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There was a person in the Texas Department of Transportation who put it well (rough quote)-"What we are doing (building more freeway lanes) isn't scalable. We need to provide alternatives. But we are going to continue to build as much as we can."
I get what this is trying to say, but that doesn't mean it is a good policy. I mean, building as much as you can is directly contrary to acknowledging the unsustainable nature of perpetually pandering to automobiles.
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At some point you have the situation you have with skyscrapers. Building them beyond a certain height doesn't make sense because you are using too much space for elevators.
True.
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But at the same time, I also agree with Houston MTA's slogan in their rail referendum as it applies to cars, "What is we didn't build it, but they came anyway?" The cars will come. You need to build as much as you can to avoid making the city like Los Angeles. Its one thing to have rush hour traffic. Its quite another to be like Los Angeles and like Atlanta is trending to have traffic 18 hours a day. Transit does much better providing an alternative for rush hours where destinations and timing are bunched.
See, the irony here is that trying to accommodate as many cars as possible will make you Los Angeles. If you don't accommodate as many as possible, yeah roads will be over capacity, but they will have plateaued. That is, they will be ~20% over capacity, but very rarely any more. Building more just means that more cars come along to fill in the space until that road is, once more, over capacity.
Transit can quite actively provide effective alternatives to driving at most hours of the day, as we can see with any number of cities with effective systems enabling non-car lifestyles.
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Atlanta (metro) did nothing on roads for 20 years and just now is starting to do HOT lanes. Atlanta did very little on transit either. Now they are finally planning on doing some things for transit, but also seem to be focused on making life more difficult for drivers. Like my wife was complaining about the other day: They put a concrete divider in a North Avenue lane she used for going straight. Now she has to wait in line behind a long line of cars turning right.
Look. The reality is that we have a limited amount of road space available. Non-car methods of moving people are far more space efficient within that limited space. It may seem like this is some dig against cars, but given the overwhelming prioritization of the automobile for the past six decades, it's really just an attempt to better allocate our space as it should have been all this time.
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We need to spend money on both. Transit needs to be done right, not done just to be done. Rail is often a very inefficient way to do things. Just because it works in Manhattan and Connecticut or Atlanta's midtown, doesn't mean it works in Snellville.
The problem with this notion of 'spend money on both' is that one has had overwhelming priority for the past six decades, and has left us with many, many financially unsustainable places, while the other has been pretty well neglected despite its ability to create financially sustainable places. Given the limited resources available, focusing on transit and other non-car mobility improvements for just a little while would do wonders for even helping pay for further road improvements in the future.
No, Snellville doesn't need its own heavy rail system, but a downtown bus station with meeting Bus Rapid Transit lines, Commuter Bus Transit lines, local bus lines, and bike lanes would go a far way.
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Originally Posted by samiwas1
It would probably help quite a bit for many years, before they filled back up. But, your point is mostly valid. But the same problem plagues something like MARTA in its current design. If something shuts down Five Points, the whole system becomes essentially useless. If something falls across a rail anywhere, that part of the system can't be bypassed.
I'm not so sold on even that. The Katy freeway filled up immediately, and worse than ever. Any new lanes to our interstates would just fill up as soon as they opened. By the time we actually finished any new interstates, they'd only last maybe a year or two before they were full again.
As has been explained before, as is standard operating procedure, if trains can not continue through, a bus bridge is put in place. The whole network does not simply turn off.
Even so, this just works to my point. The roads and transit act as two nearly independent systems to each other, not only providing general alternatives, but direct redundancy. That came in handy during the past few snow storms, when the trains could continue operations, but the roads were shut down, interstate or no.
How much of our metro can really use our limited and under built transit system as an alternative, though? The key, then, if you want true redundancies, is to heavily invest in our under-developed transit system.
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Well, short of tearing up the city, the streets are what they are, as far as where they run.
There are a few places where we can make improvements without tearing out too much, but overall I cynically agree.
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Here's where things get odd: I have been supporting huge investment in new transit options, specifically rail. But our resident uber-urbanist is flat out against it until we become even more dense and clogged. What's your opinion on that?
