When Gwinnett County voters three years ago rejected a penny sales tax that would have paid for a $12 billion transit expansion, Snellville Council Member Dave Emanuel understood.
The 2020 proposal would have extended the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s rail line into southwestern Gwinnett, which Emanuel did not think would help the rest of the county. And heavy rail, he said, is outdated technology.
Gwinnett’s new plan costs $17 billion. To foot most of the bill, officials hope voters will approve the same 30-year penny sales tax they previously spurned. Instead of trains, they would get a massive countywide increase in buses and vans. County officials have said they are aiming to have transit expansion on the November 2024 ballot, but haven’t officially voted yet to do so.
Emanuel and some others who opposed rail and MARTA say they are warming to the proposal. After four unsuccessful Gwinnett transit referendums since the 1970s, proponents are hoping the fifth time will be the charm.
“I think it needs a little more review, but it’s certainly a whole lot better than what they had before,” Emanuel said.
The proposal would reconfigure and extend bus routes, adding high-frequency buses and a bus rapid transit line from Doraville to Lawrenceville. It would expand on-demand microtransit to cover the entire county within the next decade. It would create express routes to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport from the Mall of Georgia and Snellville. Transit services would, for the first time, operate on Sundays. A network of transfer facilities would provide new amenities such as real-time route information and bathrooms.
Staff and consultants spent 18 months devising the plan with a volunteer advisory board and community outreach.
The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, made up of four Democrats and one Republican, unanimously approved the plan in September. District 2 Commissioner Ben Ku, so far its most vocal champion, said it fulfills his dream of a network that allows riders to get anywhere in Gwinnett without a car.
For many, that represents an improvement over previous plans more focused on getting Gwinnettians into Atlanta. The county, with its own commercial and employment centers, isn’t as much of a bedroom community for Atlanta as it used to be, residents have said in recent years when transit comes up.
A penny sales tax in Gwinnett would raise an estimated $12.4 billion over 30 years, according to the county. In the same period, the county predicts its transit plan would bring in $3.6 billion from federal grants. Fares would add $1.4 billion, according to county estimates.
The Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority is currently reviewing Gwinnett’s proposal to comply with regional plans, said China Thomas, Gwinnett’s director of transit capital improvement projects.
Much is still unknown. The county’s fleet of buses and vans, branded as the Ride Gwinnett transit service, is operated by Transdev, a company whose contract expires in two years. Thomas said the county will begin a new solicitation for a transit contractor. Transportation department officials don’t yet know how many employees would be needed to operate the expanded plan and haven’t yet designed the infrastructure that would allow the high-frequency bus routes to bypass traffic.
Two microtransit zones already in operation, in Lawrenceville and Snellville, have proven popular, according to county officials. Riders use an app to hail a $3 ride from their location to any other address in the zone. The county proposes to divide Gwinnett into 27 microtransit zones — each shuttle would only operate in its area, but riders could complete their trips on the larger bus network.
In Snellville, kids use microtransit to get home from extracurricular activities, Emanuel said. Adults use it if they don’t have a car or don’t want to find parking at their destination.
Microtransit has also been successful in rural Hall County to Gwinnett’s north, Thomas said. But she couldn’t point to any other transit services in the country that combine universal microtransit with high-frequency buses.
“In terms of the full complement of services, I think that the plan that we have created is unique,” she said. “There isn’t a single operator that we are comparing ourselves to.”
Joseph Hacker, a transportation expert at Georgia State University, praised Gwinnett’s plan but said it could be a political challenge.
Many residents signed up for a life of driving when they chose to move to Gwinnett. They need to be shown how the transit expansion would benefit them, Hacker said. The pitch could be successful for middle-class families who can use transit instead of buying a second car, he said. And even car owners could choose transit over parking at popular destinations, he said.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The high-frequency routes could entice more riders, but the plan’s grand scale risks the spectacle of regularly empty buses and the criticism that would generate, he said.
“You’re going to have to start the system with as much in place, running at the same time, as possible, so everybody sees it,” Hacker said. “It’s enormously ambitious, and I would be mildly concerned with, will they grow ridership to fill up all this service?”
Laurie McClain, who led the committee that devised the 2020 transit plan, praised the new proposal but said economic conditions are not right for a new tax.
Emanuel said he didn’t know how his fellow Gwinnettians would vote.
“I think that this is going to be a hard sell,” he said. “I think people like to complain that it’s too expensive, it doesn’t go where they want, they don’t like the color of the buses.”
But he and others take into account the close margin by which the last expansion plan failed. And Gwinnett’s notorious traffic is only getting worse.
“There may be enough people who are tired of the gridlock,” Emanuel said.
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