State's new plan for transportation

AJC: 

Mass transit or roads? Taxes, tickets or tolls? There is a new guide for the transportation choices the state is about to make, and a draft of it is under review at the state Capitol now. The short answer so far: Georgia needs a bit of everything, and a lot more money. 

Department of Transportation Planning Director Todd Long, who reports to Gov. Sonny Perdue, submitted the plan on New Year's Eve in accordance with a law passed last year to reorganize transportation, and he is taking comments from legislators and Perdue until Feb. 15. Much of the plan is reminiscent of Perdue's IT3 study last year by the consultants McKinsey & Co., though the case the plan makes is more fleshed-out and forthright. McKinsey worked on this plan, too, though Long emphasized it was a state document.

The plan consolidates recent shifts in vision among state leadership: a relatively new, broad acceptance that the state needs more money for transportation; acknowledgment that adding enough new lanes to relieve Atlanta's congestion is probably not possible; and occasionally, tolerance of the notion of rail transit. Here's the skinny:

What's wrong

Georgia invests less per capita in transportation than any other state except Tennessee. After big investments like the "freeing the freeways" program of the 1980s, Georgia "has been under-investing and 'coasting' on past success," according to the report. This "has clearly eroded the state's transportation performance on measures that drive economic competitiveness," like the ability of companies to attract employees who don't live close to work.

What's right

Projects the state built in recent decades are impressive. Georgia's pavement quality is consistently among the best in the nation. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the busiest in the world. The Savannah port is the nation's fastest-growing. The state's freight rail network is one of the largest in the U.S. That has all been to the benefit of Georgia's economy, according to the report.

Where's the money?

Other states that spend more draw from multiple sources including tolls, and sales taxes and license and tag fees that go to transportation funding. At the state level, Georgia uses little more than the gas tax. And Georgia's state gas tax is the second-lowest in the U.S., behind only Alaska. Alaska funds much transportation from its general fund, according to the report.

What to do

No. 1: Find a few billion dollars. The state expects about $85 billion to $100 billion from federal, state and local sources for transportation needs over the next 20 years. A big hunk of that goes to repaving and maintaining what we already have. After that and sending money to local governments, that leaves $15 billion to $19 billion for new projects. Far from building transformative new projects, that's only enough to fund half the immediate urgent needs. The state would need billions more to accomplish these goals:

-- For freight, put $15 billion into highway bypasses, popular freight routes, and rail improvements.

-- For moving metro Atlanta people, pay $29 billion to $36 billion for a range of projects, including optional toll roads, bus rapid transit and managing development patterns to fit with transportation resources. The plan calls for rail transit, too, first preserving "core" transit operations like MARTA, then expanding with connecting projects like streetcars and light rail. It even said that when a local government is willing and able to chip in, the state could support taking money usually spent on roads and putting it into transit, like the Atlanta Beltline. Long last week threw a little cold water on massive dreams of inter-city high-speed rail, noting the enormous costs compared to available federal funds, and the fact that our core rail transit systems like MARTA had so little money that it could see a service reduction of one-third to a half in coming years. Of the Atlanta money, $8 billion to $11 billion could come from tolls, and fees like parking.

-- For people outside metro Atlanta, spend about $14 billion for expansion and safety projects. In contrast to Atlanta, "people mobility in rural areas and medium-sized cities is well supported by the current network," though future investment is important, the report states.

The payoff

The right investments, the report argues, could generate up to 425,000 new jobs in Georgia's economy over the next 30 years. In return for about $65 billion in transportation projects over the next 20 to 30 years, the state could reap $480 billion in economic growth.

And if we don't

Without new transportation money, the picture the study paints for Georgia's next two decades is grim. Congestion costs like wasted gas in all metro areas will increase "dramatically" — doubling in metro Atlanta. The pool of metro Atlanta employees that an employer can reasonably hope to attract is already smaller than it should be because people can't get too far to work. But within the next 20 years, it will shrink more, by one-third. Many transit services will be cut back or eliminated.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols for GA State House