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Old 03-24-2015, 11:48 AM
 
31,997 posts, read 36,601,808 times
Reputation: 13264

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Quote:
Originally Posted by AfternoonCoffee View Post
This forum has some super-funny ideas about East Cobb. But given the topic is transit, the first paragraph above really strikes me as an odd stance to take because, as a resident of East Cobb, I would say a plurality of working people I know commute to the Cumberland area. I'm sure many would love a convenient commuter rail line over there! On the other hand, it's only a few miles away (15-20 min if you time it right) so maybe it's not worth it. I don't find most people WAY out here in the boonies (you know, less than 10mi from CoA...) to be all that politically conservative. As far as transit, it really seems 'out of sight, out of mind'. It'd be tough to make it work out here. Would have to be a very well-thought out plan. Maybe that's all folks are waiting for...

As to the 2nd paragraph...Just no. I'm a pretty open-minded person who can see both sides to most issues, but this "senior living facility" was just a bad idea. It's been a while since I've followed it, so my numbers might be a bit off, but it was like 900 independent living apartments, and a tiny handful of assisted living apartments, on a pristine piece of property, right next to the only large park/community space in the area, on an already busy road, next to an important tributary to the Chattahoochee River...Adding 900 drivers to Roswell Rd?? If people want to bring East Cobb up-to-date this "senior living facility" was NOT the way to do it. That's taking all the bad of the suburbs and just making them worse. Not to mention the whole Iskason connection wreaked of unsavory political dealings...no way would they add 900 townhomes in that location! (Unless it was proposed by "Iskason Townhome Development")

(Btw, unscientifically, I would say next most common work locations: hospitals, from home, Perimeter, Alpharetta, Buckhead, Downtown/Midtown) But part of me kind of wants to keep the stereotype going of all these miserable, angry, white conservatives sitting in traffic for 1.5 hrs a day, listening to talk radio while they slog it to downtown...makes me giggle. Plus, it keeps out the riffraff
Nice to hear someone from East Cobb set the record straight.

I agree that that senior living project would have been a traffic nightmare.

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Old 03-24-2015, 12:32 PM
 
Location: Kirkwood
23,726 posts, read 24,753,815 times
Reputation: 5702
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Nice to hear someone from East Cobb set the record straight.

I agree that that senior living project would have been a traffic nightmare.

Elderly people shouldn't be driving.
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Old 03-24-2015, 01:10 PM
 
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
11,334 posts, read 26,006,593 times
Reputation: 3990
Quote:
Originally Posted by cqholt View Post
Elderly people shouldn't be driving.
A lot of people shouldn't be driving regardless of age. Mandatory testing every year, that's what I say!

Back on topic. Cobb County needs more transit, period. The southern part of the county has almost nothing.
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Old 03-24-2015, 01:54 PM
 
Location: Atlanta - Midtown
749 posts, read 883,939 times
Reputation: 732
Thanks, Born 2 Roll. It's always nice reading your insight on these issues.
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Old 03-24-2015, 01:58 PM
 
Location: Atlanta - Midtown
749 posts, read 883,939 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gulch View Post
During the time I lived in Cobb (1991-2006 and 2011-14), from what I saw most of the opposition to rail transit came from not wanting to be taxed for it. Very little of it involved "keeping out minorities" and that viewpoint tended to come from long-time residents who moved to Cobb in the 1960s-70s.
That is one concept that I will never understand. Everyone seems to want something for free. How do these people think they will get a rail line built without coughing up the extra tax from somewhere to do so?

Maybe the Braves will return the favor and "chip in". That, plus a federal match would go a long way.
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Old 03-25-2015, 12:29 PM
 
31,997 posts, read 36,601,808 times
Reputation: 13264
Quote:
Originally Posted by cqholt View Post
Elderly people shouldn't be driving.
I know that may have been a good natured dig at me but the truth is that we older folks are probably the best drivers on the road. We don't speed, text or drive around stuffing our faces with massive cheeseburgers. Nor do we crank our stereos loud enough to be heard in the next county.

What little we may have lost in the way of reaction time or the ability to crane our necks around is more than offset by our experience and maturity. In addition, there is a good chance we have jumper cables in case of emergencies.

To get back on topic, I agree that Cobb could use some BRT.
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Old 03-25-2015, 12:49 PM
 
Location: Vinings/Cumberland in the evil county of Cobb
1,317 posts, read 1,633,713 times
Reputation: 1551
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
I know that may have been a good natured dig at me but the truth is that we older folks are probably the best drivers on the road. We don't speed, text or drive around stuffing our faces with massive cheeseburgers. Nor do we crank our stereos loud enough to be heard in the next county.

What little we may have lost in the way of reaction time or the ability to crane our necks around is more than offset by our experience and maturity. In addition, there is a good chance we have jumper cables in case of emergencies.

