“Great cities are not static — they constantly change and take the world along with them.” — “Triumph of the City” by Edward Glaeser
The end of March brought the Atlanta region to a big, early milestone along the journey to the 2012 transportation sales tax vote. That was when proposals were due for the “unconstrained” list of projects intended to help us better traverse our often-logjammed metro area.
Sewing together a lengthy, first-cut starter list of proposals will be the easy part. The tough going will come in trimming the project spreadsheet to a doable size and scope. Making that happen requires uniting this great region around a goal that we can all understand from personal experience.
Attaining a broad sense of agreement around the urgent need to act against the congestion that hobbles our progress is a critical element of building the support needed for the transportation special-purpose local option sales tax, aka T-SPLOST, to pass next year.
We are pleasantly encouraged by early signs of cooperation that have surfaced as counties and agencies began submitting their transportation wish lists. In several cases, multiple counties, cities and even T-SPLOST regional roundtables are supporting each other’s projects. This sort of collaborative vision is key to making the sales tax succeed. Ultimately, that’s our best chance toward improving mobility for the largest number of people.
As the March 30 deadline for projects drew near, it was said that the drive toward the sales tax vote marked perhaps the first time that Atlantans in the broadest geographical sense had been asked to sign on and vote around a common civic goal. We must grow and nurture this effort for the sales tax to work.
We’re by no means fully linked yet as a region, but these early actions are promising. We hope the cross-border collaborative spirit goes viral because this area has a lot of work to do in coming months.
Who among us has not endured frequent traffic snarls that waste time, fray nerves and inflate fuel bills? That’s a phenomenon experienced far too often by Atlantans living almost anywhere in this region, irrespective of whether you define this area as encompassing 10 counties or 28.
Many of us face slow, long, costly commutes that often don’t change significantly at county or city borders.
Roughly 40 percent of motorists in the metro region cross county lines each workday, according to data from the Atlanta Regional Commission. Even in more rural parts of the area, roughly three in 10 drivers do the same thing. The fact that so many of us live in one place and do business or work in others should reinforce the need for a borderless approach to reducing congestion.
Achieving this goal and keeping various interests aligned around the big picture will help bring into being a funding system for vital transportation projects that’s more formidable than any seen in decades.
That can only happen if the coalition holds together as the T-SPLOST process moves along. The next potential friction point will come as regional roundtables in this part of North Georgia and elsewhere around the state begin whittling down lengthy project compilations to a dollar amount payable from estimated sales tax proceeds.
The “constrained” short list will have the potential to tear, if not shred, the regional unity that’s needed to make this concept work. Leaders and metro residents who are clamoring for progress cannot allow that to happen.
There’s nowhere near enough money to make every needed fix, straighten every crooked road or build every feasible rail line. But $8 billion, more or less, across the 10-year life of the tax would pay for a big start. Making progress toward bettering some of the biggest problems will speed our individual journeys.
It will also shore up our economic competitiveness by proving that this innovative, fast-growing metro area is again serious about owning our destiny and building infrastructure that lets us keep ahead of competitors angling for every new portion of economic development.
That’s the self-help picture we all should keep in mind as we motor past county or municipal boundary signs.
Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board
Atlanta Forward: We look at major issues Atlanta must address in order to move forward as the economy recovers.
Look for the designation “Atlanta Forward,” which will identify these discussions.
