In a post about a spur being kept on the Seminole Gulf RR, someone mentioned stupid politicians. What a wonderful idea for a post. What idiotic things have the movers and shakers in your community done?
Here in Atlanta, Ga, the Atlanta Regional Commission just passed the 25-year transportation plan which included almost nothing but concrete and asphalt. What public transportation was included seems to be buses. Even while the Georgia DOT is planning a, I think, 29-mile commuter rail line going from south of Atlanta and hooking up with MARTA on the south side, the M&Ss could not even come up with money to extend our 30-year old rail system because the two counties which voted to finance it are tired of pulling the entire load and have voted to half their present axation rate of one percent.
So Atlanta can look forward to years and years of traffic jams because of this short sightedness. People take the trains here and they are packed during drive times. But politicians can only seem to listen to complaints from loudmouths rather than realize that most people have been satisfied by MARTA’s performance. I must admit that I believe service is falling because of deferred maintenance which the system cannot afford.
Jock Ellis
good heavens, Jock. Do you want to overwhelm this forum with messages? I wouldn’t even know where to begin listing idiotic political moves that affect transportation and railroads…
Did you see the plan for 26 miles of HOV lanes on I-75 that includes “bus rapid transit”? The price tag on that is $1B+ and it will take nearly a decade of very disruptive construction to complete. For $360M you can get the Atlanta to Athens commuter rail line in two years time that will produce the equivalent of $750M of highway construction. The whole network of commuter rail in ATL would only cost $2B and only take a few years to build out.
“Bus rapid transit” for the unitiated is the current darling of rubber tire/concrete crowd. At its best, its a bus pulling bus trailer(s) on a dedicated ROW with high level platforms. But, in this configuration, is costs as much as light rail but is noisier and less comfortable. At it’s worst, it’s just a bus in an HOV lane.
There is an attitude in Georgia that somehow Atlanta is different from other large American cities. I don’t know if it’s left over stubborn rebel pride or what, but while smaller cities such as Denver and Dallas are making strides in the right direction, Atlanta fiddles while traffic congeals.
I agree that MARTA rail is actually pretty decent - although MARTA administration is a bit of a mess…
Well,Let me explain one of those"STUPID THINGS BY A POLITICIAN".About 1 month ago the Mayor of Glendale,California came back with a 14 million dollar grant for the
Transportation here in Glendale.Guess what he wants to do.No not that,No that either.
He wants to put the so-called street cars back here .between Glendale and Burbank.
He doesn’t want anything to do with putting an Amtrak ticket agency back at the million
dollar refurbished station.A lot of customers and no where to find information or ticket s
except when the train arrives and ask the Conductor. I really don’t think he started to be a “Stupid Politician” Davebr
Ahh, Atlanta, that festering sore on the face of Georgia. Too bad it’s not between the seacoast and a major fault line, so there would at least be hope that it would slide off the continent. They should rename the place “Road Contractor Heaven”. I avoid the place like the plague, but when I went there regularly years ago I believe every single trip involved crawling past road construction somewhere on the Interstate. There must be retired construction employees who spent their whole working lives working on road projects in the area.
Hey! It’s not THAT bad…and the rest of GA ain’t that great.
I can say, that inside the perimeter, where there are HOV lanes and parallel MARTA service, traffic is not bad. On the perimeter itself and outside on the radial spokes is where the real traffic troubles are, particularly on I-85 and I-75 north of the city. (and these roads are already 6 lanes in each direction!)
I was just there last month; I hadn’t realized Glendale was an unstaffed station (it does look nice). I rushed there after missing the Coast Strarlight departure time at LA. [I didn’t need to, the Starlate was 45 mins late]. At least I was able to reach Amtrak’s Julie and then an agent on the pay phone, but your point is well taken it is helpful to have an on-site staff person to assist travelers.
Maybe the local merchants were more interested in the street cars? More customers?
Out here in North Central Idaho, the state’s politicians allowed BN to abandon a key rail link between the wheat growing lands of the Palouse and the barge ports on the Snake River. The State of Idaho did a study and found out it would cost $2.5 million to fix the line for renewed use, and they decided that $2.5 million was just too expensive. Now five years later the State has spent over $5 million on that same right of way to turn portions of it into a paved rail trail, used mostly by the local coyotes but occasionally by a human being now and then. If they decide to pave the entire right of way, it will end up costing over $25 million, ten times the cost of rehabbing the line for renewed rail service back in 1998!
It is a very sad day when there is no vision in the city. I married an Atlanta girl (Va Highlands) and lived there prior to my job assignment here in the piedmont of NC. There has never been a city that had such opportunity to do the right thing in transportation only to loose sight of its uses and purposes in the name of political expediency as has Atlanta. There are many theories about this, but often even that gets lost in the isolation and proventialism of to many cooks in the kitchen
When I ws there the interstate through the center of the city was crawling with clogs of cars and other rubberized vehicles. Where are the trains; it’s very sad.
BTW there was a rail line that curved in Virginia Highland, is it still there?
Find her and have her strung up in the Russian gulag, this @#&$%^#(&**! country has too much !%^%()(! freedom! If she doesn’t appreciate the tax dollars find her and have her Romanized . . .
Several years ago, before the Alameda Corridor opened, a BNSF double-stack train derailed in a residential area in Torrance. At the time the mayor said “They’re running these train cars too close together” or something similar. [It was a single-train derailment, not a collision]. Sometimes in the politicians’ haste to say something they choose words poorly…
If you like Atlanta, you can have my share, gratis. I’ll take the rest of GA any day; true, it has its problems and shortcomings, just like Atlanta, but I can stomach those problems and shortcomings better than those of Atlanta.
For us here that live not to far from Charlotte, this will be no surprise, NC has what are called Urban Friendly laws for development purposes along with the idea that when money talks and can be made it is worth it to go forward for the betterment of the community as a whole. As I said earlier, Atlanta had great opportunity for transportation infrastructure expansion only to blow it with competing counties and cities that could not get their minds outside of their own fiefs, JOdom voices much of how the city of Atlanta is viewed the citizens of the peach state outside the Metro Atlanta area. Many that were a part of the late great city are moving to North Carolina cities like Charlotte,