Atlanta Metro traffic truly is becoming unbelievably bad. (transfer, maintenance)

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

You're telling me there's no other grocer near you, that there's no way to get food into your home other than by car, and that you can not add a measly $5 to a monthly grocer bill?

Oh, I'd be fine. I'm ITP and both my nearest Kroger and Publix are ITP. But my nearest Target is OTP, so I'd have to weigh the toll vs going all the way down to the Atlantic Station target if I need supplies that I can't get at Publix. So it would just be a minor inconvenience in general. The main thing is that some of my favorite restaurants in my area happen to be OTP, incl. the Battery. So, kind of annoying, that I live right there and get tolled, and someone who drives 30 miles to get there would not.

My point is that it seems a bit like an unfair scheme if people in one certain area (near the ring), are inevitably going to be paying more of a share than everyone else, even if they try to avoid it. 20% fewer trips across the tolled barrier, as you said. Well, for someone like me, that would still be a lot of regular trips. I'd be taking on a larger the transit funding burden, without help from the people who live OTP and work in Alpharetta or Perimeter or whatever. And without any help from people living and working in-town.

I understand your counter, that no plan is ever going to be perfect, or perfectly fair- but still I don't think this is the best plan, even for a tolling scheme.

Toll the freeways, not the surface roads. Toll the people living in Kennesaw and driving Downtown 5 days a week. Not the people who live 1 or 2 miles from their job, and get there on surface roads, but I-285 happens to be in between. That's rather silly.

Regardless, yes it would take more than 5 years from start to finish on a project like this.

There would need to be at least a 5-year heads-up between when the measure is passed into law and when the first toll is collected. And even then, you're going to get lawsuits pouring in by the truckload. It would be a huge mess, to say the least.

And, doesn't matter anyway, since this plan is simply impossible politically in Georgia, even in the future.

See, one of the things about both decentivizing driving, and increasing transit service, is that you get more dense development. This means that there would be more options within a closer range for you to reach.

There really would not be. Or not to any degree that would affect me at all. You don't seem to understand the suburbs, in terms of layout, infrastructure, development, permanence, zoning. Most everything is in subdivisions and sprawled out complexes, and suburban style office parks. Very little is mixed-use, and even if they build more mixed-use, 90% of the area is still not going to be able to easily walk to places.

And you can't just demolish everything and start over, and I wouldn't want to even if we could. I wouldn't have moved here if I didn't mostly like it for what it is, and I imagine others feel the same way.

Basically I'm trying to say, that type of transformation of suburban areas is not feasible or practical, or desirable. Or at least, let's, you know, transform the City of Atlanta into an urban place, first. Then someday maybe we'll look at dramatic overhaul of Cumberland Pkwy, a century after we're both dead.

Just let the suburbs be the suburbs. Let urbanism thrive in the core, absolutely, but with a boundary to it, that fades out into suburbia. Just like the suburban layer (the middle layer, between urban and rural), should also have an outer boundary, and not sprawl out forever.

Because it does work. The suburbs. You say it doesn't work, but it clearly does. We drive everywhere, and get by fine. Even if the traffic were worse, we'd still get by just fine.

We can not keep using flawed and failing designs for our metro. Period. This isn't a matter of taste, it is a matter of reality. We must change how we manage our limited and available land area, and to make these car-centric designs less viable while simultaneously funding alternatives is the best way to get that going.

This isn't about what I like, it's about when we need to be doing.

I dunno though, because your views are in fact about your preferences about what things should look like. What you call "flawed" and "failing", is really opinion, is subjective, and depends on the exact criteria and the exact definition of our terms we're discussing and coming to that conclusion.

Put it this way: 95% of all trips in Metropolitan Atlanta, I would roughly guesstimate, are done in a car. So, if tomorrow morning we completely banned any and all transit from Georgia forever, traffic congestion might would get, what, 5% worse? And then if we raised a bunch of money and built a bunch of freeway tunnels, traffic could then get a whole lot better (for a while), with even less transit than now (zero transit). And you could just keep tunneling more, double decking freeways, widening roadways, whatever and whatever, to at least keep up with population growth. And meanwhile, ride-on-demand keeps reducing the total # of cars and the need for parking, and AV tech keeps reducing the downside of a longer commute and so forth. And we move completely away from fossil fuels and towards zero pollution.

I'm not suggesting that, at all. And your views (and mine, which are very similar) on what Atlanta should look like, are obviously a lot better than that. They're smarter, more balanced, more practical, less costly (than that all-cars scenario) being the huge difference, etc etc. But they're not necessarily what we objectively NEED to do, because I don't know that there is a such thing. If we wanted to have cars dominate transportation forever, that is totally possible, and we could be just fine doing that. Ultimately it comes down to preference for design. That's all I'm trying to say.

Granted, maybe the non-transit-world wouldn't be as successful by most measures. Maybe more people would choose to move elsewhere, where there's transit. So maybe it wouldn't be an optimal choice in terms of viewpoints of utilitarianism and such, but that's not the point.

