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Even with a consolidation, it would still be ridiculously slow and indirect to take transit from, say, Marietta to Gwinnett Place. Changing that fact would require local (or hopefully state) funding for new capital rail projects. Or, new express bus routes.
But, it could at least be a lot simpler and easier to the end user than the navigational/logistical nightmare it would be now, with 3 different, independent transit agencies having to be used and figured out for one simple journey across the metro.
That is the point of the Brookings study that I linked above. You simply can't get there within a reasonable amount of time for a large number of destinations. It doesn't matter to you that you can get from a Lindberg apartment to downtown quickly if you live in Embry Hills and work in Atlantic Station and Atlanta has a high % of those types of situations.
There are some major employment destinations such as the Cumberland Galleria, Emory/CDC and Alpharetta that are poorly served by transit.
That, plus many more people. The folks I was referring to are in the hospitality industry and they live in Clayton. They have to walk two miles to the bus stop, take a lengthy bus ride to the train station, transfer to the train, then catch another bus and then walk to work. If they miss a connection anywhere along the line that can add 30-45 minutes to their trip. It's even tougher at night when the buses run less frequently or when the weather is bad.
None of this $6.5 billion in new Midtown streetcars is going to do them the least bit of good.
That, plus many more people. The folks I was referring to are in the hospitality industry and they live in Clayton. They have to walk two miles to the bus stop, take a lengthy bus ride to the train station, transfer to the train, then catch another bus and then walk to work. If they miss a connection anywhere along the line that can add 30-45 minutes to their trip. It's even tougher at night when the buses run less frequently or when the weather is bad.
None of this $6.5 billion in new Midtown streetcars is going to do them the least bit of good.
Almost like it was meant explicitly for the expansion of transit within the CITY OF ATLANTA an not for Clayton County nor the rest of Fulton? Funny that.
Besides, it WILL do them a whole world of good if their job is on a streetcar line, a bus rapid transit line, an ART line, a frequent bus route, or near any of the infill stations. It will also help them if their bus route is one that receives a bus service boost, which is part of that $6.5 Billion list of projects.
Please, stop trying to simultaneously play down the scope of, and over apply the reach of, the expansion that was just approved. If you want better service elsewhere, then fight for expansion funding IN THAT AREA rather than acting bitter over what we had to already fight so hard to get.
Are you people discussing about the consolidation of Metro Atlanta transit agencies? Please keep discussions about Dallas, the speed of light rail, and the streetcar and etc in their appropriate threads, which is not this one. Get off my lawn!
With a sentence at the end that makes me roll my eyes:
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If the General Assembly approves money for the study next year, Coomer expects the report to be completed by the end of 2017. Lawmakers would take up any recommendations in the 2018 legislative session.
ANOTHER study? That will take an entire year to do, and then get debated again by the clueless morons in the assembly, not even in this upcoming session, but in the next one?
I guess I'm confused- I thought this past year was the 'study' year for this? I thought that's what they were doing.
Then, one or both of these childish groups of people, needs to get the F over it. It's an acronym. It's a name.
I live in Cobb and am 100% fine with the MARTA name, which would be my favored name for the consolidated transit agency. Also fine if they call the whole thing GRTA. Or something new. They can call it the Farty Smelly Transit Agency, as long as this consolidation happens, which it really, really needs to.
The problem is in HOW they manage that consolidation. MARTA is THE agency in the metro when it comes to both high-capacity and bus transit operation, planning, and implementing. MARTA is THE agency with all the experience and infrastructure set up to handle everything a truly regional system will need.
GRTA, on the other hand, not so much. MARTA runs express buses. GRTA doesn't run heavy rail, nor local bus systems, nor plans light rail, nor plans BRT, nor plans commuter rail. I'm not bashing them - they do a great job with what they do - but I am saying that they, as an agency, don't have any experience doing what MARTA does. That's not to say that GRTA couldn't, nor shouldn't, get into those areas, but that they have a long way, as an agency, to go to get there.
To suggest that folding CCT, GCT, AND MARTA into GRTA is the same as folding CCT, GCT, and GRTA into MARTA is to ignore the incredible infrastructure of experience, knowledge, and planning that MARTA currently has built up.
