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At first I the trolley was going to be similar to Atlanta's streetcar, but it will just be a trolley bus. All in All though, the mayor has some big plans for downtown Marietta.
How about spending it on rail (MARTA or industrial) to get some of the traffic OFF of I-75 as well as the anticipated nightmarish traffic in the making with the new Braves Stadium??? Trolleys....please....what's next? a Ferris Wheel and perhaps log flume connecting that awful waterpark on 41 with the Chattahoochee? Odd.....just like downtown 'lana....
If Cobb County got rail, hoodrats would go up there for the sole purpose of stealing people's TVs.
Newsflash, they are already there and have been for quite some time...ever see Marietta High School at recess??? Like watching a OWN movie waiting for Nelson Mandella to come out......Nuff' said.....
Trying to get that genie back in the bottle is impossible.......get a few whips off the road.....one less shining 22's on a 1977 caprice in lime green or fluorescent orange would be a relief....bet....
It's false hope to think that Gwinnett and Cobb County aren't already fully integrated. Cobb County was the first to go from majority to minority majority in their schools about 3-4 years ago.....Gwinnett is the same.....they both need massive transit by rail in the worst way as widening 75/85 is almost impossible at this point....in fact, with that "toll" lane and the whopping $16 to travel one way, all they have done is cram 7 lanes into 6 in most places.....it's costing commuters millions in fuel waste.
Get some grants, plow some old "Hooker Barnes" homes projects, down and get some rails in....NOW.....it gets old eating b'fast and dinner in your car due to the commutes, dontcha' think?
Last edited by Caleb Longstreet; 01-12-2015 at 02:26 PM..
It is a 1.3 mile line that moves at 6 mph with a projected daily ridership of about 1,400 people for $100 million.
Based on those facts, I believe it is a waste of money and a more responsive, more agile bus system could've been funded for 1/10th of that cost.
And then what? Scrap those buses when it comes time to connect the routes into the overall citywide light-rail/streetcar plan and Atlanta Beltline, that despite what you may think, will be happening?
Newsflash, they are already there and have been for quite some time...ever see Marietta High School at recess??? Like watching a OWN movie waiting for Nelson Mandella to come out......Nuff' said.....
Trying to get that genie back in the bottle is impossible.......get a few whips off the road.....one less shining 22's on a 1977 caprice in lime green or fluorescent orange would be a relief....bet....
It's false hope to think that Gwinnett and Cobb County aren't already fully integrated. Cobb County was the first to go from majority to minority majority in their schools about 3-4 years ago.....Gwinnett is the same.....they both need massive transit by rail in the worst way as widening 75/85 is almost impossible at this point....in fact, with that "toll" lane and the whopping $16 to travel one way, all they have done is cram 7 lanes into 6 in most places.....it's costing commuters millions in fuel waste.
Get some grants, plow some old "Hooker Barnes" homes projects, down and get some rails in....NOW.....it gets old eating b'fast and dinner in your car due to the commutes, dontcha' think?
You need to go tell those Cobb Decision-makers that. I absolutely agree the entire region should be connected by rail. But Cobb's leadership and the old guard up there in particular are stuck in a different mindset. Maybe because they never have to actually leave the county during the commute, I don't know.
Many posters on this thread have made some good points on this thread that much more less-costly transit service likely could have been funded for the same cost that projects like the Marietta trolley and the Atlanta streetcar are being funded for.
Many posters on this thread have also made some good points that an area like Marietta, Cobb County and the Northwest Metro Atlanta suburbs needs regional high-capacity transit service (like regional rail and/or bus transit) much more than it needs local trolley service.
But one very important thing to keep in mind about projects like the aforementioned Marietta trolley and the always debated Atlanta streetcar is that both transportation projects are economic development projects that were commissioned by their respective local municipal governments.
(...The Marietta trolley is being commissioned by the City of Marietta, NOT Cobb County government and NOT CCT (Cobb Community Transit) while the Atlanta streetcar was commissioned by the City of Atlanta, NOT MARTA.)
Both the Marietta trolley and the Atlanta streetcar are projects that were commissioned by their respective city governments almost strictly for purposes of increasing economic development in and near their downtown/inner-city areas.
The City of Marietta is commissioning a trolley to attempt to increase tourism and foster increased development in and around its historic downtown while the City of Atlanta commissioned its streetcar project to accelerate development in and around Downtown Atlanta (...the City of Atlanta has plans to expand the streetcar network in future years and decades as a means of fostering increased development throughout Intown Atlanta).
Because a regional high-capacity transit system would operate in and through multiple local city and county government jurisdictions, funding, building and operating a viable regional high-capacity transit system is a responsibility that will most likely fall to Georgia state government more than any other government body....Though it is a responsibility that the State of Georgia has yet to fully accept and/or embrace.
Actually, I think that the "buses in skirts" idea is great! In fact, call it "the Skirt"! Imagine the novelty that something like that would have. Ridership would soar on intrigue alone, I mean, it's not every day you could tell your children and friends, "Hey guys, I rode a Skirt today!" Imagine the looks of awe and wonder; they'd want to try it too!
Of course, I don't know if dressing buses up in skirts would pose a safety hazard for other drivers and pedestrians. Oh well, those kinks could be worked out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tryska
If Cobb County got rail, hoodrats would go up there for the sole purpose of stealing people's TVs.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is sarcasm. If so, well done.
