Fresh Loaf

Literally. The Transit Planning Board — the agency that brought you the regional-transit vision called Concept3 — kindly asks for your help to determine how a more mobile metro Atlanta would look.

Visit this survey the agency created that asks what works and what doesn’t. Did a set of railroad tracks look better with or without a commuter rail station? Should downtown Atlanta be served by a bus or light-rail? Should buses run on I-75 or should commuter rail zip along the shoulder?

The board did a commendable job by actually showing how many of the possible solutions to metro Atlanta’s traffic woes would actually appear. If you’re a fan of what-could-be, it’s worth your time to check it out.

(Screenshot from TPB survey)

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Yep. That’s billion.

According to the first phase of a study conducted by a consulting firm tasked with developing a statewide transportation plan, Georgia needs an extra $100 billion over the next 20 years if we want to move around this congested mess.

The always-excellent Maria Saporta at the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:

The study explores improving mobility in the Atlanta region through three different ways:

• Demand management: teleworking, compressed workweeks, employee vanpools, congestion pricing, better clear of accidents and converting existing HOV lanes to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, where people pay a premium to drive in faster-moving lanes.

• Connecting infrastructure: HOT lanes connecting major employment centers, an express bus system, commuter rail to Griffin and additional arterial roads.

• Invest in most congested corridors: replace express buses with light or heavy rail in dense corridors, build high capacity road projects and build commuter rail between Atlanta and Athens.

The “scenario study” defines those high-capacity road projects as a tunnel underneath the Downtown Connector from I-675 to Georgia 400; and another tunnel paralleling the northern arc of I-285.

That thing about commuter rail? Really cool. The thing about the tunnel snaking under the Downtown Connector tunnels? Well, as the also-excellent Joe Winter once wrote in CL — not so cool.

The price tag for the statewide transportation plan over the next 20 years is between $142 billion and $251 billion. About a half of those funds would likely come from existing sources, such as federal highway dollars, the motor fuel tax and the MARTA sales tax.

Which means the rest will have to come from a new source. The next phase of the study will focus on that conundrum.

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GEORGE CARLIN: Dies at 71.

SLOW AND STEADY: The Obama campaign gingerly courts the black vote in states where high black-voter turnout could make the difference, while trying to avoid giving the appearance of exploiting race.

2 FAST 2 USURIOUS: Atlanta Progressive News reports that Atlanta-based CompuCredit is being sued by the FDIC and FTA for $200 million on charges it deceived and took advantage of its customers.

UGA IN CWS: The final, best-of-three series begins tonight at 7.

GRAVY TRAIN: The recently Sonny-approved notion of commuter rail would be a boon for smallish towns along the proposed Atlanta-Griffin and Atlanta-Athens rail lines.

STATE OF THE ARTIFACT: Archaeological-artifact poaching is on the rise in Georgia, according to a DNR official.

THE BEE’S KNEES: This week is the national Pollinators Week, created to raise awareness of the ecologically critical, and quickly disappearing, insects that pollinate crops and flowers.

FUEL OF ROCK: More below-the-radar touring bands are canceling tours as gas prices make going on the road cost prohibitive.

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This could prove interesting.

A little bird flew upon thine window and tipped me about a piece of property near Atlantic Station owned by the State Road and Tollway Authority. The nearly 6-acre parcel of land sits across the street from the IKEA store and is sure to make developers drool.

It’s also been eyed as a key stop along the planned commuter-rail network that would spider from downtown Atlanta. (This particular route juts toward Athens.) Before Gov. Sonny Perdue’s time, AIG Real Estate sold the land to then Gov. Roy Barnes’ administration for below market value.

Earlier this month, SRTA designated the land as “surplus” property and the State Properties Commission listed the parcel on its website. It will begin accepting bids July 10. A commission spokesperson says the agency is not obligated to accept any of the offers. So maybe they’re just sticking their toe in the water.

If you’re a forward-thinking developer who understands that people want to live and work close to transit options, this photo to the right is probably just as appealing as water to a parched man in the desert. It’s near the Beltline, you’ve got a Publix a couple of blocks away, located near a bustling neighborhood and separated from Downtown only by 3,235 lanes of interstate. Commuter rail isn’t exactly the speediest service to connect people to downtown, but it’d be nice to have some rail serving Atlantic Station.

