MARTA Scam Ahead

AJC article 6/3/18 page A-18, “MARTA Expansion Benefits Communities” is a pitch for a $2.5 billion MARTA expansion being cooked up by close-in Atlanta Metro Counties. This is another attempt to invest money we don’t have in more subsidized public transit.  MARTA Expansion only benefits developers, consultants and contractors.

“Progressive” Georgia politicians would rather squander $2.5 billion on “economic development” of commercial space that routinely fails than expand the roads and highways to end the gridlock. MARTA is a unionized, government employee operation with a pension plan. Why would we expand that?

Public transit buses should be privatized and tax subsidies ended. Public transit trains should also be privatized or operated to break even so that tax subsidies can end.

Public transit schemes with never ending ever expanding tax subsidies are a bad deal. Ridership doesn’t justify expansion because Atlanta is the least dense city on the planet. We have a lot of empty train cars and buses whizzing around all day and night.  $2.5 billion would buy 100,000 Prius Hybrids. It would also buy 12,500 lane miles of new roads and highways at $200,000 per lane mile. It would fix I-285.

We defeated the T-SPLOST in 2012 with 66% of the vote because the $8 billion ARC wanted to spend didn’t fix the gridlock and the $3.5 billion on public transit that doesn’t go where we need to go was unjustified and unsustainable. The trains go to zombie malls and the buses are empty.

Claiming more than 2 counties in the Atlanta Region is a joke. Atlanta Metro is really DeKalb and Fulton. Cobb and Gwinnett are the suburbs, Cherokee and the others are the exurbs and are rural. Our infrastructure is set up for single family homes in communities and suburbs and needs no “fundamental transformation”. DeKalb and Fulton need to fix their crumbling water and sewer systems before spending another dime on “economic development”.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader