Traffic has completely ruined Atlanta (Tucker, Gainesville: apartments, renting, student loan)

[flamadiddle]

lmao at the Oprah gif. fieldm, you should be doing marta commercials!

[fieldm]

Post your good MARTA stories for those that live ITP to rub it into the faces of the OTP folks....

[fieldm]

Originally Posted by flamadiddle

lmao at the Oprah gif. fieldm, you should be doing marta commercials!

These OTP folks are 100 years behind mentally on heavy rail. They would rather complain about traffic when they should be complaining why their county officials haven't brought in heavy rail. Its still going to be traffic but at least they will have an additional option

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

Perhaps it would be more fair to compare Atlanta to cities with similar density numbers, not populations.

For that comparison, it appears that the closest cities are Raleigh, NC, Duluth MN, Lebanon, PA, Michigan City, MI and Roanoke, VA.

That's not really fair. I know people on these boards like to put a lot of stock in residential population density, but it's not really an accurate way of gauging this sort of thing. Traffic is a consequence of economic activity (i.e. going to work or buying things) and the location of a city's amenities. In our case, despite the regional population density, both of those things are highly concentrated in three places (Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead) and anchored by edge cities (Perimeter, Cumberland, Duluth, Alpharetta, etc) with high concentrations of the same things.

Population density will just tell you where people sleep at night. They actually do stuff in other places the rest of the day.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by bhammaster

It’s the levels. Houston and Dallas -both bigger - have traffic but not as bad as ATL.

Hmm, I've been to both and they have bad traffic. Even DC (which is also has a similarly sized popoulation) has terrible traffic that's far worse than Atlanta...and that's with a more extensive public transportation network.

I'll never forget one trip I had to DC to visit my uncle when I was stuck in traffic in 66. I needed to go in to the district to get some paperwork done at an embassy as well as sight see, so I asked if my uncle could drop me off at the nearest metro station by his house in the burbs (which was only 3 miles away from his house). He insisted on driving me to my destinations, so we got on the highway. Two hours later (he lives in Fairfax county) we made it in to the District and had to leave early because he didn't want to get stuck in the afternoon rush. There were no accidents or construction, it was just dead stopped traffic. It's rare we ever have sort of thing here.

I get it though, if your day takes you through the north end of 285, the Downtown connector, 400, or 85 you might see Atlanta as this traffic hellscape. Outside of those aforementioned places (and those places off peak hours) aren't that bad.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by fieldm

Post your good MARTA stories for those that live ITP to rub it into the faces of the OTP folks....

For years I lived in Buchkead and commuted by train to Midtown to work. Recently I moved to Chamblee and my office moved to Sandy Springs. I still commute to work by train, but now it involves a single transfer. The worst part: I sometimes have to wait 5 whole minutes for a train at Lindbergh.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

For years I lived in Buchkead and commuted by train to Midtown to work. Recently I moved to Chamblee and my office moved to Sandy Springs. I still commute to work by train, but now it involves a single transfer. The worst part: I sometimes have to wait 5 whole minutes for a train at Lindbergh.

[waronxmas]

If this were a world class city like NYC, I would only wait probably 2 minutes for my next train. Sometimes I don't know how I survive in this backwards town.

[0nyxStation]

Originally Posted by Vanderbiltgrad

Traffic has ruined Atlanta, well said but not sure it should be a topic. It is pretty self explanatory.

I would say Traffic is the WORSE part of living in Atlanta. Even the back roads are clogged on some Sundays. Staggered shifts could help, but that would never happen. Everyone goes to work, school, shops & recreates at the same time in the same destinations. I live in Smyrna and on weekends if I can cant get my errands ran before 11am I wait til the next weekend. Traffic is just too much. Nothing to do but to stop ecouraging people to move here.

[waronxmas]

I guess I'm so wrapped up in my ITP bubble that I just don't understand what life is like OTP for day to day stuff. There is a lesson somewhere in here about life choices and stuff.