ATLANTA: Demolition for Civic Center?

[Chris Creech]

[QUOTE=Terminus;3251654]
They are doing a great job at providing transitional housing for homeless families and revitalizing many of Gwinnett's blighted areas. I was truly unaware that so much of the county had declined so rapidly until I started that project. QUOTE]

My company has moved out to Gwinett just off Jimmy Carter and I'm remember again why I hate the surburbs. I had no ideal that Jimmy Carter had declined so much, but there's just long stretches of delapidated half-empty strip malls, it's kinda depressing. Gwinett grew so fast they just were throwing up anything they could in the 70s and 80s and now it's all falling apart.

We have our own buidling in one of the office parks there and I was amazed at the huge homeless populations that live in office parks, this was something I hadn't really known about. When everyone goes home they come out of the woods and make their dumpster rounds, eating out of all the restaurant dumpsters. There's a creek that runs through our area and a bit of a large low flood plain, with a whole homeless city that's you'd never even know was there if you didn't know where to look.

The suburbs may not have the panhandling problem that downtown has, but it's certainly got it's share of homeless. I think it's just much easier for them to live invisibly in the burbs.

[Andrea]

That's sad, Chris.

A lot of that area around there is heavily developed and probably more dense than many areas inside the city limits. And you are right, a good bit of it is pretty run down.

By the way, can you get out there via transit or do you have to drive? It's interesting how many of us are stuck with so-called reverse commute.

[Chris Creech]

Originally Posted by Andrea

That's sad, Chris.

A lot of that area around there is heavily developed and probably more dense than many areas inside the city limits. And you are right, a good bit of it is pretty run down.

By the way, can you get out there via transit or do you have to drive? It's interesting how many of us are stuck with so-called reverse commute.

The Transit isn't very convenient or timely, but some people do it cause they have to.

We even have employees that live in Cobb, that take Cobb Transit (CCT) to the CCT transfer station to get the bus into Atlanta to catch MARTA, then have to get the train to come out to the end of the line to Doraville, then catch a bus into whatever the Gwinett (GCT) Hub is to finally get to where we are. They're spending hours each day on transit, with multiple system transfers. You think that Cobb and Gwinett would have an express bus that connected their main transfer points - but they don't. GRTA doesn't help much either. Since I've been up here I'm thinking more and more there needs to be a MARTA heavy rail line along the N 285 arc, but forget that bus transit 285 is just too much gridlock, it needs to be completely seperate. Extend the three N and East marta lines out further and connect them with a Marrietta/SandySprings/Dunwoody/Norcross/Lilburn/StoneMtn line.

Have the stations right in or next to the old downtowns, and promote some nice urban new/old town developments, you tie it all up with light rail within each area. Then network buse out everywhere else.

Some of the routes may only have 2-3 runs each for am or pm rush hours.

[Fiorenza]

We need to convert gas stations at freeway entrances to parking lots for low range but low cost electric vehicles, lay light rail in the outer lanes, and build transfer facilities at those points for the trains and buses. Maybe when gas is $10/gallon it will start to happen. Maybe not.