Comments on: Driving Less

By: Ken Edelstein

Ken Edelstein — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 02:40:50 +0000

Joe: Check out http://www.whatarewefor.com for a comment on your recent comment on the Beltline there. Couldn’t find your e-mail so I’m posting the message to your here

By: Ken Edelstein

Ken Edelstein — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 02:38:00 +0000

The disgust over Sonny’s fuel folly has been wonderful to watch and fun participate in. It seems to me that the real issue is whether our state government will finally acknowledge that there is a metro area — a big fat urban metro area — smack in the middle of Georgia, and that he people who live in that big fat metro area have a right to expect big fat modern urban policies that deal with their needs. Sonny doesn’t understand that, which is why he won’t win re-election.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 19:38:23 +0000

God, as a non driver/former Cumming resident, the lack of public transport up there is enough to make a man to mad things…

A train to Atlanta might have made things a bit more tolerable as opposed to one bus out in the morning and one bus back in the evening

By: mingaling

mingaling — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:44:48 +0000

Decompressing… so THAT’S what people are doing instead of paying attention to the road.

By: Kick The Donkey

Kick The Donkey — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:58:38 +0000

Very good points. Atlanta is almost crippled by attitudes like Billy’s. Unfortunatly, I think his opinion is in the majority. People do work hard for their yuppie-moblies. According to Jim Nalley (of Nalley Lexus, et al), “Atlanta has more dealers per capita than any city in America…” I’m inclined to believe him.

A few years ago, I read some statistics that Atlantans bought or leased more new cars than any other city in the country. Not per captia, mind you. Just more new cars, period (I’d site the article, but I can’t seem to it now…).

Its going to be hard to convince people to throw their support behind a usable mass transit system so long as they think that it means they can’t drive their $40,000 Lexsus SUV 30 miles everyday if they support a commuter rail.

I would think people like Billy would be a little more devious in their support, though. Dosen’t Billy realize, if he’d support mass transit, and it gets built, that there would be less cars between Cumming and Atlanta everyday? As you said, it doesn’t mean he has to use it. It could mean a very empty train for me to ride!

Dismissing a solution just because it doesn’t apply to everyone is a nucklehead thing to do.