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Monday, March 5, 2007
At long last, a plan for war on gridlock
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Give it to David Doss of Rome, former chairman of the state Department of Transportation. The 10-year transportation proposal that surfaced last week is imaginative. It’s bold. And it’s the first real indication that congestion relief is driving this train.
A great frustration with transportation planning has been the lack of promised relief from the grueling ordeal of traffic gridlock. We’re pelted with expositions that advocate “alternatives” to roads, like last century’s rail, or elaborate public transportation systems that require costly equipment and operators — to take you where they go when they’re running.
Meanwhile, gridlock is the continuing result for the most flexible and personal means of transportation that provides travel freedom and mobility to all but a handful of Georgians.
This really goes to the concept of government’s role in our lives. Policy-makers should observe how we choose to live and get about — and then use tax revenues to identify and fix the obstacles diminishing the quality of our lives. Each of us, in traveling daily throughout metro Atlanta, can identify the fixes, whether it’s an intersection that doesn’t work, an exit that backs up into the interstate, or too much traffic for design capacity.
All are fixable — but, instead, we have layers of committees drafting 30-year plans that promise more of the same.
At some point, Georgians should expect and demand more. Status-quo gridlock is not an option.
The “big idea” transportation plan Doss is promoting addresses some of the state’s crucial needs, getting across North Georgia, from I-85 to I-75 and on to Alabama, for example. It addresses, too, the dead-stop gridlock on the Downtown Connector.
And it addresses the capacity problem, with a network of toll lanes around metro Atlanta. The goal is to reduce congestion by half in a decade. The proposed projects would be financed with tolls and with a 10-year, 1-cent sales tax statewide, which would generate an estimated $22.2 billion.
No tax plan of this magnitude will come out of the Georgia General Assembly, pending a yearlong examination of the state’s tax structure and competing needs. So, at best, the transportation proposal is just a conversation-starter for now.
But it has potential.
The state does need to have an open debate, with all cards on the table, about the worsening mobility problem — and how to fix it statewide. The proposed tax, substantial as it is, doesn’t scare me. What does is that this generation of leaders will fail to deliver the quality of life the next generation deserves. Wasting time and money on “solutions” that move a handful of people here and there are deadly to any prospect of building a basic system to serve Georgia.
While significant parts of it, like operating subsidies for intracity bus systems, raise red flags, the proposal is visionary — and it would serve the needs of the next generation. Killing the Northern Arc without offering an alternative way to get pass-through traffic from I-85 to I-75 was shortsighted. Killing many of the expressway projects around Atlanta, such as the Stone Mountain Tollway, was shortsighted. Both put neighborhood politics over the next generation’s mobility and, therefore, its well-being.
While I once dismissed as wasteful the efforts of the good ol’ boy legislators to four-lane Georgia, I’ve now come full circle. The neighborhood politics that have furthered gridlock in metro Atlanta convince me that the time to put in infrastructure is before people arrive. Once subdivisions develop, politicians lose their will. Capitulation is easy. Necessary projects get abandoned.
The proposal Doss brings would pump $3.6 billion into completing the 17 existing four-lane corridors, giving Georgia 3,150 miles of four-lane highways, putting 98 percent of the state within 20 miles of a four-lane.
Georgia should indeed leap ahead on transportation planning. It needs a state plan that involves the governor and legislators, one that brings congestion relief to metro Atlanta. It needs a plan with components chosen on a cost-benefit basis so that projects are forced to compete. Publish the list, along with a timetable for completion. No games. No agendas — except to get us moving.
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