MARTA News (Madison, Buckhead: lease, buying, contractors)

[AnsleyPark]

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt-...U1shBLbjx5y9J/

That’s a lot of money.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt-...U1shBLbjx5y9J/

That’s a lot of money.

$100 billion is needed, though. I've been saying this for years now. Seattle is investing $50 billion into rail transit infrastructure, while our metro is neglecting our future.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by primaltech

$100 billion is needed, though. I've been saying this for years now. Seattle is investing $50 billion into rail transit infrastructure, while our metro is neglecting our future.

All in trying to catch up with the system we built with their federal funds.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...arta/71907706/

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by cqholt

All in trying to catch up with the system we built with their federal funds.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...arta/71907706/

Yeah but then our failure to expand that heavy rail system at all for ages, caused Seattle to eventually surpass and do much better than us with transit. So the joke's on Metro Atlanta. Which of course is mostly conservative Georgia state government's fault, and all the balkanization with all the counties.

[chiatldal]

Originally Posted by Libertarian2

Here's my recent letter to commission chair Charlotte Nash, and shared with our Gwinnett civic groups:

Re: Transit Tax, Charlotte’s Web

Each day Gwinnett residents cope with paycheck stress and feel “taxed enough already”. If the prospective transit tax were approved, every family would pay hundreds annually for the next 20 years, probably forever, for a political non-solution. The lower and middle income class that truly need commuting trip relief would get more caught up in a regressive sales tax web with no benefit. Yet before the vote is taken the county has already backed an unneeded heavy rail transit station land deal?

Heavy fixed rail is obsolete 20th century urban planning with a strong trend toward fewer riders. Even New York commuters are leaving it. Construction and operating cost per passenger mile are out of control. Gwinnett has non-dense, dispersed nodes of jobs, schools and retail, and intraregional destinations are also dispersed. More bus runs? Every bus with few riders equals heavy subsidy. Maybe such ideas as mesh networking, asymmetric game theory and artificial intelligence can provide better transit options, but for now and the near future our county planning and budget should deal with reality of more cars and trucks. The Gwinnett Transit commuter buses into Atlanta are our only mass transit success to date. Let’s avoid expensive political toys that require decades to build and need operating subsidies.

Rather than protecting the environment, most heavy rail transit and low occupancy buses need substantial energy to build and operate and give off more carbon per passenger mile than owner vehicles.

Politicians and media are pushing for top-down solutions. As with the failed T-SPLOST proposal, they ignore and distort local fundamental facts. Gwinnett Transit would be merged into a re-branded ATL regional authority meaning loss of local control. A transit tax siphons off Gwinnett revenues directly and indirectly to shore up Marta’s crazy streetcars and busways and risky defined benefit pension system.

It’s not good to encourage an expensive, regressive new tax that begins a 20+ year cycle to build a heavy rail to Jimmy Carter with low occupancy feeder buses and endless political intrigue. Gwinnett expanding traffic needs repairs and upgrades, new lanes, synchronized traffic signals and smart signs. Instead with this flawed proposal we get inconvenient and cost-ineffective, someday-future, heavy rail and more buses.

Metro Atlanta is one of the lowest taxes metros in the country slightly increase taxes it still would be one of the lowest taxes metros in the country. People are not going into poverty because of taxes, You would had a better argument trying to defend the upper class right to greedy and selfish then trying argue taxes are hurting people in Georgia.

But the most disturbing thing about this, with in the whole post you provide little alternative suggestion of what to do with Transportation. You basically complain about plan with giving no alternative plan. I said this to bu you can't just build more roads there's no paths, building roads would require razing neighborhoods, in which people asking for roads aren't going to give neighborhoods up, people are for other people giving up their neighborhoods but not for there own neighborhoods being razed there bit of a conflict there isn't?

infrastructure is not just for the moment but for the future, Gwinnett population is increasing but it's boundaries aren't this means all growth in the county is contribute in the long of making it denser. Gwinnett is 920,260 in 2010 it was 805,321, and projected to be 1.35 million people by 2040. The areas with transit plan aren't random they are the largest employment areas in the county, They are also in CID where's a public-private relationship of planning to allow a increase of density.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Yeah but then our failure to expand that heavy rail system at all for ages, caused Seattle to eventually surpass and do much better than us with transit. So the joke's on Metro Atlanta. Which of course is mostly conservative Georgia state government's fault, and all the balkanization with all the counties.

King Co bus system>MARTA bus system
MARAT Rail>Link Light Rail

[LynnHarris1]

The first whiff of organized MARTA opposition emerges in Gwinnett

It remains to be seen just how organized — and how formidable — the effort may be.

But the first whiff of an organized opposition to Gwinnett County’s MARTA referendum has emerged.

“We’re going to fight this tooth-and-nail,” Dacula resident Michael Miller said Tuesday night.

Miller was one of about two dozen members of the public to attend an open house at Bogan Park in Buford, the first in a series of county-sponsored events meant to educate voters about Gwinnett’s March 19 referendum. Miller spent several minutes loudly drilling Gwinnett’s transportation director about specifics of the vote and the corresponding transit plan before telling reporters that he was part of the team behind a burgeoning anti-transit movement..."

FULL STORY: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt-...6M8IgoTqOIgpM/

SOURCE: AJC

[fourthwarden]

The MARTA 4 Gwinnett Campaign is actively seeking volunteers for tabling events, phone banking, and door knocking!

