US Cities leading the decline of driving (Atlanta, Roswell: sales, leases)

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by cqholt

I'd be willing to bet that maintenance on a single train costs less than if all those people riding the train drove cars individually.

There's no question that using transit on a consistent and frequent basis (if the option is available near where one lives) can lower an individual automobile owner's vehicular maintenance costs.

But maintaining rail transit infrastructure involves much more than coming up with the costs of maintaining one train.

Maintaining rail transit infrastructure requires coming up with the costs of maintaining an entire transit system which involves maintenance and upkeep (mechanical repairs, cleaning, replacement, etc) of trains, buses, and physical facilities (train tracks, stations, restrooms, escalators, elevators, indoor and outdoor lighting, vehicle storage facilities, etc).

There's also fuel costs which are a very-significant chunk of a transit system's operating budget.

Though it should be noted that maintaining the road network is also costly.

Your comment raises a good point that we don't collect enough revenues to adequately maintain a multimodal transportation network.

We don't collect enough revenues from user fees (distance-based fares) and real estate assets when it comes to transit and we don't collect enough revenues from user fees (fuel taxes and tolls) when it comes to roads.

The 6 million-inhabitant Atlanta region is a good example of a large metropolitan region that collects entirely too little in transportation revenues.

Atlanta has the pressing transportation needs of a metro region of over 6 million people, but only collects enough revenues to fund the transportation needs of a metro region of about 2 million people.

Just like the State of Georgia has a population of about 10 million residents but only collects enough revenues to fund the transportation needs of a state with a population of about 4 million residents.

...Georgia's outright refusal to collect enough revenues to fund the transportation needs of at-least the state's current population of 10 million is especially puzzling given that the state's population continues to grow at a relatively high rate...

...Something which means that a fast-growing state like Georgia should be collect enough revenue to fund the needs of a state with a population of between 12-15 million inhabitants given that growth trends signal that is where the state is heading population-wise.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by arjay57

From MARTA itself. You probably recall that they were asking for about $700 million to reach a state of good repair, and that was just the bare minimum.

The maintenance backlog is true for many major transit systems, not just MARTA. These things are extremely expensive not only to build but to operate and maintain as well.

Please provide documentation, if you are going to come up with some artificial cost. I do seem to remember where a lot of money from the TSPLOST was going to MARTA for repairs, but it was not $1B.

[arjay57]

cq, I would have to look it up.

The TSPLOST website is probably down now, but it was widely reported that MARTA was looking for megabucks to get started on paying for deferred maintenance. See, for example:

MARTA "State of Good Repair"

Broken escalators. Out-of-order elevators. The stalactites made of God-knows-what dangling from station ceilings. If passed, the transit system would receive $600 million to fix some of these problems and repair its tunnels, tracks, and other broke-down parts. Pros: Federal transportation officials don't like seeing systems they fund atrophy. Neither do we. Cons: According to Beverly Scott, MARTA's rock-star general manager, the agency has a backlog of more than $2 billion in such needed repairs.

T-SPLOST Project List: Highlights | News Feature | Creative Loafing Atlanta

You can also take a look at the Congressional Record for numerous hearings on the gigantic backlog of deferred maintenance at MARTA and other transit agencies around the country.

[scobby]

Originally Posted by bhammaster

I agree. We put $20 tolls on each road and most people would have to stop driving because they can't afford it.

That will get the job done. Less cars on the roads.

.

The long term solution is a good public transportation,bus,rail,metro.

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by scobby

.

The long term solution is a good public transportation,bus,rail,metro.

I'll continue to beat the drum that I know you guys don't want to hear...build public transit from WHERE to WHERE? As we have discussed ad nauseum here, the vast majority of commuters do not need/want to go downtown. The vast majority of commuters are traveling within and between suburbs, so unless you have a plan to address that need, it's all just hot air.

Oh, and then there're the minor details regarding how all of this bus, rail, metro would get paid for, both in capital and operating expenses. You won't get suburban residents to agree to pay taxes for services they can't and probably won't use, so how do you pay for all the great and wonderful transit?

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by neil0311

I'll continue to beat the drum that I know you guys don't want to hear...build public transit from WHERE to WHERE? As we have discussed ad nauseum here, the vast majority of commuters do not need/want to go downtown. The vast majority of commuters are traveling within and between suburbs, so unless you have a plan to address that need, it's all just hot air.

Oh, and then there're the minor details regarding how all of this bus, rail, metro would get paid for, both in capital and operating expenses. You won't get suburban residents to agree to pay taxes for services they can't and probably won't use, so how do you pay for all the great and wonderful transit?

