Streetcar victorious; I-75/I-575 project, ports road not

By Ariel Hart and Leon Stafford

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As Atlanta officials joyfully accepted a big federal check Wednesday to build an east-west streetcar downtown, other projects were not so fortunate.

The project to put toll lanes alongside I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties was one of several Georgia bids that lost out in a competition for $600 million in federal transportation grants.

All 50 states applied for 1,000 projects totaling $19 billion, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, so all projects were long shots. But just as the Bush administration used federal tax dollars to push toll projects, this grant program highlights a presidential administration's power to make transportation choices -- to rave reviews from some citizens and loud boos from others.

"We're here today because you all have your act together," LaHood said at a news conference near the King Center. "People have to come together around a common agenda, list the priorities and then start working on them. And this community knows how to do it.

"I hope soon the state will take your lead and become a model for it."

A spokeswoman for DOT, Vicki Gavalas, said that the streetcar would help make the case for a multi-modal transit hub and network and that, "Anything that pushes that forward is very good for all of us."

David Doss of Rome, the chairman of the state Transportation Board's committee that deals with toll projects like the I-75/I-575 one, said he supported transit too.

"The concern I have is, if you look at the capacity of the managed lane system on the northwest corridor versus the streetcar, it's night and day," he said.

The streetcar expects to provide 2,600 trips a weekday its first year of operation. The managed lanes Doss was referring to, reversible toll lanes along I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee, may carry 34,000 vehicles per day in early years, said Gavalas.

The projects awarded by Washington included road and bridge projects, but also a heavy mix of rail and mass transit projects, with bicycle and pedestrian ones too.

The I-75/I-575 project has issues beyond the mere construction. The Georgia DOT applied for a $37.5 million grant that would have been a gateway to a $375 million federally backed loan for the reversible toll lane project, which would cost $1.4 billion when financing is taken into account. Where the streetcar grant joins a largely complete funding plan, the state is still rummaging for significant amounts of money needed to fund the state's share of the toll lanes. While it has ideas on where all the money would come from, much of it loans, those are not approved yet and DOT is already deeply in debt.

When the city of Atlanta made an earlier run at a streetcar grant, it put in a huge request -- $298 million, nearly the whole amount available to any one state -- offering no local matching funds. When the winners were announced in February, that bid lost and federal officials said that was due in part to its funding plan.

The grant announced Wednesday is for $47 million, with a local match of more than $20 million, for a much more modest project with no significant Peachtree Street leg. The entire project will cost about $72 million, with $6 million coming from the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District and about $18 million from the city as part of the local match for capital costs, city and federal officials said.  Both the district and the city will also contribute to ongoing operations.

The city will provide up to $1 million annually in hotel/motel and car rental taxes for operations and maintenance.

Construction will begin in 2012, with operation of the streetcar set for sometime the following year. About 930 construction jobs will be created in the initial phase of the project, and more than 5,000 are forecast over 20 years, Reed's office said. The streetcar will connect some of the city's biggest attractions, including the King Center, the Georgia Aquarium and the CNN Center.

The grant is $13 million more than the next-largest grants announced Wednesday, those for rail and bridge projects in Texas and Washington state. The type of grant and loan that DOT sought for the I-75/I-575 project was given instead to a light rail line connecting to Los Angeles International Airport in the amount of $20 million.

Yolanda Wilson, 29, lives in Marietta and describes the traffic on I-75 as "totally ridiculous." She was not in agreement with the decision to fund an Atlanta streetcar.

"Right now is just not the time to do that," she said. "Everybody is struggling with this or that. It doesn't make much sense."

She was also discouraged that funding for the I-75 project was not approved.

"I think they should have funded it, even if it was just to get [total funding] that much closer," Wilson said. "Because it's more important than a streetcar. Peoples' lives depend on it."

At the corner of Auburn Ave. and Jesse Hill Jr. Drive, Controversy Boutique owner Dawn Harrell wasn't looking forward to the street construction. But she said the project would do the area good. “It is a tourist area that needs to be built up and have that positive traffic on the block,” said Harrell. “People want to see life.”

Georgia DOT also requested $50 million to build a $129 million Jimmy DeLoach Connector, a project to serve the coastal ports, and a $1 million planning grant for a downtown Atlanta multi-modal station. The ports road will still be built, said state Planning Director Todd Long, just with state bond money.

LaHood in a national press conference cited the Atlanta streetcar as a valuable project to combat congestion "that has everything to do with connecting two parts of their city."

But LaHood mostly took the long view, arguing that a simple measure of cars taken off roads right away is too narrow to gauge the whole value of a transportation project. Also considered, he has said, should be longer-term measures, like how much business will arise along the corridor and what kind of community it creates -- whether it will decrease the need for roads. 

"If you build a bus line, a streetcar line, a transit line, a high speed rail line, a highway, what happens?" LaHood asked. "They become an economic engine wherever they’re built. Jobs are created by the people who build the infrastructure, but also by the economic engine all along the corridor. Businesses are established. People begin to use it."

Mary Peters, who served as transportation secretary under President George W. Bush, argued that transportation money was so scarce and congestion such a threat to the economy that it was imperative to focus on immediate congestion relief. She proposed to battle traffic jams with toll roads and helped Georgia fund the I-85 HOV toll lane project underway now and fund a massive express commuter bus expansion. Most of the toll road project is being funded by state dollars.

Doss said losing the I-75 grant was no surprise after he and other DOT officials met with LaHood recently.

"Clearly there has been a change in priorities in Washington," he said. "While Secretary LaHood believes in and supports managed lanes, they're emphasizing transit."

Gwinnett County also applied for a planning grant which it did not get. The winners from Georgia were:

• Atlanta: $47 million for building the streetcar;
• Peach County: $1.5 million for building on State University Drive;
• Augusta: $908,000 for planning sustainable development;
• Dahlonega: $708,000 for street planning downtown.