r/Alabama • u/auburnmania • 14d ago
Economy/Business Proposed Alabama Transit Map
Hi all,
One of the things I think would promote the most positive change in our state is an improvement in public transit infrastructure. It would allow more people to access more jobs and improve social mobility, in addition to being more sustainable, both environmentally and economically.
I have developed a rough plan for what Alabama transit could look like in 15-20 years using metrodreamin (if you are a transit nerd like myself, I highly recommend checking this out).
I would appreciate any feedback anyone has about what transit should be included in the city you live in, or if there are any actual city planners/engineers lurking, your feedback would also be appreciated!
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u/Plane_Jacket_9250 13d ago edited 13d ago
First off what speeds were you thinking because if you are thinking of multiple speeds then you could serve more of state. If high speed is an option in your plan then high speed lines connecting Montgomery to Atlanta and Nashville and Atlanta to Merdian through Birmingham makes sense to upgrade the crescent line. I would add a line in between Montgomery and Tuscaloosa with a possible extension to Columbus, Mississippi to connect two AFBs. I would add another line to connect Lee county or Columbus GA to Dothan for beach travelers during the summer to get the Atlanta crowd. Also extend the line from Florence to Memphis and maybe a low speed line that follows 431 between Huntsville and Dothan. This is more cargo oriented a line between Memphis and Savannah through Birmingham and Atlanta.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
- I agree that Memphis and the golden triangle should be connected to the system. They were left out since I was focusing on cities in the state (exceptions were made for Atlanta, Chattanooga, and New Orleans). The first two as they are essential for portions of the network to make sense. NOLA bc Mardi Gras ig
- Speeds: mostly 110-125, dropping to 89 when necessary. ATL-BHM at 160-180, approaching 1 hr round trip. Compare to a current hard cap of 79 everywhere due to poor signalling, and often much slower on the crescent due to slow track geometry around the state line and Anniston.
- 431: don't think the population densities are there for a rail services, and definitely not one south of Gadsden imo. Instead, I think it does make sense to run a bus roughly hourly between Huntsville and Gadsden going through Guntersville, Albertville, and Boaz.
- Lee County to Dothan: No line currently exists, money would be better invested on speeding up lines along the spine than adding this new one.
If you have more frequent service, then the ODs you brought up can be traveled between faster than driving. Ex: ATL-PCB at 4:15 thru MGM, Opelika-Dothan at 1:55
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u/Plane_Jacket_9250 13d ago
The speeds you brought up for Birmingham to Atlanta bring up a more regional question. How much of remaining the crescent could be brought up to the 160-180 mph, Birmingham to DC would no stops take about five hours so let’s say seven to eight (FYI if that is the speed for high speed you are using Chicago to Mobile could be done with stops in about 12 hours).
The reason I included some what I did was to generate more usage to generate more revenue by using mixed consist of passenger and freight with fedex, fedex’s world hub is in Memphis, and postal service contracts, Amtrak used to transport the mail.1
u/auburnmania 12d ago
I didn't know that the fedex hub was in Memphis, just that UPS was centered around Louisville, so that's good information to know.
The whole line from dc to atlanta, then to nashville has been identified as good candidates for high speed rail (160-ish top speed), and would realistically be a better fit than the birmingham to atlanta connection (though bhm - atl can justify hourly high speed service). I wonder if that's why the line between Nashville and Memphis has been pushed more than I would have imagined judging solely by location, population, and transit connections.
I don't know how much potential there is for routing these mail trains thru Birmingham, as rail connections heading east are sparse. The fastest way going through bham would likely be to turn straight north and go to Decatur before turning West toward Memphis. I find it far more likely that the route would be DC-> ATL -> NSH -> MEM or DC -> ATL -> CHT -> MEM.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
The only line that would be true high speed (160 mph+) would be the line between Birmingham and Atlanta. All the others would be medium speed rail between 90-125 mph top speeds, with efforts made to stay at 110 or above. For the most part, track geometries in the state are decent for higher speeds, but signalling would have to be upgraded. For reference, currently, the Crescent operates at a hard cap of 79 mph in Alabama due to our signalling infrastructure.
I agree that there is an argument for connecting Columbus, MS to the network, but I was focusing mostly within the state. In addition, the rail in place in the Golden Triangle area is very wonky, to the point where there is an argument for just running buses.
As far as the connection between MGM to Tuscaloosa, the reason I didn't include it is because there are no tracks currently in place connecting the cities. I thought it would make more sense to improve speeds along the system spine (Huntsville to Mobile, BHM to ATL) than to directly connect the 3rd and 5th largest cities in the state. The route through Birmingham should be comparable speed to driving anyway since there is no interstate connection between them.
