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[Canis lupus]

Yep love it, altough too much work going on as of lately. :/

 

[Face it Tiger..]

Being from both Toronto and Ajax, it's suburb.. I absolutely hate our cities tranportation..


Nothing is consistent from the suburbs being day from to day.. buses don't come on time.. usually smell.. and there isn't enough routes at all. and they lack a serious social media presence..

I mean call a nigga, I could do that shit.

and the best I could say is that they are friendly.

now from Toronto's side..

Getting from Scarborough to meadowvale sucks.. it isn't too bad.

now from Toronto's point for a city that grows and grows.. I just would like a transit system, more grandiose for a city our size..

 

[Mesoian]

Imaged for clarity on Boston. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't work, well, it sucks. We've just recently seen a price hike. I take the commuter rail in from the Haverhill line (on the north) to North Station, and walk south past South Station, weather permitting.

The T is just too grimy to justify using it when it's not life threateningly cold.

Fuck the greenline. Doesn't matter where you get on or where you're going, it's going to take an hour for some stupid reason.

I'm moving closer to the redline next month and I expect it's going to cut my commute in half, even though it's the same distance away from where I live now.

 

[Talon]

And are you thinking of the Pink Line? Those aren't new rails. They did build a new station at Morgan St. but the Pink Line is technically just the old 54/Cermak line of the Blue Line running part of the time on Green Line tracks through the near West Side. It's really nothing new.

The city REALLY needs some bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, especially on the main arteries. One on Western (hell even Cicero god I hate Cicero) would help with getting to the north-south travel if you happen to live more than several blocks west of the Dan Ryan.

I was talking about the new station.

We have a better chance of Chicagoans being realistic about the Bears' chances than new rails being put down in our lifetimes.

 

[Omegasquash]

Fuck the greenline. Doesn't matter where you get on or where you're going, it's going to take an hour for some stupid reason.

I'm moving closer to the redline next month and I expect it's going to cut my commute in half, even though it's the same distance away from where I live now.

Actually at least once a week at work I see a slew of emails containing "in at 10:30, red line is fucked." But it'll get you to South Station, and that's all anyone I know seems to give a damn about.

Edit: Also, How Fucked is the T? It proves you're right.

 

[Magilla]

Another member of Boston-Gaf chiming in with the hate. MBTA just cut my work bus route in half and raised my monthly transit pass by 11 dollars. Thanks..?

 

[Omegasquash]

Lol. I travel a bit, so I don't usually get the full monthly...just rail passes. You can't buy a 12 trip pass for $51 anymore.

You can buy a 10 trip pass for $55 though. And that's the MBCR.

 

[cousins]

I'm in Cleveland, and it's actually a lot better than I expected. It's certainly not NY, but coming from Pensacola, it's great.

 

[Magilla]

Also, fuck the green line.

 

[chaostrophy]

The city REALLY needs some bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, especially on the main arteries. One on Western (hell even Cicero god I hate Cicero) would help with getting to the north-south travel if you happen to live more than several blocks west of the Dan Ryan.

To play armchair planner, I'd put BRT lanes on Ashland, Western, Pulaski, Cicero, North, Fullerton, Irving Park, and Foster (don't get to the south side often so I don't know where they should be placed down there). Also extend the Brown line west to Jefferson Park.

 

[Sora_N]

Vancouver, Canada and yeah it's pretty competent as long as I leave on-time. Sometimes it sucks during late morning though.

 

[Talon]

I was actually thinking the other day on the El that the service is seriously undervalued as a measure of public good. The CTA should probably think about doing what DC does by charging for distance - it makes more sense than paying the same amount for two stops as it does from Midway all the way up to Linden.

 

[EvilMario]

Public transport in Hamburg has a great coverage, 3 U-Bahn subway and around 10 S-Bahn (suburban metro) lines, then some more A-lines (going to the outer parts and adjacent towns). Bus lines are plentyful and usually on time, nothing to complain about in that regard. The fleet is modern and clean, and unlike Berlin, there are almost no violent incidents at the railway stations.

Al that comes at a high price unfortunately, tickets are expensive, a single trip over more than 4 bus stations costs at least 3 Euro, and prices go up from there. Its more expensive than any other city if been in Germany, and most of Europe. In fact, its probably competing with London in that regard.

