Design Your Own MARTA Expansion (Atlanta, Marietta: real estate, zoning, public transportation)

[NYbyWAYofGA]

I pulled this Clifton corridor info from the skyscraperpage forum. I thought you'd be interested to see the details.

http://itsmarta.com/clifton-corridor...dor-flash.html

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by neil0311

That comment isn't called for, and I'm not a southerner, so what's my excuse? I grew up in NYC and rode the Flushing Line to high school every day for 4 years. I agree that what we have now isn't adequate, but the answer isn't more of the same.

Transit that makes sense and serves the community that pays for it is what we need, not a 1960s radial system that serves a very small % of commuters. Demanding something else isn't ignorant, in fact it's smarta.

EDIT: Just saw this posted by Arjay in another thread. I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing, because it illustrates exactly why the thought process behind expanding rail to downtown isn't all that important.

That's an interesting table, but IMO it's hard to reduce trip planning down to a simple table of numbers. Besides, what do they mean by "central city" and "suburbs"? Technically, Decatur is a suburb of Atlanta, yet it's very much considered by locals to be ITP. Also, the respective 2010 city populations of the top five in that list are 8.2 million, 1.3 million, 1.4 million, 0.83 million, and 0.78 million. Atlanta, by contrast, has just 0.42 million people, yet its overall metro area has more people than any of those five's counterparts except for New York. Now you may be thinking, aren't I just making your point for you? Not exactly. Because general summary numbers do not tell *where* in the metro area these people live in. Even the table itself lumps the entire metro area into two categories: central city and "suburb." That's way, way too broad of a division to even remotely guess where the high-traffic corridors are.

BTW, you still haven't answered my question about not what *wouldn't* work for traffic solutions, but what *would* work.

Originally Posted by NYbyWAYofGA

I pulled this Clifton corridor info from the skyscraperpage forum. I thought you'd be interested to see the details.

Untitled Document

Oooh! Great to see MARTA taking a serious look at this. I think a Lindbergh-Emory-East Lake Station would get quite a bit of rail traffic, both from workers and students. Emory really needs to be hooked up to the rail network.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

That's an interesting table, but IMO it's hard to reduce trip planning down to a simple table of numbers. Besides, what do they mean by "central city" and "suburbs"?

The table is from the Brookings Institution study. They define "Central City" as everything within the the city limits of Atlanta. So it includes Midtown, Downtown, Buckhead, the airport, the industrial areas, universities, shopping centers, etc. For purposes of this report "Suburbs" are defined as areas outside the city limits of Atlanta.

There's no doubt that many areas in the suburbs are equally if not more urbanized than many parts of the city of Atlanta. However, this chart does demonstrate that we are not a region that is based upon massive numbers of people commuting into a central city. The vast majority of workers are commuting suburb to suburb. That includes residents of the city of Atlanta proper, most of whom commute to work in the suburbs.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

That's an interesting table, but IMO it's hard to reduce trip planning down to a simple table of numbers. Besides, what do they mean by "central city" and "suburbs"? Technically, Decatur is a suburb of Atlanta, yet it's very much considered by locals to be ITP. Also, the respective 2010 city populations of the top five in that list are 8.2 million, 1.3 million, 1.4 million, 0.83 million, and 0.78 million. Atlanta, by contrast, has just 0.42 million people, yet its overall metro area has more people than any of those five's counterparts except for New York.

Another way of looking at this is Atlanta has roughly 8% of the metro's population, but 20% of the metro's jobs. It's possible some other area has that same concentration of employment relative to its residential population (and yes, the City of Atlanta is also more densely populated than most parts of the metro too, which means its employment density is higher yet), but the city itself remains one of the main employment centers in the metro.

That, and every morning when I begin my southbound commute from Midtown, I'm stuck fighting my way through a sea of commuters who mostly have Fulton and Cobb tags. Except, of course, on the days I take MARTA to work (which isn't always possible with my work schedule and other commitments).

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

BTW, you still haven't answered my question about not what *wouldn't* work for traffic solutions, but what *would* work.

Yes, I have. Several times. You need to read.

