No ‘plan B’ for metro Atlanta T-SPLOST? Not so fast
You know you’re facing an uphill electoral battle when your best campaign slogan amounts to: Give us your vote now, or we’ll just come back later to ask you again.
That’s where supporters of a metro Atlanta T-SPLOST find themselves. With eight months to go, there’s not much optimism about the referendum to raise $6.1 billion for regional transportation projects via a 1 percent sales tax.
Two months ago, an opinion poll commissioned by the AJC found just 51 percent of voters in the 10-county region support the tax. Subsequent polling by supporters of the tax, I’m told, confirmed its chances of passing are precarious.
The “yes” campaign appears to be keeping its powder dry until the July 31 vote draws nearer. The experience of plebiscites elsewhere in the country, however, suggests that successful measures begin with higher support, shed voters in the face of “no” campaigns, and hang on to win.
Business leaders at Thursday’s annual meeting of the Metro Atlanta Chamber stressed the lack of a “plan B” for transportation improvements. Without necessarily endorsing the tax, House Speaker David Ralston told them, “I’m afraid that if we’re not successful next year that we’re going to have an even longer and more arduous process to get back to this point again.”
Actually, there is a plan B, or maybe it’s A-1: Delay the vote.
Tax supporters proposed a delay this summer, but they weren’t thinking far enough into the future. I’m not talking about a delay until November, in hopes that Democrats turning out to re-elect President Barack Obama will pass the Republicans’ mass-transit tax while they’re at it.
I mean a delay of a year or more. It’s a good idea, whether you support or oppose the tax.
Also last week, University of Georgia economists forecast sluggish growth in 2012, as the state continues to rebound from a series of burst bubbles. They expect metro Atlanta to fare worse than Georgia’s average, with only the ninth-best employment growth rate among Georgia’s metro areas.
Trying to persuade voters to tax themselves even more, in that environment, is a suicide mission. Businesses poised to move to, or expand within, metro Atlanta may fret about traffic congestion, but I doubt they’re pinning hopes on an altered version of the Beltline.
(To those who say the transportation projects themselves would be an economic boost: Not for a few years, given that much of the money is devoted to transit projects that are far from “shovel ready.” And not if the tax fails in the first place.)
But what about tax opponents? Why go for a delay when the referendum is likely to fail?
If you oppose the tax, period, you probably shouldn’t go for a delay.
If, however, your qualms with the tax concern the project list, you might consider it. Because there’s still a chance the tax, with this project list, will pass. And if it were up to me, the law wouldn’t be amended merely to allow a vote after 2012. It would also allow for — perhaps even require — a revised project list.
I might also insert a mandate to prioritize the potential projects based on cost-benefit analyses. I’d certainly use the extra time to settle on exactly what mode of transit was to be used in, say, Cobb’s U.S. 41 corridor.
It you support the tax, you want it to pass. Even if you don’t, you surely want to ensure the money is well-spent. Either way, if the vote is eight months from now, you stand to be disappointed.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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139 comments Add your comment
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
1:13 pm
Streetracer @ 10:49 am
I think your thinking problem is more of how you define what is infrastructure. Buses and trains or like cars. Do you call cars infrastructure? If so, where is my in kind equal welfare subsidy for my cars to match the subsidies being paid to mass welfare transit for buses and trains. Oh yeah, can you throw in a couple drivers but please make’em non-union, okay.
Roads and rails are infrastructure but as for buses, trains and the necessary human operators of them etc. that is not infrastructure.
You might also want to take refresher civics course on the role of government. It has only one obligatory primary function to serve my friend and that is to protect “our rights”, which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the rest like a free or ridiculously cheap ride that is nowhere near the actual costs thereof… well, that function is optional.
Aquagirl
December 3rd, 2011
1:15 pm
I’m still trying to figure out who Claude is.
Starting tailback for the Dawgs?
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
1:23 pm
Aquagirl
Don’t follow college football, so I don’t know. I had an Uncle Claude but he’s been dead for years. Good man, he was.
Aquagirl
December 3rd, 2011
1:43 pm
If Georgia had another pee test, your Uncle Claude might be starting. Lord knows the last one wiped out the entire backfield.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 3rd, 2011
1:52 pm
Georgia’s about to play a big boy football game for the first time in about ten weeks.
Those dirty ‘dogs are going to get whupped.
Dumb and Dumber
December 3rd, 2011
1:52 pm
Yup, let’s leave mass transit to Fulton/DeKalb and spend all of the T-SPLOST on roads. Its a strategy that got us into the mess we are in now and the only way out of this hole is keep digging, I mean build more roads; and especially build highways without exit/on ramps through in-town neighborhoods. That would really help.
