MattW
Conductor
For years now, I've been refining my pro-transit talking points, and arguments, and style against the anti-transit folks. But more recently, I'm finding myself in a stickier situation that I am simply not prepared for. A member of another forum and I are both strong transit transit advocates for the Atlanta area, but he has gone off the deep end with his ideas. I don't simply mean he has grand visions that are nice, but not achieveable in today's political climate, I mean flat out crazy ideas. The latest discussion revolves around running our MARTA service, 52 miles to Gainesville, GA. Yes, he is insistent on heavy rail rather than even considering commuter rail calling it "cutting corners" despite HRT costing up to 10 times more in the corridor for only 3-6 times capacity. Now this discussion isn't taking into account the freight traffic, we're both just handwaving that away for now while we focus on the overall service, but frankly, his ideas are crazy. He has also proposed running heavy rail the 70 miles out to Athens, GA. Simply, how do I successfully argue against him? I'm all out of ideas.