[dante2308]

Originally Posted by Newnan_Eric

I wanted to respond to your post in detail, but I haven’t had the time until now.

While it may seem that there are a lot of “highway haters” on this board, I think it’s mostly that many of us feel that the transportation focus has been too skewed towards roads to the detriment of transit. Both need to be implemented for sustainable growth. For roads in the Atlanta Metro, I personally think that the focus needs to be on interchange improvements over additional lanes – that’s where the bottlenecks are. As for surface streets, streetscaping and restricting left turns will assist traffic flow. The Peachtree Boulevard project should improve traffic quite a bit.

The main problem with the roads vs. transit battle is funding. Georgia is a donor State. Meaning that, it only receives about 70% of the transportation funding that it contributes to the Federal Government. In addition to that Metro Atlanta is a donor to the rest of the State. While this helps grease the wheels with rural legislators, it makes it hard to get the money to implement the projects where the most congestion is. A perfect example of this kind of donor “pork” is “Georgia’s High Tech Highway,” Highway 224 from Perry towards Hawkinsville. This is a very nice 4-lane divided State Highway to nowhere. It’s supposed to spur development and I’m sure that there are tax incentives for business to locate there, but it is a complete waste. The traffic on the road is minimal. For the money, I’d rather they spend it on a road improvement or transit project in Atlanta. At least it’d do somebody some good (besides the road contractor).

You are right in stating that commuter rail would not stop sprawl. It does provide those that live outside the central city an alternative route into town. This only really helps those that work in downtown or other places that connect with MARTA. However, the rail lines that commuter rail would run, pass through older town centers (where the stations would be) that have denser cores and that, in some cases, pre-date auto-centric development. Many of the towns in Clayton County have redevelopment plans they’d implement if the Lovejoy line gets started. This in turn brings more people living within walking distance of the rail stations, and this improves rider-ship. It’s a domino effect.

I don’t think that bicycles will ever be used for any sizeable portion of Atlanta’s Metro for commuting purposes. Yes, there are always the hard-core fans, but weather, steep grades, and lack of shower facilities at most employers keeps this number minimal.

As for MARTA, it needs to focus inside the perimeter. The recent interest in Gwinnett is encouraging, but that county is probably best served by commuter rail. MARTA needs to be involved with expanding options in town. Maybe a new station or two. It also needs to be involved with interconnecting with the Beltline and Streetcar projects.

High-Speed Rail is a boondoggle. As you correctly stated, it is not currently feasible. If we can get regular passenger rail operating successfully, then maybe we can look at it. Also, the additional time will allow technology to mature in this country. (It’s already mature elsewhere, but the USA doesn’t seem to be able to implement it.)

You give the Beltline a short comment, but I think it deserves more. First, thank goodness cooler heads have prevailed and the study committee is recommending rail for the LPA (Locally Preferred Alternative). Otis White, a writer for Governing Magazine, correctly noted that the Beltline is not just a transit system for getting folks from A to B; it’s an urban amenity. A light-rail or streetcar system will attract development and riders in a way that BRT – no matter how pretty – couldn’t. The parks and trails are also sorely needed in this town and I think that this development will transform the city. I also think that the Wayne Mason debacle will end up being a minor footnote in history when this whole thing is done.

Your state you’d like to see heavy rail improvements, but your recommendations are vague. I don’t think we’ll see much in the way of HRT expansion with MARTA. There may be some new stations – possibly to ease connectivity with the Beltline – but there aren’t many areas that HRT expansions are viable. There still is talk about further expansion up GA 400, but not much else in town. The North Fulton expansion makes sense, as there are no existing rail lines to put commuter rail on in that corridor. Also, if developments like the one just proposed in Roswell are to be built, they should be required to have a transit connection to handle the density.

As for your comments about MARTA South of College Park, those communities would be on commuter rail lines.

Yes, burying the connector is a wild idea and it will never happen. I do like the 5th Street Bridge though. I went to Tech when that part of Midtown was in poor shape. I think that with the Tech Square expansion the bridge needed some expansion anyway. What they have done is make a reasonably attractive area to traverse. I’ll bet that when the weather gets nice in the Spring, students will hang out and eat lunch on the lawn areas. I’d also like to see GDOT implement the expanded Mayor’s Park idea at the Peachtree Street connector crossing and the Capital Gateway park on the East side of the State Capital building. The Capital Gateway park is also supposed to connect to a linear park between MLK and Memorial running all the way to Oakland Cemetery – what a nice space that could be with redeveloped condos and retail along it.

Your final notes about development patterns reveal that you don’t really now that much about the Atlanta traffic situation. Someone commuting from Duluth to Alpharetta spends probably more time in the car than going downtown. Highways 141 and GA 20 are horrific, and forget about going down 85 and then back up GA 400. Atlanta is never going to be a centralized city, but the edge cities need to be clustered, so the densities will support some kind of transit system. We just aren’t going to be able to build enough roads for everyone.

Thank you for responding. Time is limited so I wont respond to all of this at once. To start with heavy rail, I did not make any particular recommendations because there are more factors involved there than I would like to try to get in to. Politics come into play and it isn't as simple as putting the rail where it is needed or most feasible.

I am also well aware that traffic is bad between Duluth and Alpharetta. Some of that, I think, is due to the city planning assumption that everyone wants to go from Alpharetta and Duluth south towards the core and therefore roads connecting the edge cities are not priority.

I think the southern model of city, where you have one job center surrounded by tens of miles of radial residential communities and an arterial highway network is somewhat lacking. 285, while originally a road to bypass the city, is now a road that connects two separate job centers each with as much office space as downtown, yet 15 miles closer to the people who actually work there. That is why I am in favor of the radial and multi-loop system.

If there was a reasonable way for people laterally outside of 285, I think new centers would form that would take the pressure off Atlanta and the road networks in general. I think mass transit and dense developments should follow suit. I don't think we should not develop it inside the city, but I also don't think we should ignore the rest of the region. You really only need a reasonably walkable area with amenities and/or jobs and homes in a close enough area to make a station feasible (not that there aren't other hurdles). With that vision in mind, I don't think its impossible to throw that together. Funny thing is that for every improvement Atlanta makes, more people decide they like it here and move in. Maybe we can density yet if we keep growing so fast.

If we can't keep up with the people, we got to change something. We do need new roads though. We can't just give up and stop. The answer to Atlanta's traffic problem is going to be a lot of things at once working together and I think roads are part of that answer.