Story in Progressive Railroading this morning says FEIS/ROD (the final environmental-impact statement and ‘record of decision’ have been issued by the FRA for the ‘chosen’ corridor. At this point the story does not have live links to the actual documents, although they provide at least one graphic.
I do not know if this is even an approximation to what some here consider true HSR; the corridor is not very long in route-miles and traverses some fairly heroic territory. But an 88-minute travel time between Atlanta and Chattanooga is nothing to sneeze at.
Oltmannd has pointed us in the right direction. The problem is IMHO the traffic on I-75. An observation of license plates between Chattanooga <> Cartersville shows most are states north of Tennessee. South of Cartersville very heavy local Georgia traffic.
What Tennessee license plates that are observed most are not Hamilton county ( Chattanooga ). So cannot see the ability of a HSR route CHA <> ATL being viable. The CHA - ATL route is not covering the high traffic potential of mid-west above the Ohio river. Now if there was some kind of connecting service north of CHA that would be a different subject to explore.
On the other hand the I-85 corridor has a good mix of Georgia, SC, NC , & VA cars. All which can be served by a HrSR ATL - CLT to tie in with the planned HrSR CLT - Raleigh - WASH.
The better and more convient the transportation option the more people will use it.
I-75 between Cartersville and Atlanta has grown into a continuing parking lot, thus restricting development North of Cartersville. Build better transportation options and development will fill in between Cartersville and Chattanooga.
The real question is, where do local govenments want to develop?
Would be interesting … nice if TN is looking at extending it to Nashville. Could also eliminate problematic regional airline service from CHA-ATL seeing that there is a station near ATL.
GADOT’s answer is reversable HOT lanes, nearing completion. …for better or worse. They also recently finished reversable HOT lanes on I-75 south of Atlanta, too. <
blue streak 1
Oltmannd has pointed us in the right direction. The problem is IMHO the traffic on I-75. An observation of license plates between Chattanooga <> Cartersville shows most are states north of Tennessee. South of Cartersville very heavy local Georgia traffic.
What Tennessee license plates that are observed most are not Hamilton county ( Chattanooga ). So cannot see the ability of a HSR route CHA <> ATL being viable. The CHA - ATL route is not covering the high traffic potential of mid-west above the Ohio river. Now if there was some kind of connecting service north of CHA that would be a different subject to explore.
On the other hand the I-85 corridor has a good mix of Georgia, SC, NC , & VA cars. All which can be served by a HrSR ATL - CLT to tie in with the planned HrSR CLT - Raleigh - WASH.
‘Field of Dreams’ - ‘Build it and the will come!’
The better and more convient the transportation option the more people will use it.
I-75 between Cartersville and Atlanta has grown into a continuing parking lot, thus restricting development North of Cartersville. Build better transportation options and development will fill in between Cartersville and Chattanooga.
The real question is, where do local govenments want to develop?
GADOT’s answer is reversable HOT lanes, nearing completion. …for better or worse. They also recently finished reversable HOT
The same can be said about I-985 from Gainesville that mergers into I-85 from Clemson - Toccoa - ATL. 240,000 cars on I-85 inside of the ATL perimeter ( 6 lanes ) exceeds I-75 greatly ( 3 lanes ). The I-75 traffic is more spread out between Marietta, Roswell, & I-285 west.
Of course this assumes GADOT pays much attention to this stuff.
Studying HSR to Chattanooga is politically motivated. The whole study got started only because of an outfit outside of Atlanta that is monkeying around with mag-lev. The original study was for a mag-lev line. This current study is just more of the typical Georgia Legislature/DOT/consultant mutual back-scratching game. They throw money around for these studies, never planning on actually funding any construction.