Two thousand years ago, the city of Ephesus was a leading commercial center on the coast of Asia Minor. It sat on a key trade route from Rome to the East. However, its vibrant port required constant dredging to maintain its operations, and over time, the city’s leaders lost their will to regularly maintain the harbor. As a result, this once great city withered and died.
Atlanta and Georgia today face their own infrastructure challenges. Georgia ranks 49th in the nation in per capita transportation spending. In the Southeast, we only spend just over half what North Carolina and Virginia spend on transportation, and 43 percent of what Florida spends, though we have more state road lane miles to maintain. Metro Atlanta also lags behind similarly sized metro areas in transportation investment. For instance, the Dallas region spends 280 percent more; greater Phoenix, 150 percent more, and the Denver area, 300 percent more than our Atlanta region on transportation.
The result? Forty-eight percent of our state-maintained roads and bridges are considered in poor or fair condition. Metro Atlanta has been ranked 91st out of 100 among major metro regions nationwide for access to transit. Atlantans have some of the worst commutes in the nation, with the average driver wasting on average over $900 in fuel per year sitting in traffic. Prospective businesses rank our transportation woes and our inability to address them among their chief concerns about moving to metro Atlanta.
In response, the Georgia General Assembly created this year the Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding for Georgia. Over the past four months, we have met in Atlanta, Columbus, Tifton, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Blue Ridge and Rome. We have listened to civic leaders, transportation experts, business executives and everyday citizens explain not only the transportation problems facing our state, but possible solutions. Our charge is to make recommendations to the General Assembly before it convenes in January.
As our committee considers solutions, we are mindful of the following realities brought out in our hearings:
1. At a minimum, Georgia must immediately find additional transportation funding of $1 billion per year just to properly maintain our present system; and in the long run, we must find another $1 billion-plus per year to meet critically needed future improvements.
2. Greater flexibility and coordination between state and local regions are needed to allow our regions to assess and fast-forward particularly critical transportation projects.
3. Public-private partnerships and toll lanes and roads are viable options in some areas.
4. As motor vehicles become more fuel-efficient and electric cars, more common, the present primary dependency on motor fuel taxes to fund transportation must be re-evaluated.
5. The present policy of allowing state and local governments to divert sales taxes collected on motor fuel to non-transportation purposes must be reassessed.
6. Greater coordination among metro Atlanta transit providers is required to make transit a viable transportation alternative in our urban and suburban area.
7. The following need to be adopted to determine which transportation projects should top the list for implementation: congestion mitigation, economic development, accessibility, safety and environmental quality.
Throughout history, all great societies must continuously meet their infrastructure challenges or watch their earlier successes slip into the history books.
Atlanta and Georgia are not immune to this reality. We are rightly proud of our past success, but we desperately need to step up to our transportation infrastructure shortcomings to maintain our status as a destination point for economic growth and for people seeking a higher quality of life.
Former state Rep. Edward Lindsey is a citizen member of the Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding for Georgia.
