Being Amber Rhea

There’s kind of a lot of kudzu behind our apartment building:

Ah, Georgia. Even in the middle of the city, the kudzu will not be thwarted.

This morning the GDBF and I went on a tour of the northwest portion of the Beltline. (Can you believe I was actually up at 7:00 on a Saturday?) I wrote about it on Bloglanta; I’m not going to cross-post my entry here, because I have a feeling people are getting tired of all the cross-posting. Anyway, I took a few pictures on the tour, so have a look if you’re interested. (If some of them look weird, it’s because they were taken from the window of a bus.)

Next Saturday (Oct. 8th) I’ll be going on a tour of the Northwest and Southwest (apparently, we’re only doing the NW) portion of the Beltline. Posting about it now because if you want to go, you have to RSVP by today. So I guess I should have posted earlier; stupid work, always getting in the way of my blogging.

More bloggin’ later. I’m going to Athens tonight to see Of Montreal at the 40 Watt. It’ll be teh hawtness.

Last night’s MARTA meeting was… interesting, that’s for sure. We’ll skip the part where I rant about the consultant who gave the Powerpoint presentation, and how anyone who’s read chapter 1 of Project Management 101 could have torn his presentation to shreds; and move right on to the part where I rant about other things.

The meeting covered the proposed Beltline and C-Loop plans - the so-called Inner Core. After the lengthy, painful presentation, there was a Q&A session of sorts - during which some good questions were posed, and no real answers were given. (No, I’m not surprised by this; I’m just sayin’.)

When one guy asked if MARTA had taken into consideration the costs of different sources of power - especially considering how natural gas is projected to skyrocket in the coming months, and of course the usual concerns about oil - when deciding on what types of rapid transit to implement, the consultants’ reaction seemed to be one of, “Hmm, we hadn’t thought of that!” I could be wrong, of course. But the question was quickly brushed aside, which I found strange, since I think it’s one of the most important issues. Seems to me that electric power is a no-brainer; it is viable over the long-term and relatively cheap to maintain once the infrastructure is put into place. One need only look at the 100-year-old New York City subway for evidence. Of course, this requires long-term thinking, and that’s an area where I’m not so confident with MARTA.

Moving on… Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my undertanding that the Beltline Parternship is independent, but has chosen MARTA to be in charge of implementation. I’m still unclear about how this would affect fare structure; I assume (and this assumption was reinforced last night) that if things proceed as they are now, the Beltline rail will be a part of the MARTA system. However, someone asked the question last night, what if that doesn’t end up being the case? It’s something I’d been wondering about, and the GDBF and I were talking about before the meeting. I don’t think bringing another player onto the field would necessarily be the best strategy - it would just introduce more confusion and [potentially] frustration. Would people have to pay separate fares? I know that’s how it currently works with CCT for example; but to me that’s different, since CCT is an OTP system that operates mainly in Cobb, and also serves to bring people into the city - but not transport them around once they’re here.

Having several independent systems all operating in the same city just seems like a bad idea, and one that will ultimately result in consolidation. Just look at New York (again) - there used to be the Manhattan Railway, IRT, BMT, and IND, but it got to be too much of a clusterfuck and they were finally consolidated under the New York City Transit Authority (now MTA) in 1953.

Currently, separate systems are working in Dallas-Fort Worth - sort of. The DART and TRE are separate, but a ticket from a DART vending machine will get you a ride on the TRE - but only as far as Irving, which means you have to pay extra if you want to go to the airport. It’s kind of a kludgeball, in my opinion.

I understand about capitalism, competition, and all that jazz - but it just seems that in such a situation, consolidation is something that’s bound to happen anyway, so why waste taxpayers’ money and time playing around with other kludgy “solutions”? (The GDBF presented a good counter-argument to my rant last night; but even so, I guess this is why I never had much patience politics.)

Perhaps the highlight of the night was watching a bit of vehement back-and-forth between a 90-year-old man and an 18-year-old whippersnapper; for a minute there I thought it might come to fisticuffs. I disagreed with pretty much everything the old man said (regarding cars being “the only vehicle that can get you from point A to point B”); but I’ll write more about that later, since this is long enough already.

However, I would like to point out the great irony that access to the meeting was definitely car-biased. The entrance was tucked away in the back of a parking garage. So those of us who took MARTA to the MARTA meeting wandered around like idiots for a while before a cop pointed us in the right direction.

[Cross-posted, with edits, at Bloglanta]

Yay! It looks as though they’re actually going to build the BeltLine Project! It sounds really cool. I’m pretty excited about it… this could be a big step in the right direction for the ATL.