TL metro added 68,585 residents from July 1st 2022 to July 1, 2023.

[cranberrysaus]

Any commuter rail system needs to be done outside of MARTA completely. They no longer show any competence in tackling large capital projects.

[SEAandATL]

Originally Posted by cranberrysaus

Any commuter rail system needs to be done outside of MARTA completely. They no longer show any competence in tackling large capital projects.

They should be done by the private sector. I'm surprised Norfolk Southern hasn't considered running some lines of passenger trains in addition to freight. Would be good for their business. Granted they've been having issues in the past year but this idea was from a few years ago when the deal was broken with MARTA on the ClayCo line.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by cranberrysaus

Any commuter rail system needs to be done outside of MARTA completely. They no longer show any competence in tackling large capital projects.

No thanks to West Cobb slobs and East Cobb snobs as well as their useful idiots in the Legislature who have blocked every attempt at MARTA expanding for 50+ years...

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by cranberrysaus

What should've happened 15-20 years ago was the development of a Metra style commuter rail system.

From what I understand, much of the existing network of freight rail tracks in metro Atlanta and North Georgia doesn’t have the excess track capacity that would be needed to operate commuter trains at even modest frequencies and levels of service, much less at the adequate frequencies and levels of service that likely would be needed for a regional commuter rail service to be considered to be even remotely effective in a large major metropolitan area/region like Atlanta.

Lots of effort would have to be expended (in terms of attempting to acquire additional right-of-way for the construction of additional trackage for commuter trains) and lots of money would have to be spent (on building additional train tracks) for regional commuter train service to be able to operate effectively along existing freight rail right-of-ways and corridors in metro Atlanta and North Georgia.

… Which appears to be a major reason why Georgia state government decided to fund regional commuter bus service (in the form of the GRTA Xpress regional commuter bus system) along major highways instead of pursuing the implementation of regional commuter rail service along existing freight rail tracks.

Originally Posted by SEAandATL

They should be done by the private sector. I'm surprised Norfolk Southern hasn't considered running some lines of passenger trains in addition to freight. Would be good for their business. Granted they've been having issues in the past year but this idea was from a few years ago when the deal was broken with MARTA on the ClayCo line.

From what I understand, Norfolk Southern has not been very cooperative with the idea of operating commuter trains on its freight track through Clayton County and, IIRC, even blocked the idea over concerns that they would need that freight rail line to help transport the sharply increasing amount of rail freight that the Port of Savannah has been generating over the past 10-15 years.

I agree with your excellent point that the private sector should be involved in the effort to improve public transportation and implement more passenger rail transit service in a large major metropolitan area/region like Atlanta.

Though one major issue with a company like Norfolk Southern is that the company appears to view itself as being a freight rail company first and foremost that appears to have very little, if any, interest in being involved in directly operating passenger trains on their tracks.

And in regards to the NS freight rail tracks that run through Clayton County, it seems to be very understandable that NS would to keep those tracks clear for freight rail operations with the growing amount of logistical activity that the Port of Savannah has been generating over the past 10+ years.

[Phil P]

Jeez... It's bizarre to see how much the NE metro has exploded in the 2 years since I left. Suwanee has a whole new spaceship launch center looking town center and Braselton is now what Suwanee was 5 years ago...

It's pretty nice stuff they are throwing up, but I don't know that more is really that much better. Seems like a lot of it is town center suburb on repeat. By the time you get out to somewhere like Braselton, you might as well be in a different city entirely, it takes longer to get from there to downtown ATL than it does to get to Denver from Colorado Springs... At least those two have a natural area dividing them instead of having continuous development.

It's pretty obvious why the area keeps growing, but if I had to guess, I'd think a lot of people are going to have issues being in an area that's too big, too concrete, and too congested for what they moved to the area liking in a short amount of time, shorter than they expected.

Oh, and regarding water, Atlanta is just as bad a western systems taking water from the Alabama rivers to feed the metro. 50 inches of rain doesn't support the city size with the river network it has.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by Phil P

Oh, and regarding water, Atlanta is just as bad a western systems taking water from the Alabama rivers to feed the metro. 50 inches of rain doesn't support the city size with the river network it has.

This is fake. Atlanta doesn't take in any water whatsoever from Alabama's rivers.

We do use a few percent of the net outflows of the Chattahoochee which would otherwise flow down to Alabama and Florida. But I'm not sure why they would be entitled to 100% of the river and Georgia gets 0%. Literally no upstream state/city is held to that standard.

Atlanta could in fact be supported many times over using only local surface water. Night and day difference from the western systems where major inter-basin transfers occur.

[ShenardL]

Originally Posted by Phil P

Oh, and regarding water, Atlanta is just as bad a western systems taking water from the Alabama rivers to feed the metro. 50 inches of rain doesn't support the city size with the river network it has.

Why do you keep spreading this misinformation? There is no water coming from Alabama at all. Alabama is the one that wants water from Georgia's lakes and rivers (Florida as well) but they keep losing all the court cases. The Chattahoochee River sends water to Alabama and Florida. There is plenty of water in metro Atlanta. In the past 30 years, Lake Lanier has been at full pool almost the entire time except for around 2007/2008 and for a few months in 2023. https://lanier.uslakes.info/Level.asp

[JC251]

Not to mention, I would think Atlanta would be somewhat entitled to Lake Hartwell.

[architect77]

Lake Hartwell I believe is a body of water that gets no priority in keeping it full.

I often see it very low during times of slight drought conditions, and this has been just months ago.

I hope we don't ever see a 2007-2008 drought again. Multiple SE states were sucking water from the sediment bottoms of reservoirs just to keep taps running.

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by architect77

Lake Hartwell I believe is a body of water that gets no priority in keeping it full.

I often see it very low during times of slight drought conditions, and this has been just months ago.

I hope we don't ever see a 2007-2008 drought again. Multiple SE states were sucking water from the sediment bottoms of reservoirs just to keep taps running.

It's all about power generation. They generally let it drop in the fall which is also a "dry"ish time of year and then refill it with all the late winter/spring rain. Of course, if that doesn't happen...

We're on a shallow cove. It's annoying in late summer if there's even just a small period of dryness where rain is hard to come by, there's little effort in keeping lake elevation up at 660'. It can be a struggle some years just to get to Labor Day.