This high-growth region, which for decades fueled its expansion with federal road subsidies, now wrestles with how to refurbish its lifeblood aging highways and realize aspirations for augmented mass transit despite dwindling resources. Officials have applied for any available state and federal funding, and look to add managed toll lanes on select area highways to increase revenues. But like many other metropolitan areas, Atlanta, hampered by stove-piped funding sources, is straining to fashion multimodal solutions to remedy congestion and sustain continued population growth.
Late in 2010, the city won a $47 million federal stimulus grant to develop a downtown streetcar route ... just as MARTA was forced to reduce subway and bus service and increase fares ... . As often happens with service cutbacks and fare hikes, MARTA ridership levels declined immediately, threatening to exacerbate revenue shortfalls and deplete the system’s reserves by 2013. Transit-averse rural legislators, meanwhile, are complicating efforts to find solutions by blocking state funding for MARTA and spreading transportation dollars to backwater counties, limiting Atlanta’s take despite the city’s overarching economic importance to the state and region.
MARTA’s problems will not help alleviate the area’s significant highway congestion, which is made worse by necessary repairs to roads and overpasses reaching the end of their life expectancies. A fortuitous federal rebate lets Georgia fund repaving of the heavily pitted Interstate 285 ring road north of the city, but in winning the streetcar grant, Georgia lost out on federal monies for two proposed HOT lane additions to Atlanta interstates. Officials are pinning their hopes on these managed lane strategies to reduce traffic and raise money to help offset losses from more severely limited federal highway programs. In a vicious circle, paying for lane construction becomes more difficult without the federal aid, so the state looks to become a leader in attracting private operators through PPP (public-private partnership) deals.
The city is also in procurement for a massive $320 million multimodal passenger terminal to serve as a hub for bus and rail service around the city.
The city continues to assemble a proposed network of parks, trails and transit lines to connect 45 neighborhoods in a 22-mile Beltline corridor loop. The ambitious 20-year project promises to recast the metropolitan core into a more pedestrian-friendly environment with enhanced public green space and mass transit alternatives to lower car dependency.
After reservoirs almost ran dry in a 2007 drought, Georgia has become a national leader in water conservation measures, and per capita water use has declined 10 percent, according to local officials. The metropolitan water authority plans to mandate installation of meters with point-of-use leak detection to allow residents to monitor water use almost to the drop and give utilities early notice of leaks. Conservation certainly helps, but Atlanta also needs to gain access to new reservoirs to sustain its growing population. These expanded water systems will cost hundreds of millions of dollars; not surprisingly, water bills are increasing to help pay for all the necessary improvements — from meters to land acquisition.
This excerpt is from the report “Infrastructure 2011: A Strategic Priority,” authored by Jonathan D. Miller and issued by the Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young.