Sunday issue: Transportation sales-tax project list
The AJC Editorial Board writes: The $6.14 billion in regional road and transit projects, while sorely needed, are far from bold. And the one exception, the Beltline, may be ill-advised. Is this really the best metro Atlanta can do?
We would have rather seen the Beltline funding — or at least most of it — go toward a project that would efficiently transport more people longer distances between homes and job centers.
Bob Ross, co-founder of the Fayette County Issues Tea Party, writes that the transit money would have been spent better elsewhere.
But Bucky Johnson, Norcross mayor and chairman of the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable, believes that an historic moment could have a lasting impact.
What do you think about the project list?
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31 comments Add your comment
Bryan -- MARTA supporter
October 26th, 2011
1:21 pm
@ Ga Values October 24th, 2011 4:20 pm
As a young black male I think I’ll pass going back to the 1950’s Atlanta.
I think Dr. Scott is doing a great job and I think overall MARTA managers have done great with limited resourses. Were there some blunders (Nathaniel Ford’s era)? Yeah,but hasn’t MARTA continued to grow and expand without a true stable funding source, up until the recent reccesion? Yes! All while not raising fairs for a number of years at the turn of the century. If MARTA would have raised fares back in the mid 2000s instead of doing what everyone wanted, which was keep fares the same MARTA may not have had to come with the threat of cutting services every year. If MARTA got assistance from the region that uses it instead of Fulton/Dekalb paying for for the entire region there would be MORE MARTA! Where is the help from the state? The same state that helps with CCT, GCT, and especially Xpress.
At this point I say to Fulton/Dekalb let’s not pay the additional penny to help fund other projects in counties that don’t know the benefit of supporting the inner core. Let’s do our own penny tax and split it 50/50 with MARTA and roads. That would be 1/2 cent for roads and 1 1/2 cent for MARTA, just within Fulton/Dekalb. If the idiots of Cobb and Gwinnett want to be stuck in the past and in traffic let them. Clayton, do a BINDING vote for MARTA. Yeah it’s going to be more out of your pocket but look what you’ll get with a 2 penny tax. Improved roads in the county and a rail line (or 2) with good bus service withing the county. That’s going to bring more jobs and development to your county, while helping with traffic relief. Counties like Fayette don’t even consider being a part of metro Atlanta. I know Cobb and Gwinnett will eventually get on but the people out there please stay there. Don’t come into Atlanta at all!
Also, the SRTA needs to set up toll roads on all the interstates that come into Fulton/Dekalb and let that money be used for additional revenue for roads and transit within F/D!
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
October 24th, 2011
5:45 pm
Or even better, make the TSPLOST a referendum to fund mostly transit upgrades in more densely-populated and more urban Fulton and DeKalb Counties and make the TSPLOST a referendum to fund mostly (but not all) road upgrades in the rest of the region outside of Fulton and DeKalb Counties.
I know that lots of people, especially hardcore transit advocates will say that dividing up the TSPLOST multiple ways between different jurisdictions will only help to build more roads that we don’t need.
But that’s necessarily true as the Atlanta Region’s road network is in just as severe a need of upgrading as our increasingly severely outmoded transit network.
Despite being an auto-dominated region, Metro Atlanta has a worse surface road network than the Washington DC Metro area, which is a transit-heavy, and by most accounts, a transit-dependent region.
Georgia’s failure to invest in both its transit network and surface road network during a period of extreme population growth over the last 20 years has made Atlanta extremely overdependent on a freeway system that for all intents and purposes was designed to handle the heavy vehicular traffic of a metro region with a population of three million NOT a metro region with a population of SIX MILLION.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
October 24th, 2011
5:18 pm
I personally like the concept of the Beltline, but it probably should be funded either through a local SPLOST referendum in the City of Atlanta, since it is an economic redevelopment project for and within the City of Atlanta or through bonds sold to investors and paid back over a period of 20-40 years.
Seeing as how important of an economic redevelopment project it is to the City of Atlanta, either a SPLOST or using bonds to pay for it should be an easy sell.
The way that the Beltline and some of the economic development projects are being funded with this regional TSPLOST is the problem. The TSPLOST tries to pay for both local economic development projects and regional congestion relief projects.