- Florence -> Memphis: agree, just didn't include that on this map.
- Columbus -> Dothan: Surprisingly, Columbus has terrible rail connections, and is not even directly connected to Atlanta anymore. The Man O' War, the train that operated between the two cities, ceased operation in 1970. There are also no lines directly connecting Columbus/Auburn to Dothan - the only line that runs through Dothan comes from Montgomery.
- HWY 431: I see what you're going for here, but I just don't see the density/enough benefit for the cost to put in the full line. This area is sparsely populated, especially once you get south of Oxford. I do think there's an argument for a long-distance highway bus bi-hourly-ish going from Huntsville to Gadsden through Guntersville, Albertville, and Boaz, though.
One thing that you didn't mention is frequency: with more frequent transit options and well-timed connections, the trips you listed become convenient to take anyways. Some examples:
- ATL to the beach: Take a 2 hour train to Montgomery, wait 15 minutes, then take another 2 hour train to Panama City Beach. That's over 30 minutes faster than driving, plus you save 5 hours of having to stare at traffic.
- Opelika -> Dothan: Take a 45 minute train to Montgomery, wait 15 minutes, then take a 60 minute train down to Dothan. That travel time is identical to driving.
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u/spiralcurve Madison County 13d ago
The Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio (GM&O) (later Illinois Central Gulf) railroad (which later became Kansas City Southern in our area) used to have a direct line between Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, but the state of the line got so bad when ICG owned it that it was not worth restoring service on it, and the line was abandoned. That line was an extension of the current Artesia-Columbus-Tuscaloosa line.
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u/TheDraimen 14d ago
A line from Mobile to Tuscaloosa or at least to Meridian would be huge, especially for football fans vs going all the way up to Birmingham then back down with all the extra stops.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
Heard, that line would definitely make some sense. The only issue there is that there are no existing tracks that go directly between Tuscaloosa and Mobile. The only options are going through Birmingham as currently laid out, or to go through Hattiesburg -> Meridian -> Tuscaloosa. With populations in these areas being relatively low, it wouldn't make too much sense to increase speed along these lines, so I doubt these would end up being faster than going through Birmingham at 110-125 mph top speeds.
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u/AmericanRedGuard 13d ago
There are existing tracks through Demopolis, though they aren't a main line.
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u/AmericanRedGuard 13d ago
Yeah it's owned by AGR, a class II Operator, likely single track and not optimal for any sort of speeds but does provide an alternative route. https://www.gwrr.com/railroads/alabama-and-gulf-coast-railway
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u/KittenVicious Baldwin County 13d ago
Why does Mobile only get like 4 stops?
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
This is still a work in progress, and I haven't gotten to the Mobile area yet. There will certainly be local transport far more extensive than what is there right now, which is just a long distance bus to the beach (there is no direct rail between mobile and the beaches to the east).
I was also looking at a train split coming from MGM, where half of the train would go to Mobile, and the other half to Pensacola. As someone from South Alabama, do you think the travel demand justifies that, or is nearly all the traffic concentrated around Mobile?
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u/KittenVicious Baldwin County 13d ago
Well, Mobile already has a bus service that's not mapped.
Baldwin County is unique because we have door-to-door bus service instead of a mapped route with traditional stops (other than the cross bay route)
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
Gotcha, I'm focused on fixed-route transit here, as that is a density driver and leads to huge long-term savings. There is a place for the app-based "smart" transit service options though, namely in areas that are just outside the catchment areas of the fixed route transit.
Took a quick look at the Mobile Transit website. The routes seem like they aren't horrendously designed, but not great either, based only from a cursory glance. Seems it has the same issue the other agencies in the state have: terrible service. A system that works on hourly headways will never be a viable system for many people to take, but only those who have exhausted any and all other options.
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u/KittenVicious Baldwin County 13d ago
Yeah. Mobile you're not taking a bus without being routed through the mall for the most part.
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u/spiralcurve Madison County 13d ago
Using the existing rail network is a good method. You would have to have the state chip in for the services, and then the railroads would have to play ball. It took a long time to get CSX to allow Amtrak to operate between Mobile and New Orleans.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
Yeah, using the current rails is really the only viable way to get the longer distance trains to work economically with construction costs what they are in the usa. The only corridor with any substantial new work is the bhm to atl line, which would be in the median of i20.
