If transportation vote fails, is there a plan B?

It's just not clear that those plans could achieve anything like the impact of the 157 projects encompassed by the plan on the July 31 ballot. To be feasible, any alternative must work not only technically and financially but -- perhaps trickiest of all -- politically.

The conclusion of many independent analysts is that, if the vote fails, only one class of major transportation expansion has a relatively clear way forward, financially and politically: toll roads.

"If the referendum does not pass and there's no alternative, reliance on toll roads is going to become more important," said Mike Meyer, an Atlanta transportation expert and former head of the national Transportation Research Board.

"That is probably the only thing that is left out there" that can get funded, agreed Harold Linnenkohl, a former commissioner of the state Department of Transportation.

Drivers, rather than taxpayers at large, will assume most of the costs of new road construction, he said, "either with the gas tax or at the toll booth. And as to a higher gas tax, they [politicians] won't do that. It's not on the table, it won't happen."

In just over two weeks, voters in the 10-county Atlanta region will vote yea or nay on the $6.14 billion list of projects, plus an additional $1 billion for smaller local projects. If the measure passes, residents of each county will pay an additional 1 percent sales tax for the next 10 years to fund the improvements, which are balanced almost 50-50 between roads and mass transit.

Donna Davis, a sign language interpreter who lives in Acworth, is undecided. And she has hope that policymakers will eventually come up with a plan to ease congestion. But she wouldn't be shocked if the alternative was tolls. "I guess you pay it one way or another," she said.

Criticisms of the referendum package are legion, even from its supporters. The 157 projects — adopted by a group of 21 county commissioners and mayors from across the region — reflect a welter of regional needs, local priorities and political compromises, rather than a single integrated solution to regional congestion.

Despite many physical and economic links, the 10 counties have vast differences demographically and politically. They did not band together voluntarily to address their transportation issues; the Legislature lumped them into one of 12 statewide regions for the purpose of the referendum.

In a nutshell, the overriding issue that has galvanized opposition at both ends of the political spectrum is whether the project list strikes the right balance between roads and transit. It's a fight the region has been fighting for more than 40 years, when voters in Fulton and DeKalb first embraced MARTA and voters in Clayton, Cobb and Gwinnett opted out.

At 52 percent transit and 48 percent roads for the region, South DeKalb advocates can't believe they didn't get their own rail line, but had to settle for a $225 million express bus system instead — especially since DeKalb residents have paid a penny sales tax for MARTA for years.

"So here they come now, here's the folks who have not been paying any taxes in the system from Jump Street," said John Evans, president of the DeKalb County branch of the NAACP. " ...They want to let them in to pay a penny, and they get most of the action. And we wind up paying 2 cents."

Conversely, tea party members can't believe so much is going towards mass transit rather than roads in such a spread-out metro area.

"The project list is not targeted to benefit the majority of citizens in the areas they need relief the most," tea party leaders Julianne Thompson and Debbie Dooley said in a statement when the list was released.

Getting to Plan B

On each side, many wish the region could try again, reformulating the project list to suit their preferences. But that would require getting the Legislature to authorize a new vote, even before asking local officials to re-do the list. The entire process would probably take four years, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

If, that is, politicians had the stomach to retrace the same steps -- something Gov. Nathan Deal considers unlikely. "Quite frankly, I think there's going to be great difficulty convincing the members of the Legislature to go through this again," Deal said. He is urging passage of the referendum, which was authorized by a bill signed by his predecessor, Sonny Perdue.

House Speaker David Ralston concurred that lawmakers will be loath to give the same process a second chance to work. "I don't think there's going to be any point in trying to dress up a crashed car," he said.

Even if lawmakers authorized a re-do, some experts doubt that officials from the 10 counties would adopt a transit-dominated list or that the region's voters would pass a road-dominated list.

However, some opponents, especially on the more-trains side, have suggested that Plan B could encompass only a subset of the 10 counties. If the Legislature encouraged counties to make their own, ad hoc alliances, they believe, counties such as Clayton, Cobb or Gwinnett could band together with Fulton and DeKalb to fund a plan that matched their needs.

Others say that in a do-over, the Legislature would simply dictate how the taxes would be spent — and it wouldn't likely be on transit.

"They'd keep the next round of decisions to themselves, and there is nothing in history that indicates they'd be more transit friendly than local leaders are," said Tom Weyandt, Atlanta's top transportation adviser. Previously, he oversaw the development of regional mass transit plans as chief of comprehensive planning at the ARC.

Plan B: transit

Beyond the proposed sales tax, there is no existing source of money for major transit projects. The state gas tax legally cannot be spent on mass transit. County taxes can, but county budgets are stretched as it is, and so is the state's general fund.

If voters reject the sales tax, even existing transit services may be endangered. The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, which would get $95 million from the referendum for its commuter bus service, expects to run out of money by summer 2013. MARTA, which would get $600 million for upgrades from the new tax, has a $2.3 billion backlog, according to its general manager.

