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I disagree....the rail system in Atlanta only serves a small portion of Atlanta metro area mainly the city of Atlanta.
Actually Marta rail serves Atlanta, Decatur, East Point, College Park, Chamblee, Doraville, and Sandy Springs / Dunwoody all pretty well. But your right. In order to really be effective Marta needs not only expansion of it's heavy rail but the creation of commuter rail to more suburbs.
Marta and other proposed systems biggest enemy in the past (for decades now, all this expansion was intitially planned years and years ago) has not been lack of funding so much as N.I.M.B.Y and suburban and State political opposition. Everybody complains about Marta's lack of coverage but if it was up to Marta it would have had twice the coverage along time ago. You have State, and local politicians to blame for it's lack of growth. It has the ridership to justify expansion but has been blocked anyway.
A point that is being missed is that proper planning around transit (TOD) can help infill and be the catalyst to make new transit opps work and help to assist congested roads. The density can come with the transit development
yes but few people are willing to speculate. Its hard enough getting funding in denser areas let alone getting funding for areas you HOPE to infill
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Scarface713
And Dallas and Houston (especially) will use commuter rail to funnel suburbanites into the inner city, and have light rail move them around. Highly doubt the feds will approve of heavy rail expansion in these cities anytime soon. The time passed for that (too expensive).
It is worth pointing out that it is unlikely that Dallas or Houston will ever have a heavy rail subway similar to that of the old systems (NYC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia) or the new systems (Atlanta, DC, San Francisco). The cost of building even a moderately sized system would reach into the $100 Billion plus range. They really can't be faulted for that. Light rail may not be the best option, but it is at least an option and they are at least going forward with a plan so I'll give credit where credit is due.
I'll admit to knowing diddly about this, but I remember someone telling me that there are light rail systems that can go as fast as heavy rail, so what's the difference?
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlGreen
I'll admit to knowing diddly about this, but I remember someone telling me that there are light rail systems that can go as fast as heavy rail, so what's the difference?
The difference between LRT and Heavy rail subway isn't so much speed, but a matter of capacity.
I did a little digging and found that a three car DART train like this one:
Has a maximum capacity of 600 passengers.
Where as an average eight car MARTA train like this one:
Has a maximum capacity of 1200 passengers sitting and standing, and a "crush load" (it feels exactly like it sounds) capacity of 1600 to 2000 passengers.
Aside from having a much more developed transit system, this is the reason why the MARTA subway can easily carry 260,000 passengers rides a day versus DART LRT carrying 57,700.
If you divide that up for the whole day MARTA has 13,000 train passenger riders every hour while DART has 2885. However, most trips will be during a three hour period during the morning and evening commute for workers and students. Using that metric MARTA can handle approximately 50,000 trips per hour where as DART can handle 13,000 trips per hour. Admittedly though I used some funny math on that last metric.
This is why in most instances (there are a few exceptions) subways will always be superior to light rail and there is nothing that can be done about it aside from adding more capacity to light rail systems. However doing that will be prohibitively expensive in most instances. For example, in order for DART to match MARTA's per hour operating capacity, the system would need to expand service by a factor of 5. That's not happening...
I'll admit to knowing diddly about this, but I remember someone telling me that there are light rail systems that can go as fast as heavy rail, so what's the difference?
Typically they do not travel as fast; they also typically can not carry as many passengers. Though light rail is usually more effecient than buses it is not as effecient as heavy rail
Has a maximum capacity of 1200 passengers sitting and standing, and a "crush load" (it feels exactly like it sounds) capacity of 1600 to 2000 passengers.
You won't find those numbers in Houston or Dallas anytime soon. that type of capacity is simply overkill.
Light rail works fine for transporting passengers, its extent of service that needs developing not capacity.
The Houston rail for example is mainly a second leg transportation mode. almost everyone get to it by bus or car and then continue their journey on it. The problem is that the Rail doesn't go threw any residential area so capacity is not anywhere near as high as it could be. The Blue lines going west will be going threw areas where hundreds of thousands of people live, so capacity on these will be the highest. The line close to 45 will hit a lot of residential areas too.
I guess Houston and Dallas better start digging under the couch cushions for them pennies and nickels.
Nah, if these cities can build an LRT system that is flexible and reliable. It can work just as well. The whole purpose is to get people from point A to point B. This can be done efficiently with light rail. The issue with Houston is it does it in the most cheap and unreliable way possible. Dallas simply doesn't have the core or layout to have a successful rail system imo. Light Rail can travel up to speeds just as high as heavy rail, but the issue is that light rail is used more for the inner city and requires more stops. It usually never gets the opportunity to reach top speed.
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