One pretty bad development has been the new line 4 of the subway, which will open soon, and will mostly serve the affluent Hafen City instead of areas that have been neglected for decades. Its a prestige object, like this whole new quarter of town which had been a focal point of planned gentrification.

Now living in China, I can say that public transport is one of the things that really hold everything together here. Big cities are building subways on a large scale, and unlike some things here, it really does add to a nicer environment and is actually pretty reliable. Add to that a large network of bus services even in smaller towns and cheap ticket prices. Nothing to complain here, apart from some bus drivers who just love to compete with other drivers on the street in their recklessness.

Take Shanghai for example, which till two years ago had the 400km/h Maglev connecting the airport to the city center, and still built an additional subway line, effectively reducing the price of transport on that route from 50 to 8 Yuan.

Hamburg looks like a great comparison to Toronto for me, given population of city and metro. Although it is an older system than the TTC, it's still something for us here to aspire to.

 

[FelixOrion]

There's only a 5 bus system in my little city. They cover basically the entire city but the individual buses stay to their territory in town. No subway and maybe one or two cabs, usually just used to get you to the airport.

I've never had a need to use the buses or the taxis cabs because I own my own truck and frankly its not a bad town to drive through in terms of traffic and all that.

 

[Tremas]

London

Between the tube, overground, docklands light railway, trams, buses, boats, cable cars, Boris bikes and taxis, there's no shortage of methods to get you to any part of London, day or night.

Yes, the tube is antiquated, which is to be expected from the oldest system in the world. Summers are unbearable, the prices are extravagant, service isn't 24/h and delays are commonplace. It's also iconic, expansive and brimming with character. Everything from the roundel design and the tube map to the Sherlock motifs at Baker Street station and the art installations at Gloucester Road, it's all designed and constructed to the finest detail. Even the tufted moquette seating patterns echo London

It's a far from faultless public transport system, but one that's all too frequently taken for granted by its users.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

Houston? Bwahahaha. Best get a car with AC because that's the only way you can survive.

 

[AlphaTwo00]

This popped up in my feed, and oh boy:

This is what I love about numbers and data: people can try to obscure certain facts to highlight whatever they want to prove.

 

[EvilMario]

This popped up in my feed, and oh boy:

This is what I love about numbers and data: people can try to obscure certain facts to highlight whatever they want to prove.

I saw this on a few of my Facebook feeds, so I've been responding to numerous post about it for a couple of hours.

Comparing Toronto to terrible American transit systems is just as terrible as comparing it to cities with four times the population. The public has no idea about transit and comparing kilometers of tracks is an easy out. And the TTC's priority issues should go well beyond trying to expand the subway lines now, but there are numerous reasons (impossible union, no funding from Prov, screwing up every construction contract they sign) why they'll continue to drag their feet. Automation, PRESTO card, accessibility of stations, expansion of LRTs into growing / population neighborhoods should take priority.

 

[beat]

This popped up in my feed, and oh boy:

This is what I love about numbers and data: people can try to obscure certain facts to highlight whatever they want to prove.

The SF Bay area has 7m people, twice the surface area, and they have BART, & Muni in SF and a not-that-great light rail in the south bay too (VTA).

Hong Kong has 7M people in a 7th the area as Toronto (and much of it is too hilly to build on), so that may not be a fair comparison, but HK's transit system has admirably complete coverage.

Boston has fewer people in its metro area than Toronto and greater coverage.

Like EvilMario said, Toronto should hardly be proud its transit system beats Houston.

 

[AlphaTwo00]

The SF Bay area has 7m people, twice the surface area, and they have BART, & Muni in SF and a not-that-great light rail in the south bay too (VTA).

Hong Kong has 7M people in a 7th the area as Toronto (and much of it is too hilly to build on), so that may not be a fair comparison, but HK's transit system has admirably complete coverage.

Boston has fewer people in its metro area than Toronto and greater coverage.

Like EvilMario said, Toronto should hardly be proud its transit system beats Houston.

My feed is filled with people (in Toronto) who's point is that since we're a younger city, we should compare to cities who's been around to build up the network at the same point.

But yes, the Hong Kong model would destroy that point now that I think about it, the bulk of the underground subway system only developed after 1960.

