Massive Trove of MARTA Design Documents Released Online

[bu2]

Originally Posted by arjay57

I seriously doubt that there will ever be any more heavy rail systems like MARTA, BART and the Washington metro.

All 3 were paid for by the feds. No other city has that.

Light rail has the advantage of not requiring its own ROW everywhere, making it a LOT cheaper going through downtowns.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

I lived in Marietta and would drive to the Dunwoody station many times to attend events downtown or to the airport. The Spring Creek Station in Plano is MUCH easier for me to get to here, but the time DART takes coupled with the lesser amount of traffic I would miss plus the availability of parking plus the lack of centralized events in downtown Dallas vs. downtown Atlanta just make it not worth the time or the effort.

HRT in Atlanta is ten times better than the longer route system DART has. My opinion. Don't have to prove it to you. But when I see people on the Atlanta forum downplay MARTA and think Dallas is better off with LRT, well I say MARTA is ten times a better system.

My opinion yes. Take it or leave it.

Not one person has said LRT is better everywhere than HRT, both have their places, and LRT can function in many places like HRT. One chief advantage of LRT is the simpler and at-grade stations. An LRT system may have on-street stations while HRT can't so there is time lost in the HRT in terms of a person's overall trip just negotiating the HRT station. For instance, DART Union Station to Downtown Rowlett is about 23 miles which it covers in 42 minutes. MARTA covers the 10.3 miles from Five Points to the Airport in 20 minutes. DART's average speed on this segment is 32mph, MARTA's average speed on its segment is 30mph.