Future of Atlanta Amtrak Station

[Bob Dylan]

Intermodal Stations are the way to go and the cities with progressive and smart leaders ( for example Los Angeles, Denver, St Louis,Miami,Ft Worth,St Paul and even Washington DC!!! )are going this route when building new stations or rehabbing old ones!)

That's why I'm surprised that Seattle didn't follow this model when King Street Station was rehabbed and allowed Greyhound to build a new stand alone station as well as didn't provide for direct access to the Light Rail!

 

[xyzzy]

The alternative to a new Amtrak station in Atlanta is adding a suburban stop in the vicinity of Duluth and another in the vicinity of Austell. The problem in metro Atlanta is that it takes an hour+ for many (most?) of metro residents to reach either the current Brookwood site or the proposed site -- particularly since arrival/departure times for the Crescent in Atlanta happen to coincide with rush hours. But although the City has done basically nothing to build a replacement for Brookwood, it would do anything to prevent a replacement in the suburbs.

 

[Ind Ben]

The over crowding not to mention long term parking,witch in nearly non exient.

 

[afigg]

Ok, so we got updates thanks to MattW that the MARTA coverage area may be expanding in the coming years. That is, if the referendum is passed.

GA DOT and Atlanta are at least continuing with the EIS and studies for the MMPT and it may advance to the development and engineering design stages.

But, there have been no updates or rumors posted here on what is going on with effort to build a new station at the 17th St and Northside location. Is the developer that was selected still working on coming up with plans and financing for it? Or have the plans to put an Amtrak station at the Northside location been dropped or stalled in favor of waiting on the MMPT? Which could be a long wait. Anyone know?

 

[MattW]

Movement in South Carolina. Will probably amount to nothing of course, but may be relevant: http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140704/PC16/140709713

Well, I can't find anything about the Atlantic Station um...station, but if our neighboring state starts getting serious, our politicians probably won't wait to be beat by them either.

 

[me_little_me]

I fully expect a new station well earlier than 2100. :giggle:

Nothing has come of any of the plans in well over 20 years.

 

[xyzzy]

20 years? Somewhere in the house I have a clipping from the Atlanta Constitution (still separate papers back then) from 1980 about a proposed resumption of Atlanta-Savannah. Amtrak even ran a demo train, departing from the former Terminal Station site.

 

[cirdan]

Real Estate in downtown station locations is expensive. Unless there is a reasonable way to build the air rights above the proposed station area, no one is going to wait around not exploiting the value of the real estate hoping some day to build station platforms.

I'm not talking about buying some land, putting a fence around it and waiting 50 years. That is a criminal waste of capital.

Sometimes you can repurpose things. For example in New Orleans some former railroad platforms were removed to create space for Greyhound. I guess this is a change that can be reversed fairly easily should the need arise. What matters is that the railroad maintains the freehold so it can reclaim that land. Many commercial uses such bas IKEA shops are also of limited timescale. The whole building isn't made to last and that whole concept of buying furniture is one that can easily move on and be replaced by something completely different. How about putting them on a 20 year or 30 year lease and then re-negotiating when the time comes, but having decent rental income in the interim?

 

[user 1215]

20 years? Somewhere in the house I have a clipping from the Atlanta Constitution (still separate papers back then) from 1980 about a proposed resumption of Atlanta-Savannah. Amtrak even ran a demo train, departing from the former Terminal Station site.

Even if they COULD get the track between Atlanta - Macon - Savannah up to accepting a track speed that can remotely compete with cars, the station situation in Savannah is horrible. For a resident, like me, travelling out is not so bad. Drive to the station, park and ride. But for tourists, you come into a dark, desolate station in a poorly lit industrial zone where a handful of taxis are available to whisk folks into downtown...

There is a bus that runs between the SAV station and the new intermodal bus gateway (for Catch-a-Cat busses & Greyhound), but the timing seems to be irrelevant to train travel, seemingly only useful to the three employees that work any particular shift...

The last passenger train to carry passengers from SAV to ATL was the day before Amday - April 30, 1971. On that day, the train crew was disgusted at the huge number of people bidding it farewell, claiming "If those folks sad to see us go actually rode the train, we wouldn't be going anywhere".

Yet, around 8 or 9 people - including myself - every couple of years want to see it return.

 

[xyzzy]

Getting off topic a bit. The ACL and SAL did the best they could in 1962 when the highway-obsessed GDOT (then and now) decided to obliterate Savannah Union Station in order to build Interstate 16 on the cheap. It's also fair to say that the City of Savannah was hot to get I-16 and therefore the city leaders didn't oppose moving the train station farther away.

The "new" Savannah station is indeed inconvenient for visitors, but at least ACL and SAL built it large enough -- and it does have plenty of parking. 50 years later, the building fulfills its purpose. Basically the same thing happened in Charleston, SC.

Macon-Savannah trackage is in about the same condition today as in 1971. But NS would insist on signals, at a minimum. The problem is Atlanta-Macon.

