ATLANTA TRANSIT (Marta, Beltline, Peachtree Streetcar, LovJoy Commuter, etc...)

[MarketsWork]

Originally Posted by Andrea

I've always lived inside the city limits of Atlanta, and there isn't one single place within the city for which I need a freeway. I'd certainly like to see better intersections, more connectivity, better designed surface streets, and more options for non-automobile transportation. But I don't need freeways slicing up my city.

Atlanta has boomed in spite of the freeways, not because of them. There's a place for these mega limited access roads, but it's not in the middle of our established urban areas.

Andrea, I'm happy for you that you live in the city and have no need for freeways. But the fact is that 90% of Atlantan live outside the city limits and do need freeways. Freeways facilitate commerce and pleasure pursuits all over the region, and fuel the growth that we all enjoy. Like the rivers that built older cities, the Downtown Connector moves people and commerce to, from and through Atlanta.

Perhaps your perspective is limited by your more localized life, and that's OK. But I would think the demonstrated choices of 90% of the population better indicate that Atlanta has grown because of -- not in spite of -- Atlanta's freeway system. Atlanta is not and never will be New York or Boston, and it is doing just fine as the city it is.

[smArTaLlone]

But its not some free market vacuum.
With the way zoning discourages density and encourages sprawl around here, even there the govt has a role to play in where people choose to live (and in a few years choose to live even a little farther away from the city in an attempt to escape congestion).

It may be the fact that most people would choose a home with a yard but the way this area has invested its tax dollars has a big impact on those decisions.

[CityFan]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Atlanta has grown because of -- not in spite of -- Atlanta's freeway system. Atlanta is not and never will be New York or Boston, and it is doing just fine as the city it is.

I totally agree with you. Not only Atlanta but also the nation and the world have grown because of freeway system. Freeways provide convenience for transportation and automobiles demand more freeways. I am not against mass transportation system, but Atlanta doesn't have its prerequites such as density and fundings, etc. to support a more advanced system. I believe if Atlanta keeps its growing pace for another 10 - 15 years we will see a change brought to the table.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Yes, and DC had a virtual carte blanche with federal funding to build its extensive Metro. As the nation's capital and a federal district, DC is a unique case, and its gravy train cannot be repeated to anywhere near the same degree in any other young city.

It's a matter of setting priorities and goals. No, things won't change overnight, even if we exert maximum effort. But if we don't establish different priorities, then it's an absolute guarantee that things will never change.

Do we want to simply "stay the course" that has led us down the path of becoming a global poster child for sprawl, lengthy single-occupant commutes, and ever increasing freeway delays? Do we want to stay the course that has led to significant deterioration in the quality of the air that we and our families breathe? The course that has made us almost totally auto dependent in a world that is clearly running out of fossil fuels? The course that separates our urban communities with impermeable, gargantuan concrete gulches?

Instead, wouldn’t we do better to learn from the mistakes of the past? To focus on repairing the damage we've done, and avoiding it in the future? To look for nuanced solutions that are appropriate to the specific circumstances in different parts of the city?

[RobMidtowner]

Interstates were designed to connect cities so that military personnel could transport military supplies and troop deployments. Now they are mainly used by citizens as they please. Whether or not they were placed in the best locations, the fact is we are inheriting a system and using it for something different than it was designed for. And relocating or removing it at this point would be more costly and have just as many opponents than the current location has. The city population has just as much a right over deciding to allow an interstate going through as the state of Georgia has over allowing an interstate connecting Alabama and South Carolina.

P.S. Andrea, I'm Rob, not Atlmidtowner.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Andrea, I'm happy for you that you live in the city and have no need for freeways. But the fact is that 90% of Atlantan live outside the city limits and do need freeways.

MarketsWork, I think you are missing my point, too, and again I apologize for not making myself clear.

I don't object to suburbanites having freeways in their neighborhoods if that's how they desire to get around. I object to them putting their freeways in MY neighborhood, when it does not need them and when it tears my neighborhood apart.

I've never suggested that Atlanta attempt to emulate New York or Boston, as that would be utterly unrealistic. But that's not the only option. Acknowledging that we are different from those cities doesn't mean that we have to accept enormous, impenetrable concrete canyons in the very heart of our urban island. As I've said, I think there's a place for commuter freeways, but it's simply not in the heart of mature, urban areas.

