Archive for the ‘Transportation’ Category

The problem the proposed transportation sales tax, or T-SPLOST, purports to solve would seem obvious. Here’s how the first advertisement by a group pushing the tax framed the issue:

“Metro Atlanta, we have a problem: one of the longest average commutes in America, over an hour a day. Five hours a week you don’t spend with your family; 260 hours a year.”

But what if the length of our commutes isn’t a problem we can solve? At least, that is, not by building new infrastructure to relieve congestion.

That’s the implication of new data from INRIX, a private company that tracks traffic information.

The latest INRIX Traffic Scorecard, updated this week with data through April, shows traffic congestion increases the average commute in metro Atlanta by only about 10 percent — less than six minutes a day.

Let me repeat that: Congestion adds less than six minutes to the average metro Atlanta commute. And to reduce — not eliminate — that six-minute problem, we are asked to tax …

Continue reading T-SPLOST: Is traffic really a problem in Atlanta? »

The claim by proponents of the T-SPLOST that there is “no Plan B” — no alternative to the proposed 1 percent increase in the sales tax and the $6.1 billion in regional transportation projects it would build — has always struck me as silly.

Is there another plan already prepared and waiting in the wings should voters reject the tax in July? Probably not. In that sense, the “no Plan B” talk rings true. But surely no one believes local and state officials would just quit trying to speed up the construction of new roads and mass transit. A second option would emerge, probably sooner than later.

That said, there is one real nightmare scenario for those who would have to create a Plan B: The tax fails in metro Atlanta, but passes elsewhere.

We in metro Atlanta tend not to think about the tax referendum outside our 10-county region. But the rest of the state is divided into 11 other T-SPLOST regions, and the tax might very well pass in some of them.

Legislators discussed the …

Continue reading What’s Plan B if T-SPLOST fails here, passes elsewhere? »

In any election, you’ll hear a lot about each side’s efforts to woo the woo-able. You’ve heard the names before: “soccer moms” and “NASCAR dads.” With that in mind, here’s a label for the group that might settle July’s T-SPLOST referendum: QuikTrip parents.

They live in the suburbs and have the area’s longest daily commutes. This costs them increasing amounts of gas money and family time. If you’ve seen or heard some of the advertisements about the T-SPLOST, the QuikTrip parents are the target audience.

This group may have become even more important this week when the Sierra Club said it was opposing the tax because, among other things, the project list devoted “only” 40 percent of the revenues to mass transit. In a region where only about 5 percent of commuters use transit, the Sierra Club’s stance displays a realism I’d expect from Don Quixote managing Buddy Roemer’s presidential campaign. Yet, I’ve heard the same concern from other …

Continue reading The voters who just might decide the T-SPLOST’s fate »

Here we go again. MARTA is back to complaining about the state-imposed 50/50 restriction on its sales tax revenues, which holds that half the money can go to subsidize operations but half must be reserved for maintenance and capital projects. From an AJC report:

MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott warned Monday that the transit agency needed to start preparing for deep service cuts in part because the state legislature failed to lift regulations on how much it can spend on operations.

That failure coupled with projections that sales tax revenues — MARTA’s main funding source — will come up $130 million short in the next five years of what had been previously projected means the agency will have to make cuts to ensure it has the $40 million in operating reserves required by law.

“We will have to gut significant parts of the service,” Scott said.

I dealt with this issue a couple of years ago in the special series of columns I wrote about MARTA’s perennial financial woes. In …

Continue reading Repeat after me: The 50/50 split is not MARTA’s real problem »

T-SPLOST: The Campaign began this past week as proponents of the 10-year, $7.2 billion sales tax unveiled advertisements to run on television and radio. Their message: Your commute keeps you away from your family; tax yourself to spend more time at home.

(Officially, the group behind the ads “is engaged in educational activities and will not advocate for or against passage of the sales tax referendum.” But I defy you to find a T-SPLOST opponent among the 50 people it suggests as “educational” speakers about the issue.)

