As the TSPLOST issue has gained more publicity over the last several months we have been treated to many working examples of the media-as-advocate instead of media-as-reporter.
The coverage seems designed to reinforce the Maven/ARC/Chamber message rather than to examine the facts about the project list objectively.
Things you hear and see repeatedly:
- Atlanta is choked with traffic.
- TSPLOST will fix our congestion problems.
- TSPLOST will fuel Atlanta’s growth.
Things you never hear or see:
- Over 52 percent of the funds go to transit.
- Transit does very little to reduce congestion. The metro region has too little density for transit to work.
- $500 million of the projects are going to fix MARTA’s maintenance backlog, which does nothing for congestion.
- $600 million is going to fund the city of Atlanta’s beltway project, which does nothing for congestion.
- The Citizen Review Panel is a toothless, for-show-only politically appointed body that has no enforcement power.
- ARC’s Chief Planner has stated publicly that the entire project list when completed will not change commute times very much.
The project list and many of the real facts about it are available at www.TrafficTruth.net. The ARC sites overwhelm you with soft data and studiously avoid any real analysis. Some questions a real reporter might ask (and that TLC representatives have asked repeatedly):
- What are the underlying assumptions used in the ARC model to project ridership and increased jobs?
- Where can we find the backup detail to analyze the projected project costs for the projects on the list?
- How much money that was already allocated to these projects will be reclaimed and used for other projects?
- How many of the proposed transit projects will not be completed within the 10-year window?
- How are the ongoing operational costs of the transit projects going to be funded?
The hard truth is that the TSPLOST is a massive tax increase that puts a gusher of funds into organizations that have little real budget oversight, to fund projects that, with only a handful of exceptions, will do little for congestion relief and much to enhance property values for the major developers funding the campaign.
Our news media collectively owes their audience a much more professional investigation and presentation of the hard facts.
Georgia, we can do better than this, and we must.
I believe I saw similar entries on Peach Pundit way to go! Just vote NO and tell our leaders to redo their homework.
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).
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Rather than toll roads, which also cause backups at the toll booths, why not increase the gas tax to fully cover the costs of roads including expansion? That way, if you drive on more roads/more miles, you pay more. That will also make the transit folks happy since they won't be paying the gas tax (except indirectly if buses that use gas charge the real cost of a trip), the "increase roads" crowd will be happy since they will have the funds then to build and maintain more roads. Seems like a poor solution for a tax on food, or toys, or clothing to go for road building. One last comment, I too agree with the majority on this board that the current and past political "leadership" of Georgia is severly lacking in planning, execution and looking towards the future. I am getting the impression as I travel, that Atlanta, and Georgia in general, are falling behind some of our other states and cities like DFW, Charlotte/All of NC, SF, and even Chicago and New York in terms of planning and execution for the future.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
i'm feeling oppressed already frederick.
ALL of this blather I find to be just truly sad. Its always the seems to boil down to us vs "those people" or "what's in it for me?".