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Health & Fitness

Cobb Loves Commuter Rail

Cobb has had a long positive relationship with commuter rail. Only recently did Cobb began to pretend to hate mass transit.

For instance under, Streetcars in Marietta (http://www.railga.com/oddend/streetrail/mariettastr.html), you’ll read that “Marietta was the northern terminus of an interurban line that ran between downtown Atlanta and the Cobb County city for nearly 42 years. Operated as the Atlanta Northern Railway, a subsidiary of the Georgia Railway & Electric Company, the electric-car system began operations on July 17, 1905.

The Atlanta end of the 18-mile line was at Walton, Forsyth, and Marietta Streets, where it connected with that city's streetcar system. On the Marietta end it followed Atlanta Street and then circled the city square.” While still very busy, a bus company bought it in 1946 and closed it. The last car ran on Jan. 31, 1947.

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What makes today’s transportation environment different from the 42 years of happy commuting on the early version of commuter rail? Critics say that there isn’t enough population density to justify commuter rail. The population of metro Atlanta during the life of this trolley line was much smaller.

Critics of mass transit in Cobb constantly talk about the criminal elements having access to Cobb.  The trolley line had 22 stops and anyone could ride into or out of Cobb for 4 decades. Though back then riding on mass transit meant whites up front and blacks to the back. Today, mass transit into Cobb would be integrated mass-transit.

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Today, we have gridlocked traffic and auto pollution but still no commuter rail but we do have that integration thing. Commuter rail is the new code word for racism in metro Atlanta, Cobb anyway. Since logical reasons are not available to criticize commuter rail, creative fantasy is employed (lying).

There is that other reason. The old trolley line was privately owned. Today mass transit is public, like public schools, public sidewalks, public parks, public libraries, public social security, public hospitals, public fire, and police as well as public roads. Ask a Republican what they think about “public” stuff and they will say that they are 100 percent against socialism and all of its manifestations and anything public is socialism. Neal Bortz used to regularly criticize “government schools”.

Do some or all of these explanations tell us why there is no commuter rail in Cobb? It is hard to say. When the opponents of mass transit tell the truth about their opposition, then their real grievances can be addressed.

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