John Oxendine's view on the issues facing Georgia

Curious John, what are you thoughts on CfPT's regional plan for the City of Atlanta?

http://www.cfpt.org/
http://www.cfpt.org/documents/worldclass_map.pdf

If you look at other major cities in Europe and Asia, you'll notice mass transit as a fabric of a city. In my opinion, it is rather embarrassing to compare our mass transit system to smaller European sized cities. Atlanta can only showcase interstates and two lines for MARTA.

Thanks and looking forward to your response.
Jonathan

You're transportation plan won't alleviate Atlanta's transportation problems. Interstate building is what brought on the traffic nightmare in the first place. And we've heard this type of proposal before. You're proposal will include more paving over our communities, more congestion, more pollution, more blight and result with a tremendous piece of road infrastructure that will cost us dearly.

And a SECOND connector? It's obvious the first one worked so well! I believe Atlanta learned its lesson with the first Connector. Plus by the time it's completed 20 years from now it will be just as congested.

Rather than wasting more money on the same, we should be building commuter rail in Atlanta, connecting our major cities by high speed rail and expanding MARTA. There's a real transportation solution. You want to go make Georgia the economic capital of the country? Go visit NYC, Boston, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and copy what they're doing in the field of transportation. Heck, I would rather you experiment with congestion pricing and tolls than build more interstates through Atlanta.

Any transportation planner will tell you that building more roads and interstates won't reduce demand, it will increase it. But what boggles my mind is that many conservative politicians advocate for the freedom of economic choice and advocate for pure capitalism, but yet they do just the opposite when it comes to transportation. They have refused to build a decent transit system in Atlanta to let us choose whether or not we want to use cars or transit. Capitalism isn't forcing us to drive on the interstate, capitalism is giving us the choice of walking, biking, taking the train or driving our car to work. We can’t choose between cars and transit if you only provide one option.

I live in Kennesaw and work in Buckhead. If I had a choice between getting to work by driving my car or riding a train or commuter shuttle. Hands down I would chose a train or the shuttle. I could avoid the frustration of dealing with inconsiderate drivers and long commutes. Instead I could relax, perhaps read a book or listen to music. I would also be saving energy and reducing pollution. I have used rapid transit in Washington D.C. and London. It was reliable, affordable and got me where I needed to go.