 and I-20 East expansions, as well as shortening the travel time between the East and North lines with the Clifton Corridor which while not much shorter than doing the transfer at Five Points, has a large psychological advantage by not going into Atlanta. For the farther reaching corridors, commuter rail is the better option, despite the mode transfer since the transit portion of the trip begins closer to home. If there's a central Atlanta station and a transfer station at Doraville, and a transfer at Avondale to the Clifton Corridor, that would just about cover all major corridors as far as bringing transit close enough to home to encourage people to use it.
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Old 08-25-2013, 07:35 AM
 
10,974 posts, read 10,837,809 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
However, the vast majority of the traffic in Buckhead is generated by people coming from far away to shop, work and hang out.

It's not coming from local residents.

So how is out-of-area traffic coming from many miles away a thing good for the locals?





(FWIW, even if all these apartments were built, which is highly unlikely, they won't have that much effect on local traffic).
Simple. If you are adding new units you are not just moving around the existing locals. You are adding new locals. The people that work or spend a lot of time in Buckhead may now choose to live in one of these new units instead of dozens of miles away. Then you have less out of area traffic. Not sure why everyone thinks that people want to live where they are forever and never move.
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