Thanks much to CCT Girl for sharing this graphic on Twitter. It comes from a news article about Cobb County’s proposed bus rapid transit line (behind a paywall: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/controversial-brt-wont-reduce-traffic-jams-study-s/nm2dc/). It would connect Kennesaw State University with Midtown Atlanta and all points in between on that line – including the new Braves stadium.According to the news article, a study has found that the BRT line likely won’t reduce car congestion on Hwy 41 in Cobb, and may even make it worse. But does this mean the doom of the route? Not necessarily. As the quote below shows, there are people in Cobb who understand the focus of a transit line like this is more than mobility. It’s also about efforts to point future growth in a particular direction.David Welden, a campaign manager for former commissioner Helen Goreham who has served on several citizen committees studying transportation projects, said BRT has never been about thinning traffic.“It’s about commercial development,” said Welden, who thinks the reversible toll lanes currently under construction on I-75 will do more to mitigate traffic on U.S. 41 than BRT. “Where there’s a little Army-Navy store right now will be a 17-story office tower, or a live-work-play development.Something important to note here: when it comes to dealing with car congestion, even building new lanes and new roads doesn’t help – they only induce demand for driving over time, particularly in a growing region. Congestion comes with the territory in an expanding population. The key is in allowing for mobility options that diminish the damage done by inevitable traffic, and a big part of that is reshaping the way we build places to allow for those options.  Feeder lanes & receiver roads; but what about places? Words matterLook at that last phrase in the text at the top of the graphic; it says something about the way land use and transportation are treated in areas like Cobb that are beset with sprawl. It refers to “roadway improvements” such as “extended feeder lanes on receiver roads.” This is the kind language I encountered when I attended a GA Department of Transportation meeting about the 400/I-285 interchange project. It’s a type of transportation-engineering speak that has a logical place inside the offices of those engineers. But when it makes it’s way into the public, it sounds dehumanizing. Feeders? Receivers? The roadways listed on the BRT route are not interstate highways will walls beside them. These are places for people. But to me, it sounds like these places are being designed for vehicles – much more so than for pedestrians and the places that they inhabit outside of those vehicles. If we’re going to talk about using transportation to help shape the future forms of our urban places, then we need better language for that effort. We need words that encompass the full range of uses of roadways like these, with references to improvements that affect pedestrians and the places that they inhabit.Caveat: having said all of this,  I’m not fully advocating this particular BRT plan. Unless it is accompanied by other growth in the Cobb County CCT transit system, plus bike lanes, plus rezoning of properties, plus master planning – there’s no guarantee that a single transit line like this, along a very car-centric corridor such as Hwy 41, will result in good urbanism. It’s possible that it could be a step in the right direction at least, but I can’t help but pessimistically wonder, given Cobb’s history, if those other important steps would truly follow.