Will Gwinnett County join MARTA? Not likely, officials say (Atlanta: apartments, townhomes)
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Even that failed 2012 T-SPLOST was only $7.2 billion, and most of that for roads. And the failed (blocked) 2016 .5 penny for MARTA in Fulton and DeKalb was only $8 billion. Both were something, but not near enough, especially for the region as a whole.
We need to just stop messing around. What the 10-county Atlanta region really needs, is a $50 billion package (of various kinds of taxes) for a massive, unprecedented expansion of various forms of transit. Purely to be spent on transit. If Seattle can do it, so can we. And so should we. We're the larger metro anyway. We should invest AT LEAST as much as they.
I haven't done the math or anything, but I believe $50 B should be able to:
-Fully fund the entire commuter rail system within the 10 counties. All lines and branches of it, all the necessary track widening, all the trains, and all the stations on all the lines, including the MMPT main terminal where they all meet up.
-Fully fund the most needed MARTA heavy rail expansions. Red Line to Windward Pkwy, Blue Line to Stonecrest Mall on the east, and Six Flags on the west. Plus new key infill stations like Armour and Krog St, and maybe even extending the Green Line a bit to the NW, and a modest extension of the Gold Line. Maybe even LRT between Cumberland and Arts Center.
-Fully fund all LRT and Streetcar projects, including the Beltline transit loop.
-Whatever's leftover allocated towards improving bus frequencies and facilities and such. Bus shelters on all routes, etc.
Now THAT would be a game-changer. The kind of game-changer that we really need. We need to be thinking big.
Quote:
Originally Posted by primaltech
Actually, I'm way underestimating. We could do probably do all of that above for $25 billion.
That much could be raised by a new 1-penny sales tax in all 10 counties, plus property taxes and other misc taxes and fees.
Your original estimate of $50 billion is probably right.
That's because Atlanta has a regional population that is about 45% larger than Seattle's. Atlanta has to deal with the challenge of mass numbers of out-of-town/out-of-state motorists driving through its area on its road network to other parts of the country as well as mass amounts of freight being moved through its area to other parts of the country on its freight rail network... All logistical challenges that the relatively significantly smaller Seattle area does not have to deal with to the extent that Atlanta does.
Atlanta probably needs $50 billion in spending on additional transportation infrastructure, both to accommodate the transportation needs of the region's current population and economy (which already is vastly underserved by the region's existing transportation infrastructure) and the needs of the region's future population and economic growth.
And in addition to raising that sum of additional transportation spending through taxes, the Atlanta region and the State of Georgia also needs to raise that much-needed additional transportation spending through user fees (like tolls on express lanes through new grade-separated intersections and distance-based fares on transit) and large-scale P3's (Public-Private Partnerships) supported by revenue-generating TOD's (Transit-Oriented Development) along transit lines.
It allowed the region to collect the same tax, but spend it on a number of different priorities that worked regionally, but differed in the ways some money was spent.
The problem is most people were too hung up on the whole thing needing to be all transit or all roads and made the whole thing divisive and unproductive with people unwilling to work together.
I also think the public had trouble understanding what seemed like a scattered collection of projects were all a part of a greater regional plan that collection of projects was helping implement.
I don't think anyone has ever articulated a broader vision. And frankly, I don't think the regional planning agency has a clue. As I ranted on another thread, these city centers around the metro that they think all the local people will work in are being promoted by them. What they are proposing isn't realistic based on job mobility and makes the area much more difficult to serve with transit.
I don't think anyone has ever articulated a broader vision. And frankly, I don't think the regional planning agency has a clue. As I ranted on another thread, these city centers around the metro that they think all the local people will work in are being promoted by them. What they are proposing isn't realistic based on job mobility and makes the area much more difficult to serve with transit.
I've been reluctant to join the other thread largely, because I'm picking and choosing having less time.
I understand the sentiment, but there are a few things being missed at the macro levels in the ... venting... going on in that thread.
Atlanta does not have the capacity 10-fold for us to all be commuting to one place. It would also increase commutes, because it increases the amount of people in the region that don't/can't live near work and increases the sheer distances people would need to commute, no matter how they did it.
But if people are driving two-ways in 7 or 8 different directions where we have major traffic flows going many different ways capacity opens up a whole deal. The catch is jobs and other economic functions have to be like how we live, decentralized.