You say it's simple, and that we should just do it already, but that is WAY oversimplifying what kind of impact that merger would have on any of the agencies involved. There WILL be people laid off and fired, facilities dropped, paperwork lost, and plans put on hold.
I would much rather that sort of disruption apply more to those agencies without nearly as much to loose as MARTA. This isn't a childish squabble over names, it is a very real consideration for what will be lost in the consolidation, and who will be controlling what.
The problem is in HOW they manage that consolidation. MARTA is THE agency in the metro when it comes to both high-capacity and bus transit operation, planning, and implementing. MARTA is THE agency with all the experience and infrastructure set up to handle everything a truly regional system will need.
GRTA, on the other hand, not so much. MARTA runs express buses. GRTA doesn't run heavy rail, nor local bus systems, nor plans light rail, nor plans BRT, nor plans commuter rail. I'm not bashing them - they do a great job with what they do - but I am saying that they, as an agency, don't have any experience doing what MARTA does. That's not to say that GRTA couldn't, nor shouldn't, get into those areas, but that they have a long way, as an agency, to go to get there.
To suggest that folding CCT, GCT, AND MARTA into GRTA is the same as folding CCT, GCT, and GRTA into MARTA is to ignore the incredible infrastructure of experience, knowledge, and planning that MARTA currently has built up.
You say it's simple, and that we should just do it already, but that is WAY oversimplifying what kind of impact that merger would have on any of the agencies involved. There WILL be people laid off and fired, facilities dropped, paperwork lost, and plans put on hold.
I would much rather that sort of disruption apply more to those agencies without nearly as much to loose as MARTA. This isn't a childish squabble over names, it is a very real consideration for what will be lost in the consolidation, and who will be controlling what.
That's all well and fine, but the fact is that today's MARTA will never be regional, no matter how well they do with their 3 counties, since... it only serves 3 counties, in a 13-county region. It's inherently crippled. All 13 counties of which are served by GRTA. Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is a state agency, that already receives some limited state funding, and that amount could easily be increased. Also with a consolidation, they'd be receiving all of MARTA's and Cobb's and Gwinnett's funding stream, and assets, especially MARTA's great transit assets. They'd have all of the current MARTA's people and expertise and etc. So they'd essentially be MARTA, regardless of what they're called.
Doesn't matter to me whether today's GRTA folds into today's MARTA, or the other way around, as long as the end result looks the same, with GRTA's comprehensive service area, and state agency status, and etc.
That's all well and fine, but the fact is that today's MARTA will never be regional, no matter how well they do with their 3 counties, since... it only serves 3 counties, in a 13-county region. It's inherently crippled. All 13 counties of which are served by GRTA. Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is a state agency, that already receives some limited state funding, and that amount could easily be increased. Also with a consolidation, they'd be receiving all of MARTA's and Cobb's and Gwinnett's funding stream, and assets, especially MARTA's great transit assets. They'd have all of the current MARTA's people and expertise and etc. So they'd essentially be MARTA, regardless of what they're called.
Except we don't NEED an agency that's more regional than the core 5 counties. I would even go so far as to say that it would actually HURT service in the core if we tried to have a full metro agency handle EVERYTHING.
That's not because I don't think that such an agency couldn't get the people to handle it, but that there would just be too many conflicting service needs. We ALREADY see this today with GDoT. How many roads and bridges and intersections in the core Atlanta area need work? How many are neglected because exurban and rural state politicians think that Atlanta is draining state resources, and get their pet project done instead?
There is just too much of a Cultural divide between the far-flung metro and the core for there to be an effective agency that supplies adequate service to both. A full-metro agency is just taking something that we've finally got working and blowing it all to hell. There's just no way I can see that, realistically, coming out for the better.
It makes far, FAR more sense to fold CCT and GCT into MARTA, and then give GRTA the teeth it needs to pursue proper rural and exurban transportation. As much as many in Cobb and Gwinnett may make a stink about it, they share far more interests with Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton than, say, Hall or Cherokee or any other far-flung metro county.
