I don't know about anyone else, but my suggestion is to basically abolish the state gas tax on all state residents by exempting all Georgia drivers from the gas tax and keeping the gas tax in place on all out-of-state motorists and raising the gas tax substantially (but NOT excessively) to one of the highest in the nation and indexing it to inflation so that the amount of tax on gas levied is collected as a percentage of the final amount of gas purchased instead of being a set 7.5 cents-per-gallon that never increases with the cost of gas or with our continually increasing road needs.

Metro Atlanta and Georgia Interstates see an EXCESSIVE amount of cross-county and through out-of-town traffic because of our location at the nexus of three major cross-continent trade routes, two of which (I-85 & I-75) are two of the busiest superhighways on the entire planet: I-20, which carries a very heavy amount of cross-continent traffic between the West Coast (heavily-populated Southern California), heavily-populated North Texas (Dallas-Ft. Worth) and the Southeast; I-85, which carries an extremely-heavy amount of cross-continental traffic between the heavy-industrial and resort areas of the Gulf Coast and the major population centers of the Northeastern U.S.; and I-75, which carries and exceptional amount of cross-continental traffic between the population centers of the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes and Upper Midwest and the extremely-popular resort areas of Florida (as demonstrated by the massive gridlock on Metro Atlanta freeways during holiday and vacation periods) and the fast-growing and rapidly-expanding Port of Savannah which has grown to become one of the busiest seaports on the planet in recent years.

Having North-South Interstates 75 & 85 and East-West Interstate 20 meetup in Downtown Atlanta is the equivalent of having massively-crowded Interstates 5 and 10 in Los Angeles and Interstate 95 in the Northeast all meetup in one place with Atlanta's I-285 Perimeter being the equivalent of L.A.'s I-405 San Diego Freeway as that is quite literally how exceptionally heavy a volume of traffic the Atlanta Freeway system handles.

After exempting all Georgia drivers from the gas tax and then indexing to inflation and raising the gas tax that would only remain on out-of-state drivers, I would initiate a system of distance-based user fees on each individual major road so that each major road becomes capable of funding its own construction, maintenance, operation and expansion as needed with motorists paying to use each road with each individual use, thereby making each road self-funding.

I would do something similar for all transit lines in the Atlanta Region by abolishing the politically-contentious 1% sales tax that is paid to fund the increasingly inadequate MARTA and turnover control of the increasingly embarrassing and worsening debacle that is currently MARTA to the state government.
The state government, by way of GRTA, would not necessarily run what is currently known as MARTA, it would simply oversee the system which would be overhauled to run and be administered according to transportation corridors that run parallel to the Interstate and freeway spokes that run in and out of and around the city (I-85 NE, GA 400 N, I-75/575 NW, US 29/GA 316, I-285 etc).
In place of the 1% sales tax that was levied to fund MARTA in Fulton and DeKalb counties, each individual transit line would be funded with its own unique mix of distance-based user fees (an increased distance and zone-based fare system that covers most, if not ALL of the TRUE cost of providing the transit service), P3 public-private partnerships (like the kind that the state was going to use to originally fund the I-75/I-575 NW HOT Lane project in which a partnering private company provides a very large chunk of financing for the construction and continued operation and maintenance of the line, usually between 1/3rd and 1/2 of the cost of the project) and Tax Increment Financing in which part of the property tax revenues from new development that pops up along a transit line is used to finance it.

I would also use the funds from the self-financing user fees and substantially-increased gas taxes on out-of-state motorists on the freeways to double-deck most, but not necessarily all, of the freeway system to handle the increasing volume of heavy truck traffic since a horizontal expansion or traditional widening is completely out of the question in this increasingly anti-road political environment.
The sections of the freeway system that I would double-deck would be all of I-285 (except for the section of the road that tunnels under the runways at the airport where enough room was left to horizontally expand the road to roughly 18 lanes through those runway tunnels), GA 400 North of the Perimeter and all of the Interstates, OUTSIDE-of-the-Perimeter as vertically expanding the freeways Inside of the Perimeter would most likely be another political impossibility.
I would prefer to designate the top level for automobile traffic and the bottom level for trucks, buses, vehicles with trailers and more than six wheels so that the extended elevated structures which will serve as the upper-deck of traffic don't wear-out so quickly.

About that widening thing...A wide-scale plan to widen the roads in Metro Atlanta is much easier said than done in a unique political environment here in North Georgia where fervently hard-core pro-transit ITP Intown urbanites literally scream "bloody murder" anytime a new road is proposed to be built or a busy road is proposed to be widened.
The fact that Metro Atlanta is so heavily-dependent on two-lane thoroughfares lined with heavy residential development does not help the road-widening cause either.

{{"In my opinion everyone in North Fulton should vote NO on TSPLOST on July 31st because it does not widen GA 400."}}

Actually, the T-SPLOST does propose to widen GA 400 by adding a couple of collector-distributor lanes in each direction to the road from I-285 up to Spalding Drive as part of the $640 million proposed reconstruction of the I-285/GA 400 interchange, which along with the proposed $150 million reconstruction of the I-20/I-285 West interchange, may be the only savageable parts of this highly-flawed process.

The addition of four collector-distributor lanes (two in each direction) between I-285 & Spaulding Drive may not necessarily be the large-scale widening of GA 400 that you and many others may be looking for, but it would be all that North Fulton, Forsyth, Dawson, Lumpkin and GA 400 North Corridor motorists will ever get as widening GA 400 is both politically-impossible because of the ultra-hardcore anti-road sentiment that exists Inside-the-Perimeter and physically-impossible because of the section of GA 400 that tunnels directly under the Atlanta Financial Center that cannot be expanded from more than it's current three lanes in each direction through those tubes.
GA 400 also cannot be physically or politically widened Inside-the-Perimeter because of the heavy residential and commercial development that extremely-closely lines the road from south of the Buckhead Loop/Lenox Road exit to the I-85 interchange.
That is due to both the very-high density of development in the area and part of a compromise deal between the Georgia Department of Transportation and the Intown neighborhood and activist groups that in exchange for not standing in the way of the GA 400 Extension being built, that the road would never be widened to encourage people to ride mass transit if traveling in the city.

