GDOT conducting 3-year study on fixing the Downtown Connector

[architect77]

[quote=fourthwarden;48807639]Sort of. Its affordability and growing industries and institutions of learning and connectivity and tons of other things also attract tons of people. Some even come for the urban aspect, or stay for the urban aspect.



Or, and here's a crazy concept, just don't live in the city part of the city? There are a thousand towns and suburbs in the metro where you can get what you want. The core city of a top 10 U.S. metro, though, aught to, you know, be a city. That includes all the density and supporting infrastructure.



Great, so lets provide as many alternatives for locals as possible to get off the roads for those people. Let's build the interstate rail systems for as many of them to come without cars as possible. Let's make sure they're actually paying for the infrastructure they're using through appropriate pricing points, and not just waving that off because they're tourists.

Who knows, maybe the new density and development will give more people more reason to come to our city to shop, learn, and play?



No, but food and amazon deliveries can use bike lanes, and all can certainly benefit from not having nearly as high a percentage using cars as do now. They don't need interstates, though.



The answer isn't to build more roads for them, though. It's to make sure the land near our transit lines is as full of start and end points for trip as the market can sustain. Trying to accommodate them all in cars actively works against that.



And a HUGE part of that is the cost ineffectiveness of trying to both suppress more dense development, and prioritize the automobile. The solution to freeing up & creating more resources for our cities is to move away from the car, not continue to encourage it.



No, it wouldn't. Not if we did things the right way. Especially since it doesn't have to all be rail, nor expensive rail at that.

The key is to stop treating cars as the natural solution. Stop pretending like they're the best option. They're a waste of energy, of space, and are costing us incredible amounts of money from all angles. We could, as I have already pointed out, pay for a simply amazing system of transit with implementing a congestion toll system for ITP. We could create even more money by implementing a state mileage tax to replace the gas tax as the appropriate 'user fee' for roads. We could create long-term financial sustainability for countless towns by seeding dense cores around transit stations.

That's the reality of the car. It is expensive in an institutional and a personal sense. If we move away from it, we not only improve plenty of people's personal finances, but our towns' and our state's as well.



I am being realistic. I am looking at the data and the cold hard facts. It's those who want to continue to prioritize cars and suppress more dense development that are ignoring reality for their perceived utopia, and it's crippling us, as a city and as a nation. I can not stress that enough.







You're right that Atlanta isn't very dense, but it's dense enough to be causing all sorts of traffic problems. Perhaps that should be seen as a red flag, huh?

Now, just look forward to where the metro has added another 2 million people, and the city is triple its current population. I can guarantee you things won't be better off with everyone in a car.

[quote]There's plenty of room for millions of cars, above and below the surface. Cars also can be powered by battery, charged by renewable energy and/or nuclear power. So how would that not be sustainable?

Well, first of all, I meant financially sustainable. The cold hard fact is that cars do not produce enough wealth in the form of development to sustain the upkeep of the roads needed to move large numbers of people with little to no alternatives. If you have not, go read the Growth Ponzi Scheme by StrongTowns. It, and other articles of theirs, outlines the underlying problems of car-centric development that is literally bankrupting our cities and towns.

That will not be fixed by tunnels, which are expensive to maintain and which are still expensive to build and will likely still be expensive to build for a long time.

As for electric cars, they're still a waste of energy when comparing to things like trains or buses, and are still a geometric problem.



No, cars are not perfectly sustainable. Not even close. Seriously. They are bankrupting us.

We've deluded ourselves into thinking that cars are a fine choice for transportation, but they're not. They're awful. Just because we've prioritized them for the past 60 years doesn't change that reality. They are a waste of space, of energy, and of money, and they are a gigantic source of so, so many problems in our country.

That's not an idealist mindset talking, here, that's the cold, hard, data-backed reality of things.

Another post from someone who seems lonely.

This is my final post on this thread.

My reply was directed at the person against separating the downtown exits from through traffic. They said, "No, no, not another concrete access road through the connector!", this thread's purpose of solutions for the downtown connector.

Next your line by line effort to contest everything I said is ridiculous. I said I was for rail expansion.

There's no purpose to contradict every observation I have.

Atlanta's MAIN DIFFERENTIATION from all of the other big cities in America is the "suburban look" of the tree-filled landscape even in the urban core.

As a Southerner from rural NC outside of Raleigh, my assessment of all aspects of the Southeastern states is very valid, and I say to JSVH that Atlanta is the only major city in America comprised of smaller-scale suburban-feeling building blocks, which sets it apart from everywhere else.

As a city of transplants, until someone can show me otherwise, I say the trees, beauty, & weather is what draws Midwesterners wanting to reinvent themselves, like us Southerners. Affordability can be found anywhere, but combined with a major city Atlanta reigns supreme too.

I wish Georgia officials would go visit the other top-ten most populous states & learn from them, and drastically start building for the future, also. Just like you.

Amazon deliveries in the Bike Lanes? I don't know, the necessary plastic protecting the cardboard boxes from rain will only add to the world's plastic problem.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Is it because bus service has been cut in exchange to fund rail projects?

Haven't really seen a discussion of that in Dallas. There have been a couple of articles talking about how overall ridership in Los Angeles has been declining (and traffic congestion increasing rapidly) despite a massive rail expansion and that those decreases have corresponded with increases in bus fares.

That's a risk here if they try to force riders from lower fare buses into better service, but higher priced trains. You can't ignore that people usually make rational economic decisions on transportation.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

Haven't really seen a discussion of that in Dallas. There have been a couple of articles talking about how overall ridership in Los Angeles has been declining (and traffic congestion increasing rapidly) despite a massive rail expansion and that those decreases have corresponded with increases in bus fares.

That's a risk here if they try to force riders from lower fare buses into better service, but higher priced trains. You can't ignore that people usually make rational economic decisions on transportation.

LA has seen declining bus ridership, but the rail ridership has been stable, or even risen. LA's Metro Bus System hasn't seen an overhaul in 25 years.