By the way, I didn't just luck out in having a life that doesn't require freeway commuting. I made conscious choices about where I would live, work and raise my children. For the 90% of metro Atlantans who choose to live a freeway-based lifestyle, well, as you say, that's their choice. But how come they get to build freeways to serve their desires in my neighborhood, when I've made explicit -- and often expensive -- choices to avoid that very thing?

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by RobMidtowner

Interstates were designed to connect cities so that military personnel could transport military supplies and troop deployments. Now they are mainly used by citizens as they please. Whether or not they were placed in the best locations, the fact is we are inheriting a system and using it for something different than it was designed for. And relocating or removing it at this point would be more costly and have just as many opponents than the current location has.

Rob, sorry for the misattribution.

Yes, the interstates are antiques from another era. I can't imagine that anyone setting out today to plan a city (or a road system) would conclude that it was a smart move to run enormous, impenetrable concrete gulches through the middle of it and arrange them so that they'd be clogged twice a day by hundreds of thousands of single-occupant automobiles on the way to and from various suburban destinations.

I'm not so naive as to suggest that this is what the original planners of Atlanta's interstates had in mind either. If you've ever read the original Bartholomew plan it's evident that he never envisioned what would happen.

But the fact that it turned out to be a huge destructive mess doesn't mean we have to placidly accept this as a fact of life. Nor does it mean we should continue to arrange our priorities to perpetuate the situation. These roads were built, which means they can certainly be unbuilt, and reconfigured in far more sensible and meaningful ways. That will require a public will, just as it took public sentiment to get them built 50 years ago.

It's like I said up above -- we can stubbornly "stay the course", or we can learn from our mistakes and strive to find better solutions.

[john3eblover]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

Very well stated, Andrea. DC is a fairly good example of this. They pretty much kept the freeways from within the core, especially the District itself.

driving in DC is a complete nightmare. their road system is not nearly as good as Atlanta's. The roads are too small, so they are always congested. The main highways have awkward curves and hills in them that keep traffic always slow no matter how congested it is, but its always congested anyway.

I-495 is much like I-285, but the rest of the highways are more frustrating and in much worse condition.

The metro helps somewhat, but its only slightly more expansive than Marta, so its only helpful if you live near it, or actually in the city of DC.

Overall, having lived here for a few months, my opinion is that commuting and getting around in Atlanta is easier than it is in DC.

[john3eblover]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Andrea, I'm happy for you that you live in the city and have no need for freeways. But the fact is that 90% of Atlantan live outside the city limits and do need freeways. Freeways facilitate commerce and pleasure pursuits all over the region, and fuel the growth that we all enjoy. Like the rivers that built older cities, the Downtown Connector moves people and commerce to, from and through Atlanta.

Perhaps your perspective is limited by your more localized life, and that's OK. But I would think the demonstrated choices of 90% of the population better indicate that Atlanta has grown because of -- not in spite of -- Atlanta's freeway system. Atlanta is not and never will be New York or Boston, and it is doing just fine as the city it is.

i completely agree with you. 100%

[cabasse]

john, i think many would disagree with you about the expansiveness of dc's metro versus marta, especially when comparing ridership. iirc, it's something like 3+ the amount. that's not mentioning their commuter system...

[AtlMidtowner]

Atlanta is a big city, not a little village; therefore we need a good transportation and highway system. As the density is so low, public transportation is not a real and viable system that Atlanta has the option anytime in our lifetimes. Of course it is desirable to improve the public transportation system as much as possible, but it will NEVER solve the commuting problems in Atlanta. We need a good highway system in Atlanta, and that good infrastructure of highways is what has made Atlanta been a boomcity for the past 20 to 30 years.
Many thousands, and even hundreds of thousands may be able to be lucky enough to live near a marta station and work near another, but the overwhelming majority dont. And most dont live near even such basics as grocery stores. Today, after posting here this morning, I had to purchase fabrics in Kennesaw, then go to Sandy Springs,then Dunwoody and then to Lindbergh area and then back home in Midtown. It would be totally impossible to do with public transportion, and even if I used the Marta to Dunwoody, the walking from the Station to my several destinations alone would have literally been hours. If I had to use the absurd surface streets, then my trip today also would have been impossible to accomplish in one day. Thanks to Atlanta's excellent highway system, I actually spent little time in my vehicle. I remember a few years ago when I lived in Vinings (where I was the token white Democrat), I had to transport some bulky items from Vinings to Lilburn, and was afraid of driving to fast, so I took surface streets. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes to get from Vininings to Liburn!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It normally took me 23 minutes on the freeways. To think that surface streets work in big cities is just plain naive.

