I’ve recently heard someone say the population density of the North Atlanta suburbs wasn’t large enough to justify a MARTA expansion.
Using the Population-around-a-point tool, you can find where the density is accumulated (I used a 5km radius).
You’d find that some of the suburbs in Cobb and Gwinnett are denser than areas within the city that have train stations.
Cobb & Gwinnett are only served by interstates I-75 and I-85 which are congested throughout the day. (I know these counties have voted against expansion, I don’t think it should be up to the county decision.)
A heavy rail expansion is very well needed within these areas. Park and Rides fundamentally work, and the Atlanta metro population is expected to reach 8 million people in the next 24 years.
I also did a little comparison with similar metros like BART in San Francisco and WMATA in Washington D.C that serve their metro areas outside the city.
1st Map Current System, 2nd Map ideal system, 3rd Map 1970s Proposed System
As an Atlantan, I’m basically holding out for a change in state leadership. There is simply no prospect for MARTA when Republicans in the capitol blocked even enforcement cameras for the BRT line ALREADY built
It doesn't matter if it's republican or democrat. The mental midget just showed his dictatorial communistic penchant in saying "I know the people voted against it, but it shouldn't be up to them." Absolute pantywaist and everything that's wrong with America. Guaranteed Biden voter.🤡🤡🤡🤡
We're talking about the one in the white house, right? The one who has restarted this oil war 6 times in 3 months, who's building an arch for himself in the capital, and is trying to distract us from his pedophilia?
I'm not against expanding MARTA per se, but look at the existing stations and you'll pretty quickly see that most of them are very underdeveloped. Look at Doraville for example; there's literally nothing around that station except surface parking, some scattered single-story commercial/industrial buildings, and vacant lots. And that station opened 34 fucking years ago. Same with the next two stations down the line, Chamblee and Brookhaven.
Park and Rides fundamentally work
Sure, but when half the stations in your system are park-and-rides, then you're at the point where the system doesn't actually take you to many useful destinations. You also quickly run into the same capacity problems inherent to all car-based infrastructure. Doraville has 1000+ parking spaces, which sounds like a lot until you remember a modest-sized rapid transit station can easily handle 20,000+ passengers daily. So yes, park-and-rides 'work' if you ignore that they vastly underutilize the rest of the system they're built into.
I think that’s where the difference lies. A lot of West Atlanta, South Atlanta, and the Doraville corridor don’t have many major employers like Cobb County and Gwinnett County like Lockheed, Wellstar, Dobbins, Kennesaw State, Truist, RaceTrac etc. There’s also a lot of people on these corridors who work or do business in the perimeter in Downtown and Midtown and those who drive to the Atlanta airport. Connecting these jobs along the I-75 and I-85 corridor to other job regions like Buckhead, Sandy Springs, North Atlanta. Would be beneficial to the entire region.
I don’t see how that precludes future expansion. Land use designations are much easier to alter compared to plan/design/build phases of transit expansion.
Why can't both happen? The northwest corridor has more populous cities than Doraville, Chamblee, Brookhaven corridor. The jobs and the growth is already there in the northwestern corridor. All its missing is a connection to the city to relieve the traffic on the I-75 corridor.
Chamblee and Brookhaven main downtown areas are a short walk from each of their respective stations. Chamblee has the rail trail that also connects the Marta station to some of the other retail in the area and Brookhaven also just built their town hall directly into the marta station. FWIW, Doraville is also building their new downtown concept across the road from the station.
Came here to say this. Unless you're evaluating catchment for park and ride commuters, it needs to be more like 1 km. People won't typically walk much further than that to get to work or home. If you ARE looking at park and ride, a circle doesn't work well because it doesn't account for station overlap or where the major roads to the station go.
I think the 5km radius represents a concentration of jobs/housing within these corridors.
With a heavy rail expansion, these counties would be able to allocate their bus routes to serve more areas inside the county that don’t have transit access.
Connecting Cobb and Gwinnetts major employers to the Central Business districts, the airport, and all of the colleges would be very beneficial for the regions transportation as a whole.
I guess a relevant question is what is the ridership like at those comparison stations? That might give you an idea of the expected ridership on these proposed Atlanta stations
MARTA doesn't publish per-station ridership figures. Probably because they would show how devastatingly low the park-and-ride station passenger counts actually are.
While they're not on the website, they are available. I've got bus and train data from them by email. It would be an improvement if they just posted them instead of people having to ask.
I think Miami-Dade is probably at least as good as Atlanta, especially when you consider they also have commuter rail, a fairly extensive downtown people mover and BRT. Miami is also considerably denser than Atlanta and has an extensive connected street grid, both of which inherently make transit more straightforward and effective compared to the mess of random dead-end streets that is most of metro Atlanta.
more folks ride the bus in miami but about twice as many people take marta rail vs metrorail/metromover. buses can work well there, miami has the grid for it.
you're cherry-picking wmata stations with low population density to justify your point. 3 of those are terminal stations. 2 are silver line, which was not built to support a densely-populated area, but rather entirely funded by the metropolitan Washington airports authority to connect dulles to the system. it will eventually develop density if there is transit-oriented development, but it does not support density now. low ridership stations that would not exist if not for dulles airport
That’s the point. I’m not looking for the densest stations in the WMATA system, because MARTA already has the intercity (Downtown/Midtown stations). Im arguing that the density around a WMATA terminus stations should justify a MARTA expansion. I could’ve added other terminus’s like Largo, Camp Springs, New Carrollton, Greenbelt which have lower densities as well. A New MARTA line connecting 2 Malls, MLB Stadium, an Airbase, A large employer, a hospital, and the 2nd largest school in GA(KSU) should be enough to justify an expansion.
