What High-Speed Rail to Chattanooga?
Decatur Metro | November 12, 2010
Over on his new site, Green Building Chronicle, Ken Edelstein reports that only 24 members of the general public attended a GDOT meeting earlier this week considering route options of a potential high-speed train from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to Chattanooga, TN.
Ken theorizes on why turn out was so low in Atlanta – general cynicism of transportation projects, no AJC coverage, a focus on other rail projects around Atlanta – but really I think it comes down to an unclear message of “Why exactly are we looking at high-speed rail to Chattanooga?”. The recent $4 million grant to connect high-speed rail to Charlotte currently makes a lot more sense at first glance. The map above shows that a Chattanooga line would only connect to Chicago in the “long-term”.
I’m not sure we can sell a rail line north on promises of quicker trips to Cleveland.
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Perhaps all this talk of rail is causing a collective headache. It’s certainly hard to keep track of what’s greenlit and what’s not. Off the top of my head, I can think of proposed lines from Atlanta to Athens, Macon, Charlotte & Birmingham, not to mention the Beltline, downtown streetcar, & Marta funding challenges. Considering these may not be complete for a few decades, it’s not surprising that confusion could lead to apathy.
The reason the Chattanooga line is even on the radar is because David Doss, the GDOT Board Chair, is enamored with mag-lev which is both impractical and expensive. He is from Rome and thinks it would be great to get to Atlanta in 30 minutes. Remember his “choo-choo” comment.
Ahhh…I figured it must be something like this. $4 million well spent!
Chattanooga is awesome, that’s why.
I’m going to say it – their aquarium is better than ours.
It’s not bigger, but it’s better. More tasteful, less hectic, more educational.
Oh goody. A choo-choo to go see the fishies.
My son would LOVED to choo-choo to the fishies back when he was 18 mos. to 3 years of age. In fact, our family alone probably could have put the project in the black.
Much better children’s museum, too.
Agree. The one here is only appropriate for a very narrow age range of children.
The advantages in dealing with Hartsfield capacity are real. Chattanooga is an MSA with 600,000 people, more than enough to support high speed rail between the two cities. And the close proximity to Atlanta facilitates the ridership numbers.
Finally, it is a simpler project since 90% of the construction would be in GA, versus the Charlotte line requires work from GA, NC, and crucially SC. So the Charlotte concepts is exponentially more complicated.
And Chattanooga is awesome….
You would be amazed how many people actually commute from Chattanooga to Atlanta EVERY DAY. There’s a whole industry of shuttle buses from Hartsfield to Chattanooga- and they charge a heck of a lot more than a train ticket would cost. And we need to get to Chicago eventually.
Oh- And Chattanooga is awesome…