Monday, April 25, 2011
Transit / Enviro Beltline officials ink sweet lease for Reynoldstown, southwest Atlanta segments
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 9:16 AM
David Pendered says Beltline officials last week inked a sweeter deal for the unused railroad corridors they've leased from the Georgia Department of Transportation for nearly two years:
Terms call for the BeltLine to lease the two segments for a total of $1 a year. The contract will run for up to 49 years, Davidson said.GDOT agreed to sell the land to the BeltLine at any time in the next decade for the price the state paid. That total is about $1.6 million, Davidson said. [...]
“This is definitely a huge step forward for the project’s long-term success,” Davidson said.
The original contract, which would have ended next July, allowed project leaders to begin cleaning up the parcels and developing popular hiking trails and art spaces along the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit. (View photos of the western segment, which stretches from Adair Park to Washington Park, here and here.)
We've sent an email to Beltline and GDOT officials to see if the agreement, which covers more than three miles of the project's footprint, includes any red tape when it comes to building transit. We'll update if that's the case. A Beltline spokesman says the lease allows for transit construction. Carry on!
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Last June, then-Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law HB 277, the Transportation Investment Act of 2010, that, if approved by the citizens of Georgia in the summer of 2012, is expected to provide $22 billion dollars in funding of transportation projects throughout Georgia over 10 years. It was projected that in the first year of enactment, $1.5 billion would be collected through the 1 percent tax with over $714 million, or 46 percent of that collected, to be marked for the Atlanta region.
In July of 2010, the publication Asphalt Stream reported that ridership of mass transit is at 1.5 percent of the population and the fare box only covers 25 percent of mass transit operations. It is estimated that providing light rail in metro Atlanta will cost between $25 million and $50 million per mile to build. That doesn’t include the operational costs once built; i.e. station and parking acquisition and upkeep, labor, lighting and maintenance.
And, on Nov. 17, Ariel Hart of the AJC stated “In a coup for the city, the U.S. Department of Transportation has agreed to grant Atlanta $47 million dollars for its proposed $72 million dollar downtown east-west street car project according to U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta and Mayor Kasim Reed.” Of course, the taxpayers of Georgia will be funding the $25 million dollar shortfall.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin managed to gain consensus and cut $38.5 billion from the FY 2011 federal budget. He is also looking to cut $6 trillion from the FY 2012 budget. While Congress is seeking ways to reduce the United States deficit spending and restore our credit rating, Georgia continues to ignore the fact that we can’t afford these excessive expenditures.
According to CNN, the president’s plan for national high-speed rail projects in 2011 has been cut and there will be no funds for high-speed rail projects this fiscal year. Yet, at the same time, the AJC headlines “Mass transit tops region’s wish list” with “new rail lines that could carry commuters from downtown Atlanta to Gwinnett, Cobb and Clayton counties.” And “MARTA was the biggest transit requester, asking for 43 projects.”
In the April 25 edition of Bloomberg-Business Week, Mayor Dave Bing observed, “This is like Custer’s Last Stand. If we don’t make the hard decisions, someone else will make them for us. We are not fiscally sound. We had more than 900,000 people and in the last census we had just over 713,000. We now have an infrastructure we can’t support. We can’t pay for buses all over the city.”
Atlanta is no different. Atlanta’s population went from 541,922 to 420,003 or a 22 percent reduction and that reduction has the potential of causing a $242 million dollar shortfall from federal funds.
And, in an article in Metro Atlanta Mayors Association dated April 22, the following was written, “Metro mayors in Fulton and DeKalb counties have helped to build consensus around the region about the importance of a regional transit system that would run seamlessly at least through Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Clayton and Cobb counties.”
I was under the impression that the Atlanta region consisted of 10 counties, not five. All 10 counties are interested in projects that are affordable, practical and of benefit to all 10 counties. The former mayor of Charlotte, Mayor Pat McCrory, had this to say about next year’s transportation vote: “Convincing voters in metro Atlanta to approve a one-cent sales tax to fund transportation will be one hell of a sale.”
I agree.
Don Rehwaldt
Tyrone
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