Their theme about family time is smart enough. But the ads cite a curious statistic: Metro Atlantans’ average commute is “over an hour a day,” which might not sound so bad to someone who now drives inside the Perimeter from Acworth or Buford, or from Marietta to Snellville. What’s more, it’s passing strange to campaign on improving a commute of 30 minutes each way when the metric used to evaluate the projects on the T-SPLOST list concerned …

Continue reading T-SPLOST faces not just a referendum, but maybe a lawsuit »

For Atlanta residents, this week brought another trip to the ballot box — and another sales tax approved.

This time, it was the re-authorization of a 1 percent sales tax to fund more repairs to the city’s water and sewer infrastructure. It passed overwhelmingly. Just four months ago, voters in six metro counties chose to extend 1 percent SPLOSTs (special-purpose local-option sales taxes) for school construction. Just over a year ago, Cobb residents voted to keep their own SPLOST.

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All this self-taxation has observers, including yours truly, wondering what the impact will be for the T-SPLOST referendum to be held in July.

On one hand, folks don’t seem hesitant to pass these sales taxes. …

Continue reading Poll Position: What do other tax approvals tell us about T-SPLOST? »

Take the news today about gasoline prices locally (from AJC.com) …

The average price for a gallon of unleaded regular stood at $3.55 Monday, up 3 cents from a week ago and 45 cents from this time a year ago, according to AAA.

The price has risen 15 cents a gallon in the past month.

Georgia’s average price is just slightly below the national average of $3.56, which is the highest price ever for this time of year, the Associated Press reported. Since January, a gallon of gas has risen 25 cents per gallon.

… add this prediction nationally from a Friday story in the San Jose Mercury News (note the part I’ve bolded) …

Some oil analysts predict $4.50 a gallon or more by Memorial Day on the West Coast and major cities across the United States such as Chicago, New York and Atlanta.

… and tell me how this news improves the T-SPLOST’s chances of being approved by voters in a referendum scheduled for July.

On one hand, I suppose a project list with half the spending dedicated to mass …

Continue reading Gas prices add to case for delaying T-SPLOST vote »

The chief argument for approving the T-SPLOST in a referendum this year boils down to this: If it fails, what kind of signal will that send to businesses wary of Atlanta’s notorious traffic congestion?

Instead of worrying about a negative message for a couple of years — until Plan B emerged, as it inevitably would — voters ought to be more concerned by what it will mean for the next couple of decades if we spend billions of dollars on projects that don’t improve matters much.

It’s true that some worthy projects would receive funding from the 1 percent sales tax lawmakers are putting to a public vote. To wit: Improved interchanges of major interstates, such as the top end of I-285 with I-85 and Ga. 400, should ease bottlenecks that now back up rush-hour commuters for miles.

But the list is too compromised by other big-ticket items that will tie up tax dollars for far more than 10 years without lessening traffic. Transit projects, which consume more than half of the $6.14 …

Continue reading T-SPLOST transit projects don’t address real problems of congestion — or even of MARTA »

If there’s one thing I’m sick of hearing, it’s that metro Atlanta and Georgia have no “plan B” for transportation. That’s because, increasingly, there’s no “plan A,” either.

The latest example is the Department of Transportation’s decision this past week to abort the optional toll lanes on I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee.

Some 200,000 commuters travel that corridor daily. The stretch of 75 between the 575 split and the top-end perimeter is one of the most congested highways in metro Atlanta. Yet, here’s what those commuters will have to show for years of DOT planning for toll lanes and the politicized exercise of drafting a project list for next year’s transportation tax referendum:

Jack. And squat.

A real plan for the corridor — and most of what I’m about to say also applies to other parts of the metro area — would:

a) Recognize there is neither the land nor the money available for building highway lanes ad infinitum, and that new general-purpose …

Continue reading HOT lanes reversal reflects lack of vision, leadership for transportation in Georgia »

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 …

Continue reading No ‘plan B’ for metro Atlanta T-SPLOST? Not so fast »