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For a city drawing tourists from surrounding states every weekend and a convention/ sports hub,
out-of-towners only understand the interstates and what they see from the interstates.
Hotels alongside I-75/I-85 off of 10th and 14th St. are beacons to unfamiliar visitors.
I'm not defending the Connector, but most cities do have an interstate very close to downtown.
Maybe American cities, but many European cities don't. Their freeways stop at their perimeter highways. Paris has arterials, but not freeways. Same in London. Same in Barcelona. Same in Rome. Same in Milan. Same in Amsterdam.
See, where we rammed our freeways through the hearts of our cities, tearing out neighborhoods and productive communities in the name of Urban Renewal, they kept their cities' hearts intact. They may still have plenty of traffic, but preserving those dense cores allowed incredible networks of alternatives to cars.
Where as we built cities for cars, that don't really accommodate the human scale well, they kept their cities for humans, and have managed to accommodate cars as well.
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I wish that another alternative parallel to the connector could be improvised on an existing surface street by eliminating left turns, and increasing through-put North to South. This would relieve the connector and aid in bypassing incidents.
Northside Drive might be a candidate.
Can we please not sacrifice even more land to underproductive roadways that just clog up in a few years. The land area would be far, far better spent on a walkable, human-scaled transit-way.
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Also, it's no mystery that the entrances and exits to downtown streets are what slows everything down, along with semi-sharp curves.
Closing almost all downtown entrances/exits and creating a service road to access downtown streets similar to elevated xpress lanes on I-75 in Cobb would....
increase throughput & average speeds on connector substantially.
No. No more land lost to trying to make the interstates work when we know that they'll just clog up again. We don't need to sacrifice productive land to access roads. We need to use actual solutions, that have been shown to actually work to handle far, far more people I our city than we can right now.
Price the roads to decentivize driving while using that revenue to provide a full suite of alternatives, and actually maintain them in a state of good repair.
I like buses because they take you right to where you need to be. They drop me off right in front of my destination. I don't understand why people like rail so much more than buses, especially in a city like at Atlanta with a limited rail system.
Park n ride buses do just fine in American cities when they have HOV or HOT lanes to travel in.
Now local buses are slow. And because many routes are really slow, they tend to have almost solely customers with no alternative but to ride the bus. Being in a bus when you are the only person who isn't poor just doesn't encourage choice riders.
The primary factor is the level of service. I've been on local bus routes that had many middle class passengers. But those were short routes without a lot of stops, so they weren't really, really slow like a lot of local buses. Streetcars (ie light rail w/o dedicated ROW) are just really expensive buses on rails. They will, after the initial trial period, have the same clientele as local buses.
Maybe American cities, but many European cities don't. Their freeways stop at their perimeter highways. Paris has arterials, but not freeways. Same in London. Same in Barcelona. Same in Rome. Same in Milan. Same in Amsterdam.
See, where we rammed our freeways through the hearts of our cities, tearing out neighborhoods and productive communities in the name of Urban Renewal, they kept their cities' hearts intact. They may still have plenty of traffic, but preserving those dense cores allowed incredible networks of alternatives to cars.
Where as we built cities for cars, that don't really accommodate the human scale well, they kept their cities for humans, and have managed to accommodate cars as well.
Can we please not sacrifice even more land to underproductive roadways that just clog up in a few years. The land area would be far, far better spent on a walkable, human-scaled transit-way.
No. No more land lost to trying to make the interstates work when we know that they'll just clog up again. We don't need to sacrifice productive land to access roads. We need to use actual solutions, that have been shown to actually work to handle far, far more people I our city than we can right now.
Price the roads to decentivize driving while using that revenue to provide a full suite of alternatives, and actually maintain them in a state of good repair.
Atlanta's main draw is the integration with the trees and landscape.
People who want to live in tight, dense, urban concrete surroundings (like I did for 10 years in NYC, 1 in Boston, 5 in LA, and 6 months in Paris) don't come to Atlanta, they have real urban destinations elsewhere.
With surrounding states bringing probably over 500,000 people per weekend to do their sinning in the South's big city, automobiles aren't going anywhere, and tourism is hugely important for Atlanta.
Food, construction supplies & amazon deliveries don't hop on commuter rail.
I want rail to expand and be successful also, but it's that last 1/4 mile that people are too lazy to walk that is the problem.
Look at anyplace like a Marta station or a mall, and see how nobody takes the stairs while escalators are jamb packed.
People in Atlanta who live 200 feet from a Marta station continue to drive to Lenox even though Marta is much more pleasant.
In this day and age, even the richest cities can barely afford small extensions to their rail systems, as everything today requires years of studies, environmental assessments and billions of dollars.
A substantial shift from cars to rail in Atlanta that came within 2-4 miles of each area comprising even the inner core of Atlanta would...
cost hundreds of billions of dollars and over 50 years to build.
