urbanMSP

I also believe that all except the North Line travel through relatively low-income neighborhoods with little demand for redevelopment. Recently the neighborhoods north of downtown have seen a lot of reinvestment though.

If you look at the census data, you'll also notice that almost all of the neighborhoods MARTA passes through except the north are overwhelmingly black. Racism is a big factor in Atlanta's present urban form.

But proponents of expensive rail connections to low-demand places always talk about the redevelopment potential heavy rail or LRT brings. In Atlanta, the north Periphery area seems to be growing, mostly away from Marta. And little growth on the south/west/east lines except for right around ATL. Seems to blow a hole in the transit planning methodology of "build it and they'll come" after 3 decades. If it was truly "build it and they'll come" then you'd have the other counties lagging behind Fulton and DeKalb, itching to join the taxing district.

MARTA actually goes through most of the inner-city Atlanta neighborhoods you'd want it to go through. MARTA's failure isn't that it was built as a redevelopment system instead of a transit system, it's that there were vast structural and cultural impediments to its success.

According to Wikipedia marta rail ridership is 227,000 daily.

i had read somewhere marta came about because seattle rejected mass transit funds like 40 years ago. that money was then funneled to atlanta.

i was actually pleasantly surprised by atlanta the couple of times i visited. it has it's suburban/core issues like we do. cobb county reminds me in a way of our northern suburbs.

According to Wikipedia marta rail ridership is 227,000 daily.

Yep, you're right. Looked at the wrong column.

If you look at the census data, you'll also notice that almost all of the neighborhoods MARTA passes through except the north are overwhelmingly black. Racism is a big factor in Atlanta's present urban form.

You are correct in that MARTA's failures are due more to cultural problems. The Suburbs don't want the city population to have a way to get out to the suburbs. With the out lying counties opting out that also cause a big failure to get people out of their cars too and on to trains.

Atlanta's streetcar daily daily ridership falls below 1,000 despite a $1 fare.

http://m.atlanta.curbed.com/archives/20 ... l-fare.php

Mixed used streetcars are trash.

*mixed-traffic one-way one-mile loop streetcars with no connecting infrastructure are trash

There yah go

I'm waiting for a single successful modern street car in North America before I get behind one here.

I'm waiting for a single successful modern street car in North America before I get behind one here.

Define "successful." You can certainly criticize the ones in Seattle and Portland, but both have high riderships and have been successful in encouraging new construction.

"success" = improving the travel time (therefore amenity accessibility) & reliability, carrying capacity, waiting experience/time, and system legibility for transit riders - in that order - per dollar of capital and operating cost. Ride experience is a secondary measure of success. Development near lines is another secondary measure but is difficult to tie to a single piece of infrastructure as housing/commercial desirability is defined by tons of other factors.

I'm not saying Portland or Seattle's systems have been a failure. I don't think they're as successful as boosters say. Portland itself agrees.

By any of those metrics other than travel time, the Seattle/Portland streetcars have been successful. None of the other cities we could point to have built systems that are comparable to those in length or market area, though the Nicollet-Central starter line (if built) would certainly be a lot closer to those than, say, Atlanta's half-assed loop or Salt Lake's weird crosstown stub.

I don't know. Ultimately, the A Line and the C Line are going to tell us a lot about the true extent of this region's rail bias (as opposed to just a "good transit bias.") But I do think you're significantly understating the importance of ride experience, especially in a context like ours, where even our fairly robust public transit system carries only a small percentage of intra-city trips. If speed and reliability are really the keys to attracting ridership, we should really start seeing large ridership boosts when these rapid buses open.

A nice piece about the Atlanta Beltline. I actually read Ryan Gravels book about the founding of the project and his work on it. If anyone is looking for a new book, I would highly recommend it!

eveloped as a master’s thesis concept by Georgia Tech graduate student Ryan Gravel in 1999, the BeltLine unites 22 miles of largely abandoned and underutilized rail lines that encircle the city as a network of trails and recreation space interspersed with rail transit. The BeltLine connects more than 40 Atlanta neighborhoods and serves as a catalyst for a new era of more urban development in a city better known for its sprawl. When complete, the BeltLine will add more than 1,300 acres of park space to the city, add as many as 5,600 new units of affordable housing, and lead to as many as 30,000 permanent jobs for Atlanta residents. In all, Atlanta anticipates as much as $10-$20 billion in economic development from the BeltLine. When the Westside reservoir project is complete, the park surrounding it will become the largest park in the Atlanta park system.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petesaunder ... 1e3c706dd4

Here's an article on urban forest issues in Atlanta:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/atlantas- ... us-forests

Obviously "save the trees" is pretty useful for the NIMBY side. Is there an effective YIMBY counter argument?

Well in Minneapolis every new development has to pay a certain amount of $$$ to the parks. More development, more park money.

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/gro ... 118221.pdf

Honestly, saving some trees could benefit the developer. I personally wish Thrivent would save the trees around their proposed parking garage. Money to parks is nice, but you can't really beat the effect mature trees have.