In 1971 Fulton and DeKalb counties voted to tax themselves a 1 percent sales tax to fund “rapid transit”, and MARTA was formed.
Throughout the following 41 years, literally millions of people have moved into the area, each arriving to find that their purchases carried this tax. Most have never questioned it; instead they simply consider it a cost of living in Fulton or DeKalb counties.
Let’s focus for a moment on the current reality. If your family is middle-to-upper income, which defines the majority of people in the non-downtown parts of the region, you will spend approximately $35,000 per year on retail purchases.
The 1 percent MARTA tax directly costs you $350 per year before you take the first ride.
Even with this massive subsidy, MARTA cannot operate at break even and has fallen over $1 billion behind on its maintenance. Its ridership, never a high percentage of commuters, has fallen to less than 5 percent of the areas it serves. It is doing absolutely nothing to relieve congestion on our highways.
We are now being asked to vote for an additional 1 percent tax to fund even more “rapid transit” construction that will do even less to relieve congestion.
For the average family, that now means you will be paying $700 per year to fund rail transit. Is this a good deal? I think not.
Do we wish to become a high-tax region like New York or San Francisco? Do we wish to deter people from moving here?
The Transportation Investment Act T-SPLOST vote, if successful, will raise our taxes region-wide by almost $7 billion. The project list directs over half of this money into rail transit projects. These projects are not fully funded and there is nothing in the budget for ongoing maintenance. It is a tax trap that will continue for the indefinite future. It also will absorb money that could alternatively be used to fund road projects that could relieve congestion.
Plan B: 1. Reform the dysfunctional DOT. Elect the board and hire real professionals to run the department. Academics should not be hired to run anything. 2. Legislatively mandate transportation priorities, with congestion relief at the top. Make every project be justified with hard numbers against these priorities. The current TSPLOST list has no justifications attached to any items. 3. Conduct a referendum on continuing the MARTA tax. If it fails, force MARTA to operate within its revenue generation. 4. Establish a budget for innovation and move Georgia to the front line of innovative design. Explore flyovers and set strict limits on placement of stoplights on arteries. 5. Keep transportation spending inside of the state budget, and responsibility inside the General Assembly where it belongs. Putting massive spending on autopilot is a formula for misuse of funds. 6. Redevelop the Statewide Transportation Plan and eliminate all of the Fed-speak. Base in on a large-scale origin-destination study and make the study details public, so that public analysis is possible. Georgia can do much better than the TIA T-SPLOST, but first we have to stop doing stupid stuff.
Transit does nothing to relive congestion?? Let's put over 400k additional trips on our roads today that currently are taken using transit and see just how little transit does to relieve congestion. Our transit system is dysfunctional not because it is transit.. It's dysfunctional because too many people have had your mindset for too long. That will start to change in July. $700/year to fund rail transit??. You're forgetting that MARTA has BUSES and that only 52% of the TSPLOST is for transit. Opinions are great and everyone has one but don't stealthily veil them as fact. The Patch should require better fact checking of it's bloggers.
Also interesting to note that the fares pay less than 25% of MARTA's cost. The $2.50 ride that you take actually costs $10+.
As for HOT lanes, they are a gross distortion of user fees. They simply enable a wealthier class of commuters to exclusively use resources that we all have paid for. From a transportation standpoint, they do nothing to relieve congestion but are simply a behavior-modification exercise.
If MARTA built a rail line to, say, Northpoint Mall, how are you going to get on that train? 99% of riders will have to drive to it, except for a few condo or apartment dwellers right nearby. And even they will have to drive almost everywhere else (try taking a train to the grocery store or Home Depot, or your job or a friend's house in Marietta or Lawrenceville). I love transit - in theory. But in Atlanta, widespread transit use isn't going to happen because the metro area design doesn't permit it. Why would we keep spending billions of of taxpayer dollars to build and operate something that can never be a viable frequent transportation mode for most people?
Therefore, I still favor a system of toll-based user fees for funding roads. However, I am NOT in favor of using a toll system as a form of DOUBLE TAXATION. If we are to adopt a toll system as our source of funding, then drop the other taxes that are already being used to pay for the roads. 1.) Eliminate the indirect tax system (i.e. SPLOSTS and gas tax) and raise the tolls to pay for roads. 2.) Pay for rail transit through rail fare 3.) Privatize the bus system. If they can operate on fare sales, then great - they will be providing a service that is in demand to people who are willing to pay for it. If they cannot operate on fare sales then don't ask non-bus riders to foot the bill.
The most grating aspect of this tax proposal is that 50+% is for transit, and a significant portion of that 50+% is for operations - not construction for traffic relief, but operations. And "construction for traffic relief" is a misnomer, since it is not proven at all (especially in Atlanta) that transit relieves traffic one iota.