 

[neroden]

All of those are important factors to consider. That is what makes Atlanta intriguing, since its population is likely to grow and its transportation needs will too. but its political inclinations appear to be pointed more towards self destruction. So what do you do?

OTOH Minneapolis/St. Paul, in spite of all good intentions is unlikely to see a population growth like in the Sun Belt. But is more inclined towards rail as it stands, so it is probably a more fertile ground for some good future planning.

It really is. In the spirit of going off-topic, the Central Corridor / Green Line light rail is already exceeding ridership projections, in its second week (after they started charging full price):

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_26083507/st-paul-minneapolis-light-rail-ridership-growing

It's worth remembering that the Twin Cities already had to redo their ridership models once, before the Central Corridor was planned, to increase the "rail bias" factor. This was because of gross underestimates on the Hiawatha Line. The bias towards rail seems to be extra-strong in the Twin Cities.

BTW, that sentence that neorden responded to was actually set up as a bait for him and he did take it.

Troll. Eh, I don't mind. I can never avoid responding to stuff like that, though, even when I suspect I'm being trolled.

 

[jis]

All in the spirit of random camaraderie

 

[user 1215]

Getting off topic a bit. The ACL and SAL did the best they could in 1962 when the highway-obsessed GDOT (then and now) decided to obliterate Savannah Union Station in order to build Interstate 16 on the cheap. It's also fair to say that the City of Savannah was hot to get I-16 and therefore the city leaders didn't oppose moving the train station farther away.

The "new" Savannah station is indeed inconvenient for visitors, but at least ACL and SAL built it large enough -- and it does have plenty of parking. 50 years later, the building fulfills its purpose. Basically the same thing happened in Charleston, SC.

Macon-Savannah trackage is in about the same condition today as in 1971. But NS would insist on signals, at a minimum. The problem is Atlanta-Macon.

Absolutely true, and I cringe every time I go into the downtown Savannah area NOT on I-16 and see the relatively few that do. Note that it wasn't I-16 itself that needed the terminal obliterated, but rather just the interchange. I-16 could have been built to cross over the railroad to the West of the building on its way to South Carolina.

Today, the station is regrettably in the best place for the routes that it serves. With the Star going up the ACL and the Meteor, AT & Palmetto going up the SCL, the junction is just north of the current station. To try and get the station closer to downtown would require an agreement and a lot of trackwork to interface with Norfolk Southern to get access to the trackage near bay street - and it would not be efficient at all.

Anyway - I would love to see the ATL - Macon - Savannah train return as the Nancy Hanks III, but I've already spent my whole life with it not happening and won't expect it in the next 42 years either.

 

[twa904]

The site at 17th Street is no longer available to Amtrak. What about a site just across the tracks a

a few hundred feet east that is bounded by State Street/20th St and Atlantic Station on the south, I75 on the east, Target on the west and the current tracks on the north. It is possible this site might be owned by Atlantic Station.

 

[Palmland]

Aren't there two routes from Macon to ATL, SRY and CofG? And Atlanta has talked that might be the first commuter line. Bu t not likely to see a revival of the Nancy Hanks unless NC DOT takes over Georgia.

As a boy I well remember my ride on NAncy Hanks. A recent visit to the excellent Rr museum in SAV they talked of rebuilding the viaduct to allow excursions from there. It's next to the old CofG station now visitor center.

 

[dlagrua]

The real shame of it all is that Atlanta once had two nice train stations. One was large and beautiful called Terminal Station (raised in 1972) , the other smaller and efficient but when passenger rail declined in the 1960's both stations were torn down. The larger station was quite magnificent and I've only seen it in pictures. Anyone here remember it?

What city in its right mind destroys a station like this?

Can't seem to ever get this forum to accept URL's but look up Terminal Station in Atlanta and see it

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Atlanta_Terminal_Station.jpg/300px-Atlanta_Terminal_Station.jpg

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8498/8343903832_22ec4fa20d_z.jpg

 

[neroden]

Yeah, Atlanta lost two good train stations.

Well, a lot of cities lost good train stations. In my neck of the woods, Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse; Rochester was demolished entirely, Buffalo was left to rot (because it was too expensive to tear down), and at Syracuse the building is intact and used by another company, but the tracks are severed! The latter is probably the worst situation, really.

 

[Anderson]

Richmond, VA got lucky in that of the two nice stations it had, one is back in service (Main Street Station was taken out of service following Hurricane Agnes flooding the whole neighborhood, though Amtrak had wanted out for a while) while the other is the Virginia Science Museum (though IIRC the tracks are still there to Broad Street Station).

And the answer is that not many cities in their right minds would knock down those stations...but a lot of cities took leave of their right minds sometime in the 50s. In other cases, the city wasn't part of the equation (since unlike most commuter terminals, most of the old stations were privately owned and in some cases the alternative would have been a massive deteriorating eyesore like happened in Detroit...more specifically, with Michigan Central Station) and it didn't make sense for anyone to maintain a massive station for one or two trains per day.