An intelligent discussion must include the realities of today and feasible steps to get to y'all's utopia.
Who are you to say what I and 6 million others live in Atlanta for?
Do you really think people that live and work in the core of a top 10 largest metro in the county should expect to drive everywhere and have free flowing traffic and disconnected suburban style buildings? Ha!
Cars and roads are simply too expensive and not a sustainable solution for moving large number of people around in major cities. We will never be able to build large enough freeways to move everyone around by car, so that ship has already sailed and that change is coming.
We don't have any laws that force more density on any land owners so stop forcing the growing number of us that live in Atlanta for a vibrate urban lifestyle to live with less urban vibrancy with these BS zoning laws limiting density and forcing giant highways through our urban neighborhoods.
Cars and roads are simply too expensive and not a sustainable solution for moving large number of people around in major cities.
In Manhattan or Tokyo, sure, yeah. But Metro Atlanta is not dense, not even at all, in fact it was built around low density and around the automobile.
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?
I'm not saying I want no transit, but I am saying that it ultimately does come down to preference in how we choose to live, not which one is "sustainable". Cars are perfectly sustainable if that's what we want to do.
In Manhattan or Tokyo, sure, yeah. But Metro Atlanta is not dense, not even at all, in fact it was built around low density and around the automobile.
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?
I'm not saying I want no transit, but I am saying that it ultimately does come down to preference in how we choose to live, not which one is "sustainable". Cars are perfectly sustainable if that's what we want to do.
Except they're not. It still simply comes down to a matter of space, there are only so many cars you can pack into an area regardless of how automated or what power source they run on. Power is a finite resource, there is only so much available, regardless of the source. It is far more efficient to run a train with 1000 people than to charge and power 1000 cars. Especially in an electric train, the source-to-consumer power losses are far less, and you're moving far less vehicle per person. That also doesn't take into account the resources that go into the vehicle. People keep their cars what? 5-7 years? A train car can easily last 20+ years.
But this whole argument about Atlanta not being dense is bunk anyways. We have density at a lot of nodes, like Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead and Perimeter. The issue is just in getting people there. The key is to intercept them out in the low density areas and bring them in, that's why trains and the park and ride concept work so well.
One of you has probably posted this article at some point, but if not, its worth a read. "Atlanta's War on Density"
Talks about urban planners of the 50s and how they were trying to both destroy the street grid and separate commercial from residential areas. Helps explain why commercial is so inconvenient in many parts of town and arterials so few and far between.
Atlanta's main draw is the integration with the trees and landscape.
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.
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People who want to live in tight, dense, urban concrete surroundings (like I did for 10 years in NYC, 1 in Boston, 5 in LA, and 6 months in Paris) don't come to Atlanta, they have real urban destinations elsewhere.
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.
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With surrounding states bringing probably over 500,000 people per weekend to do their sinning in the South's big city, automobiles aren't going anywhere, and tourism is hugely important for Atlanta.
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?
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Food, construction supplies & amazon deliveries don't hop on commuter rail.
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.
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I want rail to expand and be successful also, but it's that last 1/4 mile that people are too lazy to walk that is the problem.
Look at anyplace like a Marta station or a mall, and see how nobody takes the stairs while escalators are jamb packed.
People in Atlanta who live 200 feet from a Marta station continue to drive to Lenox even though Marta is much more pleasant.
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.
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In this day and age, even the richest cities can barely afford small extensions to their rail systems, as everything today requires years of studies, environmental assessments and billions of dollars.
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.
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A substantial shift from cars to rail in Atlanta that came within 2-4 miles of each area comprising even the inner core of Atlanta would...
cost hundreds of billions of dollars and over 50 years to build.
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.
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An intelligent discussion must include the realities of today and feasible steps to get to y'all's utopia.
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.
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Originally Posted by primaltech
In Manhattan or Tokyo, sure, yeah. But Metro Atlanta is not dense, not even at all, in fact it was built around low density and around the automobile.
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?[quote]
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.
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I'm not saying I want no transit, but I am saying that it ultimately does come down to preference in how we choose to live, not which one is "sustainable". Cars are perfectly sustainable if that's what we want to do.
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.
Except they're not. It still simply comes down to a matter of space, there are only so many cars you can pack into an area regardless of how automated or what power source they run on. Power is a finite resource, there is only so much available, regardless of the source. It is far more efficient to run a train with 1000 people than to charge and power 1000 cars. Especially in an electric train, the source-to-consumer power losses are far less, and you're moving far less vehicle per person. That also doesn't take into account the resources that go into the vehicle. People keep their cars what? 5-7 years? A train car can easily last 20+ years.
But this whole argument about Atlanta not being dense is bunk anyways. We have density at a lot of nodes, like Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead and Perimeter. The issue is just in getting people there. The key is to intercept them out in the low density areas and bring them in, that's why trains and the park and ride concept work so well.
Absolutely.
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