The good news is that when you’re already at the bottom of a hole, the logic of where to go from there is pretty apparent. Or at least it should be.
That’s the situation facing Georgia’s malnourished transportation infrastructure. Recent events suggest this message is becoming increasingly clear to lawmakers who hold state purse strings in an era when federal transportation funding is shakier than ever.
And that leaves us cautiously hopeful that the oft-discussed, never-fleshed-out “Plan B” for paying for long-deferred transportation improvements won’t elude Georgians, unicorn-like, for too much longer. It’s indeed encouraging to hear lawmakers again speaking the word “transportation” during public conversation. Good for them.
They should continue to do so at every opportunity because we all know that Georgia needs a 21st-century way to pay for upgraded transportation systems that’ve long been needed to address the challenges that come with living in a region and state that are actually growing. Georgia’s knack for continuing to attract new residents and create products that regularly need to move from Point A to B remains a good problem to have, even given the many frustrations driven by traffic congestion around the Atlanta metro.
So we’re happy to see that the Georgia General Assembly is again pulling away from the curb by starting a new conversation around transportation. It’s high time, in our opinion, given that two years have passed since the crash-and-burn of legislators’ last hand-it-back-to-the-locals-and-let-‘em-sort-it-out solution called T-SPLOST.
After the pounding down of that referendum in 9 of 12 regions statewide, we’re disappointed but not surprised that it took two years for the conversation to resume.
Using traffic levels on our roads most any day as a rough indicator, it’s safe to say that our mobility problems have not lessened much, if any, since the 2012 vote on the penny transportation sales tax.
So, Plan B is sorely needed for Georgia’s present and future. The legislative Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding begin its public work toward this task earlier this month.
We urge committee members to listen well and study all the data they can absorb. A big part of reaching sound conclusions, in our view, will come from examining transportation systems and listening to thought leaders from both Georgia and anyplace else that we consider a competitor for jobs, people or economic development.
The 16-person committee of state lawmakers and other leaders faces a Nov. 30 deadline to present recommendations for the General Assembly. That’s not far off, yet we believe the task is doable if given appropriate diligence and hustle by the committee.
And, to allow for the likely complexity of any proposed funding solutions that emerge, the group should aim to beat that deadline by some weeks at least. That’s advisable because the more time between the issuance of their report and the start of the 2015 legislative session, the better off Georgians will be, we believe.
Given the time-honored tradition of delaying consideration of serious business until the session’s harried last days, we’d urge the committee to not give the full House and Senate any reason to defer a hard call for yet another year because needed legislation crashes and burns at the last minute next year.
The time for those sorts of political games is over. Or at least it should be in a growing state that continually ranks 49th in per capita transportation investment.
Finding money to upgrade our mobility will be a hard political conversation in this angry age. Even when GDOT numbers show a typical Georgian driving 16,000 miles a year only pays about $9 a month in motor fuel taxes. Yes, we wrote “only” because that is about the combined cost of a gallon of gas and a single drive-through fast-food meal.
Given that miserly figure, it’s no wonder that, at the current rate, it will take 50 years to resurface every mile of state road. More people need to hear, and absorb, numbers like these. They should replace the half-truths and myths that have filled in the vacuum around honest talk of what’s really needed to get us moving and what it will cost.
Georgia’s lawmakers must summon the courage to hear and act on all that in coming months. It’s up to the rest of us to support them if they produce a prudent, workable plan as a result.