Cars are not really as impossibly unsustainable as you claim. That's just not the case. I don't see that as being objective fact.

And urbanism/pedestrianism and cars, are not incompatible whatsoever. Not at all. We've done it wrong, around here. But I've seen it done right.

There's no mass transit to speak of in Charleston, but yet it's way more dense and urban-feeling than Atlanta, with what feels like way more people walking around everywhere.

Or just look at Atlantic Station. Lots of people walking around, and transit isn't really a factor. It's people who live there or who drove there. Avalon is the same deal, and transit is basically a zero factor there.

I want what we already know to be the quantitatively best method of tackling problems. Continuing to pander to cars and sprawl is literally the worst option available to us.

I base my positions on the data. I have changed my mind, and opinions based on what data was available, and what it spelled out. When you come to me showing that cars actually make a place financially sustainable, move more people in a given space, and use less energy to move people, then I will shift my positions. Until then, all I've done is research, and then settled what we should be doing based on the outcomes of that research.

But you arrive at your conclusions based at least on some degree of personal bias. (We all do.) Someone who values cars and driving everywhere to a much larger degree than you do, surely would come to different conclusions. As in, conclusions that would put the trade-offs and financials and efforts in different places, based on the differently weighted input goals. (Hopefully you get what I'm trying to say. Difficult to word it.)

The toll as I've suggested it will only reduce entries by 20%. That's it. Roads and individual cars will still be the overwhelming majority and priority within both the metro and the city alike.

As I said above, despite what y'all think, I'm really not that much of an extremeist. It just feels that way because we have tilted SO FAR to one mode while horribly neglecting all the others. ANY shift towards a balance feels like an affront and challenge when it's really just trying to get things back to center.

This is a valid and fair point. Atlanta is extremely car-centric, so trying to implement anything that would change that by even a few percentage points would feel too drastic and extreme to many people. I get that, but I was just saying, this is the reaction you would get, if we did something like this. For better or worse, that's the basic reality of it.

I like to drive too. I love road trips. I am not yelling to ban all cars or anything even remotely close to that. 80% of vehicular entrances would still occur, and everyone still driving within the perimeter would still be able to do so.

All that's changed is that now we have a way to counter the OBJECTIVELY inefficient and wasteful prioritization of cars with a metering system and funded alternatives.

Again, it isn't about what I like, it's about when we need.

Okay, but in order for it to actually happen, a whole ton of people would have to like it. And even I (very much on your side of things) barely like this idea. Like I said, I'm kind of luke-warm about it, at this point. Even if there's going to be a tolling system such as this, I don't think this is the best way to do that.

If the tolls don't reduce entries, then they are too low. It's that simple.

The reason we shouldn't just tax people more is exactly as you say in this paragraph: it's easier to swallow and ignore. The ENTIRE point of using a toll system is to reduce traffic in the first place. The revenue funding transit is a nice benefit that works out. To do something that doesn't create a psychological barrier to driving is not effective at reducing traffic at all.

And I'm not sure I agree with the concept. Or at least with the order of operations. We need to get options in place. Comprehensive options. Then, eventually, maybe we can put anti-driving measures in place.

Atlanta is not a place like NYC, where they do have the mobility alternatives and options and such.

The 2017 expected 4% state sales tax revenue was $5,658,900,000. A 1% increase would, therefore, generate $1,414,725,000 a year in additional revenue for the state.

It is important to note, however, that only a portion of this would be able to be spent on both transit and in the metro, given that is a tax on the entire state. I would be very surprised if the 64% of that revenue needed to match the annual profit generated by the tolls was dedicated to the metro area.

Furthermore, it should be remembered that the state is lagging behind in ALL transportation spending. An HNTB study produced in 2015 concluded that properly tackling the state’s transportation needs would require a total increase in dedicated funding of just under $3 Billion per year. To get “the full universe of transportation needs in the state, including establishment of passenger rail systems,” the study suggests dedicating $4 to $5 Billion per year.

The most recent gas-tax increase was just $1 Billion annually. Neither the stated toll plan nor the sales tax increase would finish increasing annual funding to the $3 Billion mark. Furthermore, combining them would not reach the $5 Billion mark.

My point is, that even if we increase sales tax state-wide, it is unlikely that they would fund all the projects that I've outlined for the metro, nor does that solve our ultimate funding issues. We really need both, and as I said above, different mechanisms are for different reasons. A state-wide increase would generally be good for state-wide projects, while metro tolls would decrease traffic and fund specific metro projects.

I'd still rather see a state tax funding mechanism, or at least a regional tax funding mechanism (10 or 20 counties or whatever), to fund our transit needs.

And then once we build out that transit network, then we have cars and we have trains and everything else, and I say just let the cards fall where they fall. Let people go with their own preferences. Rather than some kind of official anti-cars position. I just don't know to what degree I really agree with the core premise of that. I'd have to think more about it.