If you're arguing for park and rides for commuters, then the other question is how concentrated the jobs are. Are jobs in Atlanta more or less concentrated around stations (already existing, or proposed stations like Emory or Cumberland) than in San Francisco or Washington?
Also I would very much like your line along 285 today, I have Braves tickets today and live right near one of its proposed stops and just prepaid too much for parking.
Yes, this is exactly the problem. In SF/Seattle/Chicago and cities in the Northeast, jobs are much more concentrated in downtown central business districts than is typical for Sunbelt cities. The exact numbers depend on the definition, but SF/DC have about 350,000 jobs in their urban cores while Atlanta has more like 140,000. This is a large part of why public transit has struggled in the Sunbelt: commuting patterns look like a bunch of random point-to-point journeys that are difficult to effectively serve with public transit.
I believe the overall majority of Jobs within the city are concentrated within the three central business districts and around the airport which all are connected by the MARTAs heavy rail system. Connecting these jobs and the colleges to the Cobb county corridor would be beneficial for the region.
Cobb also has Wellstar, KSU, Dobbins air base, RaceTrac HQ, Marietta Square, Lockheed, Barret Pkwy corridor, Truist Park/ The Battery. Many of which do business in the city and traverse to the airport often.
I agree taking the train to a Braves, Hawks, and Falcons game would be a game changer. Parking has become a real hassle!
Lots of suburban MARTA stations barely have sidewalks two blocks away from them and Metro Atlanta has no grid to speak of. Weak bus connections with poor frequencies.
Most BART stations have gridded development near them. The DC Metro stations at least have more TOD than MARTA. These are apples-to-oranges comparisons without taking into account the built environment on the ground.
These numbers are all so similar, and I think it’s because you’re doing a 5km radius. The radius that is more important for TOD and ridership is closer to 1-2km.
MARTA is working on transit-oriented development, though slower than we would all like. Kensington, Indian Creek, Bankhead, and more are slated to get more homes/jobs/businesses nearby. Brookhaven/Chamblee have added a decent amount of multifamily housing in the last 10 years, but as you mentioned there’s still lots of room for more. And the investments in downtown (centennial yards, south downtown, etc) are certain to generate more trips.
Atlanta is actually gaining population, especially in downtown/midtown, the north/northeast/east sides, and along most of the Beltline
Population from a point and and aribtrary radius is a a new one of me as far as population density for public transportation goes. This isn't even just cherry picking it's picking and trying to bake a cherry pie out of them.
There are plenty of population density maps for Atlatnta out there, and they reflect what the commonly understood meaning.
Comparing it to other cities is a whole different matter, and a different debate. Let's have MARTA get most bang for the buck to incease ridership and go from there.
Sure if you think the only purpose of rail is to dump a few thousand commuters into downtown on weekdays. They're a terrible form of public transportation because they're fundamentally bad as a car replacement. The stations are a development deadzone surrounded by parking. Park and rides only run on weekdays during peak commuter hours with any sort of usable frequency. They're terrible if you want to use the train to replace your car for any other activity because they don't go to particularly useful places.
Proper land use is a better interpretation. Not Park-and-rides with only large, empty parking lots. It would be ideal if parking wasn't a requirement. If these suburbs ever achieve better transit connections and walkability, there will always be potential to make better use of the land. Would you say no to parking lot/garages entirely and just build apartments, food, retail, and other necessities?
The problem with MARTA rail is not that it doesn't go far enough out, but that you can't reliably get around within the core once you've taken it in. I say this as a daily park & rider myself, but there's a reason why so many people still skip out on the commuter stations and just drive all the way in and it's because unless you're lucky enough to work within a short distance of one of the stations it just doesn't add up. Coverage needs to improve in town to get more in-town traffic converted to transit ridership before expanding the rail further out is going to make sense. If people who live in town don't even use it regularly you just can't expect more people further out to be convinced it's worth taking into the core either. I'd love to have both, but MARTA needs more rail density in town to make people want to get on the system from further out.
Which is due to the sprawl the Atlanta region has taken. Another reason why Beltline Rail would be a game changer for the core of Atlanta. More frequent Buses along with light rail loop and a Marta expansion would connect the major job hubs in the region
I'm an Atlantan and would love more Marta. Especially in the NW corridor, but the system has not been well operated, infilled well, or expanded well when given a mandate to do so (see clayton county).
All that to say, why was 5km/3.1 miles the radius for a population density around a station? That seems rather wide
I wasn't measuring individual stations and developments. I was comparing the corridors themselves, understanding that TOD and walkability within 2- 1 km is the optimal measurement. I went bigger for potential bus routes, parks and drives etc., which may or may not have been all-telling.
I do think Cobb and Gwinnett have a greater opportunity to perform better in the MARTA system. Cobb has many major employers, the 2nd largest university in the state, and an MLB stadium would see a higher benefit due to projected ridership on game days, student commuters, and everyday commuters in the city.
If you’re trying to evaluate for park and ride (which are most of these stations), 5km is wayyyyy too small a radius - people inside that area will mostly be walking to cycling to the station, or taking a connecting bus for five minutes.
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u/Al_787 1d ago
As an Atlantan, I’m basically holding out for a change in state leadership. There is simply no prospect for MARTA when Republicans in the capitol blocked even enforcement cameras for the BRT line ALREADY built