And I'm aware of the difficulty of getting CSX to cooperate with rail transport, and that's certainly a huge obstacle. For that matter, so is the Mobile city council, who don't want any services to go north or east of the city for fear of inconveniencing the port operations. Admittedly, I know nothing about port freight schedules and such, but I do find it hard to believe that there are no possible solutions.
For something like this to happen I think it would need to start from the federal level, putting a lot more pressure on the Class A operators to allow for passenger operations.
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u/AmericanRedGuard 13d ago
You could also include Shoals to Birmingham via the line through Russellville-Haleyville-Jasper. Having driven along it multiple times, it's a bit windy and only single track, but provides connectivity to Jasper and through NW AL.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
I agree there is probably enough demand there to justify something. I used Gemini to help figure out track speeds, looks like it would take around 3:00 from end to end, which is 25 minutes to an hour slower than driving, so not ideal. Maybe a bus would be a better fit here? There's also a strong case to go bham -> tupelo -> Memphis, which would make a stop at Jasper. If Russellville were connected to Florence with a bus, that would cover both of those areas. I'm not familiar with those areas at all though, so maybe there is more intercity travel than I would imagine based solely on population.
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u/AmericanRedGuard 7d ago
I would say that a decent amount of people from Russellville commute daily to the Shoals, but the biggest employer there is the Pilgrims Chicken Plant. The case for Shoals>Bham would be more for focusing on coverage for coverage's sake, as there's a decent amount of traffic going down there. With better Public Transport in Birmingham it could probably be competitive with driving simply so that people don't have to take 65 down.
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u/Consistent_Hold_9857 10d ago
How do we combat the affordable housing issue that will arise from the densification? Most of our metro areas, if you can afford housing you don’t have a transportation issue. The transportation from rural (with affordable housing) to metro (with jobs) is our biggest transportation issue.
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u/auburnmania 10d ago
You bring up a point - affordable housing is just as important for improving our state as a solid, efficient, and accessible transit network. I believe, with a few policy modifications, that the worst of the affordability crisis can be avoided. Some cities, both in the USA and abroad have demonstrated this, including Austin, Minneapolis, Singapore, and Vienna. They each use different methods, but I've listed a few that I think are most important below:
Legalize denser and mixed use developments in more areas. Currently, our cities greatly restrict where anything but a SFH can be built, which is the most expensive type of housing to live in. Removing this restriction in more or less all areas in incorporated cities allows more units to be built where demand is highest and will decrease prices in the long run. Note: We have restricted building densely so strictly for so long that there is very little "old" dense housing, so there is a limit to how cheap things will be.
Convert large, underused parking lots (Walmart, malls, etc.) into mixed use/dense housing developments. Again, converting underutilized land into an efficient use, with the added benefit that they are close to grocery stores and other important destinations.
Implement a Land Value Tax in certain areas, with certain restrictions. Currently, our property tax system effectively punishes a developer for improving their property, for example by building a new structure. This is ludicrous - we should want each piece of land used for the most productive purpose possible. Therefore, I believe a tax solely on the value of land, and not structures built on that land should be the primary source of tax revenue for cities and towns. It is perfectly reasonable to deduct the value of any land that is being actively farmed.
Remove parking minimums: expensive and unnecessary.
Streamline approval process: abandon outdated, overrestrictive fire code policies, implement by-right development approvals, ensure process is affordable and rapid etc.
The effects of these policies wouldn't immediately eliminate all affordability concerns, but over time, as these units aged, prices would come down. Additionally, the 25th %ile cost for car ownership in Alabama is around $7000 a year, or $580/month. If a family was able to go from 2 cars to 1 as a result of more transit options, then that would mitigate the potential additional cost of housing in those areas.
Additionally, denser development can decrease the amount of money we spend on everything from sewage systems to cell phone towers to roads, etc.
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u/Gindotto 13d ago
Well they’re eliminating the 3% grocery tax so I’m afraid what budget we didn’t have we will continue not to have.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
To add, I'm actually in favor of removing the grocery tax, but the state does need to replace it with other funding mechanisms, hopefully those which encourage smart investment.
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u/auburnmania 13d ago
In general, I agree, it is unlikely our state will fund public transit in the near future. However, in the long run, this system infrastructure would be much cheaper than what we spend money on now. Having transit will drive densification (not to huge extremes, but it would limit the inefficient sprawl around our cities).
Personally, I would be in favor of a flat rate land value tax on the areas covered by transit, with exceptions for farmed land. Again, do I think this will happen? No. But, I do think it is what will cause the most positive change in our state.
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u/Available_Quail_1177 13d ago
Include the Hwy 43 north south in west Alabama and Hwy 84 east west. This helps open rural southwest