From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Cost of transit systems vs highways
Date: 16 Aug 92 15:28:00 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <4687@bacon.IMSI.COM> jordan@IMSI.COM (Jordan Hayes) writes:
>Ted Koppel <tkoppel@cassandra.cair.du.edu> writes:
>
>	MARTA tried to expand into Gwinnett County (NE Atlanta) but was
>	voted down twice by the somewhat wealthier (and signifcantly
>	higher Caucasian percentage) population of Gwinnett County.
>
>This is a typical short-sighted response to transit -- "It will make it
>easy for (insert member of community most feared by community) to get
>to our homes" ... usually this means "racial minority" or "poor
>would-be theives" and at a macro level, this is even what has stopped
>the Chunnel from being what it could be.
>
>Don't build that tunnel, because it will make it easy for those
>{French,British} to invade!
>
>	MARTA will eventually move into Cobb, Gwinnett, and other
>	Atlanta counties, but it won't be easy.  It may take another
>	fuel crisis, or some other cathartic event .... but eventually
>	it will happen.
>
>Sounds to me like the "event" will be the deaths of all the scared
>people in Gwinnett County ...

Actually Gwinnett has rejected MARTA three times. The first was in
1969 when it failed by a small margin, the last was last year when
it failed by a 2:1 margin. In the meantime, Gwinnett has been transformed
from a small rural county to the fastest growing large county in the US.
It's population has tripled since 1969, mostly by transplanted snowbirds.

Undoubtedly racism played a part in this, Gwinnett is 6% black while
Atlanta is 80% black. But the overwhelming reason for the latest defeat 
is the proven failure of the MARTA system to meet it's goals, timetables, 
and cost projections. And the fact that MARTA only offered a radial
line extending from Doraville to Gwinnett Place, a north-south line,
while the bulk of traffic in Gwinnett is east-west. In 1969, 55 percent
of Gwinnett workers worked in downtown Atlanta. Today 80 percent of
Gwinnett residents work in Gwinnett. Voting for MARTA meant a perpetual
1% sales tax for a service that could be used by only a small percentage
of county residents. 

Cobb is in a somewhat similar situation. MARTA offered them a north-
south radial line to the city center when the bulk of Cobb's transport
needs are east-west. Cobb decided to start their own bus line to serve
their county's actual needs. They contracted a private firm to run
the system, and after nearly two years of operation it's operating
budget is in the black from fares alone. Gwinnett has a study committee
looking at a similar bus operation for it's cross county needs. We
are also studying, in concert with several other counties, a proposal
from a private firm to operate commuter trains on the existing Seaboard
and Southern tracks. This would give us two express rail corridors without
a tax increase. So far the railroads have been cautiously supportive
of the plan.

MARTA has been a boondoggle from the git go and many people have now
woken up that fact. It's board has always been almost completely lily
white as has it's management. Saying it's incompetent is not a racial
slur, just a fiscal fact. It's engineering firm is the same one that
built BART, but the radial design is lunacy in an area where there
are a large number of commercial centers scattered about in random
fashion. It's long construction period has not kept pace with changing
residential and work patterns.

Gary
Newsgroups: rec.railroad