To get back on topic, I agree that Cobb could use some BRT.
With all the development in Cumberland, and once SunTrust Park is completed we will need some BRT, LRT, HRT, CPR and a lot of TLC
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Old 03-25-2015, 01:09 PM
 
Location: Georgia
5,845 posts, read 6,129,141 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DawgPark View Post
CAVE = citizens against virtually everything
hahaha

"CAVE"

I am going to start using that.
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Old 03-25-2015, 04:30 PM
 
10,352 posts, read 11,369,135 times
Reputation: 7723
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gulch View Post
During the time I lived in Cobb (1991-2006 and 2011-14), from what I saw most of the opposition to rail transit came from not wanting to be taxed for it. Very little of it involved "keeping out minorities" and that viewpoint tended to come from long-time residents who moved to Cobb in the 1960s-70s.
Gulch makes an excellent point about much of the opposition to rail transit coming from residents not wanting to be taxed for rail.

Though it must noted that much of the opposition to rail transit in outlying counties like Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton also came from upper and middle-class white residents in what were then considered to be far-flung outer-suburban and exurban areas not wanting black residents from urban areas in the City of Atlanta (and later in DeKalb County) to have access to their then almost exclusively white outer-suburban and exurban neighborhoods.

Race was not the only factor in OTP residents' early-on rejection of rail transit service in outlying counties like Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton (...the populations of each of those outlying counties were well over 90% white at the time of the first MARTA referendums back in the 1960's...compare that to today when Clayton and Gwinnett are 'majority-minority" counties and Cobb is on the verge of becoming a 'majority-minority' county)....But race did indeed play a dominant factor in the rejection of rail transit service outside of Fulton and DeKalb counties along with:

> Culture (...residents in those OTP areas wanted to keep those areas outer-suburban and exurban and felt that rail transit would bring urban development and urban culture to the areas that they wanted to keep outer-suburban, exurban, semi-rural and racially homogenous)...

> Fears of crime (...the City of Atlanta had more housing projects than any other city in the Eastern U.S. south of Washington D.C. at the time and crime rates continued to be very high in the city of Atlanta through the 1970's and the 1980's)...

> Much lower populations in Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton counties (...at the time of the first MARTA referendums 45-50 years ago, Cobb County only had a population of 197,000 in 1970 (compared to nearly 720,000 today), Gwinnett County only had a population of 72,000 in 1970 (compared to about 860,000 today), Clayton County only had a population of 98,000 in 1970 compared to about 264,000 today))...

> Refusal to pay additional taxes for a mode of transportation in rail transit that those outer-suburban and exurban residents were already averse to (like Gulch pointed out).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankster87 View Post
That is one concept that I will never understand. Everyone seems to want something for free. How do these people think they will get a rail line built without coughing up the extra tax from somewhere to do so?

Maybe the Braves will return the favor and "chip in". That, plus a federal match would go a long way.
This is an excellent question and an excellent comment.

The people in outlying counties like Cobb (and Gwinnett and beyond) that oppose rail transit service on the grounds that they do not want to pay for it don't care how (or if) a rail transit line gets built if they don't pay extra taxes for it....They just know that they don't want to pay for it.

The people that oppose rail transit expansion outside of Fulton and DeKalb (and now Clayton) counties don't see the big picture of the local, regional and state road network and economy drowning in severe traffic congestion and gridlock and they don't care about the consequences of what will happen to Cobb County's, Metro Atlanta's and Georgia's economy and quality-of-life without the expansion of rail transit outside of Fulton and DeKalb counties....They only know that they don't want to pay one extra cent of sales tax to pay for a mode of transportation that they are already extremely highly skeptical of in rail transit.

Frankster87's question of how a rail transit line can be built without taxes being increased on those who oppose paying increased taxes to fund transit is an excellent question because there are actually ways that increased and expanded transit service can be funded.

One excellent way that increased and expanded transit service can be funded is with large-scale public-private partnerships that collect transit-operating revenues from transit-oriented real estate development along transit lines as well as from distance-based fares and from extensive fundraising from private sources.

Major Asian cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong have successfully utilized the transit-oriented real estate funding approach to the extent that Tokyo's transit rail system brings in over $600 million in profits from transit-oriented development each year and Hong Kong's transit system is worth an estimated $250 billion (quarter-of-a-trillion dollars) in financial value.

With the extreme reticence by many dominant political factions in Metro Atlanta and Georgia to pay additional taxes to fund transit improvements and expansions, utilizing options like transit-oriented real estate development along transit lines, large-scale public-private partnerships and extensive fundraising from private sources is likely the best possible way to proceed in getting long-overdue and critically-needed transit upgrades and expansions funded and operating.

We should not sit around and wait years and decades for highly tax-averse and transit-averse voters to vote themselves a tax increase to fund a mode of transportation that they dislike when there are other funding options available that will get results quicker in an environment where results are desperately needed.
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Old 03-25-2015, 08:26 PM
 
559 posts, read 829,167 times
Reputation: 517
Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll View Post
The people in outlying counties like Cobb (and Gwinnett and beyond) that oppose rail transit service on the grounds that they do not want to pay for it don't care how (or if) a rail transit line gets built if they don't pay extra taxes for it....They just know that they don't want to pay for it.

B2R speaks the truth. Despite my jesting with the MARTA gestapo on this board, I have talked with no less than 5 elected officials at the state and county level who could/would be a potential decision maker on MARTA to Cobb.

I ask them directly "can you bring rail transit to Cobb?" Every single one of them says they love the idea of transit to the NW Corridor . . . and then every single one has said "who's going to pay for it?"
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