Since the 1980s, various private organizations and state agencies have been developing and promoting plans for commuter and intercity passenger rail in Georgia. These plans have always had an uphill climb against entrenched highway interests, as well as the usual bureaucratic lethargy that doesn’t like doing new things or dealing with different ideas.
Despite these obstacles, there was, in the early 2000s, a small glimmer of hope that two of the eight proposed commuter train routes could actually see passenger service. Athens-to-Atlanta and Macon-to-Atlanta trains, according to state studies, could carry lots of people and help lighten some of the traffic burden on the highways by providing a reliable and affordable transportation alternative for commuters.
There was some federal and state money in place for both routes and for a “multi-modal passenger terminal” in downtown Atlanta. Federally mandated environmental assessments had been completed for both routes. Amazingly, after reviewing each 5-foot-tall stack of reports, the EPA admitted that putting passenger trains on existing rail lines would have “no significant impact” on the environment.
Georgia had spent $13 million and five years to discover that there were no snail darters anywhere along the two routes.
That was the high point for the Passenger Rail Program. Shortly after receiving the OK from the EPA, the program was hit with shifts in federal funding formulas and in the political direction of our state government. The faint hope receded.
But there would be one additional sliver of hope before all light was cut off. When Gina Evans became state Department of Transportation commissioner at the insistence of Gov. Sonny Perdue, she right away began going off script by stating Georgia would build a commuter rail system. She lasted 14 months in the job.
And yet, though the Georgia Rail Passenger Program has withered on the vine, it still lives in the shadows of GDOT’s statewide rail plan.
This plan, updated every five years, has several functions. One is to document how the railroad industry is doing in Georgia. Keeping tabs on the rail industry, its relative strength and its support of our economy is worthwhile in charting our state’s economy. The plan also focuses on the state’s involvement in the freight rail industry. GDOT owns over 500 miles of track throughout the state, much of it leased to short lines that keep rail service alive where big Class 1 railroads have lost interest, but where rail customers still exist and want service.
But beyond freight rail information, the other “purposes” are at best exercises in lip service. The plan goes into detail about commuter and intercity passenger train routes for which there is no money. It extols Amtrak’s future passenger loads, although there are no plans to increase capacity. It speaks to the wonders of high-speed rail and futuristic magnetic-levitation trains and imagines that Georgia is working to be a leader in these modes of transportation.
Most incomprehensibly, GDOT insists that the plan “enable(s) it to implement a more efficient and effective approach to integrate passenger and freight rail elements into the larger multi-modal transportation framework,” whatever that means.
This lip service is paid because Washington wants to believe that Georgia is sincere about implementing passenger rail. Washington hears what it wants to hear, and federal dollars continue to flow for another five years.
This lip service is paid so that when the state’s cities and counties insist that they need transportation alternatives such as commuter rail, the state can point to its statewide rail plan.
Most important for GDOT, this lip service is paid so that it can continue building roads, which is all that it really wants to do anyway. In its heart, such as it is, GDOT has never stopped being the state Highway Department. It probably never will.
The only way we Georgians might build the kind of transportation that can make a difference for our future is for counties and cities to band together to fund transportation initiatives, without funding or any other help from state or federal sources. By using local funds, we won’t have to spend multiple years and millions of dollars looking for snail darters.
Of course, the state has to first allow our local governments to join together for such purposes, and the state does not like giving up that kind of control. But one can always hope.
Former Atlanta City Councilman Douglas Alexander worked for six years as rail program manager of the Georgia Rail Passenger Authority.
