Thursday, October 13, 2011
Transit / Roads Roundtable members unanimously OK transportation-tax list
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:27 PM
- Thomas Wheatley's iPhone
- AND IT'S DONE Mayor Kasim Reed said proposed projects could bring metro Atlanta up to speed with competing states
That's only if you, the voters, pass the tax next summer that will fund those projects.
Today's meeting of the 21-member regional roundtable marks the end of more than a year's worth of work. Many roundtable members said they often doubted the process, which was tedious and often times contentious — and something they'd never want to do it again. Yet somehow they managed to finally put aside parochial urges and reach consensus about how billions of dollars in tax revenue would be spent on much-needed fixes.
"The juice was worth the squeeze," Mayor Kasim Reed, who personally lobbied state lawmakers to pass legislation allowing the referendum, said to reporters after the meeting.
Among the projects that made the cut: Nearly $600 million to build transit along the Atlanta Beltline and include spurs into Midtown; $700 million to link Lindbergh to Emory University with rail; planning and engineering cash to keep alive the long-awaited commuter rail line between Atlanta and Griffin; and several other transit projects. Here's a PDF of the roundtable's full 5-mb report, which includes the projects and an anticipated project schedule.
Now comes the hard part: Actually convincing metro Atlanta voters, many of whom already pay several extra pennies to fund local projects, to approve the measure in July. Stay tuned.
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