Face it, GDOT, the Governor and the State Legislature are only going through this exercise because they are tired of hearing how they are doing nothing on transportation — however under Georgia law the Legislature can use the T-SPLOST money for any darn thing it wants, so the project list is a joke and you’d be an idiot to give billions of dollars to the cretins who inhabit the Gold Dome for 40 days a year.
Just sayin’ vote no on this Turkey. Instead, move near you job. Plenty of empty houses out there.
Streetracer
December 3rd, 2011
2:55 pm
MHS @ 1:13
Infrastructure means that government should provide sufficient roads so that if I have a heart attack EMT’s can get to where I am in a reasonable time.
BTW The phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. It is a philosophical ideal, not a legal mandate.
very xmas
December 3rd, 2011
3:04 pm
LSU 56 UGA 3
and that’s just the sperm count….the dawgs will be swimming upstream against the LSU tide
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 3rd, 2011
3:48 pm
“Infrastructure” isn’t in either the Declaration or the Constitution.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 3rd, 2011
3:49 pm
Why do the folks who love mass transit object so strongly to the users paying for the service?
Because they’re greedy and are addicted to spending other people’s money.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
4:14 pm
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
12:13 pm
“In my opinion, mass transit will only work on a limited scale in Atlanta because everything is so spread out.”
Exactly. You are very correct. Trying to run MARTA local rail and bus lines down every collector street in the not-as-densely-populated suburbs and exurbs outside of I-285 is a waste of time as the density required to make it work is just not there.
“On another note, you have two choices with mass transit, it can pay for itself or it can be affordable transportation for the masses; it can’t be both.”
Very true. MARTA tried to be affordable transportation for the masses and ended up being affordable transportation for the least amongst us by keeping its fares too low and expecting public subsidies from the state that were never going to come to cover the cost of maintenance and operations.
A ride on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) buses and trains in Northern California can cost as much as $11.00 ONE-WAY for the same ride that costs only $2.50 in Atlanta.
Metro Atlanta can have a transit system that keeps its fares affordable, goes nowhere, has very limited service and run times, caters to the homeless, criminals without cars and the mentally ill and is poorly secured OR it can have a transit system that actually aims to pay for itself, goes everywhere, has extensive service with very frequent run times, caters to the entire public and has excellent security.
This T-SPLOST doesn’t necessarily look to completely address this region’s mobility problems, but looks to be more of a slush fund for politicians and their crony developer buddies.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
4:45 pm
Streetracer
December 3rd, 2011
2:55 pm
BTW, I’m very well aware of where the exact words “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” appear, so now are you vain enough to say the Bill of Rights isn’t a mandate of the very things you foolishly say are just an idea and have no legal mandate? Actually those inalienable rights which come from our creator and not from any government created by men found in the Declaration of Independence have more legal weight than the Constitution that restates some of them in finer detail via the Bill of Rights, as they are universal human rights and not simply constitutional guarantees made by the United States of America.
Want to try and top me one more time or just quite while you’re behind?
Your opinion of what is infrastructure isn’t any better than your definition of it. In either case government is not obligated to provide infrastructure unless we chose to tell government to provide infrastructure e.g. like roads which does not include any means to travel over them. However, it just so happens the founders did that very thing in order to send and receive mail but they did not do it to give you an EMT service, a MARTA bus or train; those are all options spoken of earlier. Ah but heck, I’ll be nice an let you have an EMT so long as you pay for it with your money & not mine when you use it.
Streetracer
December 3rd, 2011
4:48 pm
LBB @ 3:48
Correct. However “post roads” are. And the ideal of a stable economic system and national defense and public safety dictates that sufficient infrastructure exist to efficiently move goods and troops and EMT’s and cops and firefighters from point A to point B. I do not want to live someplace where if my house is burning the fie department has to take their truck to some train station, wait for the next train, load the truck, ride to a station close to me, unload the truck, and then drive to my house to fight the fire.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
5:00 pm
Truth is Last Dem, public mass transit can only work if it is heavily subsidies beyond its cost benefit merits population density will not offset the fiscal facts stacked against what is nanny state “Socialize Transportation”.
The only form of taxpayer funded mass transit worth pursuing is a statewide private public mass transit system that would use existing rails or railroad rights of way and charge realistic fares to cover true trip costs.
The ideas behind the Georgia Passenger Rail was a good model, if privatized it would be a better model if not the ideal model to use.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
5:05 pm
Oopsy, correcting “subsidies” to “subsidized”
Bryan -- MARTA Supporter
December 3rd, 2011
5:20 pm
@ Michael H. Smith December 3rd, 2011 7:05 am
First, of all I used my real name. I don’t have to put my full name on line just to prove a point.
