Transporting Atlanta

The Mode of Mobility under Construction

By Miriam Konrad

Subjects: Urban Sociology, Urban And Regional Planning, Environmental Sociology, Public Policy
Series: SUNY series in Urban Public Policy
Paperback : 9781438426785, 219 pages, July 2010
Hardcover : 9781438426778, 219 pages, July 2009

Table of contents

LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
1. INTRODUCTION: BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
2. THE TRANSPORTATION TRIO: RACE, PLACE, AND SPACE
3. MARTA: MUCH ADO REGARDING TOPOGRAPHICAL ARRANGEMENTS
4. GRTA: OLD WHINES IN NEW BOTTLENECKS
5. THE BELTLINE: GREAT GREEN HOPE
6. CONCLUSION: THE CASES IN RELIEF—A THREE-TAILED TALE
APPENDICES
A. METHODS
B. METHODS
C. METHODS
NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX

Examines the dynamics of Atlanta’s transportation crisis.

Description

America's worsening nightmare of gridlock is given full attention in this illuminating study of the transportation crisis in Atlanta. Inconveniences and hardships created by too many automobiles and too few alternatives for movement have reached untenable levels. Miriam Konrad investigates three major transportation projects involving public transit and use of space issues in the Atlanta area: the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), the bus and rail system that has been the backbone of metropolitan Atlanta's public transportation system for the past thirty years; the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), a superagency created in 1999 to address air quality issues in the region; and the Belt Line, a popular proposal to build a twenty-two-mile loop of greenspace, transit, and other amenities around an inner loop of the city on existing rail beds. She reveals how gridlock, over regional transportation policy and procedures, has emerged out of the competition between growth promoters, environmentalists, and social justice actors.

Miriam Konrad is Lecturer of Sociology at Georgia State University.