When the transportation sales tax referendum sank last year, many feared metro Atlanta transit was doomed to remain disjointed and underfunded.
Funding challenges remain, but an effort is under way at the state Capitol to unite the Atlanta region’s four major transit providers and create a more seamless system.
A Senate subcommittee headed by Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, is looking at how to streamline everything from websites and routes to signage and fare systems. Recommendations are due in December.
The issue of consolidating transit governance has been discussed for nearly a decade among transit providers and transportation planners, but it never moved beyond the creation of a long-range regional transit plan. The four major providers — Cobb County Transit, Gwinnett County Transit, Georgia Regional Transit Authority and MARTA — have recognized the need to cooperate but have gotten neither funding nor support.
Now that state lawmakers are taking the lead, there is renewed hope that some positive changes can be made, Atlanta Regional Commission Chairman Tad Leithead said.
“I’d say that (the subcommittee) has very much breathed new life into the conversation and brought it back to the forefront,” Leithead said.
In the future, Beach would like to see the transit systems rebranded and consolidated under one entity that operates express buses, heavy rail and light rail.
But the immediate priorities for integrating the transit systems are to develop a single website (currently each transit provider has its own), develop one workable form of payment, and allow the services to cross jurisdictional boundaries.
He’s not sure whether those changes have to be done through legislation, or if they can be accomplished with intergovernmental agreements.
It’s not an easy job. Three years ago, state lawmakers set up a committee to create an integrated transit system and appointed high-ranking lawmakers to shepherd the effort. Many thought that having a seamless system was crucial to passing the T-SPLOST.
But the effort lost momentum amid fears that regional needs would threaten local funding and local transportation concerns. Although one of the committee leaders, state Rep. Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, promised a bill would pass the following year, none did.
In Beach’s opinion, changes must happen if there’s any hope of getting voters to chip in more funding for transportation in coming years.
“If we don’t do something to show voters we’re trying to be efficient with the tax dollars we have, if two to four years from now we ask for any referendum or help for funding bridges and roads and transportation, they are going to vote it down again,” Beach said. “There’s no trust there. And if we’re going to build trust, we’re going to have to make changes.”
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