Keep driving hard.
That’s profitable counsel for the Georgia General Assembly as it begins hashing over the latest plan to begin paying for long-overdue transportation fixes and upgrades.
Creating a sufficiently capable machinery to do what’s needed will be tough. Previous Gold Dome plans and schemes in this regard have fizzled or, like the 2012 TSPLOST, imploded spectacularly.
The long infighting over dogma and dollars has left Georgians squandering time and money on overworked, under-maintained roads and other transportation systems.
It’s only common sense to believe that Georgians stand alongside lawmakers in knowing somewhere deep in their hearts that something big must – finally – be done to get this state moving efficiently once more.
House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) is dead on right when he says it’s time to bring the state into the 21st century in transportation funding. The pity is that we’re now 15 years into the millennium. That’s water under an old highway bridge at this point, though.
So better late than never to begin facing up to this crisis. Lawmakers must pursue a comprehensive and substantial mobility fix this year with all the vigor of a Georgia State Trooper chasing a speeding hot rod up the Downtown Connector.
Lawmakers and Gov. Nathan Deal deserve a decent amount of kudos for actually seeing things through to the point of producing another plan that can now be worked over in the hammer-and-forge manner of legislative process. After years of non-starts, it’s a good thing that we’ve even got the eight pages of The Transportation Funding Act of 2015 in the mix for consideration.
If enacted as written, the TFA would create a mashup of reworked taxes, new fees and other maneuvers that could shovel an estimated $1 billion annually toward filling our transportation hole.
Just putting plan to legislative paper was no small task in a state that pursues a low-taxes-as-nirvana strategy harder than most. This political reality hangs ominously over elected officials at state and local levels.
It must be confronted and courageously dealt with if Georgia wants to remain a contender among prosperous states and nations. There’s no detour around it.
The conservative economist Milton Friedman was correct in saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch. There’s always a price paid by somebody, somewhere.
In congestion’s case, the tab is paid by everybody, everywhere. We cough it up daily in wasted time and squandered, costly fuel. Gridlock’s hidden tax levied on all of us is as certain and unrelenting as any tariff ever imposed by government large or small.
There is a better way. Rather than funding the waste and inevitable decline of constrained mobility, we can instead begin to pay toward investments that will mitigate the cost of congestion.
Yes, traveling the constructive route costs money. There’s no mistake about that.
But it is the only prudent, profitable course before us. That – and the certainty of no free meals – must remain top of mind statewide as lawmakers wrestle with the transportation funding ideas in House Bill 170.
At a slight risk of sounding like one of the naysayers state leaders have warned against heeding, we strongly urge the Legislature to think big. Yes, there’s risk to that — at a level at least commensurate with how far lawmakers are willing to stretch.
Yet, Georgia can’t continue cowering in a dark corner while other places aggressively face the future. This state’s unmet needs warrant significantly more than what’s been offered up in HB 170.
The revenue it would raise amounts to a good place to start – not the finish line. The difference is easily discernible by any motorist who happens onto the metro area’s highways at rush hour. We need solutions that match the dire needs here.
Which demands a plan worthy of both our problems and Georgia’s once-bold heritage.
The hustling, massive airport that put Atlanta and Georgia on the world’s short list of happening places did not result from underwhelming meekness.
Georgians thought that way more than a century before air travel became commonplace.
The 1876 State of Georgia Handbook explains that, “The advantages of easy and rapid travel, and transportation of produce and merchandise, were well understood … . Those who keenly felt the importance of this … determined upon making it a State enterprise, and the matter was presented to the Georgia Legislature in 1836.”
What resulted after great debate and consideration was “The State Road” – a state-of-the-art transportation investment of its day. Not an asphalt road, it was instead a new railroad extending from Zero Milepost in downtown Atlanta to a point inside the corporate limits of Chattanooga.
The handbook noted “this important line is wholly a State enterprise, built with money from the Treasury, and entirely owned by the State.”
The State Road opened trade channels for Georgia commerce to points West and North. It is still owned by Georgia and still yielding rental payments from current tenant CSX Transportation..
Georgia today needs to reclaim such vision and audacity. Aggressively finding a way to pay for more of the transportation needs of today and the projected future would be the best roadwork exercise to rebuild this former strength of ours. Let’s get moving.