Perfect plan is to connect major employment centers. Cumberland to midtown/downtown and perimeter via top end perimeter. North fulton to the existing red line. Business parks along PIB to doraville and the perimeter by BRT. 85 corridor to doraville. Stonecrest and south fulton to existing MARTA system via I-20. Fulton industrial to blue line via BRT. Run LRT ot BRT along cobb pkwy.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by neil0311

Oh, and then there're the minor details regarding how all of this bus, rail, metro would get paid for, both in capital and operating expenses. You won't get suburban residents to agree to pay taxes for services they can't and probably won't use, so how do you pay for all the great and wonderful transit?

It should be funded the same way we should be funding roads. With users fees. Of course roads are already soaking up most of the tax funds by percentage (MARTA fares pay a higher % of the cost than gas taxes do for roads) and amount (my far). Stop dumping tax funds into roads (and transit) and let people decide which way it is really worth it to get around.

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by jsvh

It should be funded the same way we should be funding roads. With users fees. Of course roads are already soaking up most of the tax funds by percentage (MARTA fares pay a higher % of the cost than gas taxes do for roads) and amount (my far). Stop dumping tax funds into roads (and transit) and let people decide which way it is really worth it to get around.

I agree that transit should cost a more appropriate amount that covers the actual cost of the service. I would support that of any transit project.

As for roads, and I've commented on this many times, roads are not the same as a rail line, nor should they be treated as the same. Roads are basic and necessary infrastructure, used by public safety, national defense, private citizens, intra and interstate commerce, and even transit (buses use roads). Roads are a primary purpose of gov't used by all for the public good. Roads are a necessity, not a luxury or an option.

Transit (especially rail transit) on the other hand is not a necessity, nor is it something that would be considered a primary mission or responsibility of gov't. Where it exists, it should be paid for by the users who derive benefit from the service, which in Atlanta for MARTA is roughly 500,000 total riders (bus and rail) and about 225,000 rail riders. That's approximately 10% of the population that uses MARTA on a daily basis, as opposed to the number of people who use roads, which I would estimate must be north of 90%.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by neil0311

Where it exists, [transit] should be paid for by the users who derive benefit from the service, which in Atlanta for MARTA is roughly 500,000 total riders (bus and rail) and about 225,000 rail riders. That's approximately 10% of the population that uses MARTA on a daily basis, as opposed to the number of people who use roads, which I would estimate must be north of 90%.

Well, far less than 10% of the population takes MARTA on a daily basis.

The actual number of people using MARTA on an average weekday is 123,400. (29,000 of whom ride the train).

The ridership numbers you sometimes hear cited are higher because the average number of boardings each person makes per day is 3.37.

So assuming a metro population of 5.5 million, it's actually more like 2-3% using MARTA.

Still, that's hardly insignificant.

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by neil0311

I agree that transit should cost a more appropriate amount that covers the actual cost of the service. I would support that of any transit project.

As for roads, and I've commented on this many times, roads are not the same as a rail line, nor should they be treated as the same. Roads are basic and necessary infrastructure, used by public safety, national defense, private citizens, intra and interstate commerce, and even transit (buses use roads). Roads are a primary purpose of gov't used by all for the public good. Roads are a necessity, not a luxury or an option.

Transit (especially rail transit) on the other hand is not a necessity, nor is it something that would be considered a primary mission or responsibility of gov't. Where it exists, it should be paid for by the users who derive benefit from the service, which in Atlanta for MARTA is roughly 500,000 total riders (bus and rail) and about 225,000 rail riders. That's approximately 10% of the population that uses MARTA on a daily basis, as opposed to the number of people who use roads, which I would estimate must be north of 90%.

If that's the case, the same argument can be used for transit in any city, large or small, but some cities, it is definitely a necessity due to how it's built like NYC, Tokyo, Seoul, etc where a very large % of the commuters are using transit. In some cases, transit is MORE important than roads due to the fact that without transit, their road systems would easily clog up.

The problem is Atlanta's not a dense city. It's densifying, but it's nowhere near fast enough and the city itself grows nowhere near as fast as the big cities did in their hayday.

Atlanta can just keep building roads if they want to accompany the metro growth, but then it will just become another L.A. where despite having a ton of freeways, there's still traffic on every one of them. You can't widen freeways forever. There are some highways in Atlanta that already have 20 lanes to them and yet there is still traffic on them....I-75 north of I-285 comes to mind.