Anyway, clearly, slight increases to our taxes in various ways, could generate billions and billions for transit. Which I wish we'd do. Tolling is not required for achieving that end. As you said, you're just trying to incentivize one transportation mode preference over another, because of what you see as an objective need to get away from cars. (Or at least move in that direction, anyway. As you noted, even if all your visions came to life, cars would still totally dominate around here.)

It's an interesting proposal, and it's not that I don't see the merits. But I stated my philosophical problems with it, and, again, it's all moot. This proposal of yours is a pure hypothetical. Politically speaking, it just could never happen.

I still appreciate your ideas. If we were both in the GA senate or whatever, and it came down to my vote, you might be able to sway me. (Except in reality, me personally, I was ticked off initially by your idea because I live right on the perimeter.) So maybe I could get behind something similar, with some edits.

[cqholt]

Not the people who live 1 or 2 miles from their job, and get there on surface roads, but I-285 happens to be in between.

If we can divert those trips to alternative transportation, it'll help to reduce congestion. That distance is close and wasteful driving a single occupancy vehicle.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

The toll as I've suggested it will only reduce entries by 20%. That's it. Roads and individual cars will still be the overwhelming majority and priority within both the metro and the city alike.

A $5 toll on the estimated 426,000,000 annual entries would likely reduce those entries by 21%, to 335,398,000 annual entries.

That is one of the big fears of your proposal to charge a $5 toll upon each vehicular trip entry to the area inside the I-285 Perimeter...

...That the $5 toll will reduce entries to the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter by at least 20% and potentially do untold amounts of economic damage both to the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter (an area that, like most urban core areas across the nation, is currently experiencing an economic, cultural and social renaissance of massive proportions) as well as to the entire greater Atlanta metro area/region as a whole (an area which is heavily dependent upon the economic health and well-being of its urban core).

It is laudable that you so intensely desire to both boost the amount of funding for alternative modes of transportation like transit as well as motivate the public to make significantly increased use of transit and alternative modes of transportation.

But proposing a $5 toll on each vehicular trip that crosses into the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter understandably seems to be a flawed way of going about attempting to accomplish those critically important goals.

It probably should be noted that not all vehicular trips (both multi-occupant and single-occupant vehicular trips) into an area like inside of the I-285 Perimeter from an area like outside of the I-285 Perimeter are just simply people commuting to (and from) work by car.

Many, many vehicular trips consist of vehicular movements that are generated by economic activities like commercial vehicles (like trucks) making picking up shipments and dropping off deliveries to businesses of all stripes; people traveling to spend money at commercial, retail, dining establishments; people traveling to sporting events at venues like Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Philips Arena, Georgia State Stadium, McCamish Pavilion and Bobby Dodd Stadium at Georgia Tech, etc; people traveling to visit tourist attractions like the Georgia Aquarium, the College Football Hall of Fame, World of Coca-Cola, museums, etc; people traveling to and from the world's busiest airport at the Atlanta Airport, etc.

I mean, if vehicular entries into the area inside of the Perimeter were to be decreased by 20% with a $5 toll, it is likely that all of those economic activity-generating trips to the locations described above potentially would also be decreased by a very significant amount... A decrease in economic activity-generating trips that would be devastating not only to the economy of the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter but likely also the economy of the Atlanta region as a whole.

Just the intense fears of what such a potential $5 toll on vehicles crossing into the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter would do to economic activity would likely attract intense and overwhelming opposition from metro Atlanta's business community (particularly ITP) to the point that the toll proposal most likely would be politically dead-on-arrival pretty early on.

I know that traffic congestion may be severe on many roads and that there is an obvious need for increased transit options and increased public use of those options.

But even with the very high level of traffic congestion, it does not seem wise to deter vehicular travel into the area inside of the I-285 Perimeter for fear of the significant level of economic activity that might also be deterred from happening inside of the I-285 Perimeter along with the vehicular entries.

We do not and should not want to deter people from wanting to come into the area inside of the Perimeter and spend money and contribute to the ongoing urban renaissance that is happening there.

I agree that there is a pressing need to provide more transit options while also getting people to use transit much more often... But our approach should be to positively encourage people (both ITP and OTP) to support transit expansion and to positively encourage people to use transit after it is expanded while they travel to contribute to the growing amount of economic activity that is taking place ITP.

Our approach should not be to (whether intentionally or unintentionally appear to) punitively discourage the roughly 5.75 million greater Atlanta metro region residents (not to mention the roughly 9.55 million OTP Georgia residents as well as road travelers from around the Southeast and beyond) from coming in and spending money and contributing to the continuing economic rise and resurgence of the roughly 750k-resident area of ITP metro Atlanta.

We want people to continue to come into ITP metro Atlanta and spend money (lots and lots of money at conventions, sporting events, museums, tourist attractions, shops, hotels, restaurants, bars, etc, etc, etc) and contribute to and generate lots of economic activity for both ITP metro Atlanta/Georgia and metro Atlanta/Georgia as a whole... Something that unfortunately will mean that we will have to put up with lots of vehicular traffic clogging our roads... Something that our economic competitors in places like Nashville, Charlotte, Dallas, Orlando, etc, also have to put up with as a result of positive economic activity in the urban cores of their metro areas.