Let's also not forget the saga of Washington Union Station (which lost passenger service for quite a while in lieu of the putting a smaller building on property, if I'm not mistaken, and which wasn't kept up well for a while). I think that might be illustrative...you had plenty of cases where the alternatives were public ownership (expensive for light service), forced private ownership that would probably have found ways to let the building collapse while insulating themselves from liability (cheaper but long-term problematic), and demolition (unfortunate).

 

[jphjaxfl]

The real shame of it all is that Atlanta once had two nice train stations. One was large and beautiful called Terminal Station (raised in 1972) , the other smaller and efficient but when passenger rail declined in the 1960's both stations were torn down. The larger station was quite magnificent and I've only seen it in pictures. Anyone here remember it?

What city in its right mind destroys a station like this?

Can't seem to ever get this forum to accept URL's but look up Terminal Station in Atlanta and see it [Atlanta Union Station made it to April 30,1971 with the former Georgian of the L&N Railroad arriving and departing. I arrived at Union Station in February, 1971 on the L&N train and departed on the Nancy Hanks II which departed from the basement of the Southern Railway Building. Southern had already moved the Southern Crescent and Piedmont LTD to Peachtree Station which Amtrak still uses. Terminal was sitting emplty on April 30, 1971. The Georgia Railroad arrived and departed from a Freight Station across from the Georgia State Capital. On April 30, 1971, Atlanta had 4 stations for 5 departures and 5 arrivals. At the present time the majority of the people in Atlanta think of the train station as a MARTA station and don't know there is an Amtrak station.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Atlanta_Terminal_Station.jpg/300px-Atlanta_Terminal_Station.jpg

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8498/8343903832_22ec4fa20d_z.jpg

 

[jphjaxfl]

Richmond, VA got lucky in that of the two nice stations it had, one is back in service (Main Street Station was taken out of service following Hurricane Agnes flooding the whole neighborhood, though Amtrak had wanted out for a while) while the other is the Virginia Science Museum (though IIRC the tracks are still there to Broad Street Station).

And the answer is that not many cities in their right minds would knock down those stations...but a lot of cities took leave of their right minds sometime in the 50s. In other cases, the city wasn't part of the equation (since unlike most commuter terminals, most of the old stations were privately owned and in some cases the alternative would have been a massive deteriorating eyesore like happened in Detroit...more specifically, with Michigan Central Station) and it didn't make sense for anyone to maintain a massive station for one or two trains per day.

Let's also not forget the saga of Washington Union Station (which lost passenger service for quite a while in lieu of the putting a smaller building on property, if I'm not mistaken, and which wasn't kept up well for a while). I think that might be illustrative...you had plenty of cases where the alternatives were public ownership (expensive for light service), forced private ownership that would probably have found ways to let the building collapse while insulating themselves from liability (cheaper but long-term problematic), and demolition (unfortunate).Does Richmond Hull Street (former Southern Railway Station still exist? I have seen pictures, but never saw it live. I travel from both Main Street and Broad Street.

 

[xyzzy]

Yes, there are two lines between Atlanta and Macon, ex-Southern and ex-CofG. The ex-CofG was allowed to deteriorate immediately after the Nancy Hanks II made its last run in 1971. From time to time NS has done heavy maintenance on segments of the line, but it would still require substantial investment to support passenger trains at 60+ mph. (For one thing, Southern took out the signals on most of the line.) Southern and NS have consistently preferred the ex-Southern route for freight, and indeed that one is a very busy line although reductions in coal traffic may loosen it up somewhat.

One problem is that the two routes approach the former station in Macon in different directions. You can't run south over the ex-Southern and then continue south to Savannah without a long detour to turn the train. But the ex-CofG has a problem in that respect too because the bridge was removed that took trains from the ex-CofG into the station.

Terminal Station in Atlanta was well positioned to serve trains like Atlanta-Macon-Savannah, Cincinnati-Atlanta-Florida, and NY-Atlanta-Mobile-New Orleans -- but it was a pain in the neck for NY-Atlanta-Birmingham-New Orleans. That's why Southern moved the Southern Crescent and the truncated Piedmont out of Terminal Station and let Peachtree a/k/a Brookwood Station carry the whole burden. Union Station was also a difficult place to run through-trains, although it could handle trains originating or terminating in Atlanta without too much operational pain.

 

[Crescent ATN & TCL]

I think its imperative that the new ATL station be connected directly to MARTA rail. It shouldn't be hard to do as the Crescent follows MARTA north out of ATL past several adjacent stations. Having an Amtrak station connected by a walkway would mean a direct connection to downtown, the airport and the rest of the system.

I've gone to the current station via MARTA and it currently requires a bus transfer or a pretty good hike the rest of the way from Arts Center Station. Having a direct connection to MARTA Rail is tho only way to serve downtown without a complicated reroute to downtown and a downtown station which would be much more costly to build.