Atlanta Gridlock

The primary goal of government is to expand itself beyond what it needs to do.  The primary responsibility of voters is to stop them from doing this.

The AJC article, Candidates focus on transportation, 1/25/18 Metro page 1 reports that the State of Georgia is considering expanding US 27 and increasing state funding for transit. In 2015, the state spent $75 million on transit.  Transit should not be funded by States. I have always supported using US 27 as an Atlanta bypass.

Transit should be Private

Transit has been a form of government waste for a long time, but it has always fallen to cities and counties to fund their local transportation systems. Public transit in the US started with trollies before automobiles were common. In New York, on Manhattan Island, the subway system was built to provide transit to millions of office workers going to high-rise sky scrapers. It made sense to build the subway system to allow this densely packed development to work reasonably well. The businesses located in Manhattan seemed content to pay extra taxes to keep this government utility operating. 

I went to grade school in Queens in the 1950s. My dad took the train into Manhattan every day to catch the subway to the Empire State Building. My mom kept the car to do errands and take us to school and we used it to get around on the weekends and evenings.

Less dense cities have attempted to duplicate the transit train and they don’t operate to break even. MARTA in Atlanta has operated at a loss since its inception.  It would have to double its rider fees to even approach breaking even. MARTA is the creature of DeKalb and Fulton counties and we pay sales taxes in these counties to subsidize MARTA.

In 2012, I was in the group of Tea Party Leaders who defeated the 2012 T-SPLOST. I did the financial analysis on the Metro Atlanta Regional projects.  The price-tag was $8 billion with $3.5 billion for transit.  The road projects didn’t solve our gridlock problems and project costs were double the generic cost of construction data for 2010. We defeated T-SPLOST with a 66% No vote.

Our use of MARTA since moving to Atlanta has been sparse.  We’ve used it to go to and from the airport. MARTA doesn’t go where we need to go. We use our car to go where we need to go. We’ve never taken a MARTA bus anywhere. The trains and buses are empty, but they keep running.

The best public transit is private. Private sector Bus companies are capable of operating bus service in cities and counties and across country and don’t require taxpayer subsidies to do this. Cities and counties should sell their buses to private companies and get out of the business.

MARTA trains will probably continue to operate, but expansion to our rapidly disappearing Malls should stop.

US 27 is the Answer

Atlanta needs to unclog I-285.  Interstate traffic needs a decent Atlanta bypass.  US 27 goes from the Great Lakes to Florida and runs parallel to I-75. It can easily connect to I-75 and I-85 to give interstate traffic an alternative to going through Atlanta. This is a lot cheaper to do than building the real Atlanta bypass to intersect I-75 and I-85 we needed after 1983.

The road and highway systems in Atlanta Metro were adequate when the Atlanta Metro was 3 million. We can either lose 3 million, or set up a grid system like you can see in St. Louis Metro.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader