Keith Parker: MARTA’s rail system ideally would be double its size (Atlanta: how much, transfer to)

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by demonta4

Question: If Cobb and Gwinnett tried to create a rail system would you ride it?

If it took me from home to work, or wherever else I needed to go, sure.

[erick295]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Atlanta used to have dozens of private streetcar lines that cost a nickle (~$1.50 today) to ride. User funding is not right for everything.

If the best example of privately funded rail transit you can come up with is a fragmented system that folded more than half a century ago and left Atlanta with the very mess that MARTA is trying to solve, I think I made my point.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by MattCW

But they don't have to pay for it, yet they choose to. If they don't like it, then they don't have to shop in Fulton/Dekalb counties.

That's true. They may be getting hosed but I don't have much pity for them.

[noah]

These kind of threads don't make me happy - its either the ardent "rail is the only way crowd" or the ardent "rail should never exist" crowd. I fall in between. I am a big advocate for transit for a large city but HATE how the transit crowd turns the argument into a WE Hate cars and cars shouldn't exist. The reality is most of us will use transit when it makes sense but we will still have a car as well and we aren't angry at anyone who chooses to live in the suburbs and be car dependent.

Now, many cities that don't even have a subway system do have much better bus service including in the suburban areas, as these suburban areas become more dense this would solve helping the working poor issue.

[demonta4]

Originally Posted by erick295

If the best example of privately funded rail transit you can come up with is a fragmented system that folded more than half a century ago and left Atlanta with the very mess that MARTA is trying to solve, I think I made my point.

Actually it folded because of the automotive industry.

[erick295]

Originally Posted by demonta4

Actually it folded because of the automotive industry.

Exactly. When stakeholders stop profiting from a private enterprise, that enterprise disappears. Not exactly the kind of foundation you want to build a city on.

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by bu2

They probably could have built the east line to Stonecrest if they hadn't spent so much money on studies they never did anything about.

Clifton Corridor needs to be MARTA, not a toy light rail train running on heavily traveled streets. That and Roswell should be the top priorities, but those are both pretty expensive. We really shouldn't go out to north Alpharetta. There isn't the density. You have to go through miles of nothing (now you have to go through miles of flood plain to get to Roswell-but it gets more populated after).

disagree. alpharetta is a job center, with many commuting directly to north alpharetta (windward, old milton, etc.) and the north point area from places all over the metro. i used to do deliveries in the alpharetta area. you would not believe how many jobs are really located here. we've got the regional corporate HQ for verizon AND at&t for goodness sakes.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

disagree. alpharetta is a job center, with many commuting directly to north alpharetta (windward, old milton, etc.) and the north point area from places all over the metro. i used to do deliveries in the alpharetta area. you would not believe how many jobs are really located here. we've got the regional corporate HQ for verizon AND at&t for goodness sakes.

This is an excellent point.

Alpharetta is a up-and-coming major jobs center that generates a lot of 'reverse-flow' commuter traffic on GA 400 during morning and evening rush hours.

Which, along with the extremely-heavy amount of commuter traffic that flows down GA 400 towards the I-285 Perimeter and Atlanta, and the inability to further expand GA 400 to accommodate growing traffic volumes, is a major reason why business interests in North Fulton County so desperately want an extension of the MARTA Red/North heavy rail line up GA 400 to the Windward Parkway area.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by demonta4

Question: If Cobb and Gwinnett tried to create a rail system would you ride it?

This is a good question as I'm sure that many people who currently have no other option but to traverse the often severely-congested Top End I-285 Perimeter between I-75 NW in Cobb and I-85 NE in Gwinnett during daylight hours, particularly if the rail system took them between home and work and many other places they needed to go, as toll_booth responded.

This is also a good question because business and political interests in traditionally transit-averse but increasingly severely-congested Cobb and Gwinnett counties have been talking of quietly supporting a potential move by the North Fulton County legislative delegation to push the state to takeover MARTA and sell it off to private investors as a means of getting rail transit lines extended into North Fulton, Cobb and Gwinnett counties without having to ask tax increase-averse and government expansion-averse suburban voters for a sales tax increase.

MARTA CEO Keith Parker has actually asked those increasingly-impatient Northside business and political interests under the Gold Dome to give him time to turn the system around and make it financially healthy enough to be expanded outside of its current geographical footprint without a state takeover and sell-off of the system to private investors.

[erick295]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

This is also a good question because business and political interests in traditionally transit-averse but increasingly severely-congested Cobb and Gwinnett counties have been talking of quietly supporting a potential move by the North Fulton County legislative delegation to push the state to takeover MARTA and sell it off to private investors as a means of getting rail transit lines extended into North Fulton, Cobb and Gwinnett counties without having to ask tax increase-averse and government expansion-averse suburban voters for a sales tax increase.

Holy s**t dude, you write some of the longest and most confusing sentences I've ever seen.

Sorry, but someone had to say it. Carry on...