 

[EvilMario]

My feed is filled with people (in Toronto) who's point is that since we're a younger city, we should compare to cities who's been around to build up the network at the same point.

But yes, the Hong Kong model would destroy that point now that I think about it, the bulk of the underground subway system only developed after 1960.

Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, San Francisco, Boston, Hamburg are all good comparisons for size of the city / metro and some have comparable time frames.

But Toronto is sort of a unique study. It's a younger subway system that missed its chance to build. It didn't start in the 1910s/20s, and it didn't build when it was affordable in the 70s. And then comparing us to younger transit systems in Asia is depressing, but the cost of building in the region makes it easy to see why they've exploded transit wise while we're stuck two decades in the past.

What the city needs to do is look at what's possible instead of obsessing over expansion of only subway lines. Transit City was destroyed, rebuilt (sort of) and hopefully it gets underway. Transit plans really have to stop getting delayed in the city so a new regime can have their own transit legacy. I can't believe how many holes have been filled in in our 'short history' of subway transit.

 

[beat]

But Toronto is sort of a unique study. It's a younger subway system that missed its chance to build. It didn't start in the 1910s/20s, and it didn't build when it was affordable in the 70s.

Vancouver has only built its Skytrains since the mid-80s. That said, the first line got some serious federal money for Expo 86, and the third* line got a ton of money for the Olympics, but the second line, I think, wasn't funded as part of any particular megaproject.

* The Canada line is technically not Skytrain; the technology is different and the two systems cannot share trains.

And LA is moving quickly (for a NA city) in expanding its light rail.

 

[EvilMario]

Vancouver has only built its Skytrains since the mid-80s. That said, the first line got some serious federal money for Expo 86, and the third* line got a ton of money for the Olympics, but the second line, I think, wasn't funded as part of any particular megaproject.

* The Canada line is technically not Skytrain; the technology is different and the two systems cannot share trains.

And LA is moving quickly (for a NA city) in expanding its light rail.

Well, the TTC receives almost no funding outside of the city (ie; from the Province). We fought tooth and nail to have some money put in the pot for Transit City, but year to year, we're left to fend for ourselves. This does buy them some sympathy from me when it comes to expansion.

And let's not confuse 100% underground subway lines, which is what Toronto's lovely mayor wants, with a mix of Light Rail transit. He was adamant that the Eglinton LRT had to be 100% underground, even in neighborhoods with four / six lane roads and no congestion. He's nuts.

Thankfully, our streetcar network in Toronto is 'okay'. It's really a bunch of east to west lines that don't meetup, with a few north / south lines that are under serviced (except for Spadina). But with the new LRT lines from Transit City seeing right of ways (ie; Spadina, St Clair), it should be better than what we currently have and we are expanding. We're just not building subways.

 

[beat]

Here's diagrams of LA's next thirty years of transit expansion, decade by decade: http://la.streetsblog.org/wp-content/pdf/MeasureRProgressionMaps20120713.pdf

And part 1 of a transit-centric interview with the mayor of LA: http://la.streetsblog.org/2012/07/2...rview-i-building-a-new-transportation-system/

 

[Ramblin]

Well, the TTC receives almost no funding outside of the city (ie; from the Province). We fought tooth and nail to have some money put in the pot for Transit City, but year to year, we're left to fend for ourselves. This does buy them some sympathy from me when it comes to expansion.

And let's not confuse 100% underground subway lines, which is what Toronto's lovely mayor wants, with a mix of Light Rail transit. He was adamant that the Eglinton LRT had to be 100% underground, even in neighborhoods with four / six lane roads and no congestion. He's nuts.

Thankfully, our streetcar network in Toronto is 'okay'. It's really a bunch of east to west lines that don't meetup, with a few north / south lines that are under serviced (except for Spadina). But with the new LRT lines from Transit City seeing right of ways (ie; Spadina, St Clair), it should be better than what we currently have and we are expanding. We're just not building subways.

But we want subways.

 

[TemplaerDude]

Yeah, Vancouver's transit isn't too bad as long as you're not out in the burbs. I grew up in Richmond (which is about a 40 minutes drive from downtown) and the transit out there fucking sucks for getting around the city, for some reason they felt the need to put stops literally a 50 second walk apart from each other and of course some lazy fuck always needs to get off at every fucking stop. Also, until the Canada line showed up, it was the biggest pain in the ass to get downtown and any bus is always late, early or just doesn't show up.

