MARTA unveils its dream project list for November Referendum (Atlanta: race, mechanic)

[fourthwarden]

Atlanta Transit Plans At Risk Under Trump’s Budget Proposal

When Atlanta voters approved a half-penny sales tax last year to expand MARTA, the idea was that the money raised could be used to draw in matching federal dollars.

Trump's budget proposal says it will cut off future funding for the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program.

In a statement, MARTA says the budget proposal is "not promising," but says it looks forward to trying to make its case to the administration.

Another federal transportation funding mechanism, the TIGER grant program, is also slated to be cut. The city got $10 million for improvements on MLK Drive through TIGER last year.

Welp, would you look at that.


To add to my earlier statements about investing in transit at the federal level being good for the nation:

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) on Monday pointed to new estimates that show investing $200 billion in public transportation would generate 10 million jobs over 10 years and add $800 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 20 years.

(source)


Of course, we'll have to see what Congress does with the proposed budget, and there's zero guarantee that the cuts will be held through, but it's pretty much just as (I) predicted.

[primaltech]

Can't really blame them for cutting that program, after what localities have been using it for. Fundamentally useless projects like the Atlanta Streetcar that provided zero actual transportation or congestion relief, shouldn't have to be a waste of the entire country's tax money, in addition to the city's.

[Mossberg]

So, the first line (and maintenance facility) of what was always planned to be built out as a comprehensive street car/light rail system is fundamentally useless? Can anyone ever see past what's directly in front of them?

I guess the city and MARTA are supposed to magically build the ENTIRE system all at once for it to obtain the status of "useful", huh?

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by Mossberg

So, the first line (and maintenance facility) of what was always planned to be built out as a comprehensive street car/light rail system is fundamentally useless? Can anyone ever see past what's directly in front of them?

I guess the city and MARTA are supposed to magically build the ENTIRE system all at once for it to obtain the status of "useful", huh?

First of all, that maintenance facility wouldn't be enough to serve much more than the handful of vehicles of that first small loop. Significant expansion of the streetcar network would require a new facility.

Second of all, of course you have to start somewhere and can't build it all at once. But that start should have been A) a useful/high-ridership route, and B) and a useful technical operation, that isn't super infrequent, and super slow and stuck in traffic.

I am a transit advocate, and I was hopeful for a long time about the streetcar and defended it, but at this point I can't defend such ****-poor implementation and performance and ridership. Especially can't sit here and defend that the citizens of North Dakota and Vermont should have to help pay for it.

[Mossberg]

If I remember correctly, didn't the city want to do a different route, but the current route is the one that the feds wanted due to it hitting the tourist areas?

If that's the case and the feds are paying for most of it, we pretty much had to take what they would give us, right?

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by Mossberg

If I remember correctly, didn't the city want to do a different route, but the current route is the one that the feds wanted due to it hitting the tourist areas?

Correct. The TIGER grant used to pay for the bulk of the project specifically mentioned the economic development potential of the Streetcar and that it didn't overlay an existing rail route (which the original Peachtree route would have done).

If that's the case and the feds are paying for most of it, we pretty much had to take what they would give us, right?

Not necessarily. The screwup of the existing route stemmed from the operations standpoint, specifically the CoA's insistence that it operated it as opposed to MARTA, the lack of a free transfer with MARTA, and that it does not have signal priority at intersections, all of which can be fixed with minimal effort.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by Mossberg

If I remember correctly, didn't the city want to do a different route, but the current route is the one that the feds wanted due to it hitting the tourist areas?

If that's the case and the feds are paying for most of it, we pretty much had to take what they would give us, right?

I think it had more to do with the race card and the low-income nature of Sweet Auburn and whatever.

Either way, that program is wasteful, and so is our streetcar.

For the same money spent, they could have done so much more and so much better with buses, and years earlier. Same stations and operation, with buses every 5 minutes if they wanted to.

I'm not at all opposed to MARTA light rail on the Beltline if it's done right. I'm opposed to trains running in the streets, being slowed by other cars and red lights, and just the fact that's a street. That's the proper domain of the bus.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Can't really blame them for cutting that program, after what localities have been using it for. Fundamentally useless projects like the Atlanta Streetcar that provided zero actual transportation or congestion relief, shouldn't have to be a waste of the entire country's tax money, in addition to the city's.

The TIGER program is a diverse grant program being used for everything from ports and freight rail corridors to complete streets and transit.

The program is hardly funding 'fundamentally useless' projects, and even a cursory glance at the projects funded will show that.


Not even the streetcar is fundamentally useless, by fact that it is still actually used (and that the ridership projections have it gaining massive amounts of use after expansion to Phase 1), nor should it not be expanded using the TIGER grant approach. As has been explained ad-nauseum here, there are reasons for why things happened the way they did, and it is time to move on past them in to building our system out into a far more extensive, and reaching, system.

Given where the city, and the BeltLine are in the process of environmental review, TIGER was going to be the best / most likely funding mechanism for the next few short phases of expansion while the remaining system was proposed through New Starts or similar.

We'll have to see what becomes of the programs, though.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Atlanta Transit Plans At Risk Under Trump’s Budget Proposal





Welp, would you look at that.


To add to my earlier statements about investing in transit at the federal level being good for the nation:

(source)


Of course, we'll have to see what Congress does with the proposed budget, and there's zero guarantee that the cuts will be held through, but it's pretty much just as (I) predicted.

Trump is definitely adopting a state/federal distinction. The most common argument has been that gas taxes should be used by those who pay the taxes (i.e. not using it for bike paths and transit). But Trump's budget isn't setting up separate funding for mass transit.

There is definitely an argument for a federal New Starts.

TIGER grants, however, needed to be killed. Basically a slush fund for any project that couldn't be justified. The Atlanta streetcar was a perfect example. They shouldn't have built it until they could build a useful segment, such as one going all the way to the Beltline.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

Trump is definitely adopting a state/federal distinction. The most common argument has been that gas taxes should be used by those who pay the taxes (i.e. not using it for bike paths and transit). But Trump's budget isn't setting up separate funding for mass transit.

There is definitely an argument for a federal New Starts.

TIGER grants, however, needed to be killed. Basically a slush fund for any project that couldn't be justified. The Atlanta streetcar was a perfect example. They shouldn't have built it until they could build a useful segment, such as one going all the way to the Beltline.

This seems awfully based on your personal perspective. There are tons of projects funded by TIGER, including but not limited to, funding studies for transit, complete streets, improving rail corridors for rail and freight, and improving freight terminals.

Are you to tell me that the majority of TIGER grants are unjustifiable?

Your example, being our own streetcar doesn't even make sense. You yourself state that it's not that the project wasn't a useful part to a larger system that would need to be built at some point anyway, but rather that you feel that it was too short to justify building. That is despite the short segment operating as a solid test-bed, finding issues that would have otherwise been built out in any larger project, and required larger amounts of effort to fix.

So, we got an initial system funded that we've then been using to find (and fix) flaws in our design and operating policies.


I'm glad we did that, rather than make the same mistakes on a much larger scale.