Which commuter rail line is initially the most feasible? (Atlanta: sales, hotels)
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Why use the high-cost solution of new heavy rail, when commuter rail could be done for billions less and still have extremely expansive service.
Because, commuter rail, while it costs less than new heavy rail, would require attempting to run very high-frequency passenger train service on existing freight rail tracks that are already nearly maxed-out with very high-frequency freight rail service on many stretches.
With many stretches of existing freight rail tracks already stretched or nearly maxed-out to capacity with very high-frequencies of freight trains (particularly the busy stretch of the CSX/Western & Atlantic freight rail tracks northwest of Atlanta through Cobb County out to Cartersville and the busy stretch of Norfolk Southern freight rail tracks west of Atlanta out to Austell (a stretch of freight rail track that is one of the busiest on the entire planet) and beyond out to Rome and Dalton) attempting to run a very high-frequency of passenger trains on stretches of existing track that are so exceptionally busy with freight trains is likely not doable logistically. http://www.dot.ga.gov/maps/Documents...ns_Per_Day.pdf http://www.dot.ga.gov/maps/Documents...onnage_Map.pdf
Also, multiple corridors that are targeted for the implementation of regional commuter rail service (most particularly the I-75/I-575 NW Corridors out to Acworth and the I-85/I-985/GA 316 NE Corridors) are already increasingly in need and want of heavy rail transit service due to increasingly severe traffic congestion on a limited road network that is anchored and heavily-overdependent on the I-75 NW and the I-85 NE roadways.
The Mayors and city governments of OTP North Metro urban core suburban towns like Smyrna, Kennesaw and Acworth in Cobb County, Woodstock and Canton in Cherokee County, Roswell, Alpharetta and Johns Creek in North Fulton, Norcross, Duluth, Suwanee, Sugar Hill, Buford and Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County, and tiny exurban Oakwood in Hall County have all expressed a strong desire to have their communities served by high-quality, high-frequency passenger rail transit service that they can utilize as the main redevelopment and revitalization tool for their suburban and exurban downtowns.
The mayors and city governments of Smyrna, Kennesaw and Acworth in traditionally hard-core anti-rail Cobb County and Duluth, Suwanee, Sugar Hill and Lawrenceville in Gwinnett have all outright expressed a desire to have their towns served by some kind of post-MARTA heavy rail service.
While the city governments of Roswell, Alpharetta and Johns Creek in North Fulton County and Norcross in Gwinnett County have all repeatedly expressed an outright strong desire to have their areas served by either MARTA heavy rail expansions or by MARTA heavy rail-anchored bus transit service.
The City of Norcross has even gone so far as to repeatedly and increasingly lobby for a MARTA heavy rail transit station in or very near their historic walkable village-like downtown, which is in an advanced stage of revitalization (...Norcross even lobbied for the MARTA heavy rail transit extension and station to be included in the recently-defeated T-SPLOST).
With such building demand for heavy rail service in formerly hard-core anti-transit areas outside of Interstate 285, why not go with what people need and want now and will need and want even more in the not-too-distant future as the population (and traffic) of the Atlanta region continues to explode? Especially if you can get someone else (private investors and infrastructure users) besides overextended taxpayers to willingly pay for it?
BART also serves a far higher density area than Atlanta has around it. Atlanta's metro area has been able to grow in all directions from the city, while SF, Oakland, and San Jose are constrained, so a few 40+ miles Heavy Rail lines hit massive population centers and run right along their spines. You're also connecting three cities of 980,000, 815,000, and 390,000 with significant traffic between them. Atlanta has two cities of about 140,000 each even close by, and they're 50 and 70 miles away with areas of very light development between. Hardly comparable.
...Those are good points, but even though Atlanta has been able to grow in all directions (to differing degrees), it has mostly only been able to grow out from the original urban core along major spoke highways through outlying areas with local surface road networks that are highly-constrained with road expansion being very-limited due to a mix of libertarian and environmental politics and heavily-wooded rolling topography.
And while the sprawl of the Bay Area is constrained by the geography of the bay and the coast and the topography of nearby wildlife preserves, high hills and even mountains, the sprawl of the Atlanta region may not be constrained by natural geographical and topographical barriers, but the expansion of the road network absolutely is, has been and increasingly will continue to be constrained by anti-road expansion politics and a heavily-wooded rolling topography.
Also, you make an excellent point about how BART connects the three principal cities of the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose).