The biggest complaint I have about the Vancouver core transit is after 1:15, when the skytrain stops (for some fucking reason), it is impossible to get anywhere without a lot of luck. There are barely any night buses, they don't seem to show up on any schedule and they are always, always crowded with the dirtiest, drunkest fucking scum. The worst offender is the one bus that, during the day, goes right next to my house, but at night, for some reason, it only goes halfway and then turns the fuck around. Considering I work in and often frequent bars that let out at 2, sometimes 3, it is the most frustrating thing in the world to be sitting in the often rain soaked street, staring down the road for some bus that may never come that isn't even really going to get you a lot closer to where you need to be going.

Also, trying to get a cab downtown on the weekend is a waste of fucking time, and almost all the cabbies are fucking assholes.

So yeah, fuck the transit in this city actually.

 

[TylerD]

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

My car works well.

 

[EvilMario]

But we want subways.

 

[rinse82]

Came here to say fuck TTC

GO Transit, too

 

[Biscuits]

This popped up in my feed, and oh boy:

This is what I love about numbers and data: people can try to obscure certain facts to highlight whatever they want to prove.

I just realized, the ttc map isn't even to scale. None of these are I'm assuming.

 

[EvilMario]

I just realized, the ttc map isn't even to scale. None of these are I'm assuming.

Houston is to scale.

 

[RBH]

As previously mentioned, Atlanta is holding a vote on July 31st for a transportation referendum that would be designed to expand the city's transit system through a 1% sales tax in the 10-county region in the metro area. A roughly equal amount of money would be distributed between the roads and the train/bus system according to the proposal.

http://www.metroatlantatransportationreferendum.com

http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/faqs-about-transportation-referendum-1486724.html

http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/map-mass-transit-projects-918850.html

 

[EvilMario]

I hope Atlanta does the smart thing. I'm rooting for you guys.

 

[ATF487]

Also, fuck the green line.

This. God I fucking hate the green line.

 

[RBH]

http://www.ajc.com/news/tsplost-results-1483968.html





It's early, but the referendum's chances don't look too good.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

SEPTA Hailed as "Best of the Best" in North America

SEPTA was named the best large transit system in North America on Thursday by the American Public Transportation Association.

"SEPTA is indeed the best of the best," said APTA president Michael Melaniphy in announcing the selection at SEPTA's monthly board meeting. "SEPTA's many accomplishments and achievements are models for the rest of the public-transit industry."

He cited SEPTA's consolidated control center, environmentally friendly construction programs, large fleet of hybrid buses, and financial management.

The award came on the day SEPTA announced that its ridership in the just-completed fiscal year, 339.3 million passengers, was the highest since 1989.

SEPTA was selected as best among transit agencies providing more than 20 million trips a year. There are 64 transit agencies of that size in North America, although not all of them applied for the APTA recognition.

SEPTA general manager Joseph Casey said the award was "a testament to the dedication, hard work, and innovative thinking" of SEPTA's 9,000 employees.

Matthew Mitchell, of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, which has frequently criticized SEPTA's shortcomings, said, "There are a lot of ways to measure 'best.'

"It's entirely appropriate for APTA to recognize the tremendous progress that SEPTA has made," Mitchell said.

"There are areas that still need improvement," he said, citing on-time performance of SEPTA trains as an example.

"We still have disagreements with management over a lot of things, but that should not be an obstacle to recognizing the leadership SEPTA is showing. Their financial management has been strong."

Just some thoughts. SEPTA has undergone far less fare hikes than many of the largest transit agencies in the country because their financial management has been pretty good. While SEPTA doesn't change often, they do change fairly quickly, which can be seen by the soon to be completed roll out of the new fare system that will be similar to NYCs metro card, which will eliminate one of the largest complaints of the system, the use of tokens. Their bus coverage and hybrid buses are awesome. Seriously, hybrid buses are the best things ever. Buses are so noisy they used to wake me up at night, but since the adoption of the hybrid buses it's cut down on the noise so much it's incredible.

The two biggest projects I think SEPTA needs to do right now is put a subway line on Roosevelt Boulevard in North Philly, and extend the Broad Street Line all the way to the Naval Yard.