If we all drive the same direction to the same place... then __- hits the fan. There are so many more people driving that one way.
While people do change jobs and some people take longer commutes, many people are still able to live closer to work. That is what the beginning of that thread missed.
This can also be found in macro-level data. Most Gwinnettians do not leave the county for work. For the ones that commute out, there are just as many commuting in. We got to split it up a bit...
Having multiple centers opens up the opportunity that more people can feasible live near work and allows the others to drive in different directions and not all on the same path.
While you might end up commuting from Gwinnett to say Midtown, most in Gwinnett are still working in Gwinnett and many more of the ones leaving aren't all going the same direction as you... they're going from Duluth to Alpharetta, or Lawrenceville to Perimeter.
Now if the argument is that Atlanta went through about 30 years of lack of general investment during pro-conservative years in the '90s-2010s, then yes I agree that has been an issue.
As for regional planning... regional planning might not always have a single huge regional vision to pitch, like a large scale project... go all in 100% on commuter rail... or we must all have a complete loop...
Often there are long range plans just to keep arterial roads up to par that go region-wide. They get added to a list of all region-wide needs that are analyzed by the GDOT... than when something like T-SPLOST comes around that one tax can't fund them all, but it funds a sizeable chunk when mixed with other revenue over 10, 20 years they can keep all the region-wide needs... That is why T-SPLOST was a wide mixture of projects. They were all needed, but people's arguments of wanting to see a map of all new everything across the whole region connected in a new alignment map and funded with a single 10 years 1% sales tax was a bit unrealistic. That seemed to be what people wanted was a magical tax that'd do it all, so we keep ignoring the under-investing.
That is the problem is from the early 90s one we were under-investing in even the basic fundabmentals that no one wants to look at on a map and say.. that a clear vision! But... they are still fundamental needs.
While you might end up commuting from Gwinnett to say Midtown, most in Gwinnett are still working in Gwinnett and many more of the ones leaving aren't all going the same direction as you... they're going from Duluth to Alpharetta, or Lawrenceville to Perimeter.
That's because there's no commuter rail network, with all the trains from all over the suburbs all heading to Downtown in the morning. If we just had that in place, Downtown would boom like never before seen. All the jobs and activity would start to concentrate there (again). And to a lesser extent Midtown and Buckhead, as they'd be connected a few stops up on the heavy rail.
Because we don't have that, because it's all about driving, one road is as good as another, so jobs just go up wherever the land is cheapest. And as close as possible to one of the over-congested freeways.
We need more of a human-scale logic to it. Where in the middle of all this suburbia, there's clearly a city, a real, urban city, that you want to not be tied to your vehicle upon entering it. And upon navigating it once you enter.
To which you might say it's a chicken-and-egg type argument, fine, but, I don't see why the current commute patters should be considered when we're looking at a commuter rail network. Because having it in place would start the process of gradually re-shaping those patterns. There'd still be some car-accessed jobs along the highways of OTP north, but a lot of stuff would move to the city, where you don't NEED to drive (and wouldn't want to), and people from all over the place can access those job and that activity center, without driving there.
I'm not against that, but that is not the answer to or problems alone.
If we all had to do that we would all be travelling further and longer. That is also no magical thing either. It would get overly congested, prices of land would spike.
Or we can all work in different areas and allow different parts of our economy to develop in multiple areas when they don't all have to be on top of each other. It has actually worked you... ie. most Gwinnettians work in Gwinnett.
You make things so white or black in aggressive directions when you don't need to. Many people are just fine working close to where they live. That does take alot of pressure off of any transportation system. Commuter patterns matter, regardless of what you build.
I'm not against that, but that is not the answer to or problems alone.
If we all had to do that we would all be travelling further and longer. That is also no magical thing either. It would get overly congested, prices of land would spike.
Or we can all work in different areas and allow different parts of our economy to develop in multiple areas when they don't all have to be on top of each other. It has actually worked you... ie. most Gwinnettians work in Gwinnett.
You make things so white or black in aggressive directions when you don't need to. Many people are just fine working close to where they live. That does take alot of pressure off of any transportation system. Commuter patterns matter, regardless of what you build.
Were you trying to respond to primal and accidentally addressed bu2?
I've been reluctant to join the other thread largely, because I'm picking and choosing having less time.
I understand the sentiment, but there are a few things being missed at the macro levels in the ... venting... going on in that thread.