{{"This isn't rocket science. The roads are full so build more roads."}}

If only it were that simple...The irony is that is actually is that simple in the Houston area where the I-10 Katy Freeway was recently widened to as many as 26 lanes in some spots on the Westside of Houston to accommodate increasingly-heavy Interstate and local commuter traffic.
Houston has actually been very proactive in expanding its road network over the last couple of decades, with the aforementioned max-widening of the I-10 West and the construction of close to a dozen new controlled-access highways (expressways in East Coast-speak) with a few being built out of converted existing busy surface streets and railroad corridors.
The only kicker about Houston's ambitious highway-expansion program is that all of the new controlled-access highways constructed over the last two decades have been toll roads and that between 4-6 of the new lanes added to the massively-expanded I-10 West Katy Freeway are High Occupancy Toll lanes (HOT lanes).
The Georgia Department of Transportation actually had plans to widen I-75 Northwest to between 18-26 lanes between the I-285 NW Cobb Cloverleaf and the I-575 split/merge interchange, but that idea was quickly withdrawn due to very-negative public feedback once the media got a hold of it.

Also, GA 400 was recently widened (slightly) between the GA 140/Holcomb Bridge Road exit and the McFarland Parkway exit back in the late 2000's with the additional new southbound lane not being opened until a few weeks ago.
There are also plans to widen GA 400 from 4 lanes to between 6-8 lanes from McFarland Parkway up to the GA 20 interchange in Forsyth County, but those plans do not appear in the Metro Atlanta T-SPLOST referendum because Forsyth County is in a different regional commission (the Georgia Mountains Region or something like that) that will be voting on a T-SPLOST list that is separate from the 10-county Metro Atlanta region.
Widening GA 400 to 8 lanes will be all that GA 400 North commuters will likely ever get as GA 400 is viewed by many to be a scenic parkway-type road more than it is viewed as being a freeway and, despite the heavy dependence on the road by OTP suburban commuters, any attempts to widen the road that involve disturbing, cutting or removing the popular heavily-wooded tree buffers that line GA 400 (and other Metro Atlanta freeways) usually don't go over all that well with the public, even Outside-the-Perimeter.

There's also an active long-term movement afoot by a coalition of density and transit-obsessed land spectulators and real estate developers, anti-road environmentalists (led by the Sierra Club) and transit-hungry Intowners to "encourage" (force) suburban and exurban commuters in OTP Metro Atlanta to use transit over the long-term by intentionally adding very-little, if any, new road capacity in the Atlanta Region.
It is an anti-automobile movement that has its roots from the Intown Atlanta Freeway Revolts of the 1960's and '70's against the Stone Mountain Freeway extension the the construction of I-485 from the current I-85/GA 400 interchange down through the eastside of town to the current I-285/I-675 interchange on the southside of town.
The anti-automobile/anti-road movement gained a heckuva lot of steam with the political defeat and cancellation of the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc back in the early 2000's and will more than likely gain a heckuva lot more steam and become virtually unstoppable politically with the stinging defeat of the T-SPLOST referendum on July 31st which will make the Republicans that control and dominate the Georgia Legislature extremely hesitant to repeat this T-SPLOST ever again as liberal Intown urbanites won't vote for a list which they think has too many roads in it and conservative OTP suburbanites won't vote for a list that they think has too much transit or too many roads in it and because it is a tax increase.

{{"However, government sees a demand for roads and allocates over 50% of TSPLOST to mass transit, something that only 5% will ever use. My plan is that TSPLOST should put 95% to roads because that is what people use."}}

Upon first thought, it would appear that the suburbanites and exurbanites that are heavily-dependent upon the Atlanta Region's very-limited road network would politically back a proposed T-SPLOST list that funds road construction by a margin of 95%-5%, but upon closer examination, that might not necessarily be the case in addition to there being a great deal of anti-transit sentiment in the largely-conservative OTP suburbs and exurbs, there is also a great deal of anti-road sentiment OTP as well, especially in Fayette and Cherokee counties where there are active local movements afoot to protect those still largely-exurban counties from being overdeveloped and overbuilt with cheap commercial and residential overdevelopment as has happened with once-exurban Cobb and Gwinnett counties where the over-availability of cheap housing has turned those once far-flung suburban communities into close-in highly-populated urban districts of Metro Atlanta who must deal with the very-urban problems of overcrowding, overpopulation, high crime, massive illegal immigration, gang activity, severe traffic congestion and outright gridlock.

Fayette County wants to remain as far-flung from Metro Atlanta as possible for as long as it possibly can while Cherokee County is deathly afraid of becoming the next Cobb County and wants to preserve its unique distant suburban-to-exurban-to-rural character as a place where the "Mountains-meet-the-Metro area".
Cherokee desperately wants to keep the northern hilly-to-mountainous part of the county exurban and rural, so any roadbuilding proposals don't always go over so well in both Cherokee and Fayette counties because roadbuilding, road construction and road-widening is seen by many residents throughout the metro area as a conduit of more overdevelopment ("more roads will only create more traffic" is a proclamation that is commonly uttered both in the transit-minded city and the auto-dependent suburbs).

