Of course its not fair, but then being fair would mean giving democratic constituents and representatives a bigger voice than what the Republican Legislature is comfortable with.

So one more time. FEAR state or regional takeover or control over MARTA.

BTW that representative system is basically the same method for government seats on the Atlanta Regional Commission board. And yes its far from one man one vote and even farther when, as you did, you factor in the budget contributed via the 1% MARTA sales tax Fulton and DeKalb has.

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Atlanta: Too busy to hate, and also too busy to do a single thing right.

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"Atlanta: Too busy to hate, and also too busy to do a single thing right."

Did you read the fucking article at all? Or were you burning so badly make that benign quip that its relevance didn't matter to you?

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it's not fair but it is pragmatic. metro atlanta is so spread out we have to break new ground in governing this mess

i think atlanta is doomed in the long run. we experimented too much with automotive suburbanization. now we can't govern ourselves enough to create a fix so that we won't be totally fucked when peak oil hits. atlanta's going to dry up and blow away like a turd on a hot summer road

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Eric, in all fairness, wouldn't most of America dry up and blow away like a turd on a hot summer road?? Except for very few cities/metro areas, most are sprawled out/suburban. DC outside of the city limits sprawls just as much if not worse than Metro Atlanta... same with Dallas despite their ever expanding light rail system (which goes almost double the miles but carries less people than MARTA rail).

I think you are being way too negative. If anything, peak oil will help Atlanta and other CITIES become more dense, while the suburbs wither away... that is, unless we come up with some type of alternative fuel.

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You can argue whether it is fair or not, or whether creating another government office with staff, phones, computers, letterhead etc is part of small government but the real issue appears to be how it will effectively sideline the cities and the counties.

Step 1 - convince the local leaders to back the new tax so the pot of gold is created.

Step 2 - put them all into a huge committee so they fight each other and guarantee nothing will be agreed upon.

Then who gets the pot of gold?

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"Except for very few cities/metro areas, most are sprawled out/suburban. "

my point was that atlanta is really sprawled out AND we also have an ungovernable amount of political fragmentation due to a tremendous amount of local jurisdictions who all want their provincial interests reflected on the regional level

other cities don't have as many cooks in the kitchen as metro atlanta does

"I think you are being way too negative. If anything, peak oil will help Atlanta and other CITIES become more dense, while the suburbs wither away... that is, unless we come up with some type of alternative fuel."

cities like atlanta are going to be massively harmed by peak oil, simply because so much of our economic base is contained in untenable and energy-hungry suburbs

atlanta, specifically. two of our biggest economic drivers are truck shipping and the airport, both of which are sectors heavily reliant on cheap fuel. we might become more of a railroad city again but i doubt any gains there would be enough to offset the economic losses caused by a drop in truck transport

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@ Pfeif -

"i think atlanta is doomed in the long run. we experimented too much with automotive suburbanization. now we can't govern ourselves enough to create a fix so that we won't be totally fucked when peak oil hits. atlanta's going to dry up and blow away like a turd on a hot summer road"

Wow. We agree.

The harsh reality is that cities - and by cities, I mean San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, etc. - have it right. Their density allows them the real amenity of accessibility to everything they need at no more than a short walk and a subway stop or two. This drastically reduces the amount of energy necessary to live their lives - The average NYC resident consumes 1/4 of the energy that the average suburban resident does on an annual basis. Not only do cities provide for a considerably more sustainable way of life than the head in the sand suburbanites who think that having trees in their front yard means they're "green", but it also increases life expectancy, social interaction, and the constant transmission of new ideas - all of which are necessities to progress and improvement.

Atlanta's idea of becoming a city is one that is so perversely twisted and out of sorts with what it needs to be doing that it has probably dug itself a hole that is far too big to get out of by now...

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"The harsh reality is that cities - and by cities, I mean San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, etc. - have it right."

it's more complex than that

atlanta is trying, bless its heart, but it's a young city which experienced most of its growth during an automotive-predominant development paradigm. even frisco is a hundred years older than atlanta. chicago is about the same age, but was a boomtown during the rail era which meant a greater weight of development, therefore greater CBD/density inertia in the present day

it's not that atlanta doesn't 'get it' but rather most of atlanta's growth and political power was dispersed to the burbs rather than remaining concentrated in downtown. as a city, atlanta peaked in 1930 and ever since we've been pioneering the modern polycentric metropolis. living in a petri dish

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1. Make Atlanta safer=more apt to live in Atlanta vs. burbs.
2. Raise tolls rates=less people drive or it pays for item 1.
3. Increase tax on all surface lots=less people driving, better us of space, or it pays for item #1.