I think you're grossly characterizing their argument. Both are needed to support one another. Density can, as we can see in the real world, get along generally okay even without transit since walking and biking are still functional options. Transit without density just becomes fodder for the 'it doesn't go anywhere' and wasted tax dollars crowds. That doesn't mean that they'd turn down an offered transit line without current density, just that they might suggest to apply those resources elsewhere.
Building a place on a human scale, for walking and biking, does not mean that cars can't use it. Building a place for cars almost certainly makes a place impossible for people to really walk or bike. Same applies to transit.
Sadly, it was too long ago I saw this and I won't be able to find it easily.
The old overplayed Atlanta becoming Los Angeles doesn't pan out. In fact, we actually have the opposite problem from Los Angeles and some of this would support you opinions.
There are analysis that have been done in metro Areas to look at how much land is dedicated to a particular function and then again on a per capita scale. Los Angeles has an insane amount of roadways for their overall land usage percentage, compared to all peer cities.
Atlanta, inversely, lags behind most peer cities. Largely, from out 30+ years of minor investments to our system that was built out by the previous generation.
There is much room for Atlanta to have had more land usage in ground transportation and not be following LA's path. In fact, we already an opposite from LA... of course so opposite it brings us bad results in a different way and we have plenty of room to not be defiant to motorists.
Nah. LA has among the lowes road lanes per capital. Atlanta is already ahead of LA.
I'm not so sold on even that. The Katy freeway filled up immediately, and worse than ever. Any new lanes to our interstates would just fill up as soon as they opened. By the time we actually finished any new interstates, they'd only last maybe a year or two before they were full again.
You're right. Because we're already clogged for multiple hours per day. Obviously, people would try the other ways.
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As has been explained before, as is standard operating procedure, if trains can not continue through, a bus bridge is put in place. The whole network does not simply turn off.
Well, yeah...but that bus bridge could easily add 30-40 minutes to your trip. It's not just a "oh, we'll just go this way instead".
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How much of our metro can really use our limited and under built transit system as an alternative, though? The key, then, if you want true redundancies, is to heavily invest in our under-developed transit system.
I've been preaching that for years.
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I think you're grossly characterizing their argument.
Oh, I don't think I'm going near that far. I'm holding back due to moderation.
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Both are needed to support one another. Density can, as we can see in the real world, get along generally okay even without transit since walking and biking are still functional options.
Yes...IF that dense pocket also contains the jobs people need, and every amenity those people use within a reasonably short distance. No matter how you slice it, most people have no desire to walk more than a mile to their destination or bike more than couple of miles. And many people won't even do that.
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Transit without density just becomes fodder for the 'it doesn't go anywhere' and wasted tax dollars crowds. That doesn't mean that they'd turn down an offered transit line without current density, just that they might suggest to apply those resources elsewhere.
I'm pretty sure the idea of running lines to current busy locations was shot down until they are even more dense. I think we have plenty of areas in this city which are currently busy enough to warrant a rail-transit connection. Most of these areas are currently pretty clogged with car traffic. Plopping in thousands of more residents without the transit connection is not going to fix things.
So, then the question is...how dense does an area need to be before it's considered worthy of a transit link?
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Building a place on a human scale, for walking and biking, does not mean that cars can't use it. Building a place for cars almost certainly makes a place impossible for people to really walk or bike. Same applies to transit.
It's not impossible. Walking across a curb cut requires absolutely no extra effort. If you'll walk 2 miles to your destination, then walking 50 feet across a parking lot is not going to kill you.
That is freeway only. Does not include the entire ground transportation network that includes arterial roads and streets.
What I was looking at is an analysis of land use (spatial). LA is one of the highest in North America.
I'd also be careful with those numbers. They rely on per capita only from 1999. Atlanta has added a couple million with very few freeway miles added so the numbers would shift considerably.