Andrea, please go to Bangkok if you want to see a city with surface streets and not enough highways. In fact, go to most developing countries and you will see the real gridlock where you can almost walk faster than you can drive.
Even in European cities, you can get fairly close to the downtown areas, and once you get to the downtown areas, you can use a good public transportation system that is viable because of the population density.
You may be lucky enough and desire to live a very provincial life in the middle of a big city and just want to live work and play in one "neighborhood", but most people in the city neither want a provincial lifestyle, nor is it possible.

Under no circumstance do I believe that people from the northern suburbs drive through downtown Atlanta to drive to suburbs south of the airport, or even to Hapeville or College Park, EAst Point or even further south to the suburbs in any significant numbers. You are just totall offbase in criticizing the downtown connector. I think you are just upset a few neighborhoods were effected by development.

If you want another big round of economic boom in Atlanta, then the northern arc should have been built. The construction costs as well as the new easily accessible land for development would have been a boom for Atlanta. The multiplier effect would have brought even more people to Atlanta. On a smaller scale, just building a ramp in downtown is causing a miniboom around 17th street.

Of course development of any kind will hurt some people, but for the majority, most development is beneficial.

(By the way, my property manager grew up in the 60s and 70s in Virginia Highlands, so dont say it was lower middle class and much was low income rental houses by the late 60s and mid 70s. He moved away because he no longer liked the neighborhood. And like I said before, 10th Street area was scary as late as the early 1990's, even I can still remember that!!)

[Andrea]

You freeway lovers slay me. I guess if I decide to take a job in Alpharetta and give myself a little elbow room, y'all won't mind a bit if we run about 8 lanes of limited access concrete through your neighborhood. (And use your tax money to pay for it, of course).

You know, the rivers of commerce and all. Just a little something to make it easier for us to get around.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by AtlMidtowner

Many thousands, and even hundreds of thousands may be able to be lucky enough to live near a marta station and work near another, but the overwhelming majority dont.

Trust me, it's not luck. It's what they call conscious choice.

AtlMidtowner, you're still talking about something different from what I'm saying. My apologies for my inability to make myself clear.

[RobMidtowner]

If the majority of people using the downtown connector are merely driving through the city to other suburbs, then maybe there is some merit to having the tunnel bypasses as suggested by the Reason's Foundation study recently. Although tunnels wouldn't be the best way to do it IMO, I think more interstate bypasses (i.e. an interstate in the shape of the beltline) could definitely help reduce congestion, although I don't know how feasible that is considering how much the city is built out already. Combining all interstates into one is not exactly the best idea because it produces a bottleneck. If anything at all, I'm still a fan of building over the connector by connecting bridges with parks etc. and reconnecting the east and west sides of the city.

[fisp]

Originally Posted by AtlMidtowner

If you want another big round of economic boom in Atlanta, then the northern arc should have been built. The construction costs as well as the new easily accessible land for development would have been a boom for Atlanta. The multiplier effect would have brought even more people to Atlanta. On a smaller scale, just building a ramp in downtown is causing a miniboom around 17th street.

that wasn't a "ramp"... it was a bridge. in other words, reconnecting the city that was disconnected by a huge highway cutting right through it. i agree with andrea here. you can have your highways, but keep them out of the middle of the city. your example exactly backs that up... just by restoring the link across the connector at 17th street, you can see development booming around that area in midtown

[joey]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Yes, and DC had a virtual carte blanche with federal funding to build its extensive Metro. As the nation's capital and a federal district, DC is a unique case, and its gravy train cannot be repeated to anywhere near the same degree in any other young city.

Well, that's not exactly true, on both accounts. First, the District was supposed to have an extensive freeway network (I-95, I-270, and I-66 were all supposed to come together in downtown along with an inner ring freeway that would have wiped out areas including, I think, those just south of Adams Morgan). Citizen outcry blocked these, and the federal funds that were earmarked for the freeways instead went to build the Metro. It was provided as an either-or type of thing. Even today, though, DC wants to tear down one of the few expressway stubs that actually were built, the Whitehurst Freeway, and I doubt it would be able to rely much on federal funds, as Congress doesn't like to fund tear-downs.

