Metro Atlanta is car country, but as cities and counties put together their transportation wish lists, there are signs that some in the suburbs, which rejected mass transit decades ago, are ready to embrace it.
Next year, voters will be asked to approve a 1-cent special sales tax to pay for a list of projects that could smooth their commute. It remains to be seen which road and rail projects state and regional officials will put before voters.
But if officials assembling the final list pick mass transit, will metro Atlanta voters say yes to the tax?
Recent polls and interviews with residents and business people show a mixed picture, but the metro area’s decades-long opposition might be softening.
Sharon Fischer, general manager at the IceForum rink at Town Center, said personally she supports the idea of a light rail line, which is one proposal for the Cobb County corridor where she works. She thinks other Cobb residents may, too, although the county voted down MARTA in 1965.
“I think we’ll have people rethinking a lot of things they thought maybe 20 or 30 years ago,” said Fischer, pointing to rising gas prices.
In a Gwinnett County poll on the preferred types of projects, a mix of rail and road projects rose to the top. A majority wanted some form of mass transit. The 2010 Gwinnett County poll of 800 active registered voters was commissioned by two Gwinnett self-taxing business districts.
And a poll commissioned by transit advocates in 2008, when the economy was better, found support — even in the suburban counties — for a 1-cent sales tax to fund projects including mass transit. A more recent poll found a majority in the suburbs against a transportation tax, though the region as a whole supported it by a slim margin.
Both advocates and detractors say metro Atlanta’s future may hang on the 2012 referendum. The tax could bring the state’s biggest single infrastructure investment in 40 years — and might combat the traffic congestion that is slowly strangling the region.
Weighing the cost
The transportation wish list submitted last week to the state must go through a few steps before voters see it.
The list includes at least $13.5 billion worth of mass transit — even though the final total for all of the projects probably can’t exceed $8 billion.
On the wish list so far:
Commuters might travel 50 miles or more by rail, from Gwinnett Arena in Duluth to Hampton near Atlanta Motor Speedway, passing through five counties at rush hour.
Or they could get from Acworth to a Turner Field MARTA station without ever touching a brake.
Or tool through neighborhoods on a streetcar or local circulator bus.
But some ask: Is the cost worth it?
“I don’t know that it would be a priority if I had $1 billion right now,” said Elizabeth Wright, who runs a business referral network in Lawrenceville.
She noted the “positives and negatives” of ways a rail line could change the county.
“You’d have to wait and see where the stations were going to be and what the proposals were,” she said. “It totally depends on how it’s sold or promoted.”
Advocates originally hoped to build MARTA in Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton counties, as well as Fulton and DeKalb. But at the time, only Fulton and DeKalb approved the tax, which is why MARTA doesn’t serve Cobb, Gwinnett or Clayton.
Since then, growth has exploded in those counties — including migrants from big cities who want mass transit.
Clayton County voters, who rejected a MARTA tax in 1971, asked to join MARTA and pay the MARTA tax in a nonbinding vote taken in November.
And just last month, MARTA found that 43 percent of the cars parked in its lots come from somewhere other than Fulton and DeKalb.
Who will support what?
Malaika Rivers, executive director of the Cumberland Community Improvement District, said businesses in Cobb need roads and rail, and it’s important in attracting developers.
That’s why the CID, a self-taxing business district, has paid to get preliminary studies for the rail line going.
It is still clear that a strong roads package will be key to winning support in those counties, and especially in more distant ones such as Cherokee County and Fayette County.
For some, it may not be possible.
Harold Bost, co-founder of the Fayette County Issues Tea Party, is taking the lead coordinating tea party groups to oppose the referendum.
He says the burden of another tax is only one reason he opposes it; he also opposes mass transit because of the people it would bring into the suburbs.
“Criminals catch that kind of transportation into our county,” Bost said, “and I’m not going to support anything that works toward increasing our crime either.”
Downtown, in Fulton and DeKalb counties, the obstacles are reversed.
Support for mass transit in general is strong. If there’s not enough of it on the project list in the 2012 referendum, that might endanger the vote there, political analysts say. And if the referendum doesn’t pass in Fulton and DeKalb, “it’s dead in the water” for the region because of the number of votes there, said Neill Herring, a transit advocate and political lobbyist for the Sierra Club.
John Adams, a Buckhead computer software entrepreneur, recently attended a rally to urge mass transit get a “fair share” of the referendum’s proceeds. He said that he wants mass transit to get at least half the list.
“Road projects should get zero,” he said. “We’ve spent decades spending on road projects.”
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