See, the irony here is that trying to accommodate as many cars as possible will make you Los Angeles. If you don't accommodate as many as possible, yeah roads will be over capacity, but they will have plateaued. That is, they will be ~20% over capacity, but very rarely any more. Building more just means that more cars come along to fill in the space until that road is, once more, over capacity.
I am under the personal belief that this theory is severely over exaggerated. While I do believe it does hold "some" truth, I believe that ALOT of other factors are being completely ignored. For example being the Los Angeles region in itself is over 5 times larger than the Atlanta Metro and is the second largest city in this country, so you can expand roads but regardless you're going to have traffic. Thing is though people are under this impression that somehow widening a road just somehow flocks more people into the region and thus the road fills up again and I completely disagree with that. Los Angeles would still be as large as it is today even if they didn't build as an expansive of a highway system and focused all their money in buses and trains. What would change is how people got around, but they would come with their own cavietes or basically what I'm stating is, their is no perfect way to get people around, but their highways would be unbearably worse if they chose NOT to add those lanes. Their adding highways and expanding lanes has extremely little impact on the economic growth and development of the SOCAL region.
For one that area of the country is extremely sought after (and its not because of the highways) - people literally want to move there so bad that MANY are willing to live well under poverty conditions there, you think reducing every freeway there to two lanes each way is somehow going to detur growth and drag people out of their cars? think again.
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden
Transit can quite actively provide effective alternatives to driving at most hours of the day, as we can see with any number of cities with effective systems enabling non-car lifestyles.
I will agree with this, however; look at Chicago and also New York. Look at Washington D.C. and Baltimore. All of these cities have transit systems that make Atlanta's transit system look like a joke as far as COVERAGE is concerned. The thing is though, many of these cities also have a vast and redundant freeway network and even with their emense transit system.. the highways are still packed. Now...does the transit give you a great alternative to driving? Most of the time, yes .. however; is Mass Transit a complete REPLACEMENT for a highway? the answer is no. All of the systems are equally as necessary as each other... Mass Transit does not (nor can it ever) fit everyone's needs.
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden
Look. The reality is that we have a limited amount of road space available. Non-car methods of moving people are far more space efficient within that limited space. It may seem like this is some dig against cars, but given the overwhelming prioritization of the automobile for the past six decades, it's really just an attempt to better allocate our space as it should have been all this time.
Now this I agree with and understand however my counter to that is, this is a result of poor planning on Atlanta's part... There are several cities that have WELL in advanced planned for the widening of arterial roads of their development in general (as certain areas in the metro region are very much in lack of sufficient thoroughfares.) Now once again, do I say that we should throw roads every corner we can? No.. but when we have a 1 lane each way road packed with cars for 5 miles (like SR 120 between Peachtree Industrial Blvd and Alpharetta GA) .. we have a problem .. regardless of how we want to look at it.. the road needs to be expanded either to accommodate traffic or an alternative means of getting around needs to be installed and by this I don't mean throw up a bus system that noone's going to use .. regardless of how much we "want" people to use the bus or train.. we have to be flexible enough to provide "sufficient" means (and by sufficient what I mean is, we dont need to swell every road to 4 lanes each way, but we don't need to CHOKE our arterial roads either...) Another thing that I counter this argument is this...Atlanta's actual developing strategy comes accross as very rush and VERY unthought out and extremely underplanned.. I could be wrong across the board but thats the way it seems.. They continue to build heavy commercialized districts on arterials that are straining to handle the traffic they're already burdened with (look at SR 124 through Snellville) that have absolutely no way to by-pass them, or.. they only leave one main road to reach between two very large destinations. To me, the whole thing about not having enough "road space" isn't a good enough excuse because they could have adjusted zoning and planning, development, and several other factors to control traffic on a specific corridor if they knew there wasn't going to be enough space to widen it.
There are other cities that literally "can't" expand their road system because of geological barriers, but Atlanta has very few of these... What Atlanta faces is mostly political.
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden
The problem with this notion of 'spend money on both' is that one has had overwhelming priority for the past six decades, and has left us with many, many financially unsustainable places, while the other has been pretty well neglected despite its ability to create financially sustainable places. Given the limited resources available, focusing on transit and other non-car mobility improvements for just a little while would do wonders for even helping pay for further road improvements in the future.