But while it may not necessarily be on the same parallel, particularly in terms of popular culture reference, the heavily-populated Atlanta suburbs of Cobb County (708,000) in the I-75 NW Corridor, North Fulton (362,000) in the GA 400 N Corridor and Gwinnett County (843,000) all in need of a highly-dependable transit option in the mold of a BART to connect them (by way of the I-285 Top End Corridor) as just like the three principal cities of the Bay Area, there is a significant amount of traffic between them (often by way of the I-285 Top End Perimeter and Highways 92, 120 and 140).
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Originally Posted by MattCW
We're tunneling now? Ok, I'll revise to trillions then.
...If we want a high-quality level of local and regional passenger rail transit service, particularly in areas with heavy existing dense development and a substantial amount of at-grade railroad crossings at busy streets on existing rail right-of-ways, like in the 5-county urban core of Metro Atlanta, we are going to have to go underground like we had to with MARTA heavy rail on many stretches as disturbing areas of existing high-density development and population is not necessarily a political option for the overwhelming most part.
It won't cost "trillions", LOL! But the cost will be substantial, but then again, we can't build, operate and maintain a good multimodal transportation system, the kind of multimodal transportation system that it takes a fast-growing international city and metro of 6 million people to function at just an adequate level, on the cheap.
We're desperately trying to maintain a bare-bones multimodal transportation system as it is now on the dirt cheap and it is not working out very well for us, especially in terms of national and international reputation.
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Originally Posted by MattCW
Name a transit system in this country that makes a user-fee profit? Including ones that have distance-based fares like BART does.
...BART does not make a profit from its largely user fee-funded system, but BART does cover 78% of its operating and maintenance costs with the revenues from its inflation-indexed combination distance-based/zone-based fare structure, that is compared to MARTA which only covers roughly 30% (between 27-33%) of its operating costs with the declining revenues from its flat-rate fare structure. BART - BART's new budget: funding for the future
If the Atlanta region financed up to 80% of the cost of operating and maintaining a vastly-upgraded and expanded transit system with user fees in the form of revenues from fares, the remaining 20% of the cost of operations and maintenance could be EASILY financed with the revenues from real estate transactions on transit-owned property, Tax Increment Financing and private investment,
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Originally Posted by MattCW
Try millions in profit, not billions (from Real estate transactional funding in the form of for-profit leasing of land out for transit-oriented development along lines and around transit stations)
You are sorely overestimating the taxes from that (Tax Increment Financing), even so, all of the taxes can't be dedicated to transit.
...With Tax Increment Financing only a very-limited portion of property tax revenues from new development that pops up along a transit line after it has been commissioned can be used to fund the transit line by law.
Even so, we do not necessarily need the revenues from real estate transactions on transit-owned land and Tax Increment Financing to cover only but roughly 20% tops of the cost of operations & maintenance because most of the cost of O&M will be covered with user fees in the form of revenues from a distance-based fare structure.
You just don't get it do you? Most outlying areas DO NOT need heavy-rail like frequency. Commuter rail using conventional commuter-rail frequencies will serve well for the foreseeable future. The reason not to just give in and give heavy rail to everyone who wants it is because of the economic cost. Running a fully double-tracked heavy rail line all the way to Acworth would just be used as fuel by the anti-transit camp to derail any actually worthwhile projects.
You just don't get it do you? Most outlying areas DO NOT need heavy-rail like frequency. Commuter rail using conventional commuter-rail frequencies will serve well for the foreseeable future. The reason not to just give in and give heavy rail to everyone who wants it is because of the economic cost. Running a fully double-tracked heavy rail line all the way to Acworth would just be used as fuel by the anti-transit camp to derail any actually worthwhile projects.
The benefits of commuter rail for the region are questionable at best. I like the idea to help steer future growth, but the commuting patterns in the Atlanta area are not very consistent. The percent of suburb to downtown/midtown commuting is very low. I live just outside the perimeter near I-75 in Cobb County. I work in Alpharetta. Of the 30 or so families in my community, I know of 2 that work downtown/midtown and the rest work in the northern suburbs. There is so much suburb to suburb commuting, that the benefits of commuter rail would be minimal. Sure that might change 50 years from now, but to invest billions in building out a commuter rail system for tomorrow while ignoring the region's current needs is a tough sell. Forgoing "need to haves" for "nice to haves" is not good business.
If you can throw a commuter rail train on current tracks and just throw up a few stations in the suburbs, I think it might be cost effective, but the 10+ route maps people on here are drooling over are so far from being viable that it is comical.
The companies they (the City of Chicago and the State of Indiana) leased (the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road) to, didn't have to build the roads, and probably don't have to directly maintain them.
...You are correct that the private companies that the City of Chicago and the State of Indiana leased the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road to did not build the roads which were originally built as user fee-funded roads in the 1950's.