 

[Blader]

Boston-GAF member reporting.

Fuck the MBTA. Seriously. Maybe I'm biased because I live off the B line (not bad enough that I have to use the Green line, but the fucking B train at that) but the train is always late, always slow, and service seems to have gotten worse as the prices went up. The commuter rail can also go die.

Any time I happen to need to use the red line, I feel blessed. Always think to myself, "this is how a train SHOULD be."

Also:

Im in Boston. Every bus is 10 minutes late, every train is 20 minutes late, train operators take extreme joy in purposely waiting 3 minutes after their scheduled departure time, watching everyone getting off the late buses, watch people run all the way around the train station to get to the train yard, then leave once the front of the line is about 10 feet away from the turnstile.

EVERY DAY.

The MBTA should be destroyed.

This.

 

[Atrus]

This is Calgary's. It's not a subway map but a light rail transit map that is entirely at street level and stops traffic as it passes.

It also only serves 3 of the 4 quadrants of the city (NE,NW,SW) while the entire SE has to rely on buses. All lines share the same track in the downtown area and so have to wait for each train at the junction and alternate.

The future plan of our LRT is fantastic but like all dreams it is shy of the billions of dollars it would need to revamp our lines (due to short-sightedness that continues to this day) and add more.

 

[thcsquad]

Actually at least once a week at work I see a slew of emails containing "in at 10:30, red line is fucked." But it'll get you to South Station, and that's all anyone I know seems to give a damn about.

Edit: Also, How Fucked is the T? It proves you're right.

I think you have some late sleepers on your team. I've taken the red line just about every day for a year and a half, and I've experienced significant delays (> 10 minutes) maybe twice. The only thing that I don't like about it is that the A/C isn't nearly as good as the buses and it takes forever to get to the subway platform at Porter.

Green Line is generally pretty shitty, but I've never heard of a light rail system that was that great so it shouldn't be surprising. There are way too many stops on it for how far away they are (Who needs a rail station every two blocks?). They need to close down every other station on the green line and double the number of trains running.

 

[numble]

As previously mentioned, Atlanta is holding a vote on July 31st for a transportation referendum that would be designed to expand the city's transit system through a 1% sales tax in the 10-county region in the metro area. A roughly equal amount of money would be distributed between the roads and the train/bus system according to the proposal.




http://i.minus.com/ikrhZ2RxCfSW7.png[img]

[img]http://i.minus.com/ibaLONUMcBLbNI.png[img]





[url]http://www.metroatlantatransportationreferendum.com[/url]

[url]http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/faqs-about-transportation-referendum-1486724.html[/url]

[url]http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/map-mass-transit-projects-918850.html[/url][/QUOTE]

T-SPLOST failed.
[url]http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/voters-reject-transportation-tax-1488552.html[/url]

Sucks for Atlanta.

Los Angeles is going to try to extend the sales tax hike for transit in November. Will require 66.67% of voters saying yes.

[url]http://la.streetsblog.org/2012/06/25/measuring-the-odds-for-measure-r/[/url]

 

[HylianTom]

T-SPLOST failed.
http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/voters-reject-transportation-tax-1488552.html

Sucks for Atlanta.

Ouch. As energy costs go up and it gets more and more expensive to fuel an automobile, those cities who make infrastructure preparations are going to fare much better than those who don't.

I feel for those in Atlanta who tried and didn't qute succeed this time around. Kinda reminds me of how frustrated we were in Austin when the rail vote failed the first time around..

 

[RBH]

Distrustful of government and riven by differences, metro Atlanta voters on Tuesday rejected a $7.2 billion transportation plan that business leaders have called an essential bulwark against regional decline.

The defeat of the 10-year, 1 percent sales tax leaves the Atlanta region's traffic congestion problem with no visible remedy. It marks failure not only for the tax but for the first attempt ever to unify the 10-county region's disparate voters behind a plan of action.

"Let this send a message," said Debbie Dooley, a tea party leader who early on organized opposition to the T-SPLOST tax measure. "We the people, you have to earn our trust before asking for more money."

Kasim Reed, who fought years for the referendum as a legislator and as Atlanta mayor, rallied supporters gathered at a hotel in downtown Atlanta. "The voters have decided," Reed said. "But tomorrow I'm going to wake up and work just as hard to change their minds."

