The Soviet Union failed because of top-down appointed
government engaged in central planning to create a “workers’ paradise”. Let’s not make the same mistake.
Don’t Donate Your Money
$8.5 billion is expected
to be collected from the 10 Counties over the next 10 years. Very little goes to relieve traffic
congestion. In our weak economy, we
cannot expect that this very expensive tax referendum will pass.
The 190 projects on the January 2012 version of the Region 3
List total $6.5 billion. These include
projects by county plus an AR list and a MARTA list.
$3.12 billion goes to public transit, used by 5% of the
population. Public transit is by far the
costliest form of transportation available.
It’s costly to build and costly to staff and maintain. Rebuilding MARTA and expanding train and bus
service within MARTA and GTRA will not relieve road and highway congestion and
that is where the problems are. Atlanta
is the least dense metro area of its size on the planet. Rail and bus transit will never pay for
itself, but will double its short-fall to over $1 billion a year. If you expand it, you only expand the tax
subsidy it requires, forever. MARTA must
close its bus service and let buses go private in order to save the train.
The Concept 3 transit Plan outlines the final expansion of
public transit at a cost of $75 billion.
That’s if there is a T-SPLOST 2 in 2022.
We would be starting expensive transit when we should be fighting to
contain it.
Overcharges
That leaves $3.38 billion for roads and bridges. Overcharges for the 10 counties range from
50% to 90%. Counties could do the
projects they really need for much less than is charged as a project cost. Counties wouldn’t be required to follow Davis
Bacon and pay triple for union labor.
They would also bid these widely to get the best deals.
My calculation of overcharges is based on 3rd
party data from the internet on the cost of constructing, refurbishing and
maintaining roads, bridges and highway interchanges. My data tells me that new road
construction costs $1 million per lane per mile and road milling and resurfacing costs
$100 thousand per lane per mile. There
are very overpriced re-dos of highway ramp systems. The project costs on the T-SPLOST lists range
from 4 to 20 times higher than the standard costs I found.
Most of these costs are not for new roads and lanes. They are for bike lanes at $500 thousand per
mile, sidewalks at $100,000 per mile, multi-use paths at $500 thousand per mile,
street lights, landscaping and transit studies.
The Slush Fund
The TIA law creates a slush fund of overcharges and allows
for funds from this T-SPLOST to be used for “economic development projects”. That have nothing to do with traffic
improvement. These are usually Community
Improvement District and Tax Authorizing
District initiated boondoggles that take tax money to build projects that
wouldn’t be built without taxpayer
subsidies. They are not built to
satisfy a real demand, so they fail. In
the meantime the developers make their money and leave the taxpayers holding
the bag. We currently have an oversupply
of retail and office space and can’t afford to fund speculators who have
nothing to lose.
The Real Problem
Our problem has been
that all roads lead to I-285 and that creates a bottleneck. With the passage of the TIA, all dollars go
to the State, creating another layer of bureaucracy, creating another
bottleneck. Finally, all projects are
done by GDOT. These are they geniuses
who put stop lights on highway entry ramps.
This triples the bottleneck to ensure delays and cost over-runs for a
list of projects that don’t attack the main problems. In addition, we don’t like tolls on
anything. If we need lanes on the
Interstates, take that out of the federal gas tax proceeds. Road taxes should not be used for parks,
recreational paths, bike lanes, sidewalks, landscaping or transit studies.
Plan B
Cities and counties could handle what they need faster,
better and cheaper on their own. Voters
need to reject the T-SPLOST and then go directly to their city councils and
county commissions to discuss how to find their own tax revenue to really
reduce congestion, without any unnecessary frills. Cities and counties need to cut non-essential
expanses to find enough money to cover needed road expanses. Public transit should be privatized. Parks expansion should cease. Recreation should be returned to the private
sector. Headcount should be reduced or
frozen. Temps should be used to build
sidewalks, not contractors.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment