Our View: A few feasible plans could go a long way

In 30 weeks, the Georgia General Assembly will again be called to order.

That gives the Atlanta region that much time to caucus and come up with a comprehensive set of tactics to use anew in pushing for new transportation funding options.

It’ll be a tough sell, given the weak economy. Smart enterprises, though, often win by planning and investing for the future while competitors fixate on the here and now.

What’s made Atlanta work is that we’ve known how to convert smart plans into reality. That’s how economic spark plugs such as I-285 and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport came into being.

So we’re pleased that the Atlanta Regional Commission is taking a hard look at transportation. The ARC’s intent is to develop, by year’s end, a doable to-do list of projects that could be funded by a local transportation sales tax.

The region needs such a list of attainable projects if we’re to successfully lobby a Gold Dome that’s widely seen as skeptical at best and tone-deaf at worst to Atlanta’s cries for relief on transportation issues.

Anyone sifting through the many plans (at least 23 by one count) to separate the necessary and vital from the forget-about-it-for-now will find it’s no small task, either. Some of the plans run to hundreds of pages, covering details down to amounts to be spent for painting bridges. The Concept 3 plan released last December by the Transit Planning Board dryly notes that, “In recent years, numerous transit studies and plans for service feasibility have been sponsored by TPB partners,” which include MARTA, ARC, GRTA, GDOT and various governmental and business groups.

Prioritizing is a necessity if a regional transportation tax is going to stand a chance with a state Legislature that has twice in two years failed to hand voters a measure of control over their transportation destiny.

And the time to act is now if we’re to position Atlanta to move ahead boldly when the nation eventually begins to march out of recession. In reciting the problems and risk of inaction, various transit plans read almost like they were written by the same authors. “The metro Atlanta region has wrestled with the role of transit for well over 50 years,” reads the TPB plan. Notably, since 1950, the Atlanta area’s population has increased five-fold.

The ARC’s Regional Transportation Plan notes that “rapid growth in combination with limited project funding is leading to worsening congestion.” Those of us who watch traffic crawl along the Downtown Connector or the exurban stretches of Ga. 400 already know a will needs to find a way to start solving our problem.

And not just metro Atlantans are paying the cost of congestion, as measured in wasted time and fuel. A 2006 briefing by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce points out that Atlanta is a crossroads and conduit for interstate commerce on roads and rails. About 80 percent of freight entering Georgia’s ports rolls through the Atlanta-Macon corridor, for example. The business of transportation and logistics alone in and through this region accounts for more than one-tenth the value of goods and services produced in Georgia, according to the chamber. Put another way, transportation troubles affect a lot more than just metro Atlanta.

As the ARC selects projects that could be brought to fruition by a transportation sales tax, the questions we should face are many regarding the feasibility and necessity of things such as road improvements or new rail lines.

Should more buses travel over dedicated rights of way or new highway lanes? Can we seriously consider additional rail-based transit during these tight economic times? Should we look at light-rail routes that are less costly than heavy-rail systems such as MARTA?

What about commuter trains using freight rails? A proposed route from Atlanta to Lovejoy has $87 million in federal money waiting. The fed dollars may disappear if state matching money is not forthcoming.

There are those who argue that this great big sprawling megalopolis lacks the population density to make expanded mass transit feasible. There’s some truth to that if you compare our wooded, large-lot suburbs to the densely packed bedroom communities found in cities such as Chicago or Boston. What that argument leaves out is an accommodation for the growth that we expect in the future, as more businesses and people flock to Atlanta as they have for decades.

Keeping out the welcome mat for these taxpaying new Georgians will require girding up our infrastructure to accommodate them. Not doing so will put us on a downhill road to stagnation, if not decline.