On Tuesday you will
have an opportunity to directly influence the way that transportation planning
and development is managed in the metro region. The pro-TSPLOST vision is to
spend over 52 percent of your increased tax dollars on economic development for
downtown Atlanta (MLK Center trolley, beltline), on bailing out MARTA (“state
of good repair” capital projects), and on expanding rail and bus transit. Very
few major road projects are included in their vision, and those are deferred
until the end of the project period. For example, the much-touted GA 400/I-285
interchange project isn’t to start until 2020.
The anti-TSPLOST
position is that this is a very badly formed process that has, pardon the pun,
gone off the rails. We think the legislature needs a do-over to establish a
much-reformed and open transportation planning and management process. The
solution isn’t simply to find more ways to throw more money into the process.
It is to fix a badly broken process, then re-evaluate our needs and develop
coherent solutions. That do-over cannot begin until you vote NO on the TSPLOST
on Tuesday.
The
metro-Atlanta region has grown well beyond the confines of the city limits of
Atlanta. Most of our job growth has been, and will continue to be, in the
suburbs. We have the nicest, least-dense suburban lifestyle of any city
in the United States. We don’t need to change that, we need to support it and
develop real transportation solutions that work to help you travel from origin
to destination in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. The key
elements of a working solution were advanced in Baruch Feigenbaum’s stellar analysis found on the Georgia
Public Policy Foundation website.
It’s time they stopped
doing things to us, and started doing thingsfor us.
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