Gov. Nathan Deal's office told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he would now take a central role in transportation planning for the state's metro areas, and he would not support a sequel to Tuesday's referendum.

"It's heartbreaking," said Ashley Robbins, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit, one of dozens of organizations that worked for the referendum. She predicted a loss of valuable young workers to the region's economy. "If Atlanta's not the region that we want, the young energetic people that drove these campaigns are going to leave."

Results were still pending Tuesday night in the state's other 11 regions. The Transportation Investment Act of 2010, which set up the referendum, was touted to raise as much as $19 billion if approved district by district.

Leaders with the Metro Atlanta Chamber, which pushed to create the referendum in the Legislature and then poured millions into a campaign to pass the tax, did not immediately return telephone calls.

Voter revolt

The metro Atlanta result was no surprise to independent pollsters who in recent weeks predicted an overwhelming loss, fueled by citizens' distrust of government and the metro area's splintered transportation desires.

Voters interviewed Tuesday — urban transit fans and suburban drivers — confirmed the predictions.

Shirley Tondee, a Brookhaven Republican, thinks the region must do something to solve constant transportation woes. But she voted against the T-SPLOST anyway. "I just don't trust that government is going to take the money and do what they say they're going to do," the retired sales representative said outside her precinct.

Robert Williams, a 59-year old electronic technician and a Decatur Democrat, is skeptical too. But in the end he voted yes.

"It was a struggle," he said. However, "we need to be able to grow. Traffic is one of the things that employers do take into consideration when they're thinking about where to bring jobs."

The metro Atlanta tax would have built a $6.14 billion list of 157 regional projects — relieving congestion at key Interstate highway chokepoints and opening 29 miles of new rail track to passengers, among others — as well as $1 billion worth of smaller local projects. The list was negotiated by 21 mayors and county commissioners from all 10 counties, and it contained about half transit and half roads.

The compromise didn't work.

Re-playing 40 years of Atlanta history, controversy built instantly around the proposed expansion of mass transit. Some loved it, some hated it.

Nevertheless, the campaign had set its sights on winning over conservative voters — at least, more of them than might usually say "yes."

Perhaps as a result, the campaign for the tax seemed at times unwilling to trumpet the transit in the list. Advertisements for the referendum showed many cars but little mass transit, until later on.

But that affected some transit supporters. Some metro Atlantans love transit, and some business interests favoring the tax said its expansion was key to drawing new jobs. But how much those voters understood the transit and other projects in the list was unclear.

DeKalb T-SPLOST opponents hit hard on the fact that south DeKalb did not get a new rail line in the list. The T-SPLOST would, however, give $225 million for commuter buses and stations in South DeKalb and $600 million for upgrades to the current MARTA system.

Gladys Pollard, a Decatur Democrat and attorney, mocked promises of the T-SPLOST. "'We're going to improve roads,'" she said. "What does that mean? It's so vague."

Pollard voted "no" because she believes south DeKalb should have gotten rail.

"They're not proposing anything that will benefit me," Pollard said. "We're not getting anything out of this. People in the north — they're going to benefit big-time."

Soft-pedaling the transit message didn't help the campaign with transit opponents, either, who called the transit a waste of $3 billion in a car-loving region. They came out early and in force, starting with tea party gatherings where the first organized opposition met.

Deeper insecurities were at play as well. A poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year found that 42 percent of respondents believed new mass transit brings crime.

By election day, the issue was such a hot potato that a number of elected officials who voted for the T-SPLOST law or for the project list had stepped away or turned against it.

The campaign

Those may be challenges beyond any campaign's control.

But for all the money poured into it — more than $8 million for education and advocacy — the campaign had its own problems.

It drew some critics who found it top-down or obtuse, and it hit turbulence almost from its first moments.

Campaign tensions naturally grind as pressure rises. But by election night, transit advocates wouldn't watch election returns with the central campaign, but went to their own location at a Midtown Irish pub.

At the campaign's outset, its biggest hire was Glenn Totten, a Democratic strategist who once helped push the Georgia lottery to victory among referendum voters in this Bible-belt state. But within months, Totten, and then another Democrat, communications director Liz Flowers, left abruptly.

Those Democratic gaps in the Republican-Democrat team were eventually filled.

