Roadside trash piles up in lean economy

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tour Atlanta’s highways and see the trash.

A recent drive showed one day’s shabby roadside view: sprays of minute glittering debris, plastic dry cleaner bags, trash bags, sometimes full ones. Part of a bumper, a cooler lid and mile after mile of torn-off tire treads. All this plus waist-high weeds, some sprouting through cracks in concrete, and occasional graffiti.

“It goes on and on,” said Stuart Meyers, a retired lawyer, host of a WGST music show host and Georgia driver. “It’s important to have attractiveness in a city. If you allow a city to look like a slum, it has at least a subliminal effect that crime is OK and this place is a dump.”

It has been this way for months now, and those hoping this is mere oversight can be assured it’s not. Next week the state Department of Transportation expects to see final budget numbers from the just-ended fiscal year and the preliminary tally looks bleaker than ever. With state gas tax revenues available for spending down 22 percent, the budget gap will grow like midsummer weeds in the median of I-75.

In August drivers can expect a mowing and litter pickup, “but kind of after that, we’ve got to be on hold,” DOT treasurer Kate Pfirman told the board this month.

If the trashing of Georgia’s roads continues as the vivid symbol of the state’s crumbling budget, some businesspeople wonder what effect their appearance may eventually have on the state’s economy.

Demming Bass, vice president for communications and public policy at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, talked of showing around out-of-state executives to lure jobs to the area.

“When you’re taking them around showcasing the region or Gwinnett, you want to make sure that you’re showing off the best that we have to offer,” Bass said. “Any time that you have any blight or unkept roads, that does have an impact on the perception.”

These cuts, which have a distant relationship at best to DOT’s two biggest priorities — fixing traffic congestion and rural mobility — have wrought the most public angst by far after delayed road projects. State Transportation Board members are wringing their hands, and letters from disgusted out-of-state drivers have flowed in to DOT.

“Of course it matters,” said Rick Reder, an entrepreneur and recruiter. “If my clients visit two other states and my state has more litter ... certainly it’s a negative.”

He said he’d just returned from a trip on I-75 and “as soon as I got across the Georgia state line, I never saw so many tires.”

Reder would not blame Georgia for the problem, saying the root cause was the national recession. But wherever the cause lies, it doesn’t look to be improving.

Long-running accounting troubles at DOT already forced cutbacks in many areas. Compounding the recession, gas tax revenues, which fund most transportation projects, declined as people began to limit driving time. DOT has yet to finalize its numbers for the fiscal year just ended, but preliminary indications are state gas tax revenues will decline from $1 billion in the last fiscal year to an estimated $893 million for the coming year.

After putting aside its rising debt payments, DOT expects in the new fiscal year a drop of about 22 percent in the state gas tax. Even with cuts already made, including a hiring freeze that has reduced staff by 307 since last fall, the department is still scouring its budget to find $20 million more in cuts.

In addition, federal funds that have paid more than $1 billion a year for Georgia projects are drying up.

“We’re working in each division to try and be more efficient,” DOT Commissioner Vance Smith told an audience at a transportation conference in Gwinnett County last week. “That’s tough when you’re taking care of the number of roads in the state of Georgia,” including not only interstate highways but all surface streets that fall under the system of state routes.

Smith said he understood they had noticed the state of the roadsides and grass.

“We’re going to cut it real close in August, and I mean real close,” Smith reassured them, drawing laughter.

Every dime makes a difference. Litter and graffiti removal, which cost about $10 million a year when in full operation, has been cut back from constant upkeep to about two days a month, saving an expected $7 million, according to DOT.

One of two to four yearly mowings was canceled, saving another $11 million. DOT will still dispatch a crew to remove a mattress that could endanger traffic or mow a spit of grass that obscures the driving view, DOT spokesman Mark Mc-Kinnon said.

“We’re not compromising the safety,” McKinnon said.

There are bright spots. On occasion, a tedious drive can turn thought-provoking when graced with refuse like the undefined wrinkled purple globe — not quite balloon, not quite beach ball — that bounced slowly, like on the moon, alongside I-285’s inner concrete barrier one recent weekday. In locations like I-85 at Jimmy Carter Boulevard, some local governments and self-taxing business districts have taken on the duties themselves, sometimes producing a patchwork of manicured landscaping interspersed with bedraggled stretches. Smith said DOT’s door is open for any organization willing to sign up on any state route.

The city of Roswell has done its own street landscaping for years, including DOT’s state routes, Roswell transportation director Steve Acenbrak said. There’s one exception — Ga. 400 — which would require special equipment, Acenbrak said.

“That part is bad, and we do get phone calls,” he said. “There is trash along the road or somebody will drop a bag of trash or that there is a sight distance issue with weeds. In the past we’ve just passed those along to GDOT and they’ve taken care of it. Now we don’t have anyone to call.”