No, Snellville doesn't need its own heavy rail system, but a downtown bus station with meeting Bus Rapid Transit lines, Commuter Bus Transit lines, local bus lines, and bike lanes would go a far way.
Well my personal opinion to this is.. Atlanta has been ignoring BOTH for a substantial amount of time because DOT has had their hands tied behind their back and MARTA in itself has not become large enough to become a Federally Mandated Entity. Another issue is the excessive political backlash on BOTH MARTA AND new highways. As far as money wasted on roads? I can't agree with this. I'm really sorry but I can't. There are several metro's that have developed ten times the road infrastructure that Atlanta has (without becoming a Los Angeles I might add) that have not broken their DOT budget. The real issue is our DOT is severely underfunded. Even the state of Illinois LITERALLY has TWICE the allocated budget that we do.. and I find that kind of embarrassing.
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden
I'm not so sold on even that. The Katy freeway filled up immediately, and worse than ever. Any new lanes to our interstates would just fill up as soon as they opened. By the time we actually finished any new interstates, they'd only last maybe a year or two before they were full again.
I will admit the Katy Freeway is insanely large. And I too believe it would have been better to have divided up the traffic between rail and highway, but I can't exactly call the Katy Freeway a failure (nor can I call it a success) but instead I call it, what was necessary at that time. You see, When the Katy Freeway was designed the city of Katy itself was swelling with growth and it was predicted at that time that its freeway would literally "need" to be designed the way it currently is to handle its current traffic. Them actually widening the road had nothing to do with the population explosion in Katy TX, whether they did it or not.. it still would have swelled... issue is, if they DIDNT do it.. The Katy Freeway would be 10x worse than it currently is.. we see in NUMBERS comparing that highway to two different times and although now it MAY be worse than it was.. we have to account that the city of Katy itself has also practically doubled in size... so the two figures aren't exactly as clear as they might at first appear. Another factor is that the demand and growth in that region of Texas is not the same as it is here in Atlanta. Two different economies... I haven't done research but I am willing to vouch that this area of Texas has alot more demand than most areas in Atlanta thus .. we blame the freeway but that area of Texas may have a legit economy of which attracts people - regardless of the expansion of the freeway, it still would have swelled with traffic.. so the issue is diverting that traffic to mass-transit ... and I will still say even if they did get peak efficiency .. the Katy Freeway would still indeed be packed.
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden
As has been explained before, as is standard operating procedure, if trains can not continue through, a bus bridge is put in place. The whole network does not simply turn off.
Even so, this just works to my point. The roads and transit act as two nearly independent systems to each other, not only providing general alternatives, but direct redundancy. That came in handy during the past few snow storms, when the trains could continue operations, but the roads were shut down, interstate or no.
How much of our metro can really use our limited and under built transit system as an alternative, though? The key, then, if you want true redundancies, is to heavily invest in our under-developed transit system.
I personally believe that road and transit systems work cooperatively and hand in hand, especially in terms of bus networks. Train networks a bit more loosely but still necessary as - cars still have drive to the train station and buses do as well. When I lived in Rockdale County, I drove about 20 miles to Indian Creek MARTA where I took the train the rest of the way to the Airport. If I left late, I would still have to sit in I-20 rush hour traffic.. making me late for my train too... so they're not exactly as disconnected as they may appear.
That is freeway only. Does not include the entire ground transportation network that includes arterial roads and streets.
I was thinking that, too, but when I read down the chart there's a note at the bottom that says, "Freeway equivalent miles includes freeway miles plus a conversion of arterial street (signalized street) miles at their capacity ratio relative to freeway lane miles.
In any event, I don't think Atlanta has near the asphalt that a lot of big cities do. I would not put more freeways at the top of our list of needs but we could definitely use more arterials.