Ironically, it is the defeat of the proposed T-SPLOST in which ITP Intown urbanites think funds too many roads OTP and in which OTP suburbanites and exurbanites think funds too much transit and economic development projects ITP and too many roads OTP, that will likely push this extremely road infrastructure-challenged region ever so much closer to being a transit-heavy community in the mold of a heavily-populated Northern/Northeastern city like Chicago or Toronto (which both by the way ironically have better surface road networks than auto-dependent Atlanta which likely has the worst road network of any major metro area on the continent), Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York or Boston as opposed to being more like one of Atlanta's more automobile-heavy, automobile-dependent Sunbelt counterparts like Houston (which despite a maximum road-construction transportation approach with the addition of 10 new toll roads is still seriously considering the acquistion of commuter rail service), Miami (which has commuter rail service to parallel the very busy I-95), Dallas (which has 6 toll roads to Atlanta's one and 130 centerline miles of rail transit track to Atlanta's 48) and Los Angeles (a notorious auto-crazed town which began intensely-adding heavy rail, light rail and commuter rail 25 years ago due to extreme gridlock and little space to expand the very-extensive road network due to the complete buildout of the Los Angeles Basin).

Actually, a reasonable idea, but only if at the same time we make all MARTA riders pay the full cost of their rides and stop sucking money out of the suburbs to pay for it.

And we can also stop going downtown for football game, baseball games, shopping and how about we move all of the offices outside the perimeter so we can be closer to work and not buy lunch, dinner, clothes, gas, go to meetings, so no more need to buy catering or any other services. You want our money but not what comes with it.

Ex-suburbanite
8:56 am on Monday, July 9, 2012

Interesting suggestion, but our traffic problems are not necessarily just as simple as suburban commuters causing traffic jams, though people who commute during rush hours between largely residential areas in the suburbs/exurbs OTP and job centers in the city (Airport, Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, Emory, Perimeter/Dunwoody, Cumberland, etc) may be a large and significant part of the traffic congestion problem as in any very large city and major population center, it is far from being the only part of the traffic congestion problem as Atlanta sits at a nexus of three very major trans-continental trade routes (I-75, I-85 & I-20), two of which (I-75 & I-85) are two of the busiest superhighways on the entire planet, which means that much of the traffic that is on our Interstates is car and heavy truck traffic that is passing through the area.
It should also be noted that Metro Atlanta is a very major trucking and logistical hub on the North American continent with a larger-than-normal amount of trucking firms headquartered in the area.
Metro Atlanta is also the site of what is supposed to be the largest Intermodal facility (truck-to-rail, rail-to-truck) east of the Mississippi River, the Whitaker Intermodal Facility in Austell which generates an inordinate amount of truck traffic between the Western Atlanta suburbs and the Port of Savannah, which has grown into one of the busiest seaports on the entire planet in recent years.

Mike Lowry
9:17 am on Monday, July 9, 2012

Having mass transit riders pay much more of the actual cost of their rides, preferably through a combination distance-based and zone-based fare-collection system, is actually a very good idea.
For example, it costs as much as $11.05 one-way (up from $10.90 one-way just last month) to ride from one end of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system (Pittsburg/Bay Point) to the San Francisco International Airport (just the DISCOUNTED fares are $4.10 one-way).
http://www.bart.gov/tickets/calculator/index.aspx
It also costs as much as $31.00 one-way during rush hours and $24.00 one-way during non-rush hours to ride the Long Island Railroad from one end of the line to the other between New York City (Penn Station in Manhattan, Queens & Brooklyn) and the outer reaches of Long Island (Montauk & Greenspoint, Long Island, NY).
http://www.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares2011.htm
By comparison, regular one-way fares on MARTA are only $2.50 one-way, which doesn't necessarily get you all that much in terms of dependability, security, consistency and extensive reach of service these days.

Ex-surburbanite,

Why limit the toll to highways? If we oppose socialism, then to be consistent, we must oppose all public (i.e., government) roads. So, let's sell our streets and highways to the highest bidder (make them reimburse taxpayers for construction/maintenance costs) and put a toll on ALL roads. The result will be that we only pay for the roads we drive on. Turn left, pay a toll. Hang a right, pay another other. Merge onto a highway, pay up. Exit the highway,... You get the point.

Of course, the cost of an apple will have to include the tolls that had to be paid to get the apples from the apple trees to the grocery store. Never mind that the cost of everything will rise, and we'll end up paying more in tolls than we ever would in taxes (no reason that the for-profit road owner shouldn't be able to charge any toll they want...we gotta get to work). The good news is that we'll be able to sleep knowing that we'll be free of government roads and socialism.

I would personally pay considerably more if my ride from North Springs made only a few stops locally (from North Springs to Medical Center) and then went EXPRESS directly to the airport.

I travel out of Hartsfield nearly weekly and I'm here to tell you that there is no way I'm going to tell someone getting on our off at College Park station or any other station South of Atlanta to turn his radio down or stop cursing while talking on the phone. That's just the way it is.

In NY we paid extra to go all the way upstate by train or all the way out to the end of Long Island... I see no reason not to pay more if the distance is further.

I agree that T-SPLOST is not the answer as using the very-limited funds from a T-SPLOST to poorly-attempt to address our overwhelming traffic congestion and mobility problems is the equivalent of trying to treat a deep gash with a very small band-aid.
I also agree that more employers in selected fields could let their employees work from home, but also keep-in-mind that there are only a relatively small percentage of jobs that can be done from home or through telecommuting as many jobs must be performed in person and on-site (most jobs like law and legal services, construction, maintenance, manufacturing, medicine, research, life sciences, security, retail, lodging, academics/teaching, logistics and shipping, stocking, trucking, courier work, real estate, government, airport services, etc just simply cannot be done from home and require that people get in their cars and contribute to the congestion on the roads).

I totally agree that it is obviously not for every job, but for the majority of "office workers" it is a very real possibility and is a very real relief effort that employees would embrace.

I've seen all of the work that needs to be done via the TSplost bill and I just don't see how a city that can't send out an email when they are shutting off my water to change out a meter to a digital reader could be expected to organize such a massive effort such as what is being suggested.

There is so much wrong with it... There was another reader suggesting a Plan B, I would agree this shouldn't be all or nothing, there should be options.

Jim Kinney
12:53 pm on Monday, July 9, 2012
{{"Congestion is caused by too many cars on the road. As we've widened the roads every few years for the past 30 years, it has fueled the expansion of the population to the 'burbs. But they all want to drive to work by themselves."}}

I agree that congestion is caused by too many cars on the roads. But, actually, since the opening of the GA 400 Extension through Buckhead and the then-massive "Freeing-the-Freeways" project of the 1980's, Metro Atlanta has not really necessarily done an inordinate amount of road-widening or construction, especially when compared to our economic competitors in North Carolina, Florida and Texas with every new expressway built being toll roads in the latter two states where there have been close to 20 new toll roads built in each state in the last two decades since Georgia last opened up a new expressway, which was the stub Ronald Reagan Parkway in Gwinnett in 1994, which technically is not even an expressway, but a scenic-type parkway.
Technically, the last new expressway to open in Georgia was the GA 400 Extension through North Atlanta and Buckhead in 1993, since then the population of the 28-county Atlanta Region has nearly doubled from around 3 million at that time to about 5.8 million today.

And the thing that has fueled the expansion of the now-massive Atlanta suburbs is not necessarily road-widening, but Atlanta's location in the fast-growing Sunbelt relative to the heavily-populated Rustbelt states as much of Atlanta's growth comes from people relocating here from the Great Lakes and the Northeast (the states of New York, New Jersey and Michigan in particular contribute to much of the explosive population growth that is seen here in Metro Atlanta, along with Mexico & Latin America and Asia).
Overall, there actually has not really been that much road-widening here in road infrastructure-challenged Metro Atlanta over the last 20 years when compared to competing auto-dominated cities like Miami, Orlando, Phoenix and, ESPECIALLY, Dallas and Houston or even transit-heavy cities like Chicago, Toronto and Washington DC, who as transit-dominated cities all have much more extensive surface road networks than auto-dominated Atlanta, whose overall surface road network is EXCEPTIONALLY limited for a landlocked metro area that is exceptionally-dependent on automobile travel. The truth is that just like we have invested virtually nothing in transit in the Atlanta Region, we have virtually invested next-to-nothing in our road network over the last two decades since the opening of the GA 400 Extension in 1993.

Jim Kinney
12:53 pm on Monday, July 9, 2012
A great deal of the people out on the roads don't necessarily want to drive to work by themselves and would gladly use mass transit to commute to and from work or carpool if that were an option that were available or convenient to them, but unfortunately here in the Atlanta Region, mass transit is an option that is not necessarily easily available or is just simply not an option for them depending on where they work and what they do.
Personally, I have two jobs that require me to drive all over the Atlanta Region which means that mass transit is just simply not an option, though I am aware that if there were increased mass transit options for those who could use them, my own required personal drive could maybe possibly be somewhat easier, especially on major roads.

{{"Yep. We should all be lamenting the weakness of our leadership to enact a sensible transportation system 30 years ago when gas was cheap and we could have afforded an extra $0.30/g tax to build a working transit system."}}

It's not necessarily that simple as about 30 years ago at this time in 1982, the nation was coming down out of another extended period of economic malaise that involved an oil shock and a steep increase in gas prices. Also a $0.30/gallon gas tax would have been cost-prohibitive at the time as prices were declining to $0.60-0.70/gallon down from about $1.20-$1.30/gallon (today's equivalent of about $4.50-$5.00/gallon).
Also, at that time here in Metro Atlanta, there were about 3.5 to 4 million fewer people living here in this region then there are today (meaning the region had only 1/3rd the amount of people that it has today), MARTA was still kind of very early in the process of being built-out in Fulton and DeKalb counties as the rail line only ran through like Downtown and Midtown at the time if memory serves me correct.
Also, there was not yet very much excessive development outside of I-285 as there is today as Town Center, North Point, Gwinnett Place, Arbor Place, the Mall of Georgia and Stonecrest Malls did not yet even exist and were still each many years away from opening.

{{"MARTA is so undersized for the area it's useless for all but a few people. But the people in Cobb and Gwinnett said "NO!" 30 years ago and got the rest of GA to pony up tax funds to wider roads for them to drive to work on."}}

You are so very correct that MARTA is too undersized to serve the Atlanta Region circa-2012 as the developed core of Metro Atlanta has literally busted out of Fulton and DeKalb counties and now spreads across parts of 10 counties for certain. The people of then-suburban Cobb County and then-exurban Gwinnett County have said no to MARTA repeatedly over the last 40 years or so since the first votes for MARTA were held back in the mid-1960's (MARTA was actually rejected by what are now all five core urban counties-Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett-when the first MARTA funding referendum was held back in 1968).
But just as Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett did not want MARTA service in their then far-flung suburban and exurban communities, MARTA and the liberal power-structure of ITP Atlanta has not really wanted to extend rail and bus service out to the suburbs because the then emerging black-dominated liberal power structure inside I-285 did not want to share political power with the conservatives in the suburbs.

