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Status:
"Pickleball-Free American"
(set 1 day ago)
Location: St Simons Island, GA
23,460 posts, read 44,074,708 times
Reputation: 16840
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
Atlanta traffic is not bad for a big city.
Having lived in NYC, DC, Miami, Orlando and Seattle, I've seen worse. Much worse. Native Seattleites in particular are quite bitter over the traffic nightmares that rapid growth has brought them.
Above I stated that Atl doubled its population from 1985 to 2020 but I intended to say from 1985 to 2010. I do not buy that freeways create congestion. Freeways are clogged because of demand due to population growth. You cannot compensate for that population growth by doing nothing and that is basically what Atl has done since 1985. If you build enough freeways and capacity then congestion will be minimized. But the do nothing approach is not the answer. And poor land use is not the answer. North NJ has kept their congestion minimized with NJ Turnpike, GSPkwy, i78, i80, i76, i287, i278, and transit. But do not discount the importance of those freeways in Nj. Without any of them, there would be more congestion. In my humble opinion, it takes a good freeway sus and transit system in metros of 5 million and up. And no DFW does not rank higher in congestion than Atl. Atl is 9th in population and 4th in congestion the last time I checked. DFW is 5th innpopulaion snd 9th in congestion.
Two important things you seem to be ignoring or unaware:
MARTA was also expanded greatly in those years and also 400 was built.Spaghetti Junction,Toll lnaes were added,and several spurs were created.
Dallas does not have 4 major interstates running through with traffic from the most populous region of the US (East Coast) passing through each day.
Dallas can build those roads because they can as they have more areas in which to do them
Just be thankful the Great State of North Carolina thinks differently from do-nothing Georgia.
North Carolina has been aggressively increasing connectivity over the last 40 years with the goal of....
"bringing a modern, multi-lane, divided highway to within 10 miles of 96% of the population".
That's a tall order for one of the most evenly-spread populations of any states (2nd only to Pennsylvania).
North Carolina is constantly being awarded new interstate designations (too many to list) and has a comprehensive plan through 2040-
that will connect deep-water ports, upgrade critical highways to interstate status, construct new bypasses and loops around all of its larger metros to provide alternatives to gridlock, and even build bypasses around small towns.
For those anti-highway types, NC's intrastate rail service is successful and admired nationwide.
North Carolina is investing in a balanced, multi-modal future that is sure to re-affirm itself as one of the East Coast's powerhouse states.
Land was never available ITP, between 1985-2010, to add crosstown freeways.
No city or state plans for future highway corridors by plowing through dense existing neighborhoods.
Freedom Parkway shouldn't be used as example of expanding a freeway system.
New highway corridors are supposed to be planned, designated, and reserved decades in advance, most of the time, at the undeveloped periphery of cities.
If GDOT had been on their game, they could have designated an East-West corridor just outside of Gwinnett Place Mall back in 1990 when that was the edge of Metro Atlanta.
If they had, today there would be a super convenient and necessary artery with development on both sides that never rammed through any existing neighborhoods.
That is the way that I-285 was conceived in the 1960's, Charlotte's I-485 and Raleigh's I-540 (I-640 when loop is complete) were mapped out in the very early 1990's.
Highways are super cheap to build when the land isn't yet developed. Raleigh's non-tolled stretch of I-540, probably 25 miles or so cost about $1.4 billion to build starting in the 90's.
That's dirt cheap for so much freeway, and it's invaluable for RTP commuters every day.
I live in Charlotte, and I do not get to Atl very often now. But in the 1980s and 19900s , I traveled there frequently. I can recall that you did not begin to have a traffic problem until the mid to late 1990s. From there it snowballed out of control because of adding approximately one million new residents each decade. In 1985, Atl's metro population was around 2.5 million. Twenty five years later the population had doubled to five million. During that time, the only major new freeway added (not spurs) was the GA 400. And you guys wonder why you have a traffic problem. Transit lines were not increased in number and not expanded to outlying counties. Yes capacity was added but that was not enough. I saw a commentary on line from a spokesman within the transportation department at Texas A&M University. He said that a basic spoke and hub system with one beltway is not sufficient to handle the traffic generated from a growing metro like Atl. He said cross town freeways and more than one beltway is needed. He pointed out that Dallas Fort Worth has been successful moving traffic using this approach. He stayed that area is constantly updating its freeway system with new freeways. DFW does not have fourteen lane freeways. DFW just builds another six to eight lane freeway where it is needed. I have personally experienced the benefit of cross town freeways in the DFW area. I was traveling northbound on i35 in FW. I needed to get north of Dallas. I did not have to get on a congested beltway to do this. Instead i used a cross town freeway to north of Dallas with absolutely no congestion.
