Openness, ideas can get Georgia rolling
By Kelly McCutchen
To get transportation policy back on track, Georgia must embrace projects with clear impact and broad support, rebalance infrastructure spending and rebuild public trust.
Rebuilding trust involves transparency and reform. Simply streaming Georgia Department of Transportation meetings online, as do many state agencies, will open them to the public. Reform begins with addressing the common complaint of the “alphabet soup” of agencies; consolidating some could simplify governance and cut costs.
Georgians also need to understand how individual projects fit into a long-term vision. For example, Georgia has an opportunity to cut congestion in Atlanta by investing in projects that will divert through traffic away from the metro area. Estimates suggest this could reduce truck traffic in Atlanta 30 percent to 60 percent. This helps improve our freight network and is far more affordable than adding capacity inside Atlanta.
Technology, too, can maximize the value of existing infrastructure. Atlanta should have a premier Intelligent Transportation System: technology to synchronize signals at intersections, dynamically react to incidents and transmit real-time traffic data to drivers. With autonomous, “driverless” vehicles already being tested in real-life traffic, Atlanta should be ahead of the competition.
Transit’s long-term vision should be an interconnected network reflecting commuting patterns. Atlanta’s only realistic network approach is a focus on rubber-tired transit: Bus Rapid Transit vehicles that look and feel like light-rail vehicles. They can escape traffic via HOV, HOT or managed lanes on interstates and dedicated lanes where needed on arterial routes, offering competitive trip times and costing far less than rail.
The state should lead this effort by providing transit funding in metro Atlanta and statewide. Transit enhances economic opportunity by providing access to jobs and education, plus mobility for the disabled or elderly.
How to pay for it? The best policy on transportation funding is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Several possible sources exist.
All new capacity, where possible, should be funded by tolls. Dynamic tolling creates routes that are congestion-free even during rush hours, helping both commuters and transit riders.
Less than half of Georgia’s sales tax on motor fuel is dedicated to transportation. Shift some of those dollars back to transportation. Understandably, this will have to be phased in to minimize the impact on the general fund budget, but it will provide flexible dollars for both transit and roads.
Georgia is among the top 10 in the nation in education capital spending and the bottom 10 in transportation capital spending. Correct this by allowing counties to voluntarily replace the local sales tax that funds education brick-and-mortar projects (E-SPLOST) with a fractional sales tax, up to 1 percent, for education capital spending and/or transportation spending.
This approach enables Georgia to start enhancing quality of life and economic opportunity immediately and meaningfully, without raising taxes.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s proposals are simply a framework to get Georgia moving. Now, Georgia’s leaders must find the common ground for a targeted, fiscally sound approach to transportation that moves the state and the economy forward.
Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
14 comments Add your comment
Rick
October 9th, 2012
3:42 pm
No one is going to trust Governor Deal to be open and ethical. Look at his actions, the number of warranted investigations, and even his most recent threat of one of the strongest community activist when it comes to ethics and open records.
Quoshanique
October 9th, 2012
2:45 pm
“With autonomous, “driverless” vehicles already being tested in real-life traffic, Atlanta should be ahead of the competition.”
That pretty well exemplifies the naivete and cluelessness of the entire article. Even if we did deploy driverless vehicles the author would have us buy into the notion that other cities (”the competion”) wouldn’t use the technology too. Like the leaders in Charlotte and Birmingham would say “nope, can’t use driverless vehicles here, they already do that over in Atlanta”. What a farce.
MANGLER
October 9th, 2012
10:34 am
The “Dynamic toll lanes” in use make congestion worse by removing traffic lanes from an already over capacity highway. The only way to justify that statement would be if the toll lanes were new and separate from the existing lanes. They wouldn’t be reducing capacity as they are now. Not to mention the existing ones that cost $56m to construct and $4m in year 1 to operate and yet brought in $2M while worsening congestion in the process.
The transit minds have never quite realized that not everyone in Atlanta lives OTP and is commuting into downtown. 5.4 Million people in the metro and 800k work in the city. The majority of us don’t follow the commuting patterns that transit seems to want us to. Until there are transit options OTP to OTP criss-crossing those darned suburbs (you know, where most metro residents live play and work), congestion will remain an issue. MARTA is a nice concept, and I see a bus occasionally here and there, but try using transit options when you don’t ever go into the city.
As for redirecting money from Education to transportation … might as well pave shiny new dynamic toll roads directly to the State funded private charter schools.
Stan
October 9th, 2012
10:21 am
An outer perimeter to minimize truck traffic on 285 is a great idea. Toll roads are the way to go as well.
Every other part of the country uses toll roads; we need to get with the program if we want the region to continue to be vibrant, and not stagnate due to traffic!!
Chip
October 9th, 2012
9:07 am
Well, what’s surprising about this? Another “expert” from a “policy foundation” advocating MORE government, MORE high-dollar boondoggles, MORE social engineering and people-control, paid for with MORE taxation… all of which will benefit the power-hungry control freaks and the well-connected cronies.
Here is reality: anyone who wants to, can get around Atlanta just fine. If people couldn’t, MANY WOULD MOVE AWAY, but they don’t… proving that normal people who must deal with traffic adapt and do so as grown adults who accept it as part of the price of living here for whatever reason. Personally, I travel all over the metro region at all times of day and never really worry about it.
Who screams and rants about traffic all the time? Liberal local media and liberal control freak activists who can’t stand the idea that people are free to live, work, and travel where they wish; liberal local media who need “stories” and headlines; elitist liberal in-towners who need yet another reason to look down on anyone different from themselves; and big-government power types and connected cronies who will score millions of taxpayer dollars off all these magical proposed “solutions.”
Enough already! OBVIOUSLY the taxpayers see right through all the baloney, as proven by the overwhelming vote results the other month. And by the way, having traveled large parts of the world, I can assure you that Atlanta will NEVER be a “world class city.” Atlanta is a silly, hopelessly corrupt provincial joke of a small town with a bungling, useless Third World quality government. If you want to live in a world class city, start packing.
Sorry folks, that’s just the way it is.
Zen Galacticore
October 9th, 2012
4:06 am
More rapid rail and light rail people, that’s what we not only need, but have to have in order to be a World Class City.
An observer
October 8th, 2012
8:14 pm
Did the author say that less than half of the gasoline tax goes to transportation projects? If that is true, the public needs to fire every politician that advocated the T-SPLOST. Georgians are being abused by government!
Selah
October 8th, 2012
8:08 pm
If we want to fix the traffic problems in Georgia, we need to EXPORT all the rude, foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, poor-driving yankees who have infested our State over the last 20 years and clogged up our roads with their incompetent driving.
SAWB
October 8th, 2012
7:25 pm
Maybe we should let Gwinnett County Prosecutors complete their investigation of the County Government before we suggest they implement new taxes related to transportation. I would like to at least know the felons are out of office and then we can start on the simply incompetent.
Vince
October 8th, 2012
6:46 pm
You want to establish public trust? Take down the toll booth on highway 400. It was set to expire in 2011, but our political leaders have betrayed public trust by extending that deadline until the end of the decade. Increase speed limits city-wide. Start running the state with competence.