Every time I’ve traveled to or through Atlanta, it’s seemed like the sprawl has been steadily creeping outward and traffic has become ever more obnoxious.
Suburban Atlanta’s unwillingness to accept MARTA has long been lore within road- and transit-geek communities, usually mentioned with derision of the purported fear of suburbanites of having their communities more easily accessible by inner-city Atlantans.
So it was with some surprise that I encountered this article in the AJC:
A group of Gwinnett County leaders is pushing for an extension of MARTA’s rapid rail line to the booming area, 16 years after county voters soundly rejected a plan to join the regional transit system.
Officials with the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District, which spans the Norcross and Lilburn areas, say the issue deserves to be revisited because the county has changed dramatically since the last MARTA referendum in 1990.
Gwinnett’s population has more than doubled, and its traffic problems now rival the nation’s worst bottlenecks.
Hmmm…so Gwinnettians don’t like seeing I-85 being a massive parking lot through their county for several hours each day?
Who would have ever imagined it happening.