What price transportation?
With one week left before the July 31 transportation referendum, many of its opponents are hammering on a common theme — the ongoing cost of operating mass transit.
They're forgetting something, say their opponents — the ongoing cost of maintaining roads.
Whether or not they know it, they are both in agreement on a salient fact about Georgia's transportation budget. As stretched as it is, if the referendum passes and the projects are built, the budget will be stretched even more to operate and maintain any new projects that are built after the tax sunsets in 10 years.
The alternative? According to people who favor the tax, it's stark: Simply don't expand the transportation system, and leave congestion as it is.
Or, opponents say, encourage cost-free solutions like telecommuting.
If voters pass the T-SPLOST referendum on July 31, they will approve a 1 percent sales tax to fund $7.2 billion worth of transportation projects in the region. That includes $1 billion worth of local projects, and a $6.14 billion regional list of projects, drawn up last year. The regional list is just over half bus and train service, and nearly half roads.
The cost of the projects, the opponents' argument goes, should note that transit projects will require perpetual funding if they are to continue working.
"There seem to be a lot of very signficiant costs down the road that are not included," said Bob Ross, a pillar of the anti-T-SPLOST campaign, who opposes the level of mass transit in the list.
Supporters of the tax concede the point. With a crucial difference: They note that roads have ongoing costs, too.
"Nothing we build is free to go for the next 50 years," said Ashley Robbins, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit. "People seem to forget that."
Opponents such as Chip Rogers say that the ongoing costs to operate a rail line are more than to maintain a single highway.
Each of the mass transit projects in the $6.14 billion list was budgeted to include enough money to keep it running for 10 years after it opens, according to the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.
So what happens after 10 years?
Interviews in recent months with policy makers make clear the answer isn't simple. Either ongoing funds will be "identified" by then - a new state transportation funding plan, perhaps - or already-stretched budgets for the state DOT, MARTA and other agencies will have even more of a problem trying to figure out how to maintain their system. They may well ask voters for an extension of the 10-year tax anyway, but if new money hasn't been raised by then, they could be asking for continued maintenance of the projects.
According to GRTA, the mass transit projects on the current referendum list altogether would cost about $74 million a year to operate. Some of that is bus service, like Xpress commuter buses or Clayton County local buses, that would simply end without new funding. Others are rail projects like the Clifton Corridor MARTA project, and others are studies for future transit lines.
Last year, according to preliminary figures, the state Department of Transportation spent well over $300 million, perhaps half its main road budget, on re-paving, repairing, and safety projects. Some of those projects also included widening, but most did not.
It hasn't let up: This year, the state's budget will include $56 million to pave one fraction of I-285, the 10-mile stretch between West Paces Ferry Road in Cobb County and Ashford Dunwoody Road in DeKalb County. Roads need repaving about every 15 years or so for asphalt, and 25 to 30 years for concrete, said Jill Goldberg, a DOT spokeswoman.
In the long term, the region's transportation budget — before the referendum is taken into consideration — would spend about 70 percent on operating and maintaining the existing system, said Tad Leithead, director of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
"It's an ongoing concern of every region and city in the country," said Leithead. "The alternative is to just not build them. At all."
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