Light Rail ?

The Perimeter Community Improvement District (PCID) is planning to double its density. It occupies 4 square miles and runs from Perimeter Mall to the Sandy Springs MARTA station. It is downtown Dunwoody. It has large apartment and condo complexes and office buildings and wants to double both. The problem is traffic.

Installing an East - West light rail line over the top of I-285 is crazy and too expensive. The answer to diverting traffic from the top of I-285 is to Make US-27 the interstate traffic outer by-pass around Atlanta. Handling commuter traffic from Norcross to Perimeter will require widening Mount Vernon.

Trains only go where they go. This is rarely where you need to go, so you drive your car. Trains work if everybody works downtown; for Atlanta, those days are long gone.

Light rail costs $100 million per mile to install; roads cost $100 thousand per mile to install. Trains and buses are low use and require large tax subsidies to operate. The tax subsidy for the $750 million a year MARTA budget is 83%.

The Light rail fantasy comes from Obama. Any hope of receiving federal tax dollars for this boondoggle requires that we buy new trains and buses and install light rail. Seattle WA is doing this and will be saddled with a $37 billion, 50 year bond issue to pay off. PCID needs a Plan B; I don’t think the Atlanta Regional Transportation Plan 2040 will pass in 2012.