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Old 05-27-2016, 11:59 AM
 
Location: Seattle, WA
9,830 posts, read 7,190,769 times
Reputation: 7773

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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
Very few people would sell their cars.
That completely depends on all the variables involved, whether people would maintain ownership of a car or not. I was talking about a hypothetical Atlanta transit utopia. Plenty of people own cars in Tokyo, but certainly many do not, because they never need one to get around, and if they had one it would not be the fastest way to get around.

Anyway, regardless of how many people choose the streetcar over driving, I'm sure the ridership would be very high if the system were legitimately useful and valuable to the general populace of the city and visitors to the city.

Which, it totally could be, if that's what Atlanta, or MARTA did with it. So that, to me, is a lack of investment.
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:01 PM
 
Location: Seattle, WA
9,830 posts, read 7,190,769 times
Reputation: 7773
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
150 year old technology
By contrast, the internal combustion engine is 152 year old technology. Much newer!
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:15 PM
 
Location: Prescott, AZ
5,559 posts, read 4,664,152 times
Reputation: 2284
Quote:
Originally Posted by primaltech View Post
By contrast, the internal combustion engine is 152 year old technology. Much newer!

And the steam engine, which is still used in its variants today to power the world, is 300 years old. It's not about how old the tech is, but how it is improved with its age. Modern streetcars are no exception to that.




As many on this forum pointed out, it was predictable that ridership would fall. It was predicted, too. Anyone who claims to be objective should understand that there are various ways to consider a system a failure, and different failures call for different reactions.


The drop in ridership was a failure in expansion. It was a cost introduced before the system could be expanded and made useful enough to justify the cost.


GDoT threatening to shut down the system is a failure in management. It is something the city and MARTA have been repeatedly chastised over and will either fix, or be shut down. Many proponents of the streetcar have called for MARTA to simply take over operations, and consolidate all management under the regional transit authority.




I do not see either of these to be reasons to abandon the plans to expand that have been set forth. I do not see them as reasons to stop attempting to improve high-capacity transit within the core with streetcars and light rail as the city is attempting to do.


After all, the technology and application of the technology has been proven to be very successful elsewhere in the world, and even elsewhere here in the US and Canada.
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:24 PM
 
1,456 posts, read 1,311,764 times
Reputation: 2173
The biggest issue to me is that it goes nowhere and is in a useless part of the city. If this thing went in a loop anround the beltline and connected with Marta as a way to get to your final destination once you took heavy rail to the nearest Marta, it would do great.
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:29 PM
 
Location: NW Atlanta
6,495 posts, read 6,078,433 times
Reputation: 4453
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forhall View Post
The biggest issue to me is that it goes nowhere and is in a useless part of the city. If this thing went in a loop anround the beltline and connected with Marta as a way to get to your final destination once you took heavy rail to the nearest Marta, it would do great.
Which is exactly the plan to expand the system, starting with the MARTA referendum this November.
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:49 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
9,818 posts, read 7,846,193 times
Reputation: 9981
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sualpine View Post
Light rail is never the answer.
Wrong. LRT works great in certain situations, and the BeltLine is the perfect place for it.

As far as you are concerned, nothing ever done in Atlanta is the answer.
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Old 05-27-2016, 12:57 PM
 
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
11,334 posts, read 25,998,406 times
Reputation: 3990
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sualpine View Post
Light rail is never the answer.
It works very well in the Twin Cities. Maybe not as well in Atlanta.
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Old 05-27-2016, 01:27 PM
 
9,008 posts, read 13,985,831 times
Reputation: 7638
Is this all just bureaucratic red tape and posturing, or does this stand to actually kill the streetcar?

If it does, how long could it be dead?
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Old 05-27-2016, 01:39 PM
 
Location: NW Atlanta
6,495 posts, read 6,078,433 times
Reputation: 4453
Quote:
Originally Posted by ATLTJL View Post
Is this all just bureaucratic red tape and posturing, or does this stand to actually kill the streetcar?

If it does, how long could it be dead?
Until the city gets the listed issues resolved.
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Old 05-27-2016, 01:48 PM
 
9,008 posts, read 13,985,831 times
Reputation: 7638
Quote:
Until the city gets the listed issues resolved.
How deep are the problems?

I mean, are we talking stuff that's easy to fix and they just didn't thinking that nobody would notice, or stuff that could take months to get corrected?
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