GA Transportation Bill Rehab

There have been many articles written about the GA Transportation Bill, but none have offered a clear translation of our old gasoline tax per gallon total vs. the bill’s new tax per gallon total.  We may need an 8 to10 cent increase in the state gasoline tax.  If so, we want to see the project list with costs. If it fixes the congestion points at I-285, we’re all for it.

The bill should be clear and call for a move from 26.53 to 35.2 cents a gallon (MDJ data), then leave all other taxes the same.  Keep the 7.5 cents a gallon excise tax and the rest of the 4% sales tax rates as is.

The $100 million for transit will be wasted in MARTA train expansion pipedream studies.  It’s a mistake for the state to fund MARTA.  It’s an Atlanta, DeKalb and Fulton problem.  It’s all for UN Agenda 21 implementation, not transportation.  The $billions and $trillions in the cost of train expansion is unsustainable. Concept 3 calls for $126 billion. They are delusional.

The $500 million in local gas taxes proposed to be taken from local and given to this state fund is disruptive. If the state needs to increase gas taxes by that amount, they should propose it so it is understood.

We can understand using unnecessary school building fund bonds and that looks like a good idea. 

The 18.4 cents a gallon federal gasoline needs to be included in the total picture. All of it should go to Interstate maintenance and expansion where needed.

The big problem is what projects these new dollars will fund. The T-SPLOST failed because the projects wouldn’t fix anything. We therefore expect this additional $1 billion won’t fix anything either. We need to see a plan with reasonable costs.

Interstate vs. State highway responsibility is blurred.  The feds steal the federal gasoline tax and use it for Amtrak and green space.  Atlanta has absorbed I-285 into a metro highway without a real interstate bypass.

Bonds are a bad deal.  We spend tax money on fees and interest instead of concrete and asphalt.

UN Agenda 21 Regional New Urban Planning and CID transit village development needs to be funded by Atlanta, DeKalb, Fulton, the CIDs and the developers.

The global warming hoax that launched UN Agenda 21 has been discredited and everyone but our legislators know it.  We are waiting for legislators to quietly repeal regionalism and back away from all Agenda 21 required regulations.

High density development will continue to make our transportation problems worse. We need to reduce density in congested areas.

The state should manage its own transportation dollars for interstate and state roads and not trust any other agencies to do it. Regions and GDOT arbitrarily doubled road maintenance costs from 2011 to 2012.

The end result of the Transportation Bill should be to include all transportation related taxes to the transportation fund and allocate dollars back in proportion to their taxes. Airplane fuel tax should go to airplanes. Gasoline taxes and vehicle taxes should go to concrete and asphalt on roads and bridges at or below average costs. No gas taxes should go to “economic development” or excessive “studies” or “optional designs” or “population forecasts” or “driving time estimates”.

The state may need to limit development to relieve congestion points on the interstates. I-285 was built for a metro area of 2.2 million people and not expanded to accommodate 5 million people. We can either fix it or wait until 3 million people leave Atlanta metro.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader