Will Gwinnett County join MARTA? Not likely, officials say

[primaltech]

LRT allows for more stations, and therefore more TOD (existing and new), and therefore more ridership.

With heavy rail, there would be a station at Sugarloaf and one at Gwinnett Place and then one at Indian Trail. Yeah, great. But LRT could have a station at Duluth Hwy @ Satellite, and 3 in the Gwinnett Place area. Boom. (And given how spread out and non-dense everything in Gwinnett is, the more stations, the better.)

Here is a better, much more detailed document about the old Gwinnett LRT study:
http://www.gwinnettplacecid.com/pdfs...nal_Report.pdf

Shows how they would design it, and where the stations would be.

And again, look at all this dang space:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9874...7i13312!8i6656

Gwinnett should save SO much money and construction time and simply run an LRT line in the median of Satellite Blvd, between Norcross and Sugarloaf. Part of the road has a grassy median of unused space anyway. All you'd really need to do is widen a bit in some parts to push the traffic lanes off to the sides, and maybe in some cases lose a traffic lane.

Again, the only thing about their plan I'd change, is not terminating it at the Gold Line, but instead making it one phase of a much longer LRT line to Perimeter Center and Cumberland. Connecting with Gold, Red, and another LRT line for Cobb.

[fourthwarden]

Georgia House approves metro Atlanta mass transit overhaul | AJC

Among other things, the bill would create a new board to oversee transit planning and construction in the region. And it would allow Gwinnett County residents to vote on whether to join MARTA later this year.

28 years after Gwinnett’s last MARTA vote, is another coming? And soon? | AJC

Under HB 930, counties that want to call a sales tax vote would need the approval of a new transit board created by the legislation. The board would put together a regional transit plan and coordinate projects across the 13 counties.

But the board would not be established until next January, meaning the soonest other counties could hold a vote would be 2019.


Gwinnett is finishing work on a mass transit plan and has been building toward a November referendum on a specific list of projects that has yet to be unveiled. Under HB 930, the county’s only option for a transit vote this year would be to join MARTA.


The alternative: Gwinnett, like other counties, could wait until next year or, more likely, 2020 to hold a transit referendum that does not involve joining MARTA.

Well, Nash said she wanted a transit vote THIS year. I wonder if she'll follow through on that now.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Well, Nash said she wanted a transit vote THIS year. I wonder if she'll follow through on that now.

Ironically if they voted on it this year, it would have to be to join MARTA, which was always an option for them, before any of these changes. And the MARTA phrasing will still have to be on the ballot, I think.

And it won't have anything to do with the ATL commission either, which would be strange since that's the whole point of this bill.

I think they'll be more open to it though, because of the branding. Such that even if they joined MARTA, the branding of anything purchased after January 1 2019 will be ATL-branded.

As far as I can tell, from my own reading of the bill, the only real big operational difference to joining MARTA instead of contracting with them under the new rules, would be that heavy rail would be allowed into the county if it joined MARTA in the traditional way under the MARTA Act legislation.

[tikigod311]

If Gwinnett follows through with full on joining, it will become even more palatable for Cobb. This is getting exciting

[fieldm]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

If Gwinnett follows through with full on joining, it will become even more palatable for Cobb. This is getting exciting

Yeah I think Gwinnett is going to come through then everyone else is going to have to jump on the bandwagon