Atlanta does not have the capacity 10-fold for us to all be commuting to one place. It would also increase commutes, because it increases the amount of people in the region that don't/can't live near work and increases the sheer distances people would need to commute, no matter how they did it.
But if people are driving two-ways in 7 or 8 different directions where we have major traffic flows going many different ways capacity opens up a whole deal. The catch is jobs and other economic functions have to be like how we live, decentralized.
If we all drive the same direction to the same place... then __- hits the fan. There are so many more people driving that one way.
While people do change jobs and some people take longer commutes, many people are still able to live closer to work. That is what the beginning of that thread missed.
This can also be found in macro-level data. Most Gwinnettians do not leave the county for work. For the ones that commute out, there are just as many commuting in. We got to split it up a bit...
Having multiple centers opens up the opportunity that more people can feasible live near work and allows the others to drive in different directions and not all on the same path.
While you might end up commuting from Gwinnett to say Midtown, most in Gwinnett are still working in Gwinnett and many more of the ones leaving aren't all going the same direction as you... they're going from Duluth to Alpharetta, or Lawrenceville to Perimeter.
Now if the argument is that Atlanta went through about 30 years of lack of general investment during pro-conservative years in the '90s-2010s, then yes I agree that has been an issue.
As for regional planning... regional planning might not always have a single huge regional vision to pitch, like a large scale project... go all in 100% on commuter rail... or we must all have a complete loop...
Often there are long range plans just to keep arterial roads up to par that go region-wide. They get added to a list of all region-wide needs that are analyzed by the GDOT... than when something like T-SPLOST comes around that one tax can't fund them all, but it funds a sizeable chunk when mixed with other revenue over 10, 20 years they can keep all the region-wide needs... That is why T-SPLOST was a wide mixture of projects. They were all needed, but people's arguments of wanting to see a map of all new everything across the whole region connected in a new alignment map and funded with a single 10 years 1% sales tax was a bit unrealistic. That seemed to be what people wanted was a magical tax that'd do it all, so we keep ignoring the under-investing.
That is the problem is from the early 90s one we were under-investing in even the basic fundabmentals that no one wants to look at on a map and say.. that a clear vision! But... they are still fundamental needs.
A much better plan is to have a limited number of nodes with job concentrations. You can serve that with transit. What they are proposing is scattering it all over. We should emphasize our existing major activity centers-Downtown, midtown, Buckhead, Airport, Emory/CDC, Perimeter, Cobb Galleria, Downtown Decatur, Alpharetta, Fulton Industrial Blvd. and maybe 3 or 4 others, not 20 others. Gwinnett needs a center. Maybe DeKalb tries to make Stonecrest a center.
What they will create (if they succeed) is mass traffic in every direction (look at I-85 between 400 and 285 for an example) with a lot of people traveling longer distances. And our suburb to suburb infrastructure is extraordinarily poor.
A much better plan is to have a limited number of nodes with job concentrations. You can serve that with transit. What they are proposing is scattering it all over. We should emphasize our existing major activity centers-Downtown, midtown, Buckhead, Airport, Emory/CDC, Perimeter, Cobb Galleria, Downtown Decatur, Alpharetta, Fulton Industrial Blvd. and maybe 3 or 4 others, not 20 others. Gwinnett needs a center. Maybe DeKalb tries to make Stonecrest a center.
What they will create (if they succeed) is mass traffic in every direction (look at I-85 between 400 and 285 for an example) with a lot of people traveling longer distances. And our suburb to suburb infrastructure is extraordinarily poor.
First... who is they... and what are they proposing exactly...
The problem with that is it just peaks land prices in key business and residential areas and makes it harder for others to get to...
Take Gwinnett/I-85 for example.
They have a corridor growth model and have made invetments to have parrallel arterial roads and not just depend on the freeway and an access road, like Dekalb did in the older generations.
People then all drive towards the freeway, but they aren't all going to same place in the corridor. So traffic is spread out. Some people can from a neighborhood in Lawrenceville can drive north, NW, West, or southwest to get to different jobs.
It spreads traffic out and makes better use of all arterial roads... and not just the few that "lead to Rome"
I'm not anti-transit, but transit is no magical solution that cures all ills. Designing a city with the proper balance of residential to job areas throughout the whole region is paramount in planning to keep congestion at bay, including on transit systems.
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