There are ways to positively encourage people to support transit expansion and use expanded transit without appearing to be punitive towards selected groups of people (selected groups of people like OTP metro Atlantans and Georgians who still contribute very much to the ITP metro Atlanta economy despite living a suburban/exurban/rural lifestyle and not necessarily having a physical residence ITP). It might not necessarily happen as quick as many of us would like to see it happen, but it can be done.

Heck, it already appears to be in the process now with many people in this day and age choosing to move into (and even raise families) in urban core areas closer to job centers and other urban amenities and with the market as a whole increasingly favoring housing in high-density mixed-use transit-friendly development that helps to encourage less dependency on automobiles.

Society is already moving towards favoring less automobile-dependent lifestyles with a resurgence of higher-density urban living in the urban cores of large major metro areas all over the country.

People also appear to be becoming more and more accepting of the idea of large-scale transit expansion in a large major metro region like Atlanta where some key parts of the population (particularly OTP suburbanites and exurbanites) have long been averse (if not downright hostile) to the concept of a comprehensive regional transit apparatus that connects OTP metro Atlanta with ITP metro Atlanta.

It does not appear that we need to attempt to force the issue with measures that likely will seem extremely punitive (like a $5 toll for each time a vehicle crosses into the area ITP) and potentially turn many people off who already appear to be coming around to agreeing with those who advocate for increased transit use, increase transit availability and decreased automobile dependency.

We just need to keep working to convince people to support a much more diversified transportation network with positive encouragement and positive persuasion.

Show people (particularly people in traditionally transit-averse areas OTP) how their lives can be better with increased transit and alternative transportation options across the entire region.

Don't put forth proposals that appear to aim to punish people for living a lifestyle (an automobile-dependent suburban/exurban lifestyle) that many (if not most) people really might have had no real control in choosing in a society where an automobile-dependent suburban/exurban lifestyle in a low-density suburban/exurban area has been a predominant choice for the last 70 years.

[arjay57]

Even if congestion pricing/tolling made sense for urban areas, why would we use 285 as a boundary? It's a totally artificial line and it doesn't define Atlanta's urbanized areas.

Most of what's inside 285 is suburban development that is indistinguishable from what's on the other side of said 285. Indeed, large zones outside of 285 are far more urbanized than what's inside 285.

[Need4Camaro]

Im not even going to bother nitpicking all through that...there's no chance in heck that they're going to force everyone to pay to drive ITP - it would absolutely massacre Atlanta especially if there's no transit alternatives in place beforehand.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Even if congestion pricing/tolling made sense for urban areas, why would we use 285 as a boundary? It's a totally artificial line and it doesn't define Atlanta's urbanized areas.

Most of what's inside 285 is suburban development that is indistinguishable from what's on the other side of said 285. Indeed, large zones outside of 285 are far more urbanized than what's inside 285.

And the City of Atlanta extends outside of it. As well as cities like Sandy Springs and Doraville and East Point, that would be split. Residents would be hit with a toll without even leaving the local city they live in, just navigating the streets trying to get to their city's municipal offices and whatnot.

Simply wouldn't fly.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

You're telling me there's no other grocer near you, that there's no way to get food into your home other than by car, and that you can not add a measly $5 to a monthly grocer bill?

Most families go to the store far more often than once a month. We are a family of three and are in the store at least twice a week. It's 0.6 miles from our house, and I have never once walked there, and have no plans to do so in the future. I'm not going to walk back with six bags of groceries dangling from my arms. And in primaltech's case, I'm assuming he lives just OTP, and goes to the Publix just ITP. The next closest OTP store is about 1.5 miles away. No one is walking or biking that for groceries, so yeah...the only viable option is a car in many cases.

I base my positions on the data. I have changed my mind, and opinions based on what data was available, and what it spelled out. When you come to me showing that cars actually make a place financially sustainable, move more people in a given space, and use less energy to move people, then I will shift my positions. Until then, all I've done is research, and then settled what we should be doing based on the outcomes of that research.

Once again, you fail to look at what people actually want. We all do things that are "quantitatively" not the best option for us, because it's what we like. If you don't, then your life must be very, very mundane. We have sex for fun even though sex is "quantitatively" just for reproduction. We get drunk for fun, even though getting drunk is "quantitatively" not the best thing to do. Some smoke, even though they know that "quantitatively" it's bad for you. I'm guessing you do none of these things?

The toll as I've suggested it will only reduce entries by 20%. That's it. Roads and individual cars will still be the overwhelming majority and priority within both the metro and the city alike.

So, you're cutting 20% of customers from businesses? 20% of possible employees from businesses? 20% of attendees to various fairs and concerts?

As I said above, despite what y'all think, I'm really not that much of an extremeist.

