What ever happened to the OUTER Perimeter freeway?

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by Silverbullet404

When I was running for Governor of Georgia, I got a standing ovation, interrupting my presentation every time I spoke of that plan. Gov Roy Barnes, incumbent Governor, had stated it was going to cost $1.3 billion just to build a short section of the northern arc of that outer perimeter. I had the numbers on the complete plan I laid out and it was less than a billion to construct AND SERVE HALF THE POPULATION OF THE ENTIRE STATE OF GEORGIA.
How many DECADES is the USA behind on rapid rail? Depends on what you are comparing it to. Moscow built their underground rail system in 1919, and plenty of others are light years ahead of us.
HERE IS THE PLAN: Each major city has an outside circumferential highway with stops at major road intersections. There is a north, south, east, west non stop to the downtown centers. Light rail costs 1/3 of what interstate highways cost! Then, each city has a rail link to a system of national north, south, east west high speed rail systems. Cities link to cities and then those combined links connect to the high speed nationwide rail at a limited number of places.
The major problem is that for example in a lot of states, the DOT does not want rail. It does not need to be constantly maintained. You cant move it around every few years. In ATLANTA, GA the interstate highways were built in 1960, The GADOT has not stopped working on them, moving them around ever since. These people are paranoid about justifying their jobs! With no specific projects the Georgia Legislature increased fuel tax and gave the GADOT A BILLION DOLLARS!

[red92s]

5+ years. Might be a record for an old thread bump

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by red92s

5+ years. Might be a record for an old thread bump

I believe the term is Necroposting.

[Silverbullet404]

Place the light rail in the footprint of the proposed 'outer perimeter'. The north/south/east/west rails are high speed, non stop downtown. They connect the outer perimeter to the downtown area.
The light rail outer perimeter stops at select major highways to pick up passengers. Once on the high speed rail they are downtown in about five minutes.

If you want to take it a step further, put tolls on the interstates either before or after entering 285. This in the event the ridership of the rail is not as popular as hoped. Keep raising the tolls till the ridership is achieved.

AND, although I do not think this would be necessary; start buying up downtown parking lots and shutting them down!

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, as they say and you just have to do what works. I wouldnt trust GADOT with this project or any other, for that matter. Again I say, "They have to justify their jobs" and you cant do that very well if you are building successful rail systems which need little or no maintenance and you cant move them around every few years!

HERE IS THE POINT: IT WILL COST A BILLION FOR THIS SYSTEM. IT WILL COST $15 BILLION TO DO IT WITH HIGHWAYS~!

LOOK AT THE MAP AND THE POPULATION IN THE VICINITY! SERVING ONE HALF OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA WITH THIS SYSTEM!

Thanks everyone for your posts and opinions on this subject. It is a very important one we face and we should get on with it. That billion dollars the State gave the DOT with no specific projects proposed was our number one stupid allocation funded with increased gas taxes. That money, which will vanish like the wind could have built this system. Makes me sad.

[MikeHonchoATL]

Your idea sucks.

[cwkimbro]

Silverbullet,


I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I think you're off a good bit in terms of costs and I'm also heavily concerned at that proposition.

The problem is the Beltline route that big and far out of town won't work well for transit at all, besides being incredibly expensive.

It works for freeways, especially if we can do it ahead of development, because in a car people use the freeway but then use a series of other roads to get to their real start and end points that are spread out.

From a transit perspective where you need more effort to pick people up from their start and destination and limit transfers, it becomes a line to nowhere.

Transit can work in a Beltline approach, but it needs to be connecting major business centers and neighborhoods (ie. like something that would travel from Gwinnett, through Perimeter Center and into Cumberland and other parts of Cobb). Even then, much needs to be changed in terms of zoning and how private properties are already developed to really be effective.

This is why most transit going to the edge of town are more radial. It is also why more people use highways.

Also, high speed rail is very expensive. Tickets are also expensive. Part of what makes it high-speed is severely limiting stops and using is mostly for inter-regional/inter-state travel. It really isn't designed to pick up commuters like that and it won't magically make a trip like that in 5 minutes. In fact, most high-speed rail lines often have to slow down quite a bit when entering and leaving major cities. What truly makes them high-speed is cutting down travel times in the places in between cities.


Furthermore, you need to be careful to use tolling in the way you propose. What you're doing is limiting travel, which in turn limits economic activity. You're increasing peoples cost to get to work and do business.

Now it can be acceptable when it is designed to merely pay for a road or use a limited portion of the route to improve peak-hour efficiency (ie. make sure some cars keep moving), but we can't just overall use tolling to crowd people out of traveling when the majority of our region depdends on a car for the overwhelming majority of origins and/or destinations

[Norman2017]

Wow - aren't the folks who killed the Outer Perimeter Project happy when I-85 collapsed?

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by Norman2017

Wow - aren't the folks who killed the Outer Perimeter Project happy when I-85 collapsed?