Second, you say you don’t use the bus because you don’t get caught in traffic. We are talking about ATLANTA here. So one can conclude one of two things: 1)you don’t actually live in the Atlanta metro area or 2) you are some old retired fart that doesn’t go anywhere anyway. I’m guessing number 2!
Now your comment says Everyone depends on roads for things like food and clothing at the very least. Which are all delivered by trucks over roads, even your mass “WELFARE” transit depends on roads!
If I read this correctly it does say ALL DELIVERED BY TRUCKS does it not. Of course you go off and say planes and trains don’t deliver it directly to the stores. Any half way intelligent person knows that. And when I said all day I didn’t mean literally ALL DAY dummy! So who REALLY is the SERIAL EXAGGERATOR?
And explain how I would “PROFIT” from MARTA? Every great major city has great public transit, from New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, to Toyko. That’s how we can tell you are just some old retired loser that lives all the way out on the outskirts somewhere that complains because Atlanta has moved out of the 1950s and the colored folks have rights now. You can see the racism by you using terms like “WELFARE transit” and “GUB’MENT”…. wow
I’m sure you would love this to be a George Bush run, 1950s style Atlanta so you can drive from the country into the city and not have to worry about no one but the ones that look like you, wouldn’t you?!
Atlanta, here is why we can’t continue to move forward and grow into a true world class metro area with a great transit system and over transportation and development leader.
And for all you dummies that keep saying let MARTA pay for itself it doesn’t work that way. Why don’t people pay for their own roads? What ever street you live on YOU pay for it. Stop taking my money for a street I’ll never drive on. It will be a whole lot more than what MARTA riders will have to pay to fund their transit system. Please don’t ride the buses and trains when gas is $5 and $6 a gallon. Please don’t ride when traffic is at a stand still most times of the day on the interstants and you see a MARTA train whiz by overhead 3 and 4 times while you move less than a mile.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
5:49 pm
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
5:00 pm
“Truth is Last Dem, public mass transit can only work if it is heavily subsidies beyond its cost benefit merits population density will not offset the fiscal facts stacked against what is nanny state “Socialize Transportation”.”
Looks like the State of Georgia is getting ready to make the public make mass transit work whether they want to or not as there are rumors swirling around that the state is plotting a takeover and overhaul of MARTA into a regional transit agency that will serve all five counties in core of Metro Atlanta as opposed to just the current two counties that MARTA currently serves by the end of the decade. The rumors are that the state is planning to take control of MARTA and fold it into GRTA and expand it to serve Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton Counties.
The $16 billion dollar network of HOT lanes that the state has plans to implement all over Metro Atlanta is a part of a strategy to “motivate” and “compel” single-occupant motorists to both carpool and use future mass transit lines (heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus) that are proposed to run parallel to the region’s freeways.
The only new lanes planned to be added to the freeway system in North Georgia are HOT lanes from here on out with some stretches of freeway (like I-85 in Gwinnett and the Downtown Connector) planned to have as many as two or even three existing lanes in each direction converted to HOT lanes.
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
5:53 pm
I don’t really have a dog in this fight but my guess is, any politician that tries to make two or three Hot Lanes on the Downtown Connector, will go the way of Roy Barnes.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
6:07 pm
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
5:53 pm
That’s the thing, the politicians are using an “autonomous” state transportation agency like SRTA (the agency that’s officially responsible for converting the I-85 HOV lanes to HOT lanes) to make the decisions that they don’t want to be held responsible for making.
When SRTA “decides” to convert more existing lanes to HOT lanes, the politicians are just going to say that they have no control over what SRTA does and cannot stop them.
Proof of the state’s serious discussions to apply the I-85 HOT Lane concept to much of the rest of the freeway system in Metro Atlanta can be seen here:
http://dot.ga.gov/informationcenter/programs/studies/managedlanes/Documents/Corridor%20Evaluations%20and%20Recommendations.pdf
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
6:16 pm
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 3rd, 2011
5:49 pm
Do you think the Republicans will feel the same rejection as the Democrats, when we vote the Libertarians into complete total power over this State?
I mean what part of “hell no” do these Republicans fail to understand, is it the same part the Democrats don’t get or does Marxism and Corporatism share the same bed at times?
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
6:24 pm
Will the last Democrat
That may be true but sometimes the politicians overestimate themselves and what they can put over on the people.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
6:44 pm
Bryan — MARTA Supporter
December 3rd, 2011
5:20 pm
“And for all you dummies that keep saying let MARTA pay for itself it doesn’t work that way. Why don’t people pay for their own roads? What ever street you live on YOU pay for it. Stop taking my money for a street I’ll never drive on. It will be a whole lot more than what MARTA riders will have to pay to fund their transit system. Please don’t ride the buses and trains when gas is $5 and $6 a gallon. Please don’t ride when traffic is at a stand still most times of the day on the interstants and you see a MARTA train whiz by overhead 3 and 4 times while you move less than a mile.”
