Atlanta needs better transportation

There's a story on the front page of this paper about the Georgia Brain Train Group. How do I know? I wrote it. If you haven't read it, I suggest you go back and do so before continuing to read this rant of mine. My issue is not with the Georgia Brain Train Group, even though I have heard mixed reviews from some of the students I have talked to about it. My issue is with the fact that this project has taken so long to get off the ground and that it still has to gain support in the various levels of government to receive funding.

Atlanta is a city that is completely dominated by the automobile. A person cannot get from one point to another in the city without the use of a car. The city is too spread out and the mass transit system is nearly non-existent. True, MARTA exists, but MARTA is unreliable at best, is too expensive and does a poor job of connecting the city.

Not only that, but the city is resistant to expand MARTA to meet the needs of the citizens, since the company had corruption issues in the 1960s and '70s. However, Atlanta needs a reliable mass transit system that will ease road congestion and provide a connection among the various neighborhoods in the city.

The Brain Train is a good first step, or rather second step, since the Beltline will be completed before the Brain Train. The Brain Train will provide more connectivity to the areas nearer to the Downtown/Midtown area. This project is a way to start connecting the suburbs to the city by a means other than a highway, an idea that the white-dominated suburbs have opposed for many years.

Instead of focusing on the good that a mass transit system will bring, they focus on the bad, mainly the possibility that poor people from the inner city will ride out to their perfect little worlds of strip malls, cul-de-sacs and every other form of parasitic urban sprawl that would drive any city planner insane.

People keep saying that Atlanta is progressing and becoming a premier city in the country. True, at the 10-year anniversary of the Olympic Games in Atlanta, it is evident that the city has made leaps of improvement over its former self. New development is cropping up all over the Downtown/Midtown area. Two prime examples are Atlantic Station and Midtown West. These two new developments have drastically improved the area surrounding Tech campus.

However, neither of these new areas have seen improvements to the mass transit system. Atlantic Station does have a small shuttle bus that runs from the Arts Center MARTA Station to Atlantic Station, but the shuttle is underused and adds to the congestion along West Peachtree and 17th Streets.

The government needs to wake up and fund the Brain Train. A transit system is the most important addition that the city needs right now. All great cities have complex transit systems that spider web across the fabric of the city and allow residents to go from place to place without being chained to a car.

While the Brain Train would not fix all the problems that the city still faces, it would be a step in the right direction. The government is dominated by the Highway Lobby, which is comprised of the automotive companies and oil corporations. The government needs to get out from under the thumb of these corporations and do what is right for the people in the urban areas of the country.

Atlanta needs more connectivity, not just between the suburbs and downtown in a north-south axis, but also in an east-west direction more so than the single line that currently exists.

These two new projects, the Beltline and the Brain Train, should have some connectivity between each other. The Brain Train will only interact with other rail lines at Five Points Station, where it links with MARTA and Amtrak.

A person should not have to go to Five Points in order to get to another point in the city. A person should, for example, be able to go from Little Five Points or Virginia Highlands to Buckhead via mass transit without having to make a layover downtown.

To become a premier city in the nation, let alone the world, Atlanta needs to develop its mass transit system. The proposed Brain Train will cost $400 million, which is dirt cheap for the size of the project.

The universities in Atlanta should really come together for this initiative and let the state and federal governments know that the rail system is something that we want and something that would greatly benefit not only the universities involved, but the city as a whole.