The failure of MARTA to expand outside of Fulton & DeKalb counties has been much more of a mutual thing than has been portrayed over the years as not only did the political and social power structure of the OTP suburbs & exurbs not want train and bus service extended out from the city out of fear that it would bring crime and blight (crime & blight which arrived in Cobb & Gwinnett anyway via the automobile), but likewise, the political and social power structure of the ITP urban core did not want to extend bus service out to the 'burbs because it would mean sharing power and control over a transit system that the liberal power structure, particularly the black part of that Intown liberal power structure, has taken so much pride in having sole control over through the last four-plus decades.
MARTA has been the pride-and-joy of the Intown liberal power structure and they are none-too-eager to share that pride-and-joy with the 'burbs.
The aversion to transit in the 'burbs OTP and the protectiveness over MARTA ITP is one of the reasons why there is very little MARTA service in largely-conservative and predominantly white North Fulton County despite that area paying the 1% sales tax to fund MARTA along with the rest of Fulton and DeKalb counties and despite the fact that Georgia Highways 400 & 141 are a total traffic nightmare everyday during rush hour.

I agree with you Renee. I've also learned a lot from this forum. This is why we need open discussion and forums in Smyrna. Everything is controlled by the city. The council won't even acknowledge or address citizens when they speak before them. To communicate is the beginning of understanding. And knowledge is power.

{{"Differnent people are against T-SPLOST for totally different reasons, and those reasons are why future discussions may prove futile for producing a project list that is any more acceptable to the stakeholders than the current proposal."}}

Exactly. Tea Partiers don't like T-SPLOST because it raises taxes, expands government and funds too much transit; The Sierra Club doesn't like T-SPLOST because it doesn't fund enough transit; the NAACP doesn't like T-SPLOST because they only got a $220 MILLION bus line instead of the rail transit line that they wanted in the I-20 East Corridor; ITP Intown Urbanites don't like T-SPLOST because it funds too many roads in suburbs for people that they despise; OTP Suburbanites and exurbanites don't like T-SPLOST because it funds MARTA transit and economic-development projects in the city in the form of streetcars and the Beltline; people across the political spectrum hate T-SPLOST because they think that it funds roads that developers will only use to create more traffic and because they don't think that the money will be handled properly by state and local governments which have had more than their fair share of ethical issues lately.
It looks like this poorly thought-out and increasingly-unpopular T-SPLOST has only given people something more to dislike about government.

Don't even bother to wait for a "Plan B" to emerge as there is just barely a "Plan A" in the form of this extremely-poorly thought-out and fatally-flawed T-SPLOST.
After this increasingly-unpopular T-SPLOST is decisively-defeated at the polls on July 31st, there will not likely be anymore transportation "plans" put forth by the state legislature for a very long time as 2014 is a statewide election year in which Governor Deal is certain to face a very-conservative challenger from his political right in the 2014 GOP Gubernatorial Primary who will most likely take him to task for supporting a tax-increase in the form of this wildly-unpopular T-SPLOST referendum.
In terms of political impact, this T-SPLOST is the 2012 version of the wildly-unpopular proposed Northern Arc toll road that resulted in the defeat of a sitting Governor in Roy Barnes and the complete loss-of-power and political relevance for an entire political party in the Democrats that had been firmly in control of Georgia politics for the previous 140 years.

The defeat of the T-SPLOST will not necessarily result in the defeat of the now-ruling Republican Party who are in firm control and completely dominate Georgia politics, but it will likely result in a political climate that was already highly-adverse to transportation investment even more extremely-adverse at any attempts at transportation infrastructure investment and so-called planning as the ruling GOP moves hard-right to compensate for the party's partial support of a wildly-unpopular tax-increase referendum that failed so miserably at the polls.
It took the state the better part of an entire decade to even broach the subject of any type of wide-scale transportation investment after the rejection, defeat and severe public backlash against the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc proposal back in 2002 which means that the issue of a much-needed increase in transportation investment will most likely be anathema to this state legislature for at-least the next decade or so.

{{"A rejection of the referendum does not give the legislature any clear directive how they should proceed to reduce gridlock and satisfy the competing agendas."}}

That's okay, because the legislature didn't have a clue on how to proceed to reduce gridlock and satisfy the numerous competing agendas anyway, that much is obvious judging by the across-the-board widespread rejection of this poorly thought-out and fatally-flawed T-SPLOST.

{{"Our legislature did us no favors in not meeting our transportation needs when they punted the responsibility of solving traffic woes to the voter, without even a back up plan."}}

You, ma'am are very correct as by punting a critical issue to the voters, the legislature has likely made a really-bad situation even that much worse as the legislature will likely be too fearful to even broach the subject of transportation funding ever again for probably another decade while things get even worse.

Jake Lilley
2:28 pm on Monday, July 9, 2012

+1 (I totally and completely agree)

grrrrrreat point!! I couldn't agree more!!!

Agreed!

Thanks Jake! Patch editors do our best to get information on many different topics and opinions posted to the site on a regular basis.

That's because people who choose careers as DOT employees are usually unable to find a job doing anything else. Same thing went on in Florida when I lived there for a decade. Just simply a bunch of mentally challenged people.

The answer is if you can't work for yourself (own your own business) you work for someone else. If you can't work for someone else (be an employee) you work for the government (federal, state, county, city or local). If you can't work for government then run of office (president, vice president, congress, governor, LT. Governor...).