The pending massive expansion and massive increase in import traffic at the Port of Savannah, which is already the second-busiest export facility in all of the Americas, has motivated the state to intervene in transportation in Metro Atlanta in a much-larger way than they have ever intervened in regional transportation planning since the “Freeing-the-Freeways” project of the 1980’s.
The massive expansion and increase in import cargo traffic at the Port of Savannah could mean as much as triple the amount of already very heavy truck traffic on the freeways in Metro Atlanta in a decade with I-75, the west leg of I-285 and I-20 west of the Perimeter being the most dramatically affected. HOT lanes are the state’s way of desperately attempting to deal with a traffic problem that is getting ready to reach crisis proportions with the added truck traffic that will be generated by the growth at Savannah.
The physical inability (too much existing development adjacent to the right-of-way) and political inability to widen the freeways any further to accommodate the pending massive increase in truck traffic (new roadbuilding on a large scale like the Outer Perimeter and road widening has grown politically unpopular) along with very heavy political influence from developers who have shifted from wanting to make money off of auto-centered development to rail-oriented development, has led the state to look to the other end of the transportation planning spectrum by forcing people to carpool and use transit by converting free lanes to toll lanes.
Looks like hardcore transit advocates like yourself will be having lots of company on mass transit pretty soon if the state gets its way.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
6:47 pm
Bryan — MARTA Supporter
December 3rd, 2011
5:20 pm
First, you can’t guess worth a crap.
Second, you idiot you are the stupid dummy for making SERIAL EXAGGERATIONS that no other intelligent person would make.
Third, you SERIAL EXAGGERATING stupid idiot who doesn’t know the facts about who receives the majority public assistance from da GUB’MENT your bigotry and to use your ignorant terms of mis-speakingRACISM is showing all over the place: Those of the Caucasian persuasion depend on public assistance and welfare by a far greater number than other ethnicities. You truly are a pathetic inane joke.
Do yourself a favor, get better informed, come back when you aren’t such a miserable backward thinking socialist GUB’MENT dependent neophyte. They way you think it should work is why it has failed so damn miserably.
Getting rid of people like you and the Democrats of years gone by as now it appears the Republicans too, is what has held up progress and real progressive populism reforms from being in this state on every single issue from water to transportation. Private public mass transit will work once the special interests of crony capitalism and socialism have been eliminated.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
6:57 pm
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 3rd, 2011
6:44 pm
Take a good look at the present privately owed railroad infrastructure and railroad rights of way in this State, then come back and tell me capitalizing on and using this already in place framework doesn’t make good old fashion common sense. Pay the railroads to use their rails or rights of way to put in new rails. I can’t see CSX or Norfolk Southern saying no to what could only be called found money for assets they own that are not be used to fullest their profit potential.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
7:08 pm
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
6:16 pm
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 3rd, 2011
5:49 pm
“Do you think the Republicans will feel the same rejection as the Democrats, when we vote the Libertarians into complete total power over this State?”
The Repubs are in the perfect situation because the Libertarians don’t have any money to run a serious campaign and the Dems are so hated outside of Fulton and DeKalb Counties that it seems as though no one will never vote for them to control state government ever again at this point. Republicans in Georgia know that they could turn the entire Downtown Connector into a toll road and still get re-elected because voters hate Democrats so much and the Libertarians have so few resources as to be a political non-factor except as a wing within the Republican Party.
“I mean what part of “hell no” do these Republicans fail to understand, is it the same part the Democrats don’t get or does Marxism and Corporatism share the same bed at times?”
In America, not only do marxism and corporatism share the same bed but are happily married as corporations have enough power to use marxist means (money to buy off legislators) to make profits.
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
6:24 pm
Will the last Democrat
“That may be true but sometimes the politicians overestimate themselves and what they can put over on the people.”
But in this case, it’s perfect because most Georgians consider Repubs to be the lesser of two evils. Because the national Democrat party has moved so far left (to Marxism), the Repubs dramatic movement to the left (to Communism/Corporate Welfare) doesn’t seem as evil by comparison.
Many Georgians see the socialist Repubs as really evil, but not nearly as evil as the marxist Dems, which means that, as we’ve seen increasingly in the past decade, the Repubs in Georgia can get away with whatever they want because they have no legitimate opposition party. That means that the Repubs can raise taxes and institute tolls and literally sleep with lobbyists (see former Speaker Glenn Richardson) and big business all they want to their hearts’ desire.