It's cute that you think that, but you really are pretty much of an extremist. You may not be quite as mind-bent as jsvh, but you are really high-up that ladder.

I stated a 40-year tolling period, which is in line with MARTA's sales tax increase time-line.

TFL uses ~30% of their revenue for facilities, traffic management, administration, and support costs. I used this figure to estimate costs, even though we wouldn't have the mobile camera units, and we'd probably have a better economy of scale.

A $5 toll on the estimated 426,000,000 annual entries would likely reduce those entries by 21%, to 335,398,000 annual entries. These would generate $1,352,000,000 in annual revenue. At 30%, the expected annual cost of the system is $446,000,000, for an annual income of $906,000,000. This does not include the initial construction cost.

Over the course of the 40-year period, a total profit of $31,726,000,000 would be raised, which takes into account the initial construction cost.

This is all best case scenario. And we all know that never works out as intended. London's zone has not brought in near the amount they thought it would, and neither would yours. And in the mean time, you'd just be making life hard on everyone but yourself. I think you are living in a dreamland if you think this would actually bring in almost a billion dollars in profit per year.

Of course, this whole project is dreamland and will never, ever see the light of day, so it's all pretty hypothetical anyway.

Due to their much higher space, energy, and financial efficiencies, I would not toll bikes at all, to incentivize their use over automobiles.

I figured as much. Now, I assume that part of your plan accounts for building new separated bike facilities and new walking paths and new complete streets with funds raised from the tolls. So, essentially, what you would be doing is charging drivers to help build the facilities that you want, at no extra cost to you, because you believe that what you want is "the right way". So, none of this is about getting people who use certain facilities to pay for it. It's to get one specific group to pay for all the others, so that the others don't have to pay for it.

Are you sure you're not a Republican?

Originally Posted by primaltech

And the City of Atlanta extends outside of it. As well as cities like Sandy Springs and Doraville and East Point, that would be split. Residents would be hit with a toll without even leaving the local city they live in, just navigating the streets trying to get to their city's municipal offices and whatnot.

Simply wouldn't fly.

[cqholt]

Most families go to the store far more often than once a month. We are a family of three and are in the store at least twice a week. It's 0.6 miles from our house, and I have never once walked there, and have no plans to do so in the future. I'm not going to walk back with six bags of groceries dangling from my arms.

They make grocery carts, wagons, etc.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Oh, I'd be fine. I'm ITP and both my nearest Kroger and Publix are ITP. But my nearest Target is OTP, so I'd have to weigh the toll vs going all the way down to the Atlantic Station target if I need supplies that I can't get at Publix. So it would just be a minor inconvenience in general. The main thing is that some of my favorite restaurants in my area happen to be OTP, incl. the Battery. So, kind of annoying, that I live right there and get tolled, and someone who drives 30 miles to get there would not.

Only if they drove 30 miles from outside the perimeter. You would still have multiple options of transit, though, whether that be to take the Greenline down then transfer to a NW heavy rail line, or drive to a Perimeter BRT station and take the bus, or drive to a commuter rail station and take the train, or just take a local bus.

My point is that it seems a bit like an unfair scheme if people in one certain area (near the ring), are inevitably going to be paying more of a share than everyone else, even if they try to avoid it. 20% fewer trips across the tolled barrier, as you said. Well, for someone like me, that would still be a lot of regular trips. I'd be taking on a larger the transit funding burden, without help from the people who live OTP and work in Alpharetta or Perimeter or whatever. And without any help from people living and working in-town.

Except you would be getting help from everyone who commuted out of town to the suburbs, those who commute down into town, and even those just passing through but not stopping. Furthermore, you are only as impacted as you choose to be, in that you would have to weigh options about what makes more sense to you and your life trip wise. Maybe you don't need to drive to go to target. Maybe you don't need to go at all. Maybe you really need to go and it makes more sense to just pay the toll.

Eventually, shops and such would shift, with infill ITP picking up and closing any gaps.

No system is ever going to be 100% fair to all people all the time. That's impossible. That said, we seem to get along just fine with all the other boarders of increased costs.

I understand your counter, that no plan is ever going to be perfect, or perfectly fair- but still I don't think this is the best plan, even for a tolling scheme.

And, as I have said, I am open to formally studying other systems. In general, though, I am fighting against the idea that any tolling scheme is bad. I'm just best equipped to do so through the system I've suggested here, since that's what I've actually done the work on beyond generic research.

[quote]Toll the freeways, not the surface roads. Toll the people living in Kennesaw and driving Downtown 5 days a week. Not the people who live 1 or 2 miles from their job, and get there on surface roads, but I-285 happens to be in between. That's rather silly.

That would reduce interstate traffic, but it also pushes traffic off onto the surface streets, which is what we saw happen with the I-85 collapse. Generally speaking, the idea was to broadly reduce traffic, not just divert it.

There would need to be at least a 5-year heads-up between when the measure is passed into law and when the first toll is collected. And even then, you're going to get lawsuits pouring in by the truckload. It would be a huge mess, to say the least.