Deals like these usually involve sealed bids, with the highest offer, regardless of planned use, usually the one being accepted. Let’s hope whoever purchases this property keeps the train in mind.

You don’t need a lot of room to build a train stop for folks, but a solid transit-oriented development would be a nice addition to the area.

(Photo courtesy State Properties Commission)

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From the Savannah Morning News:

What hasn’t been so easy is gathering the roughly $380 million to build the rail line to Athens, something the DOT board in August asked the department staff to pursue.

Seven months later and with a new commissioner at the helm, DOT is facing a $7.7 billion funding shortfall and is asking cities to reconsider and prioritize projects that have not seen progress, said Crystal Paulk-Buchanan, DOT spokeswoman.

About $107 million may be available for the first three years of a route to Lovejoy, but no funding - for the Athens-Atlanta line - has been identified, Paulk-Buchanan said.

The federal government wants DOT to identify how much the project would cost over 20 years, and DOT has not begun looking at ways to divvy the cost, she said.

Opponents say that means the project is bound to show up in tax bills of the cities hosting the train. Rep. Steve Davis, R-McDonough, who voted against the resolution Tuesday, said it amounts to an unfunded mandate for the cities and counties it would roll through.

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FUND TRANSIT State Rep. Dubose Porter, D-Dublin, stands alongside mass-transit supporters Monday and voiced the need for more cash for more options.

It’s become a mantra of passionate rail and bus supporters during the current legislative session: Do something, anything, to kick start the state’s static transit situation.

On Monday afternoon, the message was echoed. Members of Citizens for Progressive Transit, Georgia Public Interest Research Group, the Sierra Club, Mothers and Others for Clean Air and Georgia Brain Train Group, among others, rallied for legislators to pass a proposal that would generate cash to expand bus and rail services.

Advocates say their movement has momentum this year in the form of a state Senate resolution that was nipped and tucked last week by the House. State Rep. Dubose Porter appeared alongside the groups yesterday and said it’s time to start thinking about moving people by rail.

“We cannot pave our way out of gridlock,” Porter said. “This is someone from rural Georgia talking… The bill that is moving through [the General Assembly] is about allowing regions to determine their future.”

Neill Herring, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, supports the need for more transit funding, but told InsiderAdvantage’s Dick Pettys that the current form of the Senate’s proposal reads like an “Atlanta bill.” That could be a problem. Porter said that can be changed if the House dedicates the remaining penny of the motor-fuel tax that’s traditionally gone to the state’s general fund to instead fall under the care of the state DOT. For rural regions which lack the density upon which transit thrives, the generated revenues could go toward road projects.

Also on Monday’s agenda: Release findings of a study they say shows using public transit saves money and gas and lessens our impact on the environment. Rob Thompson of Georgia PIRG presented a study that concluded metro Atlanta transit agencies reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 662,036 metric tons per year and save consumers $228 million in gasoline expenses. (Ariel Hart of That Other Paper has a report questioning some of the study’s findings.) View the agency-by-agency data after the jump.

(Photo by Thomas Wheatley)

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(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Proponents of the Brain Train, including state legislators, college students, local officials and environmentalists, gathered in the cold shadow of the Gold Dome Thursday to urge legislators to pass funding that would help make the long-running idea a reality.

Bundled up in jackets and fighting the morning cold, supporters held posters and rallied for the proposed route of the Brain Train stretching from Athens to Atlanta and south to Macon.

Emory Morsberger, chairman of Georgians for the Brain Train, said a new poll commissioned by the organization showed 72 percent of registered voters in Bibb, Clayton, Henry, Lamar, Monroe and Spalding counties supported the idea of a commuter train connecting Atlanta and Macon.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘Is the Brain Train going to happen?’” Morsberger said. “I say yes. When we started, everyone laughed at us. But now we’ve got the House, the Senate, the DOT board. It works cost-wise, it works for the environment and it helps congestion. The time to do this is now.”

Allen Marshall of Griffin held a poster board outlining the 33 public and private educational institutions the commuter rail line would connect. Schools, he said, would be just one of the benefactors should the Brain Train begin to roll.

Other poll results show:

• 74.2 percent believe commuter rail service in the Macon-Atlanta corridor will help create jobs

• 70.7 percent stated