Nonetheless, the Sierra Club members who voted to oppose the existing plan believe a sea change has happened in metro Atlanta, one that politicians and transportation planners fail to realize. They believe that if the referendum fails, a silent majority will coalesce to fund a package with more transit and fewer roads.

"The 'there is no Plan B' argument is a false choice," said Colleen Kiernan, the chapter's director. "The political pressure doesn't go away. Especially if the referendum fails."

In a 20-page report on the referendum plan, the group proposes changing the law or state constitution to allocate gas-tax revenues to transit as well as roads. They also propose increasing the money it generates by making it rise with inflation. (Today, most of the gas tax is charged as cents-per-gallon, not cents-per-dollar, so the government's share stays constant, regardless of the pump price.)

But a higher gas tax may be a non-starter.

Many times in the past two years, key legislators such as House Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, have said they and their constituents are not ready to raise the gas tax. The Legislature has also repulsed efforts to apply the gas tax to trains, a move which would likely decrease the amount of money available for road projects in their districts.

Nowhere does the Sierra Club's report lay out a political path to its goals. It merely says that someone should "ensure that transportation planners...are allowed to do their jobs without political interference." And that on the gas tax: "political leadership is required."

The Sierra Club's contract lobbyist at the statehouse, Neill Herring, said legislators would go for the gas-tax idea if the tax was set to initially be lower than people pay now, only rising above current levels as gas prices increase over time.

Mark Woodall, who chaired the Sierra Club's board as it voted to oppose the referendum, brushed aside the political issues, saying he has faith that a regional transit-dominated plan is feasible. "You're going to need to have more transit options," said Woodall. "How that happens, we're flexible."

Weyandt, the former ARC transit planner, doesn't share Woodall's faith. "I see no path to that," he said.

Plan B: roads

A recent study from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation didn't advocate for or against the referendum, but it concluded that there is too much mass transit in the current plan.

The report, by Baruch Feigenbaum, a transportation policy analyst at the free-market Reason Foundation, makes a case that taming congestion can best be achieved through a better grid of local roads, increasing local bus service and building toll roads. Feigenbaum doesn't regard toll roads as a panacea, but he said the current plan has deep flaws, including expensive, inefficient choices.

Dooley last year called for a list composed 75 percent or more of roads. Now, she's not even in favor of that.

Maybe the gas tax could be raised, she said -- if gas prices fell below $2 a gallon and if Georgia transportation agencies regained her trust.

But really, she said, smaller things would do. Her key recommendation for now: encourage telecommuting.

"I don't think it's the crisis they're saying it is, I absolutely do not," Dooley said.

If the referendum is defeated, state officials had better hope she's right, because Georgia's transportation budget is being eaten alive by debt. After about $400 million a year goes to debt service, there is less than $1 billion left for statewide roadwork, and a large portion goes to maintenance.

Last year, according to preliminary figures, the state had less than $300 million to spend on new roads, bridges and major widenings in all 159 counties of the state. That's a fraction of the cost to do one metro Atlanta referendum project, the I-285/Ga. 400 interchange reconstruction.

Counties, cities and DOT will continue to put taxes toward new projects, of course. But that money is spread awfully thin to fund any big game-changers. Which leaves ...

Plan T: toll roads

The state already has a major toll road expansion in mind for metro Atlanta over the next 30 years.

Politically, toll roads are a creature unto themselves. After passing laws encouraging toll roads, the Legislature now has little say on them. The key approvals come from boards chaired by the governor and the state Transportation Board, which openly favors toll roads.

Deal and most top state leaders also have come out in favor of charging tolls on newly created highway lanes.

"That institutional framework is already set up to do that," Meyer said.

Such roads are usually confined to major highway corridors, though. So no array of toll roads will have the broad impact of the different types of projects encompassed by the referendum.

Nor are toll roads completely free of political risks. Two toll proposals that once seemed sure things -- the Northern Arc and the Ga. 316 rebuild -- were killed by public opposition.

Harry West, who led the ARC from 1973 to 2000, stressed the limited impact of toll roads. On the other hand, he said: "There are only so many places you can get money."

For those who want an overarching plan without a new tax, he said, "Maybe we'll discover oil on the Capitol grounds."

Catherine Ross, a transportation planner on the faculty at Georgia Tech, is more hopeful that other options will emerge if the referendum fails, that a deepening transportation crisis will yet spark regional unity.

She agrees, however, that the immediate future would look bleak: "Our reality will be different...people will pack up and vote with their feet," Ross said.

Others suggest that a defeat would leave the way clear for Deal to take charge with a new plan.

In any case, for or against the current plan, most agree on one thing: The July 31 vote is momentous.

Said Meyer: "I really do think this is the most important game in town."