Transportation bill calls for new Northern Arc, tunnel

A new Northern Arc and a highway tunnel under Atlanta are among the projects Georgia could build under a transportation tax proposal announced Monday in the state House of Representatives.

The bill (HB 277) and a companion resolution (HR 206) would levy a statewide 1-cent sales tax for transportation projects.

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Both would have to be approved by the Legislature to pass. Then the public would vote on a constitutional amendment in 2010 allowing the tax, but would not vote on the project list.

Among other projects, the bill calls for:

• A “tolled roadway connection” between I-75 and I-85 at least 15 miles north of I-285.

• A “roadway tunnel for the improvement of traffic flow along a north-south axis.”

It’s unclear how much the two projects would cost. The bill calls for doing them as “concessions,” where private companies pay to build them and then may be repaid with income from tolls.

The Senate has passed a competing proposal that would let multi-county regions, such as metro Atlanta, adopt their own sales taxes and draw up their own project lists.

The House bill doesn’t say exactly where the tunnel would go, but state Transportation Board member David Doss said he believed the tunnel would connect Ga. 400 and I-675. A House spokesman, Marshall Guest, said he also believed that would be the location.

That would follow a similar path to a surface highway that was defeated by neighborhood opposition in the 1970s.

Such a tunnel got on Georgia’s radar after Bob Poole of the libertarian Reason Foundation suggested it. Doss then added it to a proposal of his two years ago that was similar to the House bill. More recently, a statewide study commissioned by Gov. Sonny Perdue suggested something similar, but longer.

The proposed new highway on the north side of metro Atlanta was a pet project of the state that met heavy opposition from neighborhoods along its path. It became an issue in the election that brought Perdue to power. After his election, Perdue declared it “dead.”

But in 2007, state Department of Transportation officials said they were looking for a route farther north because the project was too important to drop. They said it would probably be too expensive to build along the old route because of development there.

DOT has not studied the tunnel, said spokesman David Spear, and its Northern Arc studies were for the old route.

“It’s a pretty easy argument to be made that the east-west connector is the single most important transportation project in this state,” Doss said. “And not too far off is the tunnel.”

Since the tunnel would be underground, Doss said, the traffic wouldn’t disrupt neighborhoods.

Lee Biola, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit said the House proposal “risks being defeated by the voters at the polls” by including hot-button projects like the tunnel and a new arc. He also said the bill doesn’t provide for mass transit funding for 20 years, a requirement to get federal money.

To see the projects listed in the bill, go to http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2009_10/fulltext/hb277.htm.