Sadly, many Georgia politicians want more tolls, not less. When one constituency gets a tax break, that usually means that somebody else has to make up the difference (e.g., you and me via sales taxes and tolls). We have to pay for all of those corporate tax breaks somehow: http://www.ajc.com/news/tax-breaks-lack-accountability-263496.html

{{"I've been wondering: why hasn't the Black Caucus come out against this regressive tax (that would be their usual line of disagreement)."}}

The Black Caucus technically already has come out against the tax as the NAACP opposes the Metro Atlanta T-SPLOST, mainly only because the I-20 East Corridor in South DeKalb will only get a mere $225 MILLION bus line instead of the $1 billion heavy rail line that is highly-desired by voters in that part of the region.
http://documents.atlantaregional.com/tia/pdf/TIA-M-023.pdf
http://www.peachpundit.com/2012/05/25/new-t-splost-trouble-naacp-set-to-announce-opposition/
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/state-naacp-opposes-t-1446678.html
The Sierra Club also opposes the T-SPLOST because they think that the project list has too many roads and not enough transit while the most-visible Tea Party group in the state, the Georgia Tea Party led by Debbie Dooley and Julianne Thompson of out Dacula/Gwinnett way (one of hundreds of Tea Party groups in Georgia, btw) opposes the T-SPLOST because they think that the project list has too much transit and not enough roads while Tea Party groups in Fayette and Cherokee Counties oppose the T-SPLOST simply because they think that it is a tax increase that just happens to fund roads and transit that they neither want to use or pay for.

The NAACP, the Sierra Club and the various Tea Parties have joined in a rather unusual, but exceptionally powerful, alliance to oppose the T-SPLOST.
The Tea Party opposing the T-SPLOST was not necessarily unexpected, but once the left-leaning NAACP and the even more left-leaning Sierra Club came out against the T-SPLOST, it was toast as the boosters of this thing were depending on a great degree of support in densely-populated and left-leaning Fulton and DeKalb counties, somewhere in the 70% range or more, along with about 40-50% support in the suburbs, to help this thing pass.
The fact that this thing is polling at under 50% in Fulton and DeKalb counties and just barely above 30% (and slipping) in the eight counties of the region outside of those two core counties shows just how much of an exceptionally-poorly thought-out and horrendously-bad idea this thing was.
The political backlash and the political slaughter in the aftermath of the defeat of this thing could turnout to be even worse than what happened after the defeat of the infamous Northern Arc a decade ago.

P.S. The news media is corrupt and generally useless. You have to use common sense to figure out the "real story." Trust your gut instinct, it's usually rght.

Well at least the oft heard challenge of "no plan b options on the table" has been debunked by ACC- SEC Booster....

I believe I saw similar entries on Peach Pundit way to go!

Just vote NO and tell our leaders to redo their homework.

Just Nasty and Mean
8:43 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012

{{"ACC-SEC Booster. You need to get a life."}}

...Nah, I'll let you try and find one of your own first.

MRSJohnson
2:30 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012

{{"Let people reply before replying to your own comments."}}

I will...Just so that everyone can stop and SLOW DOWN and wait for people like you who have nothing worthwhile to add to an important ADULT conversation about transportation policy but childish insults to respond with empty-headed comments.

Feel free to actually contribute something worthwhile to this conversation about media manipulation of tax policy and transportation funding, otherwise don't even bother to show everyone how unintelligent and uninformed you are by typing and demonstrating the obviously lacking contents of that mostly-empty space between your two ears.

P.S.: Breathe deeper......

-Just Nasty and Mean 8:43 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012-
-MRSJohnson 2:30 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012-

We can trade useless insults from here on or we can have a substantive discussion about the very-pressing issue at hand. The choice is yours...

I outlined my suggested plan for dealing with the Atlanta Region's transportation and mobility woes above in my previous comments at 6:08 pm, 6:24 pm, 6:42 pm and 6:56 pm on Sunday, July 8, 2012.

We are all very curious to know what plans or suggestions that YOU TWO have for financing critically-needed upgrades to the region's mounting transportation challenges?

That is, if you have any real suggestions or comments on the matter at all besides just childish insults that boost your own overinflated egos and inferior self-esteem...

Feel free to respond to either these or any other or anyone's else's comments with constructive comments of your own that actually add something to the discussion at anytime...Something that the magic of the computer actually allows you do at anytime one chooses no matter how other comments may already be on the board.

Maggie, you can't compel people to use mass transit, not to mention when it is designed poorly and lacks security (MARTA). There is not choice but to build a "bypass" around Atlanta miles and miles from I-285 to relieve congestion. Nothing else will work!

That's also what is wrong with many Democrats and liberals that come up with alternative plans. They think they can "force" people to use an alternative (like "mass transit" in this case) They have forgotten this is a free country of choice (and always will be unless we have another civil war and the wrong side wins. Then they can have their way).

Ground Chuck 10:32 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012-
I completely agree that people cannot be expected to flock to mass transit and ride an inferior product in MARTA.
But the outer bypass around Atlanta that you are suggesting was tried when the state proposed to build an Outer Perimeter highway in the late 1990's.
http://www.conway.com/loop.htm
The Outer Perimeter proposal was reduced to just the now infamous-Northern Arc between I-75 NW & I-85 NE in 1999, then was delayed due to increasingly negative intense political pressure all sides of the political spectrum on then-Governor Roy Barnes, then was eventually cancelled in 2003 by then-new Governor Sonny Perdue who successfully ran for office on cancelling the increasingly-unpopular proposed road.
The Republicans that dominate the Georgia Legislature that came to power back in the early 2000's partly on the strength of campaigning against an increasingly-unpopular proposed Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc that the previously-dominant Democrats backed will not even broach the subject of reviving the unpopular (and politically-unfeasible) Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc as the Georgia Department of Transportation, which agrees with the assertion that an outer bypass could help relieve congestion from urban freeways, was derided by the press and totally-ignored by the Legislature when they attempted to resurrect the Northern Arc idea even farther out from Atlanta on two occasions in 2007 and 2010.

