Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Transit / Roads Cobb County pols want transportation tax to fund I-75/575 project, not transit
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:51 AM
Two Cobb County elected officials yesterday said cash from a potential regional transportation tax slated to fund a light-rail or bus-rapid transit line between Atlanta and the Galleria should instead pay for "reversible lanes" along I-75 and 575. In other words, roads over rail.
Cobb County Chairman Tim Lee and Kennesaw Mayor Mark Mathews both served on a regional roundtable that decided which road and transit projects would receive funding from the 1-cent sales tax measure, which voters will decide in July.
But they told reporters yesterday that the state Department of Transportation's recent decision to not pursue a public-private partnership to build a "reversible lanes" project along the congested interstates motivated them to propose the sudden switch.
The sudden change of mind had nothing to do with politics, Lee, who's up for re-election next year and has been battered by local critics for supporting the transportation tax, told the Marietta Daily Journal:
“For eight years I’ve been an elected official in Cobb County, and I’ve never made a decision based on politics, and this is certainly not the first one,” Lee said. “I’m here to serve (the people of Cobb County), and politics is not a part of that.”Mathews said the latest proposal gives the transit tax a better chance of passing.
“I think that is something that will be looked favorably by the residents of Cobb County,” Mathews said.
Whether residents of Fulton, DeKalb, and the other counties in the region which will decide the tax's fate in July is another matter.
Any change to the project list would require new legislation. Whether the General Assembly will actually tackle this issue is unclear. Lee and Mathews were joined yesterday by Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, which is a sign that there's some support for at least discussing the change in the dysfunctional upper chamber. But House Speaker David Ralston has said he's not particularly thrilled about revisiting the transportation tax issue.
Comments (18)
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Not surprising coming from a county where they think rail will turn their cities into Soviet states.
The level of idiocy from Cobb County officials is astounding, even for politicians.
Can anyone explain to me why Cobb County is against mass transit initiatives?
Would change to the project list require actual legislation? The legislation says a list will be drawn up but it doesn't clearly prohibit addition of a new project.
But even if that is true, the legislation does not require that every project gets built. True the funds left over from other projects costing less or not getting built are supposed to cover cost overruns of other projects and/or go back proportionately to each county for the county to spend. But clearly the process allows for the Cobb Transit earmark on the list to not get built. And in fact the expensive Transit project now listed on the list is a last minute substitution for the light rail from midtown to Cumberland that was originally on the list. The point being that this last minute replacement is highly speculative with little study done of it and its very likely that it will not be built and/or the reversible lane could be argued to be apart of the "enhanced bus service"
Bottom line this is just further evidence that as has historically been the case in Metro Atlanta Regional funding plans for spending on Transit always end up not spending as much on transit and spending more on roads.
The regressive 1% sales tax at the end of 10 years will NOT come close to spending 50% of the funds on Transit.
@velomash
because "the poors" are going to take the train into their cozy bedroom communities to steal their car stereos and get into pitched gun battles in their hancock fabrics.
Vote down the tax. if it's passed we can expect more of this bait and switch business. Suburban Republicans simply won't be able to resist.
What does it say about the wisdom of the projects if people who put those projects on the list already don't like them? Shouldn't the rest of us be concerned?
Jaydoz and zedsmith,
I used to be so proud of that theme when I was a Cobb County youngen.
"Can anyone explain to me why Cobb County is against mass transit initiatives?"
there are a number of dumb reasons, take your pick
-mass transit brings poors (blacks) into places where they don't belong
-mass transit erodes home value, because trains emit noxious auras and the #1 role of government is to preserve the value private property
-mass transit is socialist. this is america, where we drive cars hither and yon over the landscape like god intended.
-mass transit inherently leads to little socialist communist kenyan apartments stacked up in a dreary mess. the only way to live is in a faux-pastoralist fantasy, where i can feel like an independent yeoman with my pathetic little tomato garden on my half acre
-mass transit is expensive. no i don't know how much intensive automotive use costs and i don't care, la la la la
-mass transit doesn't work. if mass transit worked, wouldn't we already have it? no, i've never studied your liberal ivory tower "urban history" it sounds like a bunch of crap to me
this guy ain't from Cobb, but he's close, from Dunwoody, he had a column in one of the local rags. Basically Transit is a United Nations plot to take away our freedom our cars and bring in "affordable housing" OMG RUNNNNNNNNN..... http://dunwoodytalk.blogspot.com/2011/10/w…
"But that is not the TOD [Transit Oriented Development] of today. Today's TOD was born from the United Nations Agenda 21.
Here's a little taste of that UN chatter:
Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.
Our very own MARTA is eager to implement the TOD in Dunwoody. After all, with the TOD encouraging people to not own a car, they are dependent upon MARTA.... When you play with MARTA, you play by MARTA's rules:
As stated on page 48 of the TOD Guidelines, MARTA believes that residential and mixed-use TOD projects should include a significant component of affordable housing.
"But that is not the TOD [Transit Oriented Development] of today. Today's TOD was born from the United Nations Agenda 21."
haha i forgot the conspiracy theory angle
-mass transit is a socialist plot to destroy america, headed by the bilderberg lizardmen
people are fucking stupid
modern TOD principles were developed long before the evil UN tried to stretch its octopus-like tendrils over god fearing american's right to be forced to own and maintain a motor vehicle
honestly when you say that "After all, with the TOD encouraging people to not own a car, they are dependent upon MARTA.... When you play with MARTA, you play by MARTA's rules:" you could just as equally be talking about the DOT
let's try it
After all, with the built environment encouraging people to own a car, they are dependent upon the roads.... When you play with the DOT, you play by the DOT's rules:
see? people are fucking stupid
rick callihan is a moron who has no idea what he's talking about
there are plenty of reasons to be a selfish bastard who opposes TOD without invoking alex jones
"After all, with the built environment encouraging people to own a car, they are dependent upon the roads.... When you play with the DOT, you play by the DOT's rules:"
Excellent point. And it illustrates the major flaw in the logic of those so called "free market" folks who feel transit funding is somehow an excessive intrusion into the free market by government.
That's a big reason why I'm still leaning against the 1% uber regressive transpo sales tax. Beyond its regressiveness, it seems to me the tax will more muck up demand* towards DOT's vision or "rules" than MARTA's or other transit vision or "rules".
*Demand = where people choose to live, work and shop and how they choose to travel for that.
This depresses me just as much as anybody, but I think some of us have too quickly forgotten about MARTA's proposed line to Emory. This tax, it appears, is the only chance that line has of being built.
I'd rather pay for a new MARTA line plus some suburban road
expansions than pay for, and receive, neither. Until Georgia grows up and joins at least the previous century, those are our options.
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