This thread is hilarious, dont even know where to begin really.
I have an opinion about Charlotte traffic and growth as well, and since you opened the box with your opinion about my city, I'll share my opinion about yours as well. Thanks for giving me the platform to express my thoughts
Charlotte is a cluster **ck waiting to happen on so many levels. Traffic is already bad there and is well on its way to getting worse. That city has the same non grid/meandering street set up that ATL has, same spotty growth here and there that ATL had/has. Put a new subdivision out in the middle of nowhere, 3 miles off the main strip instead of continuous development, yeah that type of growth. And Charlotte is also growing at a fast clip like ATL is too.
So you want to compare what ATL was like in '85 to now? How bout we compare what ATL was like in 85 to what Charlotte is like now? If you do that, its plain to see that your city is in for a traffic nightmare of epic proportions. ATL in '85 had both 285 and MARTA up and running for damn near 20 years at that point. So if Charlotte in '17 is ATL in '85, then that means its ATL with a barely completed 285 and only half of a single MARTA line, but with the same amount of new people moving to the area. Do you see the fallacy in looking at us like we have a problem with what is going on in your own backyard? You all should be building hwys and transit lines hand over fist, every other month something new should be opening up there to keep up with the growth. And lets be real, thats not happening up there, you can barely complete your interstates or transit system, yall too busy looking at what ATL is doing instead of taking care of your own house.
Yall just completed your interstate loop a few years ago, and that joke of a transit system (street car) that only goes to the richest part of town doesn't help alleviate traffic at all. Not to mention but the fact that yall built the train line out south first instead of west or east was one of the dumber civic decisions i've ever seen a city pull. Cant even get funding for the rest of the line so you had to roll out a vintage bus system that was supposed to mimic a street car for the parts of town that need mass transit the most. So the people who have money and by extension cars, get access to transit, but the poor people on the west and east just have to fend for themselves? Know what that equals? A grimey ass, crime ridden city in 20 years. Segregating whole sides of town and not letting them participate in the growth of the city is the same thing places like Chicago and New Orleans did, and look how that worked out for them on the crime tip.
Ive said for years that Charlotte is a powder keg waiting to blow, and the whole world saw it not too long ago with those riots in Uptown. The people who run the city are so obsessed with being the anti-Atlanta that they waste valuable energy that could be directed to actually making the city better. All the while ignoring whats peculating in their own backyard. I lived there for a minute and still own a rental in NW Charlotte and there is an actual tangible sense of anger among the lower classes of people there, its literally palatable on the streets. They see stuff like the city jerking them around with transit to their respective parts of town, and it makes them angry. The city is trying to leave them in the rear view mirror in favor of the shiny new transplants. Can't do that, gotta at least throw them a bone, if you don't then those same folks will make your day to day life worse. Its not a problem now because the streets are still slow up there, but once folks from the hood realize that car jacking and robbing people in Myers Park and South Park beats the heck out of sitting on the porch all day, then it will be a problem for you. But by then it will be too late. Pretty sure the folks here in ATL can tell you what it's like having the stick up kids come from the rough parts of town to the nice ones to get some money. We have MARTA and a big ass airport to at least alleviate some of that. Give some dudes a shot at a better life so they don't have to do that. Your city has none of that.
Last edited by oldschoolChevy; 07-22-2017 at 04:00 PM..
This thread is hilarious, dont even know where to begin really.
I have an opinion about Charlotte traffic and growth as well, and since you opened the box with your opinion about my city, I'll share my opinion about yours as well. Thanks for giving me the platform to express my thoughts
Charlotte is a cluster **ck waiting to happen on so many levels. Traffic is already bad there and is well on its way to getting worse. That city has the same non grid/meandering street set up that ATL has, same spotty growth here and there that ATL had/has. Put a new subdivision out in the middle of nowhere, 3 miles off the main strip instead of continuous development, yeah that type of growth. And Charlotte is also growing at a fast clip like ATL is too.