But the private companies that the two roads were leased to DO indeed have to directly pay all costs to maintain and operate the roads that they're leasing from the public.
Having the private entity pay all of the operations and maintenance costs of those major public roads is a major part of the lease deal in return for the private entities getting to keep all of the toll revenues they collect from those roads.
With those lease deals, not only did the City of Chicago and the State of Indiana get paid billions in upfront revenues that they used to maintain existing transportation infrastructure and build new transportation infrastructure elsewhere in their respective jurisdictions, but they also totally eliminated the cost to their respective jurisdictions' taxpayers of having to operate and maintain those roads for the foreseeable future.
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Originally Posted by MattCW
Building AND operating transit is not profitable, that's why the government does it.
...Before the City of Chicago leased out the I-90 Chicago Skyway for $1.4 billion and the State of Indiana leased out the Indiana Toll Road for $3.8 billion, neither was building and operating roads as the Indiana Toll Road had lost money in 3 of the previous 5 years before the state leased the road out to the private entity for a much-needed profit/windfall and eliminated all of cost to the taxpayer of operating and maintaining the road.
The way to pay for much-needed large-scale transit upgrades and expansions would not necessarily be to just lease out individual transit lines, but to lease out entire multimodal transportation corridors (I-75 Northwest, Georgia 400 North, I-85 Northeast, etc).
The federal governments and many state governments, including the State of Georgia, are increasingly seriously considering phasing-out fuel taxes and replacing them with user fees over the long-term, due to the decreasing effectiveness of fuel taxes in funding transportation infrastructure.
If the State of Georgia decided to utilize user fee transportation funding on a large scale, the state could start by eliminating the portion of the fuel tax that funds the maintenance of Interstate Highways and replacing that declining fuel tax funding with funding from inflation-indexed distance-based user fees on each controlled-access superhighway (Interstates and freeways) that would pay 100% of the cost of the needs of each user fee-funded road.
For example, after eliminating fuel tax funding of superhighways and switching to user fee funding on controlled-access superhighways, the State of Georgia could take a road like Georgia 316 between Lawrenceville and Athens and lease it out along with the proposed parallel "Brain Train" high-capacity passenger rail transit line to a private entity for a profit.
The upfront profits from leasing Georgia 316 and the accompanying future passenger rail transit line out to a private entity would be used to greatly expedite the construction on the conversion of GA 316 into an Interstate-standard separated-grade expressway between Lawrenceville and Athens.
The profits from the leasing of the GA 316 multimodal corridor would also be used to quickly construct and implement a grade-separated regional heavy rail line (tracks and stations) along the "Brain Train" corridor between Atlanta and Athens.
After leasing GA 316 and the "Brain Train" regional heavy rail line out to the private entity for a profit, the private entity would get to keep the revenues from the user fees on both GA 316 and the Brain Train regional heavy rail line, and the state's taxpayers would no longer be responsible for the costs of maintaining and operating the road or the passenger rail line.
The costs of maintaining and operating both the new GA 316 superhighway and the "Brain Train" regional heavy rail line would be the responsibility of the private entity who was leasing the GA 316 multimodal transportation corridor (the new Interstate-standard separated-grade expressway and the regional heavy rail transit line), as part of the lease deal between the state and private entity.
Congestion pricing would also be used to keep the general purpose lanes moving at a speed of at-least 40-45 mph and keep any express lanes (HOT/HOV-3, HOV-4 or whatever) moving at a speed of at least 50 miles per hour during peak hours.
The long-term plans of the federal government and state government are to utilize congestion pricing on all lanes of physically and politically-constrained Atlanta freeways with adjustable tolls used to keep express lanes moving at 50 mph and general purpose lanes moving at 40-45 mph with carpools of 3 or more people riding at a dramatically reduced rate (not free) and the spillover (motorists who don't want to pay the heightened toll rates to travel at peak hours) using parallel and adjoining passenger rail and bus transit lines
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Originally Posted by MattCW
The road network isn't that congested at night (to warrant 24-hour rail transit service with low headways). Hourly service making all stops on the routes is plenty. Even New York only has hourly service out to only some of its suburbs 24/7.
...That's a good point, but there is still a substantial amount of activity that goes on at night, particularly on weekends when the nightlife and entertainment scenes are much more active, but also on weekdays as people shuttle to and from evening and night jobs around major employment and activity centers (the Atlanta Airport, hospitals at the Perimeter and Emory, logistical jobs at UPS and FedEx, etc).
Greater Atlanta's nightlife and entertainment scenes also remain active during the week, though not at the level that they are active on weekends.
