Stalled transit bill needs a push

By Yvonne Williams

When Georgia’s governor and legislative leaders lined up to support a transportation funding bill this year, the business community was encouraged that this would be the year that legislation to address our critical transportation needs would finally move forward.

But the Legislature got bogged down once again with local interests instead of looking at the needs of the entire state.

No transportation bill will satisfy everyone. The legislative process involves the art of compromise. And that’s what legislators must do to salvage competitiveness for economic development in our state.

Status quo on transportation funding is not an option. As the IT3 Statewide Strategic Transportation Plan initiated by Gov. Sonny Perdue points out, the course we are on will worsen congestion, restrict access to jobs, slow freight flows and reduce competition.

By enacting legislation that sets up a regional referendum process for an additional 1-cent sales tax for transportation, we will get funding for important projects that will ensure our state can offer quality of life and economic stability to its residents and businesses.

The development of any list of transportation projects within a district should be based on strategically planned, outcomes-based criteria that consider how land use patterns, demographics, and customer wants and needs are changing. And transportation plans must include a broad array of projects such as transit in metro areas and inter-city rail. Continuing to put an investment emphasis only on roads is as outdated and noncompetitive as the requirement that Georgia’s motor fuel tax be used exclusively for that purpose.

Legislation should remove the restrictions on MARTA of how it spends local sales and use taxes. In a time when income is down dramatically, MARTA needs the budget flexibility to shift funds from capital projects to operations to reduce service cuts.

MARTA operations and maintenance also should be specified as allowable expenses for new transportation funding. The U.S. Census Bureau now includes 31 counties in its officially designated Atlanta metropolitan area. Residents of many of those counties are using MARTA today while funding from sales taxes continues to be borne by just two counties, Fulton and DeKalb.

We see the benefits of MARTA daily in Perimeter, where thousands of workers commute by using the area’s three MARTA stations. To help ensure easier, cheaper commutes, nearly a dozen commercial property owners and companies in turn spend nearly $1 million a year to operate private shuttles from MARTA stations to places of employment and housing. As metro Atlanta’s dominant office district and one of the largest employment centers in the region, Perimeter’s economy has a sizable impact on local and state governments.

But it’s not just Perimeter’s well-being that’s at stake, but the entire state. While surrounding states are making significant investments in transportation and gaining substantial federal dollars for their projects, Georgia is stalled by the roadside. Georgia only received $750,000 of the $1.8 billion in federal transit funds awarded this year, and not one of the 51 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant applications submitted from Georgia won funding. Georgia was the only southern state that did not receive TIGER grant funding with the exception of Florida, which had just received $1.25 billion for high speed rail between Orlando and Tampa.

Good transportation infrastructure is an economic stimulus. We need our legislators to look at the big picture for our state and finally get Georgia moving this legislative session.

Yvonne Williams is president and CEO of Perimeter Community Improvement Districts.