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
7:17 pm
I think party labels, in Georgia, are meaningless. (I think that for the most part anyway but we’re just talking about state government right now). I lived many, many years under a Democratic state government and now it’s a Republican state government. Nothing much has changed over the decades, that I can see. It’s still a click and who you know and who you ….., well you know. They all look after each other and their buddies, just like they always have.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
7:19 pm
Oh yeah this one goes out to the inane neophyte who whined about $5 and $6 a gallon gas telling me not to ride something I never use but have paid for more times than I’d like to recall. If I ever do want a train to ride I’d rather hire a real railroad and the right private sector people able to run one controlling my mass transit chew-choos.
Can MARTA can move a ton of people nearly 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel?
http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-csx/projects-and-partnerships/fuel-efficiency/
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
7:24 pm
It’s still a click and who you know and who you… know in the Biblical sense, well you know.
That’s the diplomatic equivalent for what I think you wanted to say.
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
7:28 pm
Michael H
Diplomacy has never been my strong suite.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
7:33 pm
Hillbilly D, Michael H. Smith:
Why would anyone expect anything to be different with the Republican Party in control of Georgia when many of the Republicans currently in charge (including former Governor Sonny Perdue and current Governor Nathan Deal) are former Democrats who changed parties just to stay in politics?
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
7:38 pm
Will the last Democrat @ 7:33
That’s pretty much my point. Back in the day the question was “Why are you a Democrat?”. The answer was, “I’m not really either but that’s what I have to be to get elected”. Now the question is “Why are you a Republican?”. The answer is the same as it was then. Nearly every person who was running for office that I asked that question, always gave the same answer.
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
7:44 pm
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 3rd, 2011
7:33 pm
The problem is that many of us expect lousy politicians even if by unintentional accident to occasionally be laudable statesmen. What were we thinking
Time to start voting them out and if we get lucky maybe we’ll oust a sufficient number them to make a change for the better.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
7:59 pm
Michael H. Smith
December 3rd, 2011
7:44 pm
“Time to start voting them out and if we get lucky maybe we’ll oust a sufficient number them to make a change for the better.”
But that’s the thing, whenever one lousy politician is voted out, there seems to be at least five, maybe ten more waiting to take their place.
Just the nature of politics (and the huge sums of money often needed to run for office) seems to attract certain types of people (meanly lawyers who have no problem bending the truth as a means to an end) who are only in it for the money and the power.
Most normal people are disgusted by politics, which means that we’ll always keep getting hucksters who are only interested in being in office for the “perks”.
Hillbilly D
December 3rd, 2011
8:22 pm
We have a sayin’ up here in the Hills, “If they ain’t a crook when they go in, they will be by the time they come out”.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 3rd, 2011
8:30 pm
UGA: Not man enough.
Sorry, couldn’t resist!
Always Skeptical
December 3rd, 2011
11:16 pm
inasmuch as so much of the money is going to roads, I would just as soon see it fail so that the OTP gridlock becomes even more unbearable. Maybe you can pony up for some more of those HOT Lanes whydon’tcha…The Beltline and MARTA will survive without it..We’ll find a way with or without you
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 3rd, 2011
11:32 pm
Always Skeptical
December 3rd, 2011
11:16 pm
“inasmuch as so much of the money is going to roads, I would just as soon see it fail so that the OTP gridlock becomes even more unbearable. Maybe you can pony up for some more of those HOT Lanes whydon’tcha…The Beltline and MARTA will survive without it..We’ll find a way with or without you”
Actually, the state has been quietly, but openly, plotting to raid some of the T-SPLOST revenues to pay for the construction of additional HOT Lanes in on I-75 in Cobb and on I-85 in Gwinnett.
Letting and actively making gridlock in the remaining free lanes on I-85 in Gwinnett so unbearable that it makes motorists want to ride future high-frequency transit lines planned to run through the county is part of the state’s newest transportation strategy as the state plots to takeover, operate and expand MARTA into Cobb, Gwinnett & Clayton Counties by the end of the decade. Something tells me that with plans to convert as many three lanes on each direction of I-85 to HOT lanes that the state has no intention of having low ridership be an issue on an expanded (and renamed) MARTA that they will be managing,
Michael H. Smith
December 4th, 2011
2:46 am
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 3rd, 2011
11:32 pm
This suggested confidence on the part of the State ill-placed in MARTA is likely not one that will be shared by Cobb and Gwinnett voters. MARTA failed three times to gain Gwinnett voter approval. Keeping anything renamed or otherwise, MARTA, is a very dumb move.