We may not need to run trains every few minutes during overnight hours (between roughly 1am-4am), but just like we need to maintain a high-level of evening and late-night transit service (between roughly 7pm-1am) we still need to maintain a relatively high-level of overnight service where applicable to serve the substantial overnight activity that does go on during the week and especially on weekends.
Personally, I've been stuck in traffic jams on I-85 in Gwinnett County at 11:30 pm at night on weekdays (particularly when the economy was at full bore) and I've also been stuck in traffic jams on the Downtown Connector during the midnight hour on Friday nights while working an overnight driving job out of the Atlanta Airport.
I've also had jobs (that did not require the use of a personal vehicle) where I worked evenings and late nights, and did not leave work until between the hours of 1am-4am and have been without a vehicle on occasion because of mechanical issues.
I've also had to utilize the services of either a cab or overnight transit in another city to get home from work on some of those occasions that I've been without a vehicle because of mechanical issues, so I personally know the importance of having access to overnight transit service.
The benefits of commuter rail for the region are questionable at best. I like the idea to help steer future growth, but the commuting patterns in the Atlanta area are not very consistent. The percent of suburb to downtown/midtown commuting is very low. I live just outside the perimeter near I-75 in Cobb County. I work in Alpharetta. Of the 30 or so families in my community, I know of 2 that work downtown/midtown and the rest work in the northern suburbs. There is so much suburb to suburb commuting, that the benefits of commuter rail would be minimal. Sure that might change 50 years from now, but to invest billions in building out a commuter rail system for tomorrow while ignoring the region's current needs is a tough sell. Forgoing "need to haves" for "nice to haves" is not good business.
Right, no one commutes to Atlanta any more so the highways in and out are all vacant in the morning and evening
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If you can throw a commuter rail train on current tracks and just throw up a few stations in the suburbs, I think it might be cost effective, but the 10+ route maps people on here are drooling over are so far from being viable that it is comical.
That's what most people are seriously proposing. At least I hope no one is taking Born 2 Roll's wild plans seriously as the "next step" for Atlanta transit. The maps that I have (haven't posted the detailed lines yet) are nothing more than minimal station and parking facilities either in key neighborhoods, or at key thoroughfares. Basically just two strips of concrete with two or three bus shelters for those rainy days is sufficient plus a parking deck where possible. The only exceptions are certain terminal stations where I've added pullout tracks so trains can sit at the platforms off the main line, and two stations which have direct highway access like the current Indian Creek station I've shown the ramp infrastructure needed.
But there is no getting around extra capacity on most lines. Most of the lines out of Atlanta have one or more single tracks sections before a good terminating city and I can pretty much guarantee the freight railroads won't go for anything less than double-tracking where possible with triple-tracking not out of the requirements possibly in some areas.
Right, no one commutes to Atlanta any more so the highways in and out are all vacant in the morning and evening
C'mon sport, read what I posted. Here, I'll post it again and I'll even bold the important parts for you. If you need it explained, feel free to private message me.
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The benefits of commuter rail for the region are questionable at best. I like the idea to help steer future growth, but the commuting patterns in the Atlanta area are not very consistent. The percent of suburb to downtown/midtown commuting is very low. I live just outside the perimeter near I-75 in Cobb County. I work in Alpharetta. Of the 30 or so families in my community, I know of 2 that work downtown/midtown and the rest work in the northern suburbs. There is so much suburb to suburb commuting, that the benefits of commuter rail would be minimal. Sure that might change 50 years from now, but to invest billions in building out a commuter rail system for tomorrow while ignoring the region's current needs is a tough sell. Forgoing "need to haves" for "nice to haves" is not good business.
Run a cost benefit of how much a commuter rail line would really help improve transportation in the region. Essentially, a commuter rail line could potentially be very expensive and only service a small portion of the region. Add on top of that that the commuting patterns are not consistent, the pool of those who live close enough to a commuter rail line for it to be feasible is sliced into a very small slice. Spending hundreds of millions per line for something that would be used by a relatively small number, when there are bigger regional projects that could immediately benefit hundreds of thousands, would not be popular (hence no political support from Dims or Pubs). Again, it is a 'nice to have' but we have many more regional 'need to haves.'
Please leave Cobb county and North Fulton just once for each rush hour and look at the traffic snarls entering and leaving Atlanta every day. Until you do, you aren't qualified to comment on what is necessary, and what isn't. Even then, until you're stuck in that mess day after day, you still aren't really qualified, but at least you'll have empirical data rather than just tired rhetoric that hasn't been true in years.
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