Is it time for an atitude adjustment in Cobb & Gwinnett toward transit via rail? (Atlanta: live)

[atler8]

Can you imagine a welcoming attitude toward a new transit line being widespread enough in Cobb or Gwinnett counties that such a line could be feasibly considered there in the near future?
What does the difference between our suburban view of transit by rail as contrasted to the attitude found in suburban north Denver say about our balkanized metro & it's future prospects?
http://http://www.denverpost.com/new...-rtd-rail-line

[bryantm3]

i can see gwinnett warming up to the idea. cobb is so gerrymandered that the tea party will still control the government even if the county turns 60% democrat.

[arjay57]

Cobb and Gwinnett will get rail when they are ready for it. At this point it's not so clear how it would benefit them.

[tikigod311]

I get the feeling that if both counties, and really the metro as a whole, were presented with a sweeping plan like the FasTraks program in Denver, they would be much more welcoming towards it. No, the piecemeal wishlist which was the TSPLOST doesn't count. The voters in Denver, as I understand it, were presented with multiple lines all at once. A real vision for the future, something easy to understand.

I think metro Atlanta would be much more open to the idea if they saw a plan with a strategy behind it. One custom built for the urban and the suburban mix that is Atlanta. It will be a tougher sell in Cobb though. Gwinnett would likely be more receptive. Have a success in one county, watch the others want to join in.

[neil0311]

OMG...how many of these threads have to be created? Getting a bit old....do a search for all the answers/debate you could ever want.

My humble opinion as I've expressed it over and over...transit is great, but not for its own sake. It has to solve a legitimate need, and not just satisfy some political desire of one group of urban residents who want to judge by their yardstick and put everyone in their urban box.

The biggest problem that I see with expansion of transit in Atlanta is that the original architecture of MARTA in the early 1970s was a radial system that relied upon the assumption that people from the suburbs need/want to go downtown. Starting in the 1980s and becoming more and more true is the new reality where 90% of the metro lives outside of the City of Atlanta and a high percentage of those people work and play outside the city, so transit to the city is of little use to them.

What we need is a plan to bring intra and inter-suburban transit, but of course given the scale of Atlanta's metro area, the reality is that transit within and between suburbs would be very, very costly, and probably still not get huge ridership. If we did it, we'd have to charge what the ride actually cost, and that might make the choice even less likely for many suburbanites who have expensive cars that are already a sunk cost.

[WmMeeker]

We are going to have to warm up to it. The traffic here is not getting any better. We need more transit and more roads too. I would extend MARTA into Cobb, Gwinett, Clayton and maybe eventually Douglas and Rockdale. I would also build the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc but with very strict development restrictions around it so it does not become another mess like I-285 is.

[WmMeeker]

Originally Posted by neil0311

OMG...how many of these threads have to be created? Getting a bit old....do a search for all the answers/debate you could ever want.

My humble opinion as I've expressed it over and over...transit is great, but not for its own sake. It has to solve a legitimate need, and not just satisfy some political desire of one group of urban residents who want to judge by their yardstick and put everyone in their urban box.

The biggest problem that I see with expansion of transit in Atlanta is that the original architecture of MARTA in the early 1970s was a radial system that relied upon the assumption that people from the suburbs need/want to go downtown. Starting in the 1980s and becoming more and more true is the new reality where 90% of the metro lives outside of the City of Atlanta and a high percentage of those people work and play outside the city, so transit to the city is of little use to them.

What we need is a plan to bring intra and inter-suburban transit, but of course given the scale of Atlanta's metro area, the reality is that transit within and between suburbs would be very, very costly, and probably still not get huge ridership. If we did it, we'd have to charge what the ride actually cost, and that might make the choice even less likely for many suburbanites who have expensive cars that are already a sunk cost.

We need to run a Perimeter rail line around the city to serve the inner suburbs. The train would just go around in a circle and you could ride it from Cobb to Gwinnett or Clayton. It would "meet" the existing trains which could be extended at stops like the airport. You could change for a train downtown or Midtown at "meet" stops around the circle.

[atlantagreg30127]

Originally Posted by neil0311

OMG...how many of these threads have to be created? .

The answer would be no more right now. This topic as pointed out, has been discussed before in varying incarnations before, so anyone who wishes to discuss it should use the search feature in the forum and add to those existing threads. Thank you