I was thinking that, too, but when I read down the chart there's a note at the bottom that says, "Freeway equivalent miles includes freeway miles plus a conversion of arterial street (signalized street) miles at their capacity ratio relative to freeway lane miles.
In any event, I don't think Atlanta has near the asphalt that a lot of big cities do. I would not put more freeways at the top of our list of needs but we could definitely use more arterials.
I think freeways are needed, but arterials are a bigger need. I remember some transportation expert quoted in the AJC a few years ago describing our arterial network as "a bunch of 2 lane country roads without left turn lanes."
And while some on here will say its impossible to improve, I saw what Houston did starting around 1982 when they came up with a 25 year plan. Their arterials were as bad and disconnected as here with more potholes. And they started that program during the worst recession Houston has ever had, the oil bust that lasted from 1982-1987.
I will agree with this, however; look at Chicago and also New York. Look at Washington D.C. and Baltimore. All of these cities have transit systems that make Atlanta's transit system look like a joke as far as COVERAGE is concerned. The thing is though, many of these cities also have a vast and redundant freeway network and even with their emense transit system.. the highways are still packed. Now...does the transit give you a great alternative to driving? Most of the time, yes .. however; is Mass Transit a complete REPLACEMENT for a highway? the answer is no. All of the systems are equally as necessary as each other... Mass Transit does not (nor can it ever) fit everyone's needs.
Definitely agree with this.
...Atlanta's actual developing strategy comes accross as very rush and VERY unthought out and extremely underplanned.. I could be wrong across the board but thats the way it seems.. They continue to build heavy commercialized districts on arterials that are straining to handle the traffic they're already burdened with (look at SR 124 through Snellville) that have absolutely no way to by-pass them, or.. they only leave one main road to reach between two very large destinations. To me, the whole thing about not having enough "road space" isn't a good enough excuse because they could have adjusted zoning and planning, development, and several other factors to control traffic on a specific corridor if they knew there wasn't going to be enough space to widen it.
Also agree with this-they should focus more on areas that can handle it.
There are other cities that literally "can't" expand their road system because of geological barriers, but Atlanta has very few of these... What Atlanta faces is mostly political.
Totally agree with this.
Well my personal opinion to this is.. Atlanta has been ignoring BOTH for a substantial amount of time because DOT has had their hands tied behind their back and MARTA in itself has not become large enough to become a Federally Mandated Entity. Another issue is the excessive political backlash on BOTH MARTA AND new highways. As far as money wasted on roads? I can't agree with this. I'm really sorry but I can't. There are several metro's that have developed ten times the road infrastructure that Atlanta has (without becoming a Los Angeles I might add) that have not broken their DOT budget. The real issue is our DOT is severely underfunded. Even the state of Illinois LITERALLY has TWICE the allocated budget that we do.. and I find that kind of embarrassing.
Also agree here.
I will admit the Katy Freeway is insanely large. And I too believe it would have been better to have divided up the traffic between rail and highway, but I can't exactly call the Katy Freeway a failure (nor can I call it a success) but instead I call it, what was necessary at that time.
Whether you built it or not, they WERE coming. And the expansion has greatly improved non-peak mobility. You could be stuck crawling on it at any time of day. Now it can handle non-peak traffic.
I personally believe that road and transit systems work cooperatively and hand in hand, especially in terms of bus networks. Train networks a bit more loosely but still necessary as - cars still have drive to the train station and buses do as well. When I lived in Rockdale County, I drove about 20 miles to Indian Creek MARTA where I took the train the rest of the way to the Airport. If I left late, I would still have to sit in I-20 rush hour traffic.. making me late for my train too... so they're not exactly as disconnected as they may appear.
Even with massive investments in transit, Los Angeles and Dallas continue to have a declining % of their population using mass transit. Here's reality: a) work hours are more irregular, making it more difficult to use mass transit when you have a family with the associated commitments; b) jobs are getting more and more dispersed throughout the metro, making them harder to serve by mass transit; and c) people value convenience. You can't plan your transportation strategy on only serving 4% of the population.
Freeway capacity has grown by next to nothing since 1999.
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