Quote:
Originally Posted by BlindFatSnake
Clayton county residents will be voting to join MARTA - not commuter rail. The question is whether MARTA will extend heavy rail into Clayton county or light rail lines. The national trend seems to be light rail over heavy rail due to the considerable cost difference in building light rail vs. heavy rail.
Also, Clayton county residents were used to the MARTA brand since C-tran contracted MARTA to run and operate the bus system.
Personally, I think commuter rail is dead in Georgia since HSR is taking center stage in NC and FL. Our connections with those states would be via HSR not commuter rail. So, a commter line from Macon to Atlanta would compete directly with HSR along the same route (for federal funds) ...
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Well, re: heavy rail, there's a map on wikipedia showing potential extensions of the MARTA system into Clayton Co. but I doubt they've ever really been evaluated in detail. Concept3 doesn't have much in the way of heavy rail going into Clayton County. There is the Hapeville Line, but the Hapeville Station would likely still fall inside of Fulton Co. leaving only the Southern Crescent Station, which is in the middle of an industrial park. The Citizens for Progressive Transit map is a little better and has a station south of the Airport on Riverdale Road and one over by the Farmer's Market.
I'm skeptical that they'd do light rail because there wouldn't be any other LRT systems on the southside to connect to. It'd basically have to just stub into MARTA at either the Airport or College Park station. I guess it's possible though?
Re: HSR, it's never going to happen in Georgia until the tax laws change that enable GDOT to spend money on transit operations. HSR is going to require some sort of operating subsidy and because it's inter-city/inter-state in nature, that funding needs to come from the state/feds. Commuter rail is doable because you can actually ask the counties and municipalities that would benefit from the service to pitch in (whether they would or not is another matter).