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Sunday, September 10, 2006
Republicans and transportation: Bound for trouble on a rail
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Word has come down that a prominent Atlanta businessman, who normally writes checks to Republicans, will host a $500-a-head fund-raiser this month for Mark Taylor, the Democratic nominee for governor.
Michael Robison is the owner of Lanier Parking System and chairman of the board of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau. He’s also the guy pushing to bring streetcars back to downtown Atlanta.
“Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor understands the critical need for a true partnership between Atlanta and the rest of the Peach State,� Robison says in his invitation, acknowledging his own “traditional support for the Republican party.�
We’re told that the above phraseology translates primarily as disappointment with Gov. Sonny Perdue’s approach to traffic congestion in metro Atlanta.
Robison may not represent a serious trend. Not yet. But it’s clear that transportation — most specifically commuter rail — is developing as a major fault line within the newly empowered Georgia GOP.
It splits Republican ranks geographically, between suburbia and rural Georgia.
The issue also causes serious friction between the party’s anti-tax wing and its business class — which is less concerned with philosophy and more concerned with keeping society’s parts moving in well-lubricated fashion.
Mark Rountree, a Republican strategist based in Gwinnett County, has become an unwelcome presence in many parts of the state Capitol, because of his forceful advocacy of commuter rail.
Rountree is a consultant for the Georgia Brain Train Group, which is devoted to building a high-end commuter train system between Athens and Atlanta — and then, beyond. The group is specifically non-partisan, but its chairman is Emory Morsberger, a developer, former state GOP lawmaker, and enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush.
To the Brain Tree crowd, commuter rail isn’t the only answer, but it is an essential ingredient to solving metro Atlanta’s ever-worsening transportation ills. “It’s the only proposal that gets you where you want to go — on time, every time,� Rountree said.
Before we go deeper, Rountree wants it said that the Perdue administration has nothing to fear from him. He’s an unabashed supporter of the governor, and can rattle off a number of Perdue’s accomplishments in the area of transportation, including the current reconstruction of the I-85/Ga. 316 interchange in Gwinnett County.
But Rountree also believes that, unless Republicans open their eyes to the gridlock that’s paralyzing the suburbs, and open their minds to the possibilities of commuter rail, the future spells trouble.
For decades, in the years following desegregation, metro Atlanta was a white suburban donut with an African-American core. Everyone knows that’s changing. But traffic congestion is close to sending the trend into hyperdrive, and that’s a bad thing, Rountree argues.
“People are making life-changing decisions to move out of the suburbs and back into the city,� he said. “What is it about the suburbs that people may be moving away from? It’s probably not the schools, and it’s probably not the crime issue. It’s traffic. You don’t move to Atlanta because you hate crime.�
In other words, traffic congestion will soon force metro Atlanta into a growth pattern more in keeping with the global history of cities — an urban center populated by the well-to-do, and a suburban donut filled with working class residents of all races.
Remember that Rountree is a Republican when he says the following: “If the suburbs collapse and go Democratic, this town will fundamentally change in a very negative way. You will have a complete 180. It used to be that the Republicans ran the counties in the metro area, and Democrats ran the state government. You could easily have a reversal.�
If you don’t think it can happen, Rountree said, look back to the 1970s and ‘80s, when white suburbanites fled much of DeKalb and Fulton counties. Slow change is acceptable, but stampedes — regardless of motivation — are bad for real estate and bad for business, Rountree said.
“It’s something that I, as a Republican, want to help people avoid,� he said.
