The state Senate is poised to vote today on a billion-dollar plan to solve Georgia’s transportation troubles. But something is missing.
Funding for any form of mass transportation isn’t anywhere to be found in HB 170, the transportation funding bill, which would devote those hundreds of millions of dollars to roads and bridges.
The lack of investment in transit by the state’s politicians seems a puzzling disconnect from what metro Atlantans — who account for half the state’s population and about two-thirds of its gross domestic product — say is the best way to clear the key arteries in the car-clogged heart of Georgia.
Traffic was seen as the biggest problem facing metro Atlanta, according to respondents to a 10-county regional survey last year — moreso than even the economy, public education and crime. Forty-two percent in the Atlanta Regional Commission poll said expanding public transit was the best way to fix traffic. By comparison, 30 percent thought improving roads and highways was a better solution.
The absence of transit funding in the bill also seems at odds with sentiments recently expressed by many in the General Assembly. A joint study committee created to look at transportation funding options last year went around the state seeking input. The 12 members’ final report was unequivocal about mass transit.
“Funding is needed annually for investment in transit systems around the state,” the report said. “It is in the state of Georgia’s and numerous transit systems’ best interests to establish a separate, permanent funding stream for those interests.”
So what gives?
‘Everything can’t be given to Atlanta’
For one thing, transit is a tough sell in rural Georgia. Republican Sen. Mike Dugan, whose home in Carroll County is a world away from Atlanta, said, “Everything in the world can’t be given right to Atlanta.” But he feels the tension as much as anyone, since all the counties in his district (which also includes Paulding and Douglas) are in the 28-county Metropolitan Atlanta Statistical Area.
“I want to relieve a lot of the congestion we have in the center of the state, a major hub and thoroughfare,” Dugan said. “But at the same time, make sure we are taking care of the people outside of metro Atlanta.”
The state Constitution requires that motor fuel tax revenue — which makes up the lion’s share of state funding for transportation — be spent only on roads and bridges. Changing that would require a constitutional amendment, which would only go to voters if two-thirds of the Legislature approved it.
State Sen. Steve Gooch, R - Dahlonega, who co-chaired the transportation funding study committee, said that’s very unlikely.
“You would probably not win that battle, because we don’t have enough money in transportation as it is for roads and bridges,” Gooch said. “So if you took more money away from roads and bridges, you’re digging a deeper hole.”
Democratic Rep. Calvin Smyre, the longest-serving lawmaker in the Capitol, said that for a long time transit funding was an issue nobody under the Gold Dome wanted to touch. Attitudes are changing, but slowly, he said.
TSPLOST, take 2?
In the meantime, the news is not all bad for transit supporters.
On Wednesday, Senate leaders amended a bill to enable local governments retry a regional transportation sales tax similar to the TSPLOST that failed on the ballot in nine of 12 regions of the state in 2012, including metro Atlanta. If those regions fail to reach a consensus by January 2017, single counties or smaller groups of counties could offer their own transportation tax referendum. The proposed sales tax would not have to be a full 1 percent as before but could be a fraction of a penny.
State lawmakers have also included $100 million worth of borrowing for transit projects in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
That’s a one-time provision, however, with no guarantee of a future repeat. And the money would have to be spread among 128 transit providers in Georgia, meaning it wouldn’t go far. Especially not for something like an extension of MARTA’s heavy rail, which costs about $200 million per mile. Or even an extensive new bus service, like the MARTA expansion to Clayton, which will cost about $23 million annually.
The $100 million is more likely to be used for small-scale improvements, like station upgrades, buying more rail cars or extending bus service, said Rhonda Briggins-Ridley, senior director of external affairs for MARTA.
‘We have made a good beginning’
House Speaker David Ralston said the $100 million in bonds for transit is historic.
“I think that it begins a discussion,” Ralston said. “I don’t know what future legislators will do … but I think we have made a good beginning.”
Transit advocates applaud that step. But transit planners need a dedicated funding stream from either the state or a local sales tax to plan large-scale projects for the future, said Neill Herring, a veteran lobbyist for the Sierra Club.
Dedicated funding is also important when competing for federal grants, because the grants usually require a state match.
Georgia is already lagging other states on transit investment.
MARTA is one of the three subway systems founded in the 1970s. Two (Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco and the Metrorail in Washington D.C.) have more than 100 miles of track. MARTA has less than half that.
“We have fallen significantly behind,” MARTA CEO Keith Parker told an Atlanta-Fulton County delegation of lawmakers Wednesday.
Transit critical to younger workers
That could be a huge barrier to attracting and keeping businesses like Mercedes and State Farm, which recently decided to locate corporate hubs near MARTA stations, and the younger workers they want.
Millennials are notoriously more urban-centric and transit-loving than their predecessors.
Just ask Cory Jackson, a 29-year-old commercial banker who lives in Sandy Springs. Jackson recently joined a 130-member panel of millennials who are providing input to the Atlanta Regional Commission about transportation policy, among other topics.
“A lot of people are moving outside of the state because most people of our generation want to be able to live, work and play within a three-mile radius,” Jackson said. “I think there is a disconnect between the money that needs to be going to transit versus what is going into these bills. And I think hopefully we’ll be able to figure out in our panel in the next year or so, how can we connect the two dots. Because I think public transit is a very important piece to millennials.”
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