Also, on the other point, Washington's not a unique case: I-95 was supposed to go straight through Boston, I-70 straight through Baltimore, and I-495 clear across 33rd Street in Manhattan, and all were blocked for similar reasons.

These days, Metro is also heavily supported by the District, Maryland, and Virginia (yes, and the federal government as well), unlike MARTA with Georgia, but Metro also has no dedicated funding on the order of MARTA.

Edit: And, to whoever was complaining about driving on expressways in Washington, what are you talking about? There are only three freeways in the District (the Whitehurst Freeway -- about a mile, a stub from I-395 -- maybe 2 miles, and DC/I-295), they're all very short, and none of the them are habitually backed up.

Also, unlike Atlanta where less than 10% of the region works downtown, in DC, 50% of the region works downtown. They've gotten by with virtually no freeways through their downtown (they stop at the edges or beyond and turn into arterials), and, arguably, they should have far greater demand than Atlanta. The city of Atlanta itself would have been much better served had the Connector never been built, and the instead the Perimeter beefed up so that it could handle the through traffic. Today, city residents are being held hostage for the benefit of suburbanites.

[ThrashATL]

Originally Posted by Andrea

You freeway lovers slay me. I guess if I decide to take a job in Alpharetta and give myself a little elbow room, y'all won't mind a bit if we run about 8 lanes of limited access concrete through your neighborhood. (And use your tax money to pay for it, of course).

You know, the rivers of commerce and all. Just a little something to make it easier for us to get around.

I'm ALL for it! 400 is WAAAAAAAAAAAY too narrow right now.

[joey]

Oh, and to clear up some of the differences (I think?) between Andrea and the others, there's no doubt that the freeway system in the Atlanta region has at least shaped growth in the area. Whether it's encouraged growth or not, I'm not confident either way. Without any sort of expressway network, growth certainly would have taken a different form (probably greater density and connectivity closer in).

But while Andrea is talking about benefits to Atlanta and those who live in it, the others are talking about the benefits to everyone in the region except those who live in Atlanta (and perhaps to the detriment of those intown). I feel like the Andrea's opponents are arguing that it's the responsibility of Atlanta residents/taxpayers (who, honestly, suffer very few traffic woes, because the in-town arterial network is generally adequate) to make it cost-effective for people to live on isolated quarter-acre cul-de-sac lots in Lilburn rather than having them live in smaller homes/lots on interconnected streets closer to mass transit.

I now live in Virginia, but when people here ask me about Atlanta traffic, I say that it's a fallacy. There's almost no bad traffic in Atlanta for Atlantans (with a few exceptions such as Lenox Road east of Peachtree, Spring Street south of 4th at about 5pm, and Sydney Marcus around that same time). Quite simply, people who complain about Atlanta traffic don't live in Atlanta. They live somewhere else and commute in or, very often around, and they complain that the residents/taxpayers of Atlanta haven't made things easy enough for them to live in their inefficient and resource-consuming ways.

[SteveD]

Originally Posted by fisp

your example exactly backs that up... just by restoring the link across the connector at 17th street, you can see development booming around that area in midtown

I'm sorry, but I must take exception to that. The development boom occurring around the 17th street bridge is most certainly not because a "link" was "restored", it's because the area now has modern, high-speed limited access (i.e., interstate) accessibility, which wasn't present before.

[cabasse]

Originally Posted by atlmidtowner

To think that surface streets work in big cities is just plain naive.

Andrea, please go to Bangkok if you want to see a city with surface streets and not enough highways.

surface streets don't work in atlanta because they meander, and are badly designed. they do work in other major cities, however. look at detroit for example; a grid of mile roads running everywhere out of downtown, plus a spoke system - jefferson, gratiot, woodward, michigan, etc... this city would continue to function just as well without freeways destroying the core, or even as far out as the inner ring burbs. no jokes please. (you guys think you have it bad with the connector, again, detroit - it's core is surrounded and divided by a multitude of freeways) or how about chicago - no freeway runs downtown, but do you think that's a problem for the city economically? (and nobody denies the fact chicago (or detroit for that matter) is as bad a sprawl monster as atlanta or worse) honstly, i'd pit detroit's road system, sans freeways against atlanta's entire road system and call it for detroit...

steve that makes no sense, considering that there are other freeway ramps within blocks of 17th? i agree with fisp, it's because it's a new connection across the river.