Compelling people to use mass transit (that largely does not exist) is what the powers-that-be are (poorly) attempting to do as there is a concerted long-term effort underway to force motorists onto mass transit by intentionally adding virtually no new road capacity and allowing traffic congestion to worsen.
This article on the erstwhile-Northern Arc in the August 11, 2000 edition of the Tollroads Newsletter gives a little bit of insight into the Atlanta regional mindset of intentionally adding virtually no new road capacity both to attempt to force motorists onto mass transit by anti-road and pro-transit environmentalists, politically and socially-liberal Intown urbanites and density and rail transit-obsessed developers and by conservative and libertarian anti-road suburbanites and exurbanites who want to discourage the type of excessive growth and overdevelopment that has turned once-exurban Cobb and Gwinnett counties into overpopulated, overcrowded and increasingly urbanized districts of Metro Atlanta.
http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2723

{{"Gwinnett County is one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. I don't see anything wrong with creating more lanes."}}
I completely agree, the only thing is that there is virtually no additional right-of-way remaining along I-85 to further expand or widen the extremely busy road (about 300,000+ vehicles per-day) between Spaghetti Junction and Pleasant Hill Road as many sections of the road are closely lined with higher-value commercial and industrial properties that the governments of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties don't want condemned and are not willing to give up for a possible widening of I-85 because of the higher amounts of revenue that those properties contribute to the property tax digest.
Since the road cannot be expanded and widened horizontally, the only place that the road could possibly be expanded is vertically by way of an elevated roadway, which I personally have no qualms with seeing as though the amount of traffic is likely to only further increase over time (both truck and commuter traffic).

But road widenings and expansions of any kind, especially of the increasingly-crowded freeway system, have been increasingly politically-difficult, if not politically-impossible, to pull-off in Metro Atlanta in recent years, especially after the defeat of the Northern Arc a decade ago in which environmentalists and anti-road expansion and pro-transit advocates Intown loudly (and successfully) objected to $2 billion possibly being spent on a new road instead in the distant suburbs and exurbs instead of mass transit in the urban area. Since then it's been increasingly downhill for already-scarce road expansion projects in Metro Atlanta as a commonly-heard refrain, both ITP and OTP, is that "more roads will only lead to more traffic".
Unlike in competing Sunbelt states like Texas, Florida or North Carolina, Metro Atlanta has developed rather "unique" political environment that overall seems to be increasingly hostile, and even downright toxic, to road expansion, even in politically and socially-conservative suburban and exurban areas Outside-the-Perimeter.

Speaking of road-widening proposals that were poorly-received by the public, the Georgia Department of Transportation actually had plans to widen I-75 Northwest to between 18-26 lanes between the I-285 NW Cobb Cloverleaf and the I-575 split/merge interchange, but that idea was quickly withdrawn due to very negative public feedback once the media got a hold of it. Feedback which also included objections by the Cobb County government to the prospect of losing to a massive road expansion very valuable commercial and industrial properties that make up a very significant portion of the county's property tax digest and contribute a very substantial amount of tax revenue to the county's tax base.
http://www.nwhovbrt.com/
http://www.nwhovbrt.com/media/pdfs/CncptLO/MAIN_OPTION_3b.pdf
As a result of the very negative public reaction to the state's plans to widen I-75 to between 18-26 lanes the plans to expand the road were dramatically downsized from proposing to add 15 new lanes to the right-of-way to proposing to add 3 reversible lanes to the right-of-way and then were downsized again to the current proposal that adds 2 partially-elevated and reversible HOT lanes to the westside of the I-75 right-of-way.
http://www.nwcproject.com/

I agree then Booster that the roads should be expanded vertically if it's not possible horizontally. But not as an extra expense. Get rid of the programs that are not working for the purposes they proposed and sucking up all the funds and just re-route them.

Your experience on MARTA is very reflective of why most Metro Atlantans don't even consider public transportation to be a real option despite the horrendous traffic jams that most commuters are saddled with on a daily basis.
Now many hard-core pro-transit advocates ITP might interpret or portray your comments as being anti-MARTA or anti-mass transit, but you didn't say that you would never use mass transit or have any preconceived notions about MARTA, you just stated that you actually tried to use MARTA and found it to be dirty, disgusting and unsafe which is what many people experience when then try to use MARTA, which means that for you, the reality was not that far off from the negative perception that much of the region, especially outside of Fulton and DeKalb counties, have of MARTA .
And you know what they say about perception and reality in politics ("In politics, perception IS reality"), meaning that if the vast majority of this region perceives MARTA to be dirty, dangerous and ineffective, then it is as no matter how good or bad or in-between the actual reality may be, the POLITICAL REALITY is that MARTA is dirty, dangerous and ineffective.

A similar situation exists for the state-controlled Georgia Department of Transportation which is perceived as being corrupt, ineffective and wildly incompetent.
No matter what GDOT does right, they will continue to be viewed in a very negative light over issues like severe accounting errors to the tune of billions-of-dollars in some cases, the winter weather debacle back in January 2011, the GA 400 Toll and the I-85 HOT Lanes (both of which are technically under the purview of the State Road and Tollway Authority).
But to the public, the particulars don't always matter as in politics, perception is reality and the political reality is that GDOT is ineffective, inept and incompetent at the behest of the ineffective, inept and incompetent state legislature that controls them.
It's not good when the public has a sharply-negative perception of its very crucial government institutions in a region with very-severe traffic congestion and transportation mobility issues.