[tomno00]

cool chart neil and I must say that I am not suprised at all by those numbers. Atlanta is still to me just a lot of different loosley connected neighborhoods that are thrown together to arrive at what we call "metro atlanta." In that sense it is very much so a sun belt city. Anyone that has family or has spent time in the northeast can see the differences - you don't need a chart like that to reailze there are big differences between Atlanta and cities like Boston or DC. I'm not saying that is good or bad. But this is how the population of Atlanta wants it to be. People that think like toll_booth (and I am not saying your ideas are bad - in fact i agree with a lot of it) are in the minority in Atlanta. The way things are set up now keeps things cheap - which is what people want. Are cities with good transit cities cheap? Nope. To get anywhere close to those cities in the northeast, you need to start from the inside out, not the other way around. You need a more urban center.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by tomno00

cool chart neil and I must say that I am not suprised at all by those numbers. Atlanta is still to me just a lot of different loosley connected neighborhoods that are thrown together to arrive at what we call "metro atlanta." In that sense it is very much so a sun belt city. Anyone that has family or has spent time in the northeast can see the differences - you don't need a chart like that to reailze there are big differences between Atlanta and cities like Boston or DC. I'm not saying that is good or bad. But this is how the population of Atlanta wants it to be. People that think like toll_booth (and I am not saying your ideas are bad - in fact i agree with a lot of it) are in the minority in Atlanta. The way things are set up now keeps things cheap - which is what people want. Are cities with good transit cities cheap? Nope. To get anywhere close to those cities in the northeast, you need to start from the inside out, not the other way around. You need a more urban center.

Atlanta's decentralization is one of its strengths. People don't have to be near one central place, and therefore pay a steep price to be close to work. Instead, there are many employment centers here and people can find one to their liking and live nearby at a very reasonable cost. And have great schools, shopping, parks and other amenities.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by arjay57

The table is from the Brookings Institution study. They define "Central City" as everything within the the city limits of Atlanta. So it includes Midtown, Downtown, Buckhead, the airport, the industrial areas, universities, shopping centers, etc. For purposes of this report "Suburbs" are defined as areas outside the city limits of Atlanta.

There's no doubt that many areas in the suburbs are equally if not more urbanized than many parts of the city of Atlanta. However, this chart does demonstrate that we are not a region that is based upon massive numbers of people commuting into a central city. The vast majority of workers are commuting suburb to suburb. That includes residents of the city of Atlanta proper, most of whom commute to work in the suburbs.

As true as that may be, that doesn't address the issue of where the point-to-point commutes are actually occurring. For example, in a wildly hypothetical situation where 20% of all area commutes are from Marietta square to the heart of Sandy Springs, it would make perfect sense to build a transit line along that route, even though that's technically suburb-to-suburb. In reality, of course, it isn't that simple; however, if enough trips share the same route and have virtually the same destination, then feasibility for a transit line could become plausible.

Here's something I invite you to consider--the passenger density of the ten most heavily-traveled transit systems in the US (source). Here are their average numbers of passengers per mile:

New York--35,144
Washington--8,730
Chicago--6,177
Boston--13,026
San Francisco Bay--3,471
Philadelphia--13,240
PATH (Jersey-New York)--17,971
The ATL--5,063
LA--7,931

Although these numbers imply that we're well behind the big boys--New York, Boston, and arguably Philly--they show much more parity than the sheer ridership numbers. MARTA is close to the per-mile ridership numbers of the Chicago L-train--the third-heaviest metro system in America--and it is not that far behind the heralded DC metro. In short, if anyone's looking for evidence that more people would ride MARTA if it just went to more places, there it is.

Originally Posted by testa50

Another way of looking at this is Atlanta has roughly 8% of the metro's population, but 20% of the metro's jobs. It's possible some other area has that same concentration of employment relative to its residential population (and yes, the City of Atlanta is also more densely populated than most parts of the metro too, which means its employment density is higher yet), but the city itself remains one of the main employment centers in the metro.

That, and every morning when I begin my southbound commute from Midtown, I'm stuck fighting my way through a sea of commuters who mostly have Fulton and Cobb tags. Except, of course, on the days I take MARTA to work (which isn't always possible with my work schedule and other commitments).

Exactly. Which is part of why I really hope that NW line gets built by the year 2030. Start it out by going up to Cumberland, with a park-and-ride lot there. Then extend it up into central Cobb. FWIW, who knows if the resistance in Cobb county to transit won't fade in the years to come, especially if MARTA is consolidated into a larger network.

Originally Posted by neil0311

Yes, I have. Several times. You need to read.

Childish insults, Neil? I honestly missed it, if you even said it. What should be Atlanta's solution to traffic problems?

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Childish insults, Neil?

What did I say that was either childish or an insult? You insisted....AGAIN...that I hadn't provided my solution. I said that I did, and that you need to read. Both are statements of fact and neither childish nor insulting. <shakes head in disbelief>

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by neil0311

What did I say that was either childish or an insult? You insisted....AGAIN...that I hadn't provided my solution. I said that I did, and that you need to read. Both are statements of fact and neither childish nor insulting. <shakes head in disbelief>

Then what is it? What is the solution to metro Atlanta's traffic problems?