So you want to compare what ATL was like in '85 to now? How bout we compare what ATL was like in 85 to what Charlotte is like now? If you do that, its plain to see that your city is in for a traffic nightmare of epic proportions. ATL in '85 had both 285 and MARTA up and running for damn near 20 years at that point. So if Charlotte in '17 is ATL in '85, then that means its ATL with a barely completed 285 and only half of a single MARTA line, but with the same amount of new people moving to the area. Do you see the fallacy in looking at us like we have a problem with what is going on in your own backyard? You all should be building hwys and transit lines hand over fist, every other month something new should be opening up there to keep up with the growth. And lets be real, thats not happening up there, you can barely complete your interstates or transit system, yall too busy looking at what ATL is doing instead of taking care of your own house.
Yall just completed your interstate loop a few years ago, and that joke of a transit system (street car) that only goes to the richest part of town doesn't help alleviate traffic at all. Not to mention but the fact that yall built the train line out south first instead of west or east was one of the dumber civic decisions i've ever seen a city pull. Cant even get funding for the rest of the line so you had to roll out a vintage bus system that was supposed to mimic a street car for the parts of town that need mass transit the most. So the people who have money and by extension cars, get access to transit, but the poor people on the west and east just have to fend for themselves? Know what that equals? A grimey ass, crime ridden city in 20 years. Segregating whole sides of town and not letting them participate in the growth of the city is the same thing places like Chicago and New Orleans did, and look how that worked out for them on the crime tip.
Ive said for years that Charlotte is a powder keg waiting to blow, and the whole world saw it not too long ago with those riots in Uptown. The people who run the city are so obsessed with being the anti-Atlanta that they waste valuable energy that could be directed to actually making the city better. All the while ignoring whats peculating in their own backyard. I lived there for a minute and still own a rental in NW Charlotte and there is an actual tangible sense of anger among the lower classes of people there, its literally palatable on the streets. They see stuff like the city jerking them around with transit to their respective parts of town, and it makes them angry. The city is trying to leave them in the rear view mirror in favor of the shiny new transplants. Can't do that, gotta at least throw them a bone, if you don't then those same folks will make your day to day life worse. Its not a problem now because the streets are still slow up there, but once folks from the hood realize that car jacking and robbing people in Myers Park and South Park beats the heck out of sitting on the porch all day, then it will be a problem for you. But by then it will be too late. Pretty sure the folks here in ATL can tell you what it's like having the stick up kids come from the rough parts of town to the nice ones to get some money. We have MARTA and a big ass airport to at least alleviate some of that. Give some dudes a shot at a better life so they don't have to do that. Your city has none of that.
North Carolina cities and the state's infrastructure is completely different from Georgia's.
Atlanta is its own entity surrounded by very rural land with low population.
North Carolina's has more-evenly spread population (think rural countryside with traffic lights at highway crossings) with smaller metros all growing concurrently.
Charlotte is probably like Raleigh where there are 5 different ways to get anywhere on the nation's 2nd largest highway system (behind Texas) with over 80,000 miles of state maintained highways and over 100,000 miles total.
Charlotte, like Atlanta and the rest of the US is at the point where no single solution will solve mobility challenges.
Charlotte is the imaginary center of one of the nation's most-populated regions (6-7 million people live within 100 mile radius [Raleigh-Durham isn't even included in this number) and growth doesn't have to hug up close to Charlotte's core like Atlanta does.
Central North Carolina has the same population as North Georgia today, and mobility is doing pretty well.
Charlotteans will hate my saying this, but [ Raleigh- Charlotte- Atlanta ] are perfect examples of cities coming in sizes [ small- medium- & large ].
I don't even think big city traffic can really be "cured". Certainly, Atlanta can do better by doing enough to at least reduce the hours and minutes in a given day where there is congestion and peak severe congestion. But, I don't think it can be reduced THAT much. Overall, a healthy, robust city anywhere in the world has bad traffic, and some horrific traffic. This is NOT to say "give up." Again, things can be better, but Atlantans will always be facing some serious traffic headaches - because it's a large, robust city.
The only sure for traffic is congestion tolling. Besides that we need to focus on giving people alternatives to driving and stop giving people incentives to fill up the roads.
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