A Question for Atlanta’s next mayor?
“That’s a question for the next mayor,” said Harris Raynor, a union official whose local represents 3,000 workers in Metro Atlanta.
What is?
Public transportation.
I was interviewing Raynor of Workers Unite earlier this month about the impact of MARTA’s proposed cuts on service industry workers (see posts here and here).
That’s when he mentioned the Atlanta mayoral race, and the importance of solving the transportation question in Atlanta.
I’m not looking to be political or even polemical, but I think we all know he’s right. I know some people think mass transit will never work on a big scale here, but one statistic alone tells me he’s right:
The so-called Generation Y folks – the people born between 1979 and 1996 – are coming of age, and will soon be entering the real estate market, first as renters, then as buyers.
And a whopping 77 percent of them plan to live in “urban cores,” according to RCLCO, a real estate consulting firm with offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Orlando.
They want to live in urban areas where amenities such as shopping, fitness centers and restaurants are within a few blocks of their apartments and where they can take public transportation to work, to visit friends, or have a night out on the town.
Oh, and there are 80 million of them – more than the famed Baby Boomer generation.
How are Atlanta officials going to handle this? Well, if they want smart young people to move here, they probably need to start fixing the transportation problem hasta pronto.
I just left a state where smart young people were NOT moving, and so many of the cities and towns there are dying a slow death. You can read more about what Gen Y folks want in a report RCLCO principal Sarah Kirsch gave here in Atlanta in April.
I’m headed to MARTA’s public meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I hope to see Atlanta’s mayoral candidates there.
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