But when challenges arose within the T-SPLOST's Democratic, transit-fan base of voters, the campaign seemed to be caught flat-footed.

The campaign lost huge potential endorsements at the core of its voter base this spring, when the state organizations for both the Sierra Club and the NAACP came out against the tax, feeling there should be more transit in the list.

In each case, the decisionmaking boards of those groups spent weeks in debate over their positions, but were never contacted by the tax campaign, according to the heads of the groups.

Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia conference of the NAACP, said the NAACP even had a string of conference calls with speakers for and against, to help the group make its decision. They would have been glad to have a campaign representative speak, DuBose said, since the advocates the statewide group heard from didn't have a great deal of knowledge about the tax program. But he had no idea who the campaign manager was.

"I do find it odd" that they were never contacted by the campaign, DuBose said then. "Especially odd given that we are very visible."

Republican campaign supporters didn't run lock-step for it either. Although Gov. Deal helped the campaign, his first full-throated, passionate speech at a press conference urging its passage only came Monday, the day before the vote.

Deal said he had not had the opportunity to speak at large events for the Atlanta tax.

Now, with his predecessor's plan cashiered, the problem of funding a metro Atlanta traffic fix is his.

http://www.ajc.com/news/transportation-referendum/voters-reject-transportation-tax-1488552.html



*sigh*

 

[HylianTom]

My partner just proposed a really nasty guerilla campaign technique for the next ballot attempt.

On the weeks leading-up to the vote, have a squadron of cars out on the city of Atlanta's main highways. The cars' purpose? To slow-down, snarl, and delay traffic to the point where driving is an absolutely frustrating, miserable experience. Form slow-moving, unpassable rows of cars, infuriating those behind them. Make folks late for work. Bring them to the brink of road rage. With any luck, horrible traffic should be on the forefront of everyone's minds any time the subject of transportation comes-up in conversation or in news coverage.

The cars doing this shoud have no visible connection to the campaign whatsoever.

Then, on the final week before the vote, air a TV commercial with footage of horrendous traffic, triumphantly proclaiming that this miserable traffic condition is Atlanta's "new normal" of transportation - unless voters smartly act now, with an eye to the future. Confidently proclaim that these new transit options will take many of these cars off the road, and that things will get moving again when there are other modes of transit available. Blanket local and cable TV with these ads over the final week.

I like his idea. It's pretty apparent that, at least in this issue, Atlanta voters need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

edit: damn - 67% to 33%?!? Holy crap..

 

[Slavik81]

This is Calgary's. It's not a subway map but a light rail transit map that is entirely at street level and stops traffic as it passes.

It also only serves 3 of the 4 quadrants of the city (NE,NW,SW) while the entire SE has to rely on buses. All lines share the same track in the downtown area and so have to wait for each train at the junction and alternate.

The future plan of our LRT is fantastic but like all dreams it is shy of the billions of dollars it would need to revamp our lines (due to short-sightedness that continues to this day) and add more.

They made some sacrifices to be sure, but on the other hand, it's been amazingly efficient. We built this thing very cheaply, and it's been very well-used.

In 2001, the US General Accounting Office released a study of the cost-effectiveness of American light rail systems. Although not included in the report, Calgary had a capital cost of US$24.5 million per mile (year 2000 dollars), which would be the sixth lowest (Edmonton was given as US$41.7 million per mile). Because of its high ridership (then 188,000 boardings per weekday) the capital cost per passenger was $2,400 per daily passenger, by far the lowest of the 14 systems compared (had Edmonton been included it would have been the next most cost effective at $8,900 per weekday passenger, while the closest American system was Sacramento at $9,100 per weekday passenger). Operating costs are also low, in 2005, the C-Train cost CDN$163 per operating hour to operate. With an average of 600 boardings per hour, cost per LRT passenger is CDN$0.27, compared to $1.50 for bus passengers in Calgary. (source)

 

[beat]

Deeper insecurities were at play as well. A poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year found that 42 percent of respondents believed new mass transit brings crime.

I was told that that's why BART has to this day not been extended to a full ring that goes through the South Bay.

 

[EvilMario]

A Star article mentions Atlanta's transit failures as something of a warning to Toronto.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...ure-to-fund-transit-plan#.UCE2LGcJatI.twitter