Georgia’s hard-won plan to bolster spending on transportation was signed into law last week with the expected fanfare.
The state’s deteriorating bridges and mounting gridlock in metro Atlanta have for too long reflected draconian underinvestment. The prospect of an additional $800 million to $900 million directed toward playing catch-up is welcomed – and overdue.
And to give credit where due, the Georgia General Assembly at long last succeeded this year in staring down an activist opposition to pass new fees and an increase in the state’s motor fuel taxes. Another bill allows counties to put transportation sales taxes up for a vote. A third bill removed outdated shackles on how MARTA divvies up its spending.
Getting that package passed took political courage. We would be disingenuous to minimize that reality.
Even so, as the back-slapping accolades end, and government bureaucrats began transforming legal tenets into a new fiscal reality here, we’d be remiss in not pointing out that the triumvirate of transportation laws cannot be the end. To cite Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The bills are thus best seen as a new base upon which we can continue to update transportation infrastructure for today and tomorrow.
Doing so will take more money than the new House Bill 170 will bring into state coffers. Doing nothing more beyond this year’s efforts won’t be a bargain, either. The stealthy, yet real, cost of congestion demands we continue addressing problems whose magnitude confronts us during each rush hour.
So the post-legislative session political protestations that the one bite at the apple has already been chomped away cannot stand. Georgia needs more, and it’s up to her citizens to keep hammering home that point until elected officials listen.
Pay close attention to the accolades spread around last week and you may discern where clever wordsmithing seeks to make phrases such as “current infrastructure usage” and “maintain those critical investments” synonymous with adding new infrastructure for the future — rather than repairing neglect of the past and present. The two are very different, yet equally necessary.
Georgia needs to adequately repair and expand its 20th-century transportation systems. Yes, that means upgrading roads and adding traffic capacity. Drive I-75 through Cobb County today to see what this can look like.
Metro Atlanta and this state must also begin aggressively building for the 21st century and beyond. This should be a non-negotiable point for a growing state with global ambitions. Recent experience is proving the necessity of this strategy. Job creators lured to Georgia are increasingly calling for building sites along MARTA lines. Millennials, a young and growing part ot the workforce, are also showing strong affinity for transit and urban-type density.
Cities often named in the same sentence as Atlanta have picked up on this generational change. And, unlike us at this point, they are already moving concrete and steel to address it.
From 2009 to 2014, Dallas — like Atlanta a low-density, conservative metro — has nearly doubled the length of its light-rail system. More expansions are being considered. Denver is in the midst of a voter-approved transit expansion said to be the largest in the nation. It’s expected to bring nearly 150 miles of new rail and bus rapid transit to the region.
For the record, both Western metros have a population density that’s lower than Atlanta, according to U.S. Census data. Atlanta’s comparatively few people per square mile is commonly cited as a reason why transportation solutions here need involve no other major ingredient besides asphalt.
That outdated thinking needs to change. The Legislature, in its wrangling to get a roads bill passed, delayed for another year substantive consideration of transit that its own committee on “Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding” says is needed. Its report last December said “it is critical that the state of Georgia increase its commitment to the development of responsible, well-funded and coordinated public transportation in metropolitan areas.” “It is in the State of Georgia’s and numerous transit systems’ best interests to establish a separate, permanent funding stream for those interests.”
Legislators should quickly move forward on their own group’s point. Doing so requires that they stop behaving as though transit is a newfangled, unproven concept. That’s an illogical stance when considering that many cities’ transit routes observed their centennials decades ago.
The General Assembly needs to get moving on Phase II of improving mobility in the state. They should not wait until after the next election – or beyond – to do so.
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