You can sign up through the 'Get Involved' page on the campaign website: https://www.marta4gwinnett.org

If you signed up before, please do so again, as the old form had an error keeping it from storing contact info.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by Libertarian2

Here's my recent letter to commission chair Charlotte Nash, and shared with our Gwinnett civic groups:

Re: Transit Tax, Charlotte’s Web

Because I've apparently got nothing better to do, I'm going to pull this thing apart because... ho-boy is it a spin and a half.

Each day Gwinnett residents cope with paycheck stress and feel “taxed enough already”. If the prospective transit tax were approved, every family would pay hundreds annually for the next 20 years, probably forever, for a political non-solution.

Let's see... Gwinnett, with its current 6% sales tax, is actually on the lower end of rates for counties within the state, and the additional 1% for MARTA will bring it up to a much more average 7% sales tax rate.

Then Georgia is, over all, a fairly low tax-burden state.

And, of course, the U.S. is a very low tax-burden nation.

The lower and middle income class that truly need commuting trip relief would get more caught up in a regressive sales tax web with no benefit. Yet before the vote is taken the county has already backed an unneeded heavy rail transit station land deal?

First off, lower and middle income people will see commuting relief from a greatly expanded transit system that will offer opportunities to get around without needing a car, which is a much more regressive web than transit is.

Second off, the new tax burden is unlikely to be so harsh as to cripple budgets, particularly given that Georgia law exempts many necessity item sales, such as food, from sales taxes no matter what.

Heavy fixed rail is obsolete 20th century urban planning with a strong trend toward fewer riders. Even New York commuters are leaving it.

Heavy rail transit is near its all-time high ridership, and the recent decreases are barely making a dent in that. Heavy rail is absolutely still relevant as a mode of transportation, with modern systems being built and expanded world-wide right now.

Construction and operating cost per passenger mile are out of control.

High-capacity transit allows areas to combat net fiscal sustainability issues by facilitating high-density growth, as opposed to a primarily car-based system which traps cities into a spiral of fiscal insolvency due to the low-production nature of the supported development.

Gwinnett has non-dense, dispersed nodes of jobs, schools and retail, and intraregional destinations are also dispersed.

Gwinnett still has a solid corridor of relative density both for housing and employment. Wouldn't you know it, that's the exact corridor that heavy rail is planned to go through. Additionally, new heavy rail can anchor plenty of future TOD and growth, enabling far more economic activity without sacrificing mobility.

More bus runs? Every bus with few riders equals heavy subsidy.

As opposed to the massive subsidies that roads already get for use by just about the most inefficient method of moving people imaginable? At least mass transit enables the growth, which is already on its way, to settle in ways that take advantage of that additional mobility.

Maybe such ideas as mesh networking, asymmetric game theory and artificial intelligence can provide better transit options, but for now and the near future our county planning and budget should deal with reality of more cars and trucks.

No, it really shouldn't. Particularly since the reality is that those cars and trucks are drowning budgets in fiscal unsusatainability, hurting economic mobility, wasting energy, and loosing the county opportunities to grow in much more sustainable ways.

The Gwinnett Transit commuter buses into Atlanta are our only mass transit success to date. Let’s avoid expensive political toys that require decades to build and need operating subsidies.

That could have something to do with the lack of general investment. It's hard to use a system that's barely in place at all, or even non-existant.

Rather than protecting the environment, most heavy rail transit and low occupancy buses need substantial energy to build and operate and give off more carbon per passenger mile than owner vehicles.

Even low-used transit vehicles are sill efficient enough to compensate against the massive ineficiency, particularly when you extend the equation to the wider build environment. Again, transit-enabled, dense growth is much more energy efficient than car-centric low-density. Given the low car-occupancy rates, and the actually decent ridership projections of the Gold Line expansion, it seems extremely unlikely that transit would end up a net contributor to GHGs compared to the equivalent mobility expansion for cars.

Politicians and media are pushing for top-down solutions. As with the failed T-SPLOST proposal, they ignore and distort local fundamental facts.

This is nothing like the 2012 TSPLOST. For starters, the plan is much more detailed and specific with routing.

Gwinnett Transit would be merged into a re-branded ATL regional authority meaning loss of local control.

This is factually incorrect since it would be MARTA who assumes control of GCT, NOT the ATL. MARTA has plenty of provisions for local representation, including terms within the contract maintaining local control.

A transit tax siphons off Gwinnett revenues directly and indirectly to shore up Marta’s crazy streetcars and busways and risky defined benefit pension system.

The contract that MARTA and Gwinnett agreed upon requires that the vast majority of the funding collected within the county be spent only within the county. A smaller portion of the funding is being used to compensate MARTA for the general access to the wider network, which is actually planned for in Gwinnett's own transit plan by way of connecting bus systems.

Funding for streetcars and busways are fully established from specific special sources, such as the City of Atlanta More MARTA tax, or specific federal programs. Gwinnett's funding is not needed to 'shore up' anything within the rest of the system.

It’s not good to encourage an expensive, regressive new tax that begins a 20+ year cycle to build a heavy rail to Jimmy Carter with low occupancy feeder buses and endless political intrigue.

It kinda is, though. Certainly better than trying to continue using the far more regressive and expensive planning system around cars.

Gwinnett expanding traffic needs repairs and upgrades, new lanes, synchronized traffic signals and smart signs. Instead with this flawed proposal we get inconvenient and cost-ineffective, someday-future, heavy rail and more buses.

And continuing to overly prioritize cars will only make that all worse, given their entrapment within fiscal unsustainability.

[arjay57]

Where is the business community's contribution to MARTA funding?