No: Beltline plan doesn’t meet tax objectives so it shouldn’t get funds.
I want to be clear: I agree that traffic in the Atlanta region is congested and that to compete nationally, we must improve our transportation systems and come up with the dollars to get the job done.
The premise of the new 1-cent transportation tax, to be voted on in 2012, is to relieve congestion and improve our regional transportation system.
I do not find that the Atlanta Beltline proposal fits those objectives. Therefore, it should not receive $602 million — 10 percent of the total T-SPLOST funds — as currently listed on the project list.
The Atlanta Beltline website (www.Beltline.org) is the best source to obtain an explanation of the Beltline, and it makes abundantly clear that its objective is economic development, not traffic congestion relief.
The objective is to improve prospects for redevelopment of the 3,000 acres of underutilized properties it touches. The website speaks of the 30,000 new jobs to be developed around the Beltline.
These are worthy purposes for the city of Atlanta, but they are not related to relieving the Atlanta region’s traffic congestion.
A close examination of the Beltline website maps reveals an astounding fact: Not a single segment of the proposed Beltline intersects the MARTA system at MARTA stations.
In other words, folks who will be riding whatever transit system the Beltline might eventually adopt (possibly streetcars) will not be able to get off those conveyances to transfer to MARTA trains at the MARTA stations.
They might be able to get off somewhere in the vicinity of a MARTA track, but not near the stations.
This is not connectivity and does not denote regional transportation.
When the Beltline proposal was being promoted in Atlanta in 2005, a panel of transportation experts was assembled to analyze the transit element of the Beltline.
Catherine Ross, a noted professor of transportation planning at Georgia Tech, headed the panel. In its report, the panel points to a lack of information about ridership and questioned whether it would attract enough riders to support transit.
It emphasized that the greatest need for transportation alternatives is to get people from their homes to work and back. But the Beltline fails to connect to the largest Atlanta employment centers: Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead and the Lindbergh area already served by MARTA.
The Beltline website explains that the Tax Allocation District revenue is expected to provide 60 percent of the needed revenue to develop the Beltline. TAD revenue represents new property taxes generated by new development hoped for as a result of the Beltline.
Obviously, in today’s economic climate, dependence on such increases in property taxes is highly problematic. How will the bonds that depend on such revenues be paid off?
The investors of land along the Beltline are no doubt worried. But that does not transform their economic redevelopment dream into a regional transportation improvement.
Eva Galambos is the mayor of Sandy Springs.
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