Comments on: Salt Lake City!?!

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:00:22 +0000

Building more roads that serve as connecting streets wouldn’t be a bad idea. Simply increasing capacity (or, supply, as you call it) would just be a temporary solution. Considering how much money it costs to widen a highway, temporary solutions would not be rational.

By: Smoove D

Smoove D — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 05:35:55 +0000

Apologies for being late in responding, but what we have been doing is nothing. Continuing to do nothing will result in increasing duration of congestion. Building more roads would be the exact opposite of what we are doing and would work, as evidenced by Houston. The last major project in Atlanta was the 18 laning of the downtown connector. More people, plus more cars, equals more demand for roads. Rational people would build more roads. While it is true that we can’t build our way out of congestion, we can mitigate congestion by addressing the supply side.

By: MRJ

MRJ — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:21:25 +0000

It probably works in Salt Lake City because the population is mostly white. Atlanta can throw all the money it wants at its problems, but unless racial demographics change…its still going to be a turd.

By: Amber

Amber — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:03:50 +0000

Smoove D - using words like “arterials” doesn’t automatically make you smart.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:08:46 +0000

That would be a great way to completely destroy the intown neighborhoods, Smoove. Building more arterials will solve nothing. MARTA’s problems would be fixable if the state and local governments would be willing to look at MARTA as an investment rather than as a pariah.

But, you could just have it your way. Not that it would make a whole lot of sense to keep doing what we’ve been doing and expect a different result.

By: Smoove D

Smoove D — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 04:39:01 +0000

I rode MARTA for six months while I saved up money to fix my bootleg car. After six months I concluded that MARTA blows goats and I traded my bootleg car for a reliable model. Throwing more money at MARTA won’t make it suck less. What we really need is more freeways. Not more lanes on existing freeways, but more freeways. We could also use more connectivity between major arterials, more major arterials, and grade seperations at key intersections along existing arterials (i.e. Peachtree and Piedmont). However, the NIMBY ass clown homeowners that inhabit the neighborhoods will never let something this sensible happen.

By: Amber

Amber — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:35:46 +0000

That is a great letter. Very short and too the point. And hopefully effective.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:24:48 +0000

But just a consideration - what is occuring now in Salt Lake City, Denver, Charlotte, & Houston are similar to what Atlanta, San Francisco & Washington did in the 1970’s - they built modern transit systems in the car-era. So it’s difficult to suggest that those cities are doing something Atlanta hasn’t - the only problem is those cities are building their systems BETTER.

It is going to take a huge backbone for us to accept that MARTA didn’t do what we wanted - which is to build a quality inner-city transit system. I think MARTA is still a good system, but it certainly isn’t very flexibible.

A better comparison would be San Francisco & Washington, they built their subway system at the same time, but most importantly they did not abandon it & they have or ar planning on supplementing it with light rail. They not only value you it as a commuting link to the suburbs but also in the inner-city.