Will sales tax shorten Atlanta commutes, reduce traffic?

A few areas would see seismic change. Most, a moderate improvement. Some, too little impact to measure.

As the vote approaches, the Atlanta Regional Commission’s traffic-simulation computers have gamed out the 10-year showdown between the tax and its mighty foe, traffic congestion. The resulting study predicts how the referendum’s $6.14 billion regional project list is likely to change metro Atlantans’ commutes and job prospects.

The lesson, say planners: The needle is really hard to budge.

Holding the line against decay is an accomplishment. If some spots edge toward transformation, that’s a bonus. Regionwide, metro drivers in 2025 would waste 128,000 fewer hours in traffic each day than they would if the referendum doesn’t pass, the ARC found.

But they’d still waste 1.8 million hours a day.

On average, the number of metro Atlantans able to reach job centers in under 45 minutes would rise just 6 percent by car, and about 20 percent by bus or train, if the projects are built. The new transit projects expect perhaps 75,000 or more daily boardings.

Regional planners insist that in the world of transportation design, a 6 percent or 20 percent jump in good commutes is a big deal. But they know it’s a tough sell on the street.

“That does not seem like a viable investment to me,” said Mike Lowry. He is a Roswell resident and tea party member helping to fight the referendum.

“For the money they’re anticipating to raise,” Lowry said, “the effectiveness of the project list is absolutely minimal.”

Absolutely not, said Dave Stockert, CEO of Post Properties, and chairman of the campaign to pass the referendum. “Six percent is a start, but it has a very meaningful impact,” he said. “The alternative is continuing on the path we’re on.”

He believes that congestion is chasing jobs and growth from Atlanta to other cities, and that the trend bodes worse.

Planners acknowledge the project list is not a cure-all.

“You’re not going to see all congestion evaporate,” concedes ARC Director Doug Hooker, who stresses the ARC staff is not advocating for or against the tax. But Hooker said the plan places the big bets in effective places: employment centers and the routes to them.

“For people who commute very close to home, it probably will be negligible,” Hooker said, “but it moves the needle forward in a significant way for a majority of commuters.”

Eye of the beholder

Hooker and his planners say it’s all how you look at it.

Take the Cobb County mass transit line from Acworth to MARTA in Midtown Atlanta, a lightning rod for Cobb criticism of the referendum’s project list. It takes up $698 million on the list.

The question remains whether it will be bus all the way or partly rail. Whatever it is, opponents say, it won’t have much impact on the 10-county region’s 1.8 million daily commuters.

But planners say it makes sense. The passenger traffic on that line could take cars off I-75, which sees upward of 200,000 vehicles a day. Even if it didn’t, it could offer a more reliable alternative to driving I-75.

One Cobb County businessman isn’t convinced it will bring him more customers.

“It’s an interesting theory, but do I think that will happen? No,” said Bob Pressley, who runs a sports memorabilia shop on Marietta Square.

Actually, the referendum could make its biggest mark in Cobb on road congestion. In addition to the transit project, commuters to Cobb would benefit from projects including fixes on I-75 and Cobb Parkway as well as highway projects in other counties, such as I-285 interchanges. Like most counties in the region, a majority of Cobb workers and residents commute across county lines, according to the ARC.

So as other job districts might see 6 percent or 8 percent improvement for drivers, the Cumberland district in southern Cobb would see 18 percent. It’s the region’s biggest jump, with 117,000 additional drivers being able to reach jobs there by car within 45 minutes.

Bob Cartwright, 69, a manager for AT&T in Marietta who drives to work from Kennesaw, wasn’t overwhelmed by the predicted increases. But he said it was still worth it. “I’ll probably vote for it,” he said. “I think it’s necessary.”

Budging the needle

Critics charge that the ARC study gives voters the wrong information. Instead of measuring how many more commuters can get to a place within 45 minutes, the critics say, the ARC should offer a simple piece of information: average time savings per metro commuter.

ARC planners readily acknowledge that such an across-the-board number would be small — but that shows how meaningless the figure is, they say.

In fact, the ARC has used such numbers, just not here. In the data reports for the Atlanta region’s 30-year plan, across-the-board average time savings is the first measure presented. And it’s small. That plan shows that all the other money that the region expects to spend on transportation by 2040 aside from the referendum — $60.9 billion — will save the average driver eight minutes.

Even doubling that would still yield only a few minutes of improvement for drivers and passengers.

“We know that obviously there’s going to be a huge impact if you put down that level of infrastructure,” said John Orr, senior principal planner at the ARC. So, he said, impact must be shown in different ways.

On the roads to be funded by the referendum, according to the ARC, car drivers would see 24 percent less congestion on average. The ARC could not say how many drivers use those roads.

But as a result of the referendum’s road projects, more drivers would be able to reach job centers more quickly. The region’s major employment centers would be within reach of a 45-minute commute to about 6 percent more drivers than if the projects are not built, according to the ARC.

By those measures, the Perimeter district, just center-north of I-285, would have an average improvement. Six percent more metro Atlanta drivers, or 30,000 additional people, would be able to reach Perimeter-area jobs within 45 minutes.

And Perimeter won the list’s biggest road project, a $450 million interchange at I-285 and Ga. 400. The project is partly funded by the referendum and expecting federal funds as well. That highway spot would become nearly a third less congested.