As has been discussed ad nauseum here, I think you're cutting the possibility of Cobb and Gwinnett joining MARTA on their own FAR too short. There are things in play here that may very well change each county's outlook in a couple of years' time.
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Doesn't matter to me whether today's GRTA folds into today's MARTA, or the other way around, as long as the end result looks the same, with GRTA's comprehensive service area, and state agency status, and etc.
Except that the order DOES matter, and will not generate the same results. MARTA will, inevitably, favor retaining its current employees. The same goes for GRTA. There will be firing not matter what, but WHO gets fired is important, and I have far more faith in MARTA to run a regional transit agency than GRTA.
It makes far, FAR more sense to fold CCT and GCT into MARTA, and then give GRTA the teeth it needs to pursue proper rural and exurban transportation.
Yeah, that would be my second favorite outcome that could potentially come of this. That would at least reduce the # of metro transit providers from 4, down to 2. And GRTA would be doing a different-focused thing and not operate local service, so there hopefully wouldn't be too much user confusion between them.
I don't know exactly how the state would accomplish this, but Gwinnett and Cobb should become automatic service area members of MARTA, without the need to pay a sales tax, and without the need for public referendum, or any of that. Their existing transit tax funding (via mostly property tax, I think), and all their existing buses, drivers, and all assets would be folded into MARTA to handle and operate.
Each of the 6 MARTA service areas (including Atlanta), should be able to raise whatever kind of tax, to whatever level, that they want to pay for MARTA.
Then Cobb could figure out how to increase funding level for MARTA, and possibly implement the 1% tax, or maybe a smaller sales tax, maybe combined with a property tax. Or whatever. Point being, it would come to a debate about numbers (as it should be), rather than all this social-political nonsense about joining MARTA.
Right now, the revenue to double or triple the bus fleet and/or double or triple the size of the region's rail network does not necessarily seem to exist to the extent that it needs to exist to execute such desired large-scale expansions of the region's transit network.
Well, let's do some back of the envelope figuring.
A sleek new CNG bus runs about $500,000.
Tripling the current fleet (which is about 500 buses) by adding 1,000 new ones would cost $500 million.
That's not chicken feed but let's put it in context.
The recent MARTA sales tax increase is expected to generate $6.5 BILLION over the next 40 years. So you could buy these buses for only 8% of the money being raised by this tax increase.
But for even more context, bear in mind that this $6.5 billion tax increase is coming from the city of Atlanta only.
Now the five county core area (Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton and Gwinnett) has around 3 million people. About 17% of them live in the city of Atlanta.
If you extrapolate that half-penny sales tax increase to the rest of the five county area, you'd generate around $38 billion over the next 40 years.
That means 1,000 brand spanking new, state of the art CNG buses would cost only 1.3% of the projected tax increase. You'd still have $37 billion left for messing around with light rail.
And instead of decades of wrangling with ROW acquisition, new infrastructure, EIS and NIMBY wars, you could have these buses out on the streets within a matter months. Helping real people in a real way, right now.
Well, let's do some back of the envelope figuring.
A sleek new CNG bus runs about $500,000.
Tripling the current fleet (which is about 500 buses) by adding 1,000 new ones would cost $500 million.
That's not chicken feed but let's put it in context.
The recent MARTA sales tax increase is expected to generate $6.5 BILLION over the next 40 years. So you could buy these buses for only 8% of the money being raised by this tax increase.
But for even more context, bear in mind that this $6.5 billion tax increase is coming from the city of Atlanta only.
Now the five county core area (Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton and Gwinnett) has around 3 million people. About 17% of them live in the city of Atlanta.
If you extrapolate that half-penny sales tax increase to the rest of the five county area, you'd generate around $38 billion over the next 40 years.
That means 1,000 brand spanking new, state of the art CNG buses would cost only 1.3% of the projected tax increase. You'd still have $37 billion left for messing around with light rail.
And instead of decades of wrangling with ROW acquisition, new infrastructure, EIS and NIMBY wars, you could have these buses out on the streets within a matter months. Helping real people in a real way, right now.
Like someone told you over and over again a few weeks ago you didn't include the cost to hire more drivers, pensions, maintenance, storage, etc, etc
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