These iron hand behind the closed door maneuvers is what beat the donkey dung out of Roy Barnes. As you describe things this is what has taken place once again. That being the case, the powers that now be have overplayed their hand. Agree or not, I’d tell you they have written their own resignation papers and unwittingly signed them in advance of we voters gladly accepting their termination notices.
It’s all a bit too neat to be complete my friend. Lexus lanes will lose in the long haul. Once everyone has luxury it is no longer considered luxurious, if you know what I mean.
Even worse when this negative investment strategy is selling scarcity as a marketable commodity on the supply side to replace the market for capacity on the demand side by shorting the capacity futures trade.
As I’ve said before this isn’t a question of will we have statewide rail transit, the answer is so inevitable the question has become irrelevant to the discussion, even with additional roads and new roads receiving the bulk of our transportation dollars it will not meet the mobility market demand for increased transportation capacity. Geography alone made this market demand determination for us decades ago in advance of anyone really looking at the conundrum, other than a handful of visionary transportation policy wonks.
Only to reiterate the earlier cited point of Georgia’s existing rail infrastructure, the least disruptive/best use of remaining land, why MARTA should cease and desist from all efforts to re-build a railroad infrastructure, where the same geography that determined the suitable limits of our new road capacity applies equally to building new railroads, lieu of making use of the private sector railroad’s rails or rail rights of way to add passenger lines to their already developed superior product of their privately owned rail infrastructure.
So my friend if it is a chew-choo we must all ride then I’d say lets just hire the long established experienced private sector railroads with trains, tracks, rail rights of way that connects every dot in the State and the skillful knowledge of how to use it all “PROFITABLY”. IMHO, GDOT and our lousy politicians need to get out of the way, hand the passenger rail transit football over to CSX and Norfolk Southern for rapid rail implementations and leave these county public bus services out of the railroad business altogether and that particularly means MARTA.
State Rail Plan & Statewide Rail Plan
http://www.dot.state.ga.us/travelingingeorgia/rail/Pages/StateRailPlan.aspx
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 4th, 2011
5:47 am
“as the state plots to takeover, operate and expand MARTA”
————————–
Having the state take MARTA away from the incompetent management it now has would be one of the few bright spots of having TSPLOST pass.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 4th, 2011
6:00 am
Michael H. Smith
December 4th, 2011
2:46 am
“This suggested confidence on the part of the State ill-placed in MARTA is likely not one that will be shared by Cobb and Gwinnett voters. MARTA failed three times to gain Gwinnett voter approval. Keeping anything renamed or otherwise, MARTA, is a very dumb move.”
This time, I don’t think that the state plans to get direct approval from the voters for permission to expand the agency that is currently known as MARTA into Cobb and Gwinnett Counties. Most of the Republican state and regional leadership seems to be in on this plan to manufacture a market for transit by only adding or converting HOT lanes on freeways.
And trust me, if the plans to HOT lane the heck out of a road like I-85 by creating three toll lanes in each direction out of existing lanes are any indication, the state plans on creating traffic jams so massive that people will feel as if they have no choice but to either ride mass transit or pay a toll to use the freeways that they used to drive on toll-free (they had already paid for the roads with their taxes).
When the state first put in the HOT lanes on I-85 and created more traffic jams and got people very angry, like you I also thought that there was no way that this would fly politically over the long-term. But after all of the local E-SPLOSTs were renewed on Election Day, many of them by very large margins, I seriously started to doubt how much resistance there would actually be to the HOT Lane strategy and the pending T-SPLOST.
It looks like the overwhelming passage of all of the E-SPLOSTs up for renewal this past Election Day gave the state and regional powers-that-be some confidence that there may not be as much of a backlash against HOT Lanes and the T-SPLOST as they were thinking there might be.
It’s still very early in the process, so it is not known how the state may actually go about operating an overhauled MARTA whether as another government bureaucracy or as a public-private partnership or what not, but there have been very active discussions involving Governor Deal, Lt. Governor Cagle & House Speaker Ralston about abolishing CCT (Cobb County Transit), GCT (Gwinnett County Transit), C-Tran (Clayton County Transit which is currently on hiatus) and MARTA and folding them all into GRTA which would be reworked to be a five-county transit agency.
Whatever happens, I don’t think that the state has plans to be very democratic in how they go about doing it, meaning it won’t be put to a direct vote like the expansion of MARTA has been repeatedly put to a vote (and repeatedly rejected) in Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton Counties over the years.
Also, I’m not exactly sure of the date, but wasn’t the last time that MARTA was put to a vote in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties like 1990?
