Tag Archives: rail

Georgia’s Lack of Rail Act

Jay Bookman blogs in the AJC about how Rail will come ‘when Georgia gets its act together’, talking about Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation:
In his comments, LaHood tried hard not to criticize Georgia policy makers directly. “I’m not going to pretend to tell Georgia what to do,” he said repeatedly.

But rather than criticize the lack of planning and support for high-speed rail in Georgia, he offered examples of regions elsewhere that “get it.” “The Northeast (high-speed rail) corridor has its act together,” LaHood said. “The Midwest corridor has its act together. The governors there have set aside their own egos and their own ambitions” to work together on bringing high-speed rail to those regions.

LaHood made no mention of the stark contrast to the Southeast, where our governors are too busy posturing to discuss resolution of the ongoing water wars, let alone high-speed rail.

Ain’t that the truth.

The best part is in a comment:

You see the state legislature wants to control the tax revenues from metro Atlanta so they can spend them in Hahira, Rome, Valdosta, etc., etc. Antwhere but metro Atlanta.
Ah, Atlanta! Just more important than anywhere else!

You know, if Atlanta cooperated in creating a rail plan for the entire state, such as for example the long-established rail corridor from Chattanooga through Atlanta, Macon, Tifton, Hahira, and Valdosta to Jacksonville and Orlando, we might actually get rail in Georgia. It doesn’t have to all be high speed. If I could take a regular passenger train to Atlanta, I sure would, instead of having to drive or squeeze into an ASA toothpaste tube.

By the way, Ray LaHood has a blog.

Commuting Waste Quantified

Portland, Oregon comes out well on a recent study of transportation in the U.S.:
Without mass transit, the average Portland area commuter would spend five hours more a year in rush-hour congestion, costing the region $98 million a year in lost time and wasted fuel, the Texas study says.
The Texas study is the Urban Mobility Report 2009 from the Texas Transportation Institute. It quantifies what we lose from commuting:
  • The overall cost (based on wasted fuel and lost productivity) reached $87.2 billion in 2007 — more than $750 for every U.S. traveler.
  • The total amount of wasted fuel topped 2.8 billion gallons — three weeks’ worth of gas for every traveler.
  • The amount of wasted time totaled 4.2 billion hours — nearly one full work week (or vacation week) for every traveler.
The study recommends strategies for dealing with it:
  • Get as much use as possible out of the transportation system we have.
  • Add roadway and public transportation capacity in the places where it is needed most.
  • Change our patterns, employing ideas like ridesharing and flexible work times to avoid traditional “rush hours.”
  • Provide more choices, such as alternate routes, telecommuting and toll lanes for faster and more reliable trips.
  • Diversify land development patterns, to make walking, biking and mass transit more practical.
  • Adopt realistic expectations, recognizing for instance that large urban areas are going to be congested, but they don’t have to stay that way all day long.
Fortunately, Lowndes County is not a large urban area, so it doesn’t have to be congested. Note that none of the recommendations include “just build more roads.” Two of them involve public transportation. And land development patterns that include services next to subdivisions could help a lot. I attended a recent Valdosta City Council meeting in which inhabitants of one subdivision were bitterly complaining because the developers wanted to put a few stores on a lot next to the subdivision. Maybe as the price of gas goes back up they’ll discover the attraction of walking to the store to get eggs and milk….

“longest and steepest decline in driving since the invention of the automobile.”

Today in USA Today:
The nation heads into the Independence Day holiday weekend amid the longest and steepest decline in driving since the invention of the automobile.

Since the number of miles traveled by motor vehicles in the USA peaked in November 2007, the nation’s 12-month total has dropped by 123 billion miles, or slightly more than 4%. That’s a bigger decline than the drop of just above 3% during the 1979-80 Iranian revolution that triggered a spike in gasoline prices in the USA.

The 4% drop is the equivalent of taking between 8 million and 10 million drivers off the road.

“We may be witnessing the beginning of a fundamental shift in American driving habits,” says Ed McMahon, senior research fellow at the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit group that promotes innovative development.

Maybe this would be a good time to implement busses and rail.
McMahon says his research shows that people over the past three years are trending toward compact, transit-oriented developments that mix residential, retail and office uses and encourage walking. Even when the economy recovers, he says, people won’t resume driving at previous rates.
And if they had mass transit to use then instead of cars, we’d all be better off.

So Far Behind Neighboring States?

img570perry_goodfriend_photo.jpg Opportunity knocks, and what does Georgia do?
President Barack Obama’s plans for a national high-speed rail network is bittersweet for Georgia.

The state is now eligible to win millions of dollars in federal funds for high-speed rail projects.

But transportation advocates say Georgia is so far behind neighboring states that the best it can hope for is money to fund more studies.

Who are these un-named “transportation advocates”? Sounds like they’re “paving is progress” advocates.

Oh, my:

The department says it is changing. It has recently hired Erik Steavens to oversee rail projects, and he said he will push for a rail line linking Atlanta to Chattanooga.
Changing from thinking paving to thinking small. That’s change that will miss a great opportunity. Actually even worse than thinking small:
The only other rail project, with guaranteed cash available, is a line from Atlanta to Chattanooga that was part of a 2000 bill from the state legislature, HB 1348. In fact, the bill, which was passed when the Democrats last controlled the State House, contains plans for several lines around the state, but only the Atlanta-Chattanooga high-speed track is specifically guaranteed funding “should federal or private funds be made available for such high speed rail.”

Unfortunately for Georgia legislators, though, President Obama’s rail plans do not include a line between the two southern cities, meaning that if the state still wants to build that line, it needs to come up with the money itself.

Up until the 1950s Georgia had a rail system that connected almost every town in the state. The rails from Atlanta through Macon and Valdosta to JAX are still there, and in use constantly for freight. Sure, Valdosta would have to build a station, but those are not complicated. And somebody would have to convince CSX to share the rails. But JAX already did that for commuter rail, so it’s possible. 5 million people in Atlanta, 3/4 million in Jacksonville, and Valdosta halfway in between….

If the same entities that repeatedly banded together to keep Moody Air Force Base (VLD, Lowndes County, VSU, state and national reps and senators, etc.) lobbied DoT (state and federal), they could do this thing. They could even use the rail line to Barretts to run commuter rail to Moody while they’re at it. Here’s a chance for Valdosta and Lowndes County to lead the state in making real progress.

Rail for south Georgia and Bill Gillespie

Bill Gillespie and GA-01For a while I’ve been going on about commuter rail for Lowndes County. It turns out there’s somebody running for Congress from Georgia’s First District (GA-01) who wants to do mass transit for all of south Georgia, including busses and rail: Bill Gillespie.

If you’re near Valdosta today, you can meet Bill, and the incumbent, Jack Kingston, at the South Georgia Political Forum. Ask Bill and Jack about mass transit.