Trolley on wheels is called a bus. The mayor disguised it as a trolley because white people have a stigma against buses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ant131531
It's only Atlanta and other southern cities where white people have a stignma against buses. Plenty of white people are riding the bus in cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Boston.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cqholt
This is what I am getting at. In other areas, demand riders are comfortable riding wheel-based transit, whether you call it trolley or bus. In Atlanta, people are shocked if demand riders tell others they ride city buses. Suburban commuter buses are acceptable.
Where does anyone get that white people don't ride buses due to race issues??? The reason is deeper, and possibly far more benign than race (I'll get back to this last bit). If you overlay a race map with a wealth/income map of metro Atlanta, you'll see the lower wealth areas tend to align with the predominantly minority areas (not just black, also looking at the Hispanic and Asian Buford Highway corridor). Our buses suck. There are about three routes that are decent, 110, 140, and 39. Of those, 39 serves the predominantly minority Buford highway corridor inside I-285. The bus headways are bad enough everywhere else, that the only people riding are the low-wealth/income who have no choice which guess what? Are predominantly minority citizens. Now, as to why the bus routes are like that, that might be racially motivated, but we've had the bad headways for years, and it's controlled by the MARTA board, not by the people, so it's hard to even pin this on any kind of existing racial bias.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ha-Mez
Georgia Tech has a trolley on tires, and it's nice. The old Atlanta streetcar system had some tire-based trolleys. They are not as big as streetcars, and they're more expensive than streetcars over a long period of time when service levels are high, but for moderate demand, >= 15 minute headways, trolleys are good value. And yes, they do look cool.
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Originally Posted by AnsleyPark
Doesn't Ga. Tech call it's little buzz bus thing the Tech Trolley? Hey, if those smart folks can do that, I think the mayor of Mayretta can do so, too!
The Tech Trolley is actually pretty bad. It looks cutsey on the outside, but on the inside, it really belongs in an amusement park. It's small, with thinly cushioned benches with bad shocks. I wish they'd use the buses they use on the "internal" routes. They can keep the name, and paint a trolley on the side, but
Quote:
Originally Posted by skbl17
Another transit thread derailed into an argument about race, yippee. Hey, at least there's no pointless streetcar discussion, so that's encouraging.
As for Marietta's trolley, eh...I'm a fan of LRT and HRT and grade-separated BRT and all that jazz, but to see Cobb County embrace any kind of public transit is encouraging. I hope that both this trolley and Tim Lee's proposed BRT line are successful, because it would show the skeptics (well, the people who believe them,) that public transit isn't the evil that some circles make it out to be.
- skbl17
They already have CCT which qualifies as "any kind of public transit." But they keep it relegated to a 0-star service that exists primarily to say that it exists. I wouldn't even qualify their "best" route, 10, as useful having actually tried it out once.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
I don't know what's so dang important about overhead wires. Folks here in Atlanta breathed a huge sigh of relief when that tangled spiderweb finally came down.
Efficiency. With regenerative braking, over 33% of the energy used to power one vehicle can be "put back" on the wires to power another one. You wouldn't have that level of efficiency even if you used battery hybrid buses. The modern catenary is also much less obtrusive than the previous "spiderweb" wires.
I understand what everyone is saying. From my experience living in Northern Virginia and being in and around Atlanta for years, I can tell you the average ridership for a white rider is significantly less than in DC. It's really a personal choice and something of an opinionated topic. I do know that culturally the Atlanta MSA have alway been vehicle oriented as is most sunbelt cities, I mean the 14+ lane interstates running through the area give it away. Even when the MSA population approaches 10 million you may have the same views on transit. If a person truly values and supports public transit their best option maybe to just move into the city limits and utilize MARTA.
I understand what everyone is saying. From my experience living in Northern Virginia and being in and around Atlanta for years, I can tell you the average ridership for a white rider is significantly less than in DC. It's really a personal choice and something of an opinionated topic. I do know that culturally the Atlanta MSA have alway been vehicle oriented as is most sunbelt cities, I mean the 14+ lane interstates running through the area give it away. Even when the MSA population approaches 10 million you may have the same views on transit. If a person truly values and supports public transit their best option maybe to just move into the city limits and utilize MARTA.
That's an excellent point that the Atlanta metro region seeming to have somewhat of a cultural aversion to transit.
But if the Atlanta metro region still has the same aversion to transit when its population reaches 10 million, the Atlanta metro region will likely be in a lot of trouble.
The Atlanta metro region just simply doesn't have the road network to adequately handle its current population of just over 6 million.
If the Atlanta metro region is still struggling to accept transit and still has the same road network when the area's population reaches 10 million as it has now, the area's quality-of-life will likely suffer greatly.
(...With a current population of over 6 million inhabitants, the Atlanta metro region basically still has much the same exact road network that it had when its population was under 3 million....We've basically got a road network that is serving a metro region with more than twice population it was intended to serve.)
Attempting to have a very large major metro region with a road network that attempts to serve three-and-a-half to four times the population that it was intended to serve is not a recipe for continued success both from an economic and a quality-of-life standpoint.
If the Atlanta metro region (and the state of Georgia) wants to continue to be economically successful over the long-term, the region and the state are going to have to embrace transit much more strongly and much more intensely.
The Atlanta metro region just simply does not have the road network (nor does it seem to have the political ability to expand the road network to the extent that is needed) to be able to function at a high-level over a sustained period of time without a very strong regional high-capacity transit option.
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