It was a meeting to solicit community input on what issues like transportation in metro Atlanta might look like in 2040. Potential plans showed that the only major transit initiatives likely for the southwest metro area will be found primarily in Coweta County in the form of commuter rail and express bus service to Newnan provided that funding is available.
Sponsored by the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the meeting last week at the Wendell Coffee Golf and Events Center on Ga. Highway 74 in Tyrone was supposed to be an event for residents of Fayette, Coweta, south Fulton and Spalding counties to have their say on how the Atlanta region might address issues such as transportation leading up to 2040 and the arrival of an estimated three million additional residents.
Of the approximately 60 attending, about 55 were Fayette residents. One person attended from Coweta County, five from south Fulton while no one from Spalding County attended. ARC representatives said other meetings will be held in the coming weeks.
In terms of transportation initiatives, ARC Senior Principal Planner David Haynes presented a map meant to enhance transit across the metro Atlanta region by 2040. Largely a matter of “aspirations” due to its very lofty $59 billion price tag, what the map did show for southwest metro Atlanta involved only Coweta County and a portion of south Fulton. Assuming that funding is somehow available, Coweta could see commuter rail along U.S. Highway 29 from College Park to south of Newnan and express bus service down I-85 to Newnan.
Provided the funding is found and the community wants the service, provisions such as commuter rail and express bus service could fit well with Coweta’s growing significance in southwest metro Atlanta. Coweta, essentially on the threshold of becoming the area’s economic engine, already possesses the largest population in the area and is forecast to include a population of nearly 250,000 by 2040. Coweta’s estimated July 2010 population was nearly 130,000.
A former ARC map showing a commuter rail line extending from the College Park station through Union City and Fairburn and then on to Tyrone and Peachtree City and ending in Senoia is no longer a part of the plan, Haynes said. The removal of that line from consideration met with positive remarks from a number of very vocal Fayette residents who continue to maintain that Fayette does not want or need any form of mass transit.
Haynes at the outset of the meeting challenged participants to think about metro Atlanta as a totality and to, “Think about your children and grandchildren who will be living here in 2040.”
Along those lines the attendees, divided into small groups, were asked to list the things that motivated them to attend the meeting. Among the reasons were stopping ARC, congestion at Ga. Highway 74 and I-85, halting the regional transportation concept, concern and interest for seniors, pollution, concern for the future, becoming better informed, preserving quality of life and the environment and concern for Atlanta.