I don't disagree, I just don't see that as a good reason to not try to get it done. After all, a new interstate and/or transit line would have tons of lawsuits too, but that doesn't stop us from pushing for them.

And, doesn't matter anyway, since this plan is simply impossible politically in Georgia, even in the future.

Never know until you try. Like other things, I don't particularly feel like writing it off before I've even finished writing the paper. Other tolling systems took decades to get in place, I have no illusions about this one happening next legislative cycle or anything.

There really would not be. Or not to any degree that would affect me at all. You don't seem to understand the suburbs, in terms of layout, infrastructure, development, permanence, zoning. Most everything is in subdivisions and sprawled out complexes, and suburban style office parks. Very little is mixed-use, and even if they build more mixed-use, 90% of the area is still not going to be able to easily walk to places.

I understand them just fine. I think you have a hard time imagining how to retroactively fix them, which is 100% possible with things like the Sprawl Repair Manual and other design guides.

Suburbs are not magically different than any other place, in that they can absolutely be changed with time. Suburban densification and infill is already a thing at some nodes, and the densificiation of historic suburbs gives us a example of the possibilities.

With the right incentives and priorities, even the far-flung areas of Vinnings can grow into much more walkable and transit oriented. Not to say it won't take work, but it is absolutely possible.

And you can't just demolish everything and start over, and I wouldn't want to even if we could. I wouldn't have moved here if I didn't mostly like it for what it is, and I imagine others feel the same way.

Well, just because we like something doesn't mean it is correct to keep it. Not when it could be objectively better in so many ways.

Basically I'm trying to say, that type of transformation of suburban areas is not feasible or practical, or desirable. Or at least, let's, you know, transform the City of Atlanta into an urban place, first. Then someday maybe we'll look at dramatic overhaul of Cumberland Pkwy, a century after we're both dead.

It's much more feasible than you're giving it credit for, and would be happening while the city also infills.

Just let the suburbs be the suburbs. Let urbanism thrive in the core, absolutely, but with a boundary to it, that fades out into suburbia. Just like the suburban layer (the middle layer, between urban and rural), should also have an outer boundary, and not sprawl out forever.

ITP is a measly 3% of the metro area. I AM letting the suburbs be suburbs. 97% of the metro will not be included in the tolled area, and will be left to be as suburban as they want to be.

Because it does work. The suburbs. You say it doesn't work, but it clearly does. We drive everywhere, and get by fine. Even if the traffic were worse, we'd still get by just fine.

If you actually bothered to read about the Growth Ponzie Scheme, or if you remembered past explanations, you'd know that suburban unsustainability is a long term problem that gives the illusion of success and functionality now, while setting itself up for a massive financial problem in a generation or two down the road. This is a reality that most towns are caught up in, and that many, many places are already feeling the effects of.

Suburbs do not work, we've just tricked ourselves into thinking they do.

I dunno though, because your views are in fact about your preferences about what things should look like. What you call "flawed" and "failing", is really opinion, is subjective, and depends on the exact criteria and the exact definition of our terms we're discussing and coming to that conclusion.

You can call it subjective all you like, but I've actually brought the data and metrics and projections to these conversations. I've done the math showing how financially unsustainable suburbs are, and linked to case studies talking about that math in a broader way.

You can ignore the data, but that doesn't mean it's a subjective topic.

Put it this way: 95% of all trips in Metropolitan Atlanta, I would roughly guesstimate, are done in a car. So, if tomorrow morning we completely banned any and all transit from Georgia forever, traffic congestion might would get, what, 5% worse? And then if we raised a bunch of money and built a bunch of freeway tunnels, traffic could then get a whole lot better (for a while), with even less transit than now (zero transit). And you could just keep tunneling more, double decking freeways, widening roadways, whatever and whatever, to at least keep up with population growth. And meanwhile, ride-on-demand keeps reducing the total # of cars and the need for parking, and AV tech keeps reducing the downside of a longer commute and so forth. And we move completely away from fossil fuels and towards zero pollution.

That 95% (ish) figure probably has a good bit to do with the fact that only 3% of our transportation network is dedicated to non-car methods of moving people around.

You say that you can just keep building roads to keep up with traffic, but we KNOW for a fact that we can't. We have piles of real-world data to show, definitively, that we can not build roads fast enough to significantly reduce traffic. We can't do it on the surface, and trying to do it with viaducts and tunnel roads would be far, FAR harder.

Transitways can carry 20x as many people as personal automobiles can. That is not a gap that you will be able to close with autonomous vehicles, no matter how many hand-waving techno-dogmatic proposals people come up with. It makes FAR more sense to just put transit systems in those tunnels. It is an objectively better answer than trying to do everything with cars.

I'm not suggesting that, at all. And your views (and mine, which are very similar) on what Atlanta should look like, are obviously a lot better than that. They're smarter, more balanced, more practical, less costly (than that all-cars scenario) being the huge difference, etc etc. But they're not necessarily what we objectively NEED to do, because I don't know that there is a such thing. If we wanted to have cars dominate transportation forever, that is totally possible, and we could be just fine doing that. Ultimately it comes down to preference for design. That's all I'm trying to say.