Cobb and Gwinnett may still be home to a lot of suburban/exurban conservatives and libertarians, but those OTP counties were very different places when MARTA was voted down in 1990. Twenty-plus years ago, Cobb and Gwinnett were still very suburban and even exurban in nature with Cobb (690,000 residents) having over 240,000 fewer residents and Gwinnett (810,000 residents) having over 450,000 fewer residents then they do today.
Today, Cobb and Gwinnett are much more urban in nature with only a few real exurban spots remaining in their entire counties. Heck, Cobb County is close to being completely built-out.
As we see in politics, places that are more urban and densely-populated tend to be more accepting of expanded government and socialism (higher taxes, more laws, etc) than places that are rural and exurban due to a real or perceived need for more services to deal with urban problems that rear their ugly head in high-growth areas (crime, traffic, overcrowding, etc).
While MARTA is so dysfunctional that it still would likely be rejected by voters outside of Fulton and DeKalb Counties, the fact remains that Cobb and Gwinnett have become so much more urban that there may not be anywhere nearly as much resistance to measures like the T-SPLOST and concepts like HOT lanes as there might have been in those counties’ respective exurban pasts because of a perceived need for more government to deal with the traffic and overcrowding.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 4th, 2011
6:14 am
Lil’ Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 4th, 2011
5:47 am
“as the state plots to takeover, operate and expand MARTA”
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“Having the state take MARTA away from the incompetent management it now has would be one of the few bright spots of having TSPLOST pass.”
The state taking control of and overhauling MARTA would not necessarily be a direct function of the pending T-SPLOST as the state only plans to raid some of the revenues collected from the tax in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties to make either minimal lane additions (two HOT lanes added to the right-of-way on I-75 Northwest of I-285) or conversions of existing lanes (plans to convert as many as three lanes of each direction of I-85) to toll lanes as a means to socially engineer commuting behavior to force people to use transit.
All told, the $7 billion that would be raised by the regional T-SPLOST and the $16 billion cost of the proposed HOT Lane network is but only a fraction of the nearly $50 billion that the state wants to spend on infrastructure in the Atlanta Region overall in the next 20 years.
I don’t know how the powers-that-be plan to get their hands on $50 billion-plus, but one would have to assume that it involves a lot more taxes, tolls, fees and much higher transit fares than has been the norm around these parts.
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?.....
December 4th, 2011
7:09 am
Bryan — MARTA Supporter
December 3rd, 2011
1:44 am
“That’s what we need to do. Wait ANOTHER year to fix traffic and transit here. Wow not smart at all. And ATF if Cobb would have voted to join MARTA in the 70s there would already be rail at Town Ctr!”
When MARTA voted down by Cobb in 1969-70 it was still a relative exurban outpost of not even 200,000 residents (equivalent to the population of Hall County today and less than one-third of Cobb population today) in a metro area that had only about a fifth of the population that it has today.
In the late 1960’s there was no way that people in what was then still a relatively new and for the most part lily-white exurb in Cobb County would have known that Atlanta would through the next 40 years eventually become a major international city with five times as many people, a great deal of them being from all over the world.
1970 was 41 years and nearly 4.5 million new residents ago and Atlanta was a much smaller and more provincial city in Georgia, which at the time was a state that was still dominated overwhelmingly by rural agricultural interests. Heck, Gwinnett, which now has over 800,000 people, had only 70,000 people (nearly 95% fewer people than today) and was considered to be so far removed from the city that many businesses still saw the county as too far-flung to do business there (DeKalb was the hot East Metro suburb at the time as Gwinnett didn’t really even catch on as a popular exurb until the late 1970’s).
It’s a little unfair to look back and judge past actions through the prism of someone who lives in a traffic-choked international urban region of nearly six million in the second decade of the 21st Century and say that people who lived in a much smaller more provincial city of just over a million people in a society that was still struggling with the very fresh after effects of segregation and Jim Crow should have expected that their much smaller very provincial city/metro that only officially covered four counties at the time (Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb & Clayton) would grow into a geographical monster that would cover nearly 30 counties in North Georgia with five times the people.
From what I understand, many people in Atlanta did not necessarily know that it would become a very big city at the time, it was just that the boosters of the city wanted Atlanta to be known as a big city and the only ways that they knew to do that was to acquire professional big league sports teams and get a subway system. They just wanted to be known as a big city, they didn’t necessarily know that Atlanta would actually become a very, very, VERY big city.
Heck, Cumberland Mall hadn’t even been built yet and I-285 hadn’t even quite been completed at the time that the first MARTA referendums were held in 1969-70, so you can’t hold the lack of urban vision against the people of 40 years ago.
carlosgvv
December 4th, 2011
8:19 am
Barry – 9:57
So, you agree that if any of these losers who are running for the Republican nomination make it to the White House, we won’t be any better off?