In other words, the TSPLOST tries to do too much by funding local economic development projects like the Beltline and the supposed light rail lines from the Arts Center MARTA Station to Cumberland and from the Doraville/future Norcross MARTA Station to the Gwinnett Civic Center and local and regional congestion relief projects like road widenings and road modifications like the I-285/GA 400 and I-285/I-20 West interchanges.
This TSPLOST might be more effective if the funds were aimed much more at improving our lagging and undersized surface road network throughout the region while taking the one percent of the state gas tax that currently goes into the state’s General Fund and diverting it to become a base level of funding for transit improvements by using it as collateral for transit projects constructed with bonds and paid back with fares over a period of 20-40 years.
Bonds paid back with fares over a period of 20-40 years should be the primary method of funding transit upgrades from well thought-out and well-placed extensions to what is currently known as MARTA to bus service and commuter rail.
Financing transit upgrades through bonds can get the projects constructed and up and online much quicker than being dependent solely upon politically-unpopular sales tax increases.
Ga Values
October 24th, 2011
4:20 pm
Bryan — MARTA supporter
October 24th, 2011
9:47 am
If you had been in the 1950’s Atlanta, you would like to go back. I know we can’t go back but we could replace the current MARTA “management” team with competent managers. The Wasteline is just a mtheod of bailing out the politically connected developers and making the Jackson family richer.
Burke Sisco
October 24th, 2011
3:45 pm
Shame on these people who are trying to divert money away from a world class alternative transportation project like the BeltLine to building and widening roads. We’ve already seen where that leads. They should be made to run through a belt line of the whuppin’ kind.
Bryan -- MARTA supporter
October 24th, 2011
10:07 am
For all those voting no I want to here what you would have added or what projects you would have on your list. What would you have voted yes for?
Sallie
October 24th, 2011
9:58 am
If TSPLOST were focused on real transportation improvements and not on special interest, ideology driven projects like the beltline or light rail from Cumberland to the Arts center I would vote for it. As it stands, too much of the money is going to address needs other than traffic. I think we could have done much better than the list of projects we have.
I will vote no.
sirwinston1941
October 24th, 2011
9:48 am
Far from the truth is the way highway funding is being used; rather than widening if required; completed roads and highway that should be;sending mountain of traffic downtown in the “Grady Curve” rather than around the city, keeping 400 open; using driver funds instead of closing the toll, fast lanes are no different; so we come to say that this poor, poor planning on the transporation administration part for continuing to do the same things, charge and charge again…and traffic for this city is getting no where but a lot of talk. I agree, VOTE NO! It takes a real transportation engineer to really get traffic and highways here in Georgia right; we continue to see and do the sames old things, “beltline” where is it going; street rails and trolley cars, for what, narrow streets already in Atlanta make it hard to drive and park forcing people to do stupid parking and using unsafe parking stall at those buildings and yet, we call this Atlanta a city who can’t hate! I think good planning and good road-work with good engineering around the city instead of traffic continuing to go right back into the city will solve a lot of congestion here in Atlanta. Nobody is seeing the real truth about Atlanta’s highways and byways. Instead, they are continuing to bring all traffic, parking, events back int the city thinking it will raise a lot of revenue. It won’t!
Bryan -- MARTA supporter
October 24th, 2011
9:47 am
@ A reader October 23rd, 2011 11:33 am
I think not voting for something that will obviously benefit the region because of ONE project is just stupid and holds the entire region back.
Please explain how the Beltline isn’t a regional project. Doesn’t the entire region benefit from the success of Atlanta? Yes! Does this project provide a rail system for the inner core of Atlanta? Yes! Isn’t economic development what we want for the city of Atlanta? Yes! Doesn’t dense development, like the Beltline will spur, what we want to get people walking and utilizing transit? Yes!
Why don’t you look at how many ROAD projects are just in that county. Most of them are. How are they benefiting the ENTIRE region? They don’t! They benefit the people of that county that use them but want the entire region to pay for them. Most of the people using them are probably trying to drive to Atlanta in the first place!
People like you and Ga Values hold the Atlanta region back. This is not 1950. Lets move forward and stop holding Atlanta and the region back from being a world class area.
zeke
October 24th, 2011
9:17 am
Here is what I think of this socialist agenda list of projects, VOTE NO!!!