That doesn't mean that there isn't an objectively better answer. The scenario you proposed is, by nearly every metric, a worse idea than improving transit services.

Granted, maybe the non-transit-world wouldn't be as successful by most measures. Maybe more people would choose to move elsewhere, where there's transit. So maybe it wouldn't be an optimal choice in terms of viewpoints of utilitarianism and such, but that's not the point.

Cars are not really as impossibly unsustainable as you claim. That's just not the case. I don't see that as being objective fact.

It doesn't matter if you see it any way, it just is fact. We have piles of real-world data to show it, too.

And urbanism/pedestrianism and cars, are not incompatible whatsoever. Not at all. We've done it wrong, around here. But I've seen it done right.

I'm not saying they are incompartible, but there

There's no mass transit to speak of in Charleston, but yet it's way more dense and urban-feeling than Atlanta, with what feels like way more people walking around everywhere.

Charleston HAS transit. It has a bus system that has express commuter services, local routes, and mobility services. It also has two Amtrak routes serving it, which is more than Atlanta has.

That said, the core city was built at a time before cars, making use of the rivers, railroads, and eventually streetcars to handle large numbers of people.

Or just look at Atlantic Station. Lots of people walking around, and transit isn't really a factor. It's people who live there or who drove there. Avalon is the same deal, and transit is basically a zero factor there.

It has the shuttle that I know first-hand people use. It has the only functional bus-only lanes in the metro, and was fully planned for a BRT or LRT route to serve it. Plenty of people WANT transit there, and say the lack of transit access is a real problem for Atlantic Station.

But you arrive at your conclusions based at least on some degree of personal bias. (We all do.) Someone who values cars and driving everywhere to a much larger degree than you do, surely would come to different conclusions. As in, conclusions that would put the trade-offs and financials and efforts in different places, based on the differently weighted input goals. (Hopefully you get what I'm trying to say. Difficult to word it.)

There are such things as objective realities in this world. You can insist that I'm biased and that that's what's driving my positions all you want, though I have the data to back up my positions far more than many others.

This is a valid and fair point. Atlanta is extremely car-centric, so trying to implement anything that would change that by even a few percentage points would feel too drastic and extreme to many people. I get that, but I was just saying, this is the reaction you would get, if we did something like this. For better or worse, that's the basic reality of it.

And it's a mentality that is easy to counter, and can be changed with time, if it's not already changing now. I won't just abandon this idea because some people will be upset, which I think has been made rather clear by now.

Okay, but in order for it to actually happen, a whole ton of people would have to like it. And even I (very much on your side of things) barely like this idea. Like I said, I'm kind of luke-warm about it, at this point. Even if there's going to be a tolling system such as this, I don't think this is the best way to do that.

I don't disagree that it will take time, but I'm not trying to flip a switch today.

And I'm not sure I agree with the concept. Or at least with the order of operations. We need to get options in place. Comprehensive options. Then, eventually, maybe we can put anti-driving measures in place.

Except that that IS the order of operations. You go through initial studies. You say you're going to toll entries, and you expect it to raise $X, and select initial transit projects. You issue bonds based on expected revenue. You then fund both the initial toll construction, AND the transit. Both the tolls and come online at the same time.

There, you've built transit alternatives before the tolls are put in.

Atlanta is not a place like NYC, where they do have the mobility alternatives and options and such.

Which is why we build them using the revenue from the tolls to fund them!

Why do I have to keep repeating this?

I'd still rather see a state tax funding mechanism, or at least a regional tax funding mechanism (10 or 20 counties or whatever), to fund our transit needs.

As I already said, we need BOTH.

And then once we build out that transit network, then we have cars and we have trains and everything else, and I say just let the cards fall where they fall. Let people go with their own preferences. Rather than some kind of official anti-cars position. I just don't know to what degree I really agree with the core premise of that. I'd have to think more about it.

And keep cars financially prioritized over transit when we have empirical data that auto-centric priorities are harmful? No thank you.

Again, this isn't anti car, it's just not hyper-prioritization of cars.

Anyway, clearly, slight increases to our taxes in various ways, could generate billions and billions for transit. Which I wish we'd do. Tolling is not required for achieving that end. As you said, you're just trying to incentivize one transportation mode preference over another, because of what you see as an objective need to get away from cars. (Or at least move in that direction, anyway. As you noted, even if all your visions came to life, cars would still totally dominate around here.)

I still appreciate your ideas. If we were both in the GA senate or whatever, and it came down to my vote, you might be able to sway me. (Except in reality, me personally, I was ticked off initially by your idea because I live right on the perimeter.) So maybe I could get behind something similar, with some edits.

Sure.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Even if congestion pricing/tolling made sense for urban areas, why would we use 285 as a boundary? It's a totally artificial line and it doesn't define Atlanta's urbanized areas.

