Living car free

[Ack]

Atlanta resident here. MARTA is a joke, yes. It doesn't go to too many places, and it has a racist nickname locally because its most often used by minorities(Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta), but MARTA suffers mainly because the Atlanta metro area that you showed is actually an amalgamation of various towns and cities. Of the Perimeter(that big circle), Atlanta takes up only a third or so. There's other cities in there too, like Decatur, Panthersville, Chamblee, Buckhead, Vinings, East Point, Cumberland, and so on, and many of these either don't want mass transit or can't afford it. Hell, take a quick look at this map:

That is just the stuff in part of Dekalb County, roughly a fourth of the land in the Perimeter. Hell, there's even a ghost town in the Perimeter: Constitution, GA.

Also, that map is only for the MARTA train system(though it pretty much shows where I live. I'm down next to King Memorial station). The bus system is actually quite impressive and extends well beyond the Perimeter.

As for mass transit versus highways...Atlanta needs both. Mass transit for those of us living inside the Perimeter, but Atlanta is also a major transportation hub and has a lot of materials being moved up from the coast and distributed out to the rest of the South or the country as necessary. So neither will necessarily work by themselves. We need both an improved highway system for the tourists and shipping industries(especially with Savannah's harbor being dredged and expanded), and an improved mass transit system that doesn't have racially or economically-biased stigmas.

[Erik_Twice]

Same here, I'll take my car any day instead of long waits at the bustop with all the fun people you would love to introduce to your family.

You mean...blacks?

Not to accuse you of anything, CRT, but it's quite nasty to see the contempt Americans have towards those who ride public transportation, as if riding a bus were beneath them. And given those who ride buses and trains are in their overwhelming majority (85-95%) poor inmigrants or blacks it's easy to see how the contempt comes mostly from an ugly mixture of class and race.

When people favour highways, what is actually favoured is that white people can go live to monolithic neighbourhoods where everyone is like them while blacks see their houses being demolished to make room for polluting, noisy eyesores. Transportation, like housing, has a huge racial and class component in the US and oposition to the extension of public transport is often opposition to having those nasty people you wouldn't introduce to your family move into the house in front of you.

A city in which the only way to move is to buy a car is hostile to everyone who isn't middle class. And given how much a car costs, I would also claim it's hostile to them.

[dsheinem]

I'm pretty sure that CRT was referring to the riff raff that hangs around so many stations here in the US: pickpockets, panhandlers, drug addicts, street preachers, etc. They tend to come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

[ZeroAX]

I'm pretty sure that CRT was referring to the riff raff that hangs around so many stations here in the US: pickpockets, panhandlers, drug addicts, street preachers, etc. They tend to come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Ok I have one more question for the people who prefer more highways instead of a developed public transport network (involving trains, metro, buses, trams, ect):

Have you ever been to Asian or European cities with really well developed public transport networks?

If yes, what didn't you like about it and you prefer more highways?

If no, don't you think you should check it out before you reject it?

[Jmustang1968]

No, not necessarily blacks. He is referring to people you will often see on the Walmart pictures that get posted online. So, more so the poor. There are lots of poor whites and hispanics as well. But I can see how someone could also find that pretentious. Just saying, it isnt automatically a racist statement.

Ive stated this before, but the Houston area suburbs are actually very diverse. If you read that article I linked above, many of the large southern cities are more diverse due to cheaper cost of living. It is the large older 'legacy' cities that tend to be more segregated.

That being said, there are still black, hispanic, and asian centric areas around town. But I think that is partially attributed to cultural groups atteacting others of the same group.

[ZeroAX]

I still find it weird as fuck that in America "hispanics" are considered a "separate race" than "white people"

(can't wait for 2 centuries to pass and the entire world can end up like Brazil and we'll stop talking about this "race" thing, whatever that was)

[Betagam7]

As a non American with an American partner I have always found the attitude towards buses kind of hard to understand as well. She is the first one to choose a bus anywhere we go in the world over other transport but always says she would never take the bus in the States unless it was a last resort.

How did they get to have such a bad reputation there compared to the rest of the world?

[Erik_Twice]

Just saying, it isnt automatically a racist statement.

Oh no, it's not (Perhaps it sounded harsher than I expected it to, so sorry for that). But I do find the contempt towards mass transist in the US has a huge racial and class component, so I thought it was a nice tangent to discuss.

Interestingly enough Madrid's subway has become infested with mafia-backed panhandlers and musicians (I ranted about this before), which really makes commuting annoying sometimes.

[ZeroAX]

Interestingly enough Madrid's subway has become infested with mafia-backed panhandlers and musicians (I ranted about this before), which really makes commuting annoying sometimes.

Is the economy in Spain that bad that even the mafia had to give up proper business (drugs, blackmail, ect) for begging?

[fastbilly1]

As I stated before, the reason that MARTA sucks in Atlanta is because whenever they try to expand it, the people in power in surrounding counties deny them. The word is that they dont want "the people who use MARTA" aka lower income African American and Hispanics, to be able to come out to their areas. Which is funny because many of them already live out there because of the lower cost of living. To combat this they use to have their own transit systems and started a joint system:
http://atltransit.org/index.html
Which lets you use a Marta pass on any of the four main bus systems. And as you can imagine, is super confusing in practice.

I would love a rail system in every major USA city that rivals Europe's and are possibly connected city to city, but it just wont happen. To use General Norris's examples of Madrid and Atlanta:
Madrid metro area - 6.5 million people in a space roughly 234 sq miles roughly 376 km sq
Atlanta metro area- 6.1 million people in a space roughly 8,376 sq miles roughly 21,694 km sq
*Updated numbers from wikipedia.

As you can see, it may be the same amount of people, just in a much larger area. I believe several people have made this point already, but when you look at the hard numbers, it is a bit sharp.