[SouthernStatesTraction] Atlanta, Ga. - modern streetcar line: who is riding ??
"The Atlanta Streetcar is good for tourists. What about regular commuters?
I rode the streetcar to work for a week. Here’s what I learned.
January 20, 2015
Rebecca Burns
There’s little doubt that the Atlanta Streetcar, which finally started service a few weeks ago, will be a good thing for the city’s tourism business. Its 2.7-mile loop connects all those Centennial Olympic Park attractions—Coke! CNN! Civil Rights! Fish! Football! Ferris wheel!—with the King Historic District, which on its own merits draws more than a million visitors each year. The trolley gives tourists and conventioneers staying in the hotels clustered around Peachtree Center an easy way to get from the hotel
I hope it was just an unintentional accident, and you didn’t mean to imply that the streetcar draws more than 1 million visitors
I read it that she is referring to the King Street District. Why assume differently? Wrong comma placement?
Maybe it’s a problem my computer has reacting to the new and improved trains.com, but all the text in your original post except for the links is white on a white background. I only got to read it when I had clicked on the link http://tinyurl.com/pxfmsnl
I had the same problem when I returned to this posting. Apparently, the article from the Atlanta paper has too many bits for one posting on this thread. I think I repaired the problem by deleting all the photos and posting only the text. I hope this works for you. Apparently it workds for me.
41 min for 2 1/2 miles? so much for rapid transit. should have went with dedicated lanes. Is there signal priority?
tracktat888 I’m a bit too busy now to figure which trip you mean, but the author says the 1st trip TOTAL time is 41 minutes, the light rail ride is only 10 minutes. 10 minutes wait time, so must be 21 minutes walking.
They will need to get the APD out there to start ticketing drivers blocking the tracks.
Well I thought it said 40 min for 2 1/2 miles. Still it seems a awfuly expensive connector service. Let U know how Cincy goes.
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Seeing that U are from Florida how goes the TECO line? Seems that Florida is full of orphan lines the Grand Daddy of them is the Disney Monorail. You have the JAX people mover, the Commuter Train in Orlando that was a back way of paying off CSX by Jeb Bush in the billions and the Mugger Mover in Miami. Neither Tampa nor Cincy have any long range plans for a larger system. Why plan long range when a good portion of your population believes that the end of the world is near and that there Lord and Savoir will come down from Heaven a New Jeruselem complete with light rail and monorails after the rest of us sinners is purged from the earth both in and out of the Bible Belt. BTW Israel is doing quite well after years of murbund rail service in making a world class system.
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Is that conservtives in red states particaluy those in the bible belt are less likely to support transit as a social justice issue. This goes back to the Social Gospel of which Fundimentalist Christionality was founded in opposistion to. Social Gospel took hold in the Northeast and the Fundys established themselves inthe south and the west. However when tied to real estate delelopment and sold first to real estate bosses it is more of top down where in the blue states is its a grass roots bottom up approach. BTW today is Sunday. There are having a heck of time getting light rail in Richmond VA as opposed to Northern Virgina were rail is welcome
Transit to support tourism is a great idea. Tourist drop serious money into the local economy and pay a ton of tax - room taxes, rental car taxes, etc. I’d bet those taxes more than cover the cost of construction and operation (in fact, the city just diverted a couple hunderd million of those taxes to fund the new Falcon’s stadium. How is that fair?)
Why not start with a bus? Buses are more difficult to use and aren’t permanent enough to attact development.
One look at midtown ATL shows the value of the MARTA rail line that doesn’t show up in the farebox.
Is the streetcar line the perfect thing? Of course not. I think the route is flawed (not long enough - needed to loop around Centenial Olympic Park)
Are there more pressing transit needs in ATL? Of course. Connecting the city east and west of the connector and getting the Emory are connected are pressing needs.
Well, you mentioned a ferris wheel. I was last in Atlanta in 1981 and an Ice Storm hit the town. The hotel couldn’t keep my room warm. Today,when I went to Youtube to see a video of the Atlanta Streetcar, (see link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH2c8TOrVpk
the first thing I noted was the ferris wheel. When was this built?
Don’t know the date for the Ferris Wheel, but here is more user info:
ATLANTA, Georgia’s largest city, returned rail transit to city streets Dec. 20 for the first time since 1949, and an op-ed commentary on the “atlanta magazine dot com” site suggests one positive change would be to make headways more frequent on the 2.7-mile belt line loop through downtown:
Atlanta streetcar to continue offering free rides
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28690443/atlanta-streetcar-to-continue-offering-free-rides
ATLANTA (AP) - Atlanta city officials say streetcar passengers may ride for free through the end of 2015…
Looks like they still havent figured out how to charge for this …