The lack of natural barriers make Atlanta a driver friendly city, add risk aversion and thriftiness you have a recipe for sprawl. Make it more expensive to commute and safer to be in Atlanta and you start turning the tide.

(before you say the extra $1-$3 extra per commute will cause less people to come into the city....you really think workers will quit, companies will relocate, or places will go under due to the increase?)

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Vox, as to your last point, for some odd reason people seem to think the suburbs are a single point on the map. Georgia Power moving to Newnan wouldn't help employees living in Norcross or Woodstock. It's the same argument that comes up about sports facilities. Yes it can be difficult to get downtown but put the Falcons in Lawrenceville and then it's only easy for people in a small portion of Gwinnett to get there. Anyone who doesn't live near the Gwinnett Arena but has gone to an event there is painfully aware what trouble it can be. But most people don't care about reality, they just want their cake and to eat it too.

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@ Pfeif

"it's more complex than that"

No shit...

"t's not that atlanta doesn't 'get it' but rather most of atlanta's growth and political power was dispersed to the burbs rather than remaining concentrated in downtown."

You probably didn't understand what I meant by 'get it'. What I meant was precisely what you said, with a psychological accusation. As you said, Atlanta is obnoxiously dispersed - from a human and political capital level. The dispersion (which can be quantified as over 90% of the metro area's population) either doesn't "get" the fact that their lives are enabled by the city that the surround. However, what they also "don't get" is that if they continue to bastardize the city with more and more low density sprawl, the entire area is eventually going to go to shit, as it will be too spread out to have any meaningful connections, and the worthwhile people/employers that are here will leave in droves.

Of course, that's a simplified and very high-level view of what will eventually become of atlanta, and why, but hopefully you "get" that...

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I don't think Atlanta is doomed, it just may not continue to grow as fast and as demonstrated by Georgia's inability to draft decent legislation covering these important issues that's probably a good thing.

Bottom line the transportation sales tax bill is horrible, and its not largely going to transit.

The regional transit issue was supposed to have been addressed by GRTA under Barnes but that was abandoned. To now try to create a new agency under the same model as the ARC where the suburbs have excessive influence only assures that meaningful transit will not happen. Just like the structure assured an ARC that for years enabled the region to shuck and jive about doing things different but in the end all we got was more roads and little transit or improved development patterns.

Granted the ARC had little power.

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"Of course, that's a simplified and very high-level view of what will eventually become of atlanta, and why, but hopefully you "get" that..."

i've got a post-graduate degree in this exact subject, of course i get it

it's very easy to ascribe negative motive in what is in fact a very long and complex process akin to historical determinism. you're being too quick to assign individual blame for what is a societal and bureaucratic problem with no clear cause or solution

"the entire area is eventually going to go to shit, as it will be too spread out to have any meaningful connections, and the worthwhile people/employers that are here will leave in droves"

the spread-outness is exactly what attracted a lot of people and employers (low cost of living, assuming cheap energy)

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"i've got a post-graduate degree in this exact subject"

Congratulations...there are a lot of people with post-graduate degrees from Georgia State in this city....which is the equivalent of an undergraduate degree from a mediocre university. I don't know where your's is from, but if you're touting it, I hope it's from somewhere worthwhile.

"you're being too quick to assign individual blame for what is a societal and bureaucratic problem with no clear cause or solution"

I'm far less concerned with the cause, than I am the solution, and I have plenty of solutions...but none of them would be politically digestible - which is what usually stalls out smart initiatives....especially at the local/state level.

"the spread-outness is exactly what attracted a lot of people and employers"

Sure it did, when that spread-outness hadn't yet created the massive problems that is now has. Instead of ensuring that the city grew alongside the suburbs, Atlanta allowed itself to expand outwards while doing nothing to strengthen its core, and now it's probably in too deep to fix it. The problems that now exist present an excellent opportunity to consolidate growth, development, and power back into the city - except for the fact that the political power is so spread out, that nobody will ever allow it.

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