Michael H. Smith
December 4th, 2011
8:48 am
Will the last Democrat in Georgia please turn off the lights?…..
December 4th, 2011
6:00 am
You might be right on how these Republicans go about things but as for me, if they do as the Democrats have done, which is what you’re saying know it or not, they are finished. Oh yeah they’re finished, doubt it if you like but it will happen. So on that point we really will have to strongly disagree and let time as time alone has settled the outcomes to say who is right.
Shabootyquiqui
December 4th, 2011
9:38 am
As long as the government counts the ballots it matters not how many people vote no, this thing will pass. And in Georgia, thanks to our touchscreen paperless voting machines, you can forget ever proving the vote count or even your own vote.
getalife
December 4th, 2011
10:32 am
How about them dawgs?
Honey Badger for the Heisman.
Chip
December 4th, 2011
11:20 am
First of all, the hysteria over “Atlanta traffic” is just that… hysteria. I travel up to six months a year on business, and that includes driving rental cars in other cities all across the country. Even the “great/enlightened/progressive” cities with extensive public transportation have heavy traffic. Why? Because public transportation is worthless for most people.
Sure, for those who actually live in downtown NYC, SF, Chicago or wherever, a bus or train could be useful, when the users deliberately choose to live along a bus line or near a transit station. Some people choose that lifestyle, and that’s fine.
However, for most people, public transportation is worthless because it’s always predicated on the old model of everyone working downtown, which isn’t valid — especially for Atlanta, which didn’t start really growing until after the explosive advent of the automobile. In many cities, people work and live everywhere, moving in all different directions. This means means static fixed public transportation can only serve a tiny miniscule fraction of any city with sizeable suburbs.
According to liberal elitists, people live in suburbs because (a) they have been manipulated by evil developers, and (b) they are stupid. No, I’m afraid not… we live in the suburbs for the usual reasons… we don’t want to live in tiny over-priced boxes in hell-holes of crime, high taxes, lousy schools, and hopelessly corrupt Third-World quality city government. Why on earth suffer all that when we can live in fresher air, with green lawns and peaceful back yards, along with lover taxes, lower crime, better schools, and responsible, efficient, answerable local government?
Traffic is just traffic, and most of us who live in the Atlanta suburbs are adults who understand and accept that traffic is part of the parcel of a better lifestyle. We can get in our automobiles, and — with a little common sense planning — go where we will, when we want. We can go about our business in privacy as we will… which brings us to the heart of the problem… LIBERALS HATE FREEDOM!
Why do the urban liberals scream, rant, and rave about traffic that they really don’t experience themselves? What does it matter to them? Why would they even care if strangers living 30 miles away get caught in a traffic jam?
They don’t. Like so many “issues”, the Left couldn’t care less about the actual “problem,” it’s just an excuse. If you scratch a liberal, you uncover an insane obsessive control freak… a New Puritan who lives in constant bowel-churning distress that somewhere, somehow, someone is doing something that he or she cannot control, and that drives them bonkers.
In the Liberal Utopia, the suburbs and small towns would be dismantled and the land made into nature preserves, and all of us who live there would be forced into high-rise public housing. Our cars would be confiscated, and we would spend hugh portions of our lives waiting on public transportation to take us to the few places we would be allowed to go.
Of course, as crazy and unstable as libverals are, they realize that will never happen… so instead, they constantly search for new rules and new taxes to force on people different from them, to punish us for enjoying our freedom, and to remind us backward Earth-killing unwashed heathens of their innate moral superiority… and of course, to build more rail and “green space” for themselves with Other People’s Money.
So, if you don’t like Atlanta traffic, move somewhere else. Don’t expect normal people willing to pay more for a better lifestyle to subsidize your selfish Lefty fantasies.
Hanna
December 4th, 2011
11:34 am
Hey (buffalo)chip, I command that you leave. Your idiot vision of Atlanta’s logistical problems is pathetically middle school in it’s simple-mindedness. Y don’t U go to Alabama with your one tooth and make it a full set with the other 31 idiots that think in sophomoric terms too..
moron
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 4th, 2011
12:38 pm
Hanna doesn’t like reality, apparently. Most liberals don’t–they prefer a world run under a command-and-control paradigm, where busybody frustrated ex-student-government-vice-presidents tell everyone else what to do.
Mind your own business, libs.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 4th, 2011
12:42 pm
carlosgvv: So, you agree that if any of these [Americans] who are running for the Republican nomination make it to the White House, we won’t be any better off?
——————-
We’d be better off with ANY of the Americans in the White House than we are with Obozo.
I just don’t have any faith that the parasites will vote correctly–no one likes admitting they made a huge, disastrous mistake like the one in November 2008.