The recently published conclusions of the General Assembly’s Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding are straightforward – Georgia is on a collision course with mediocrity if we do not take seriously our present transportation shortcomings.
In a nut shell, we need to increase transportation funding at a minimum of $1.5 billion per year to meet our present and long term infrastructure needs. Why the enormous increase? Three reasons:
1. It is a safety issue: Forty-eight percent of the roads and bridges we drive on every day in Georgia are rated in either fair or poor condition. However, at our present transportation spending level, we were able to repair and resurface only 2 percent of our roads and bridges last year.
2. It is a quality of life issue: If given a choice, very few of us would choose to sit in traffic rather than be productive at our jobs, spend time with our children and families, or enjoy our recreational time. However, that is just what we are doing in Metro Atlanta with one of the worst commutes in the country.
3. It is an economic development issue: Our roads, bridges, transit systems, and rail lines are the critical bone structure that connects our businesses to the needed raw materials, supplies, customers, and employees required to compete locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. However, the business community ranks our transportation shortcomings as one of their chief concerns in moving to Georgia or expanding their operations here.
How do we meet this need? There is no one silver bullet, but a combination of the following changes could put us back on the right track:
1. Spend gas taxes exclusively on transportation. Approximately $180 million in state gasoline taxes and $500 million in local gasoline taxes are siphoned off into general funds each year and not directed exclusively to transportation. Gas taxes should be viewed as a user fee and devoted exclusively to transportation.
2. Expand the use of tolls for new roads and lanes.
3. Create a new per-mile method of taxing alternative fuel vehicles to insure that they also pay their fair share toward transportation.
4. Recapitalize the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank (“GTIB”). Georgia has not increased its gas excise tax since 1971 which currently stands at only 7.5 cents per gallon. A four cent increase devoted exclusively to the GTIB would generate $240 million per year and create a loan/grant fund to incentivize governments, authorities, CIDs and other entities to provide matching funds for local transportation construction projects.
5. Provide greater flexibility for multiple counties to join together to create regional SPLOSTs to meet particularly critical road and transit needs in their regions.
6. For those regions that have not or do not adopt a regional transportation SPLOST, allow for an additional one percent state sales tax to be used exclusively for transportation. This gives regions around the state the choice between deciding for themselves their transportation priorities or having the state do it for them.
In conclusion, it is time to act. Doing nothing on increasing transportation funding is simply not an option if we are to be the great state we aspire to be for ourselves and our children.