Most of what's inside 285 is suburban development that is indistinguishable from what's on the other side of said 285. Indeed, large zones outside of 285 are far more urbanized than what's inside 285.

Because it's a blatantly obvious demarcation line with limited entries that make it easy to meter against.

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Im not even going to bother nitpicking all through that...there's no chance in heck that they're going to force everyone to pay to drive ITP - it would absolutely massacre Atlanta especially if there's no transit alternatives in place beforehand.

I've already explained this a ton of times. Transit would be built and in place in time for the tolls to open. Period.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Most families go to the store far more often than once a month. We are a family of three and are in the store at least twice a week. It's 0.6 miles from our house, and I have never once walked there, and have no plans to do so in the future. I'm not going to walk back with six bags of groceries dangling from my arms. And in primaltech's case, I'm assuming he lives just OTP, and goes to the Publix just ITP. The next closest OTP store is about 1.5 miles away. No one is walking or biking that for groceries, so yeah...the only viable option is a car in many cases.

Tons of families in developed nations around the world get by without a car for their daily food shopping needs. America isn't special.

People with figure it out, and new stores will open up to fill gaps. The world will not come to a starving halt. If they truly need so much food bought at once that they must have a car, then the cost of the toll will pale in comparison to the final grocer bill.

Once again, you fail to look at what people actually want. We all do things that are "quantitatively" not the best option for us, because it's what we like. If you don't, then your life must be very, very mundane. We have sex for fun even though sex is "quantitatively" just for reproduction. We get drunk for fun, even though getting drunk is "quantitatively" not the best thing to do. Some smoke, even though they know that "quantitatively" it's bad for you. I'm guessing you do none of these things?

The difference being that no one is forcing use to prioritize having sex or smoking or drinking or doing any of those things as a routine part of our day based on what they want. Those activities are truly choices that we get to make.

Compare that to the hyper-prioritization of cars and I have to wonder why your personal wants override what we know to be the better solution. Especially when that better solution actually ADDS options for people to finally get to choose how they get around.

So, you're cutting 20% of customers from businesses? 20% of possible employees from businesses? 20% of attendees to various fairs and concerts?

Reducing 20% of vehicular entries does not mean there is a 20% reduction in the amount of people coming into the area.

As has already been explained, the total capacity of our network will increase with the wide-arrays of new transit services, allowing more people than ever to access the core metro, and continue to get to work, shop, and seek entertainment.

It's cute that you think that, but you really are pretty much of an extremist. You may not be quite as mind-bent as jsvh, but you are really high-up that ladder.

Says the person who straight told me they don't care about data and real-world measurements, but sure, I'm the extreme one.

This is all best case scenario. And we all know that never works out as intended. London's zone has not brought in near the amount they thought it would, and neither would yours. And in the mean time, you'd just be making life hard on everyone but yourself. I think you are living in a dreamland if you think this would actually bring in almost a billion dollars in profit per year.

Of course, this whole project is dreamland and will never, ever see the light of day, so it's all pretty hypothetical anyway.

You realize that the reason London's system didn't bring in as much revenue as it expected was because it worked too well, right? It was because the charges were great at lowering traffic, which is the first and foremost goal of road pricing systems, and the topic of this thread.

There is room in my estimates for both reducing final total income without greatly affecting transit projects, as well as padding based on overestimating the number of reduced-price toll users.

Sure my projections are not 100% accurate, but they're no where near as bad as you claim.

I figured as much. Now, I assume that part of your plan accounts for building new separated bike facilities and new walking paths and new complete streets with funds raised from the tolls. So, essentially, what you would be doing is charging drivers to help build the facilities that you want, at no extra cost to you, because you believe that what you want is "the right way". So, none of this is about getting people who use certain facilities to pay for it. It's to get one specific group to pay for all the others, so that the others don't have to pay for it.

I mean, I don't bike to work. I still drive a good bit despite trying to take transit as much as possible, and I leave the Perimeter plenty, so I'd be one of the drivers paying the tolls right there along side everyone else more than I'd perhaps like.

That said, there is NOTHING wrong with charging something that has quantifiable negative externalities and social costs for those social costs. Cars have a TON of negative externalities that are not at all priced into the taxes surrounding them.

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with using the fees from those negative externalities to fund things that are far better financially, specially, and efficiency wise.

Are you sure you're not a Republican?

Are you sure you're not confused on party's political stances? A stereotypical republican would 1) never suggest to actually fix the over-prioritization of their freedom-wagons -ah- I mean cars, 2) certainly never recognize the concepts of externalities not taken car of by market prices, 3) would never suggest to use funds raised from one thing that they do use on an entirely other thing that they may not get to use.

Tolls are a pro-environment, pro-urban, pro-transit topic. It's why groups like the Sierra Club were so sad to see tolls taken off GA 400. They just also happen to be fiscally sound policies, which I do not see any problem of having fiscally sound policies as a liberal or Democrat.