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Friday, June 13, 2008
Commuter ‘pilot project’ to Lovejoy off the rails
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eons ago, before “the Bridge to Nowhere” aroused the nation to the outlandish waste represented by congressonal earmarks — those unexamined pork barrel projects that individual politicians dump onto taxpayers — commuter rail to Lovejoy was born.
It came about not because anybody had examined the transportation or congestion-relief value of a slow train that would traverse the 26 miles from Atlanta to Lovejoy. It came about because somebody prevailed on former U.S. Rep. Mac Collins, who represented the area, to earmark $87 million of the transportation money otherwise coming to Georgia, to create the Lovejoy line.
More than a decade later, Gov. Sonny Perdue drank the Kool-Aid. Reasoning that the money’s just setting there, and gas is $4 a gallon, he made a decision that is most uncharacteristic of a governor whose legacy will be a determined effort to make Georgia the best-managed state in the nation. Last week he announced support for a Lovejoy line extended to Griffin. It will be, he says, a pilot project.
Perdue thus takes the position that was being forced on him by former Secretary of State Cathy Cox when she was mounting her own gubernatorial campaign two years ago. Reacting to language inserted in a state budget “at the 11th hour that threatens the Lovejoy commuter rail project,” she criticized “Gov. Sonny Perdue and state lawmakers” for a decision that “potentially” left “millions in federal transportation funding on the table. …” Her Democratic colleagues lamented, too, that failure to spend the money would “make it more difficult to secure federal funding” in the future.
Bottom line: Money exists. Spend it. That’s not Sonny.
Besides, state auditors who were examining the advocacy-group-driven efforts to sell commuter rail noted that $21.1 million had been spent on studies of 14 proposed lines in the 10 years ending in 2006 and none had been built. While they were not specificially asked to comment on the Atlanta-Lovejoy line, they noted the risks anyway. Wrote the auditors:
“We found the project may cost more than the estimated $108 million; the state may be liable for a portion of the federal investment in the project (about $87 million) if the line is terminated prior to being in operation for 20 years; and the state may be liable for covering any operating shortfall.”
Of the $108 million, almost half would be spend on upgrades to track taxpayers don’t own, with most of the remainder going to rail stations.
Ridership projections from 2004 were for 1,800 riders a day, with annual operating costs of $7 million. The 26-mile trip from Lovejoy to Atlanta would take 46 minutes and cost $5.60.
Taking commuter rail on to Macon — the ultimate goal of rail supporters — was projected in 2002 to cost somewhere between $290 million and $2.3 billion, with annual operating costs of $22.6 million.
Perdue vowed four years ago that all proposed transportation remedies, commuter rail included, would be subjected to cost-benefit analyis and compared on cost effectiveness to other options for lifting metro Atlanta out of gridlock. “What we’ve begun to do is make transportation policy based on facts. Congestion can be measured. What we’re doing is measuring where the greatest needs are, taking the resources that we have, and looking for the best solutions to those needs.”
He did not then rule out commuter rail but insisted that “we’ve got to be sure that it moves people in a way that they will adopt and ride — and that means it generally has to be quicker, more pleasant and go where people want to go. …”
Two points: Fiscal conservatives don’t spend money just because an earmark put it there. And money spent on the wrong solution worsens congestion.
Commuter rail south is a money-sucking white elephant. That it will remain, unless the state takes other steps, such as moving state agencies and departments out of Atlanta to points south, as the Department of Corrections is doing in relocating to Forsyth. Moving employees from Atlanta will help cure traffic congestion here — and help spread jobs to the south.
There has to be more than a plan for commuter rail. There has to be a plan for commuter rail to attract riders.
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Brittle loss, bogus lives, Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
When my 95-year-old mother-in-law died two years ago, I knew Sophie Mae peanut brittle would suffer a financial blow. But dang. Rich’s. Davison’s. The C&S bank. Southern institutions gone. And Sophie Mae’s on a flatbed headed north. Old Atlanta may have gone, but the corporatists can never take away our world-famous heat and humidity.
The contest is over. A winner is declared. It’s State Sen. Vincent Fort of Atlanta, who wins the coveted prize of unlimited airtime on all local TV networks in the New Motto for Grady contest. Fort’s entry, inspired by the news that the state has given the hospital $12.7 million for its trauma center, the lion’s share of available money, offered this unforgettable new motto: It’s Still Not Enough.
What gives? MARTA presumably is the beneficiary of high gas prices —- and yet it’s projecting a deficit of $43 million for the coming year after reporting back-to-back surpluses.
MARTA’s setting the example for other governments in one respect, though. Rather than add employees for the brief spell needed to instruct riders on the new Breeze card payment system, it hired contract workers. When the job’s done, they go. Not surprisingly, though, some object, insisting that taking the contract job meant they’d become MARTA employees. Huh? One contract employee is said to be “angry.” Your anger is not my mandate.
Evidence from Massachusetts is a reminder that the proper term for the “uninsured” is “self-insured” when people who can afford to buy health insurance choose not to because they prefer to spend the premiums on something that gives them pleasure. In Massachusetts, 5 percent of taxpayers failed to buy health insurance —- and almost half were fined $219 because they could afford it but still didn’t buy. Strip mandates and allow purchasers to buy health insurance anywhere in the country and combine it with health savings accounts and catastrophic coverage. Penalize people for not having coverage. The self-insured will buy.
The most difficult job in Georgia is being a caseworker for the Division of Family & Children Services. You’ve got to be the momma, the daddy, the psychiatrist and the omniscient protector —- and in the instance you’re not, you get fired. The best approach to the problems of children at risk is to do everything we can to make certain they come into the world with a mother and a father in the home.
Holy cow! Breaking news from the Free Enterprise front. Stop presses. A “reinvigorated focus on price” enables Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, to beat out the competition in a tough economic environment. Briefly, for the Obama economists who peruse these reports, it means that when prices (or taxes) are lowered, business (or government) wins. Wal-Mart’s stock is close to a 52-week high. Time for a windfall profits tax on successful retailers. And take away any tax incentive to build new stores or maintain the ones they have.
I’m beginning to believe half the newcomers to metro Atlanta are running from the law, lies, lives or ex-wives. Investors with newcomer Kirk Wright got bogus statements. The wife of fake physician Eric Perteet, another newcomer, got from him bogus transcripts and degrees.
Headline: “Rivals take their shots at absent Chambliss.” Uh, the absent Chambliss has no primary opponent and hence no reason to appear onstage with five Democrats and a Libertarian. It would be noble of him to consent to be their punching bag, but why?
Must we go the entire summer with the partisans distorting John McCain’s position on the Iraqi phase of the war? They jumped with glee when McCain said on the “Today” show, in response to a question about whether he had a timetable for troops to be out (Barack Obama’s is 16 months), “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.” The Left insists that the two options are to bail out in 16 months or to stay in a shooting war for 100 years. Dishonest.
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