Good instincts are what allow certain politicians to survive seemingly forever. When Gov. Nathan Deal rushed to try to appease motorists infuriated by Atlanta’s toll-lane disaster, he once again showed those instincts.
On this one, Deal is absolutely right and probably couldn’t go as far as he wished he could. Making toll lanes out of previously free lanes is about as dumb a thing as a government can do.
These particular ones, on 15.5 miles of I-85, were funded with federal money on a federal interstate. The state’s ability to tinker with them is limited, although Deal did try right away.
Moreover, the instant howls of anger are expected to die down by toll advocates who assure all that, after some months or years, the victims, er, motorists become accustomed to their fate and begin using, and paying for, the lanes in ever-increasing numbers. In other words, the answer to all this is simple: grin and bear it.
The I-85 instance is likely made worse, and even more angering, because the lane used to be the free-for-all HOV one. It’s not new at all.
Already on the drawing boards for the Atlanta area are up to 285 miles of new such lanes running alongside existing interstates. At least those would largely be new paving. The money would also come from a mix of sources — state, federal and private (meaning the tolls create a profit stream that never ends) — with a rough cost estimate of $16 billion. Yes, that’s with a “b.”
Deal needs to hone his good instincts a bit more and re-examine this whole high-speed toll-lane scheme, which is built upon a misguided grasp of what causes the Atlanta metro’s traffic clog problem.
Worse, it creates the impression that the “rich” will whiz by the “poor” who can’t afford access and must creep along in the jammed lanes.
In any case, the real problem is not simply commuters trying to get to work and back home and never has been. It is and always has been them having to share the same roads with vehicles containing folks and goods that want to get past Atlanta and have no way to do so.
Not only that but drivers who would love to evade Atlanta are the very ones who would be most willing to pay to escape sitting for hours wasting fuel idling and losing money, earnings, or time lazing on a Florida beach.
Atlanta interests slit their own throats on this one when they opposed the Outer Perimeter concept more than two decades ago — a loop entirely outside the clog zone bypassing the whole mess.
If memory serves, that entire circle around the metro would then have cost an estimated $2 billion and been a freeway to boot.
Build the same thing now, charge tolls on it and just how much traffic would be taken off the existing Atlanta thoroughfares?
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