You make a very valid point as the state could have maybe been able to build the road if it had been built early-on when that area was largely rural and very-sparcely populated from between the time when the idea for the road was first proposed in the 1960's to about the mid-1980's before heavy exurban and suburban residential development started to encroach upon and takeover the area in the late 1980's and later.
After the exurban and suburban development started to close-in it was going to be pretty much completely impossible to build that road as the rural and agricultural land owners in the area wanted to be able to reserve the right to sell their land to the highest-bidding land spectulators and real estate developers who had started building in earnest by the time that the state had started to move on that proposal in the late 1990's.
Also, by the time that the state had gotten around to moving on that proposal, much of the land for the road in Cherokee and Forsyth counties had increasingly high-end exurban residential development closely lining both sides of the proposed right-of-way of the Northern Arc and those newer residents in those newer high-end homes were not going permit the road to be built out of fear that it turn their exurban communities into something akin to overcrowded Cobb and Gwinnett counties which have both since grown even more intensely overcrowded and overdeveloped in the decade since the cancellation of the unpopular road.

Also, the political leaders who backed the building of the road, Roy Barnes and the Democrats, were effectively severely-pressured by an increasingly angry public into cutting back, delaying, suspending the project and were kicked out of office in the 2002 election before they could really move on building the road, which became increasingly intensely unpopular within the media and with the public during the course of Roy Barnes' one term in office as was demonstrated by Barnes significantly scaling back the road from an entire Outer Perimeter loop to just the Northern Arc between I-75 NW & I-85 NE in 1999 and then delaying and suspending the road during his failed re-election campaign in 2002 in which his opponent, Sonny Perdue, won election to office partly on the strength of successfully campaigning against the increasingly-unpopular road proposal, which he cancelled upon almost immediately upon taking office in 2003 as part of his campaign promise.

I understand and remember the election but there was more to it than just the northern arch. Also the state was turning more to the right. Also the rest of the state didn't want to fund anything in the Atlanta area. They feel that the capital area gets more tax dollars than it puts into the kitty. I understand it is easy to turn it into a one subject election but more is there than meets the eye.

Robert Pendley 6:00 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012-

You are right, sir. That election was not just a one-issue election as there was more to that election than just the Northern Arc itself as there was also a lot of widespread dissatisfaction over the state flag issue, the state budget deficit at the time and most teachers in the state, who were unhappy with Roy Barnes governing skills, voted as a bloc and those issues collectively led to the defeat of Barnes and the long-ruling Democrats by former Democrat-turned-Republican Sonny Perdue who successfully campaigned all of those issues, but the very-powerful role that the Northern Arc played in that election cannot and should not be discounted.
There was also outrage by ITP pro-transit activists over $2 billion being spent on a new road OTP instead of transit in the city and close-in suburbs as far as the Northern Arc goes.
Though, the irony of it all is that it is a very similar political coalition that joined together to defeat the Northern Arc that is joining together to lead the way in the defeat of the increasingly-unpopular T-SPLOST.
A highly-unlikely coalition that includes conservative and libertarian suburban and exurban Tea Partiers from outside I-285 and liberal transit activists, environmentalists and urbanites from inside I-285 and Fulton and DeKalb counties.

Well, thank you very much for the compliments, Ms. Paris.

And thank you to Mr. Mike Lowry for being a bloodhound on this issue and not letting crap fly from the powers-that-be who only care about pushing their misguided and highly-flawed political and social agendas at the expense of implementing REAL transportation mobility upgrades.

I for one am tired of more taxes. NO MORE TAXES!!!! Make do with what you have. There is enough money in the tank to do what you want. If or when we give more money the politicians will spend them on buying votes, just look at the 400 toll money.

Tim, thank you for your compliments as well.
And speaking of toll roads and transportation planning in other states like North Carolina, I'm glad that you mentioned the subject of how traditional toll booths cause back-ups on toll roads as North Carolina just recently opened a couple of new toll roads that use no toll booths, the NC 147 Triangle Expressway through Research Triangle Park outside of Raleigh.
Motorists just drive through a bank of sensors that charge their accounts if they have a Peach Pass-like box that is used on the increasingly-hated GA 400 and I-85 toll sections and if they don't have that type of Peach Pass-type box then a camera takes a picture of their license plate and mails a bill to their address later (I think that bills are mailed out on a weekly basis).

Raising the gas tax would probably be, at the very least, the simplest way to collect more road maintenance revenues, the only (major) problem with that approach is that most of the Republican politicians who dominate state government sign a "No New Taxes" pledge before they take office.
Voting to increase the state's increasingly meager gas tax would be seen by many voters as being a direct violation of that campaign pledge of promising never to raise taxes for any circumstance, a pledge that has become a virtual prerequisite to taking office in the Republican Party.
In their minds, I guess, voting to pass legislation that asks the voters if they want to raise their own sales taxes is technically not a direct violation of that "No New Taxes" pledge that the overwhelming majority of Republican candidates sign before taking office, through many of their constituents and the conservative base of the Republican Party feels otherwise.
The fallout from the defeat of this failed and flawed T-SPLOST referendum may be that the Legislature, which wasn't exactly lightin'-it-up anyways when it came to transportation planning and funding, will likely view Georgia's (Metro Atlanta's) mounting transportation issues as being politically-radioactive, not unlike the issue of the Northern Arc and an Outer Perimeter bypass has been in the decade since that increasingly-unpopular project was cancelled due to intensely negative public pressure.

Melinda Rocks. It is sad that we have reached a point where NO ONE trusts a darn word a politician says when they try to extricate more cash out of you. People in office now won't even be around when these projects finish f-ing us over and their replacements will just blame those who have gone before who are drawing paychecks from the developers for future "consulting" work. This project is nothing more than progressive redistribution repackaged...lets all chip in so the moochers can have more bus routes and more train routes to get around so they can spend government handouts that also come from those who are successful enough and work hard enough so they actually have to pay taxes on income, much less on consumption. Scre- the t-splost and all the liars who developed it.