Such a complex result is par for the course for employment centers through the region. From Southlake in Clayton County, which would see widenings of Jonesboro Road and Tara Boulevard, as well as a new bus system, to Gwinnett, where the list is loaded with local roads and highways, to Buckhead and beyond, the percentage increase of 45-minute car commutes stays under 10 percent.

“A 6 percent reduction [in commuters blocked by congestion] for us is huge,” said Mike Alexander, research division chief of the ARC. With congestion, “the more you try to press up against it, the harder it is to get there,” he said, in part because new roads also generate new traffic.

“We know, after all these years of doing this, we see 6 percent, and it’s, ‘Woo hoo!’ ” he said, raising his arms in victory. “We’ve got something that’s working.”

Hannah Michel, 21, a marketing graduate of the University of Mississippi, can see the logic. “Four percent doesn’t do that much, but in the long run, it would,” said Michel, who often shops in the Perimeter area and was there recently after a job interview.

Caroline Riggins can see it, too — all too well. The 40-year Dunwoody resident is retired, and she predicts one thing from the improved highway commutes: all those new workers pouring onto her local streets. “Once they get off those main roads, they’re getting on our roads,” she said.

She’s voting no.

Transit transformation?

The impact of mass transit projects in the referendum is a matter of debate.

One of the biggest projects on the list is the Atlanta Beltline. It takes up $602 million, and it’s touted as one of the most transformational.

The ARC’s study shows that after it is built, the number of new people able to reach jobs in Midtown Atlanta within 45 minutes increases by as little as 1 percent.

But Atlanta Beltline advocates focus on what it would do for the neighborhoods.

“I hope it passes,” said Michael Kelly, a graphic designer. He lives within walking distance of a Whole Foods retail center near a future Beltline stop, City Hall East, and said he would use it to commute. “It can only be healthier for the city.”

Beltline officials point out that 1 percent to 4 percent in high-population Atlanta is a lot of people, and that the area already has MARTA heavy rail, so it’s tougher to improve on numbers that are already pretty good. They expect the Beltline to provide 11,800 daily trips.

So can it lure car-crazy metro Atlantans out of their vehicles?

At the retail center near Kelly’s home, Jay Commodore, a network analyst from East Point, was shopping on a recent Sunday and said he’d vote for the referendum. But would he have used transit to get to the store that day? “Possibly.”

Even on workweek day shifts, though he can take the MARTA red line right to work each day, half the time he just doesn’t. “Even two days ago I’m on the expressway, I’m like, I should’ve taken the train,” he said, remembering the “crazy” traffic. “I just got accustomed to driving,” he said.

At the opposite end of the transit spectrum, the referendum could bring the Emory University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention area a commuting revolution.

A $700 million rail line along the Clifton Corridor would take mass transit access there from miserable to some of the region’s best. If the rail line is built, 220,000 additional metro residents could reach jobs there by transit within a manageable 45-minute commute, a 729 percent increase. Realistically, planners expect daily ridership of about 10,000 boardings, slightly less than what’s expected for the Beltline.

“This could make a tremendous difference,” said Dr. Russell Medford, a former professor of medicine at Emory who has spun two biotech companies out of Emory work, and is now president and CEO of Salutria Pharmaceuticals. He calls Emory-area traffic “awful.”

“We make decisions of where we locate our facilities based on transportation access all the time,” Medford said.

Adrian Owens could feel slighted. In his area, south DeKalb County, some have said train money should have gone to a project along I-20. But Owens is satisfied with $225 million in new bus stations and express buses there instead. That’s in spite of the fact that it may or may not improve his daily five-hour round-trip commute to Norcross.

That commute was his choice, he said. Besides, his mom, Jeanette, has a housekeeping job at Emory and has to take three buses there from their home in Lithonia. For her, “I think it’d be a massive difference,” he said.

Not for Curtis Nash. “We need more access” in south DeKalb, said Nash, who lives in Stone Mountain and works in Tucker. He questions the way success is being measured. He looks at a map of the employment centers where ARC counted job access for the referendum projects. He notes that they are in more densely developed areas centrally located — not in south DeKalb.

ARC planners respond that people may work at those centers but live in homes all across the region, and still benefit. They note that residents will get varied projects in all 10 counties. The list includes not just roads and mass transit, but projects to improve safety and make walking and bicycling easier.

Tim Lomax, a national congestion expert at the Texas Transportation Institute, said the ARC’s calculations sound reasonable.

But don’t look for abolition of congestion, as long as metro Atlanta has a solid job market.

Lomax pointed to Detroit as a place where congestion has diminished.

“Is it possible? Ask the people in Detroit,” Lomax shot back. “They’ve done away with a lot of it. They’ve done away with a lot of jobs. In an area that’s growing in people and jobs, it’s very difficult to get any kind of a reduction over 10 years.

“Slowing the growth of congestion is a really good target,” he added. “The scale of the problem that we’ve created is so big, it’s really hard to get your hands around.”

ABOUT THE TRANSPORTATION REFERENDUM

The July 31 referendum represents the first time metro Atlanta has voted as one region. Ten counties – Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale – will vote together on a 1 percent sales tax to be levied in those counties for 10 years. If it passes and survives legal challenges, the tax will fund projects within those counties. A regional list of projects drawn up by local officials last year totals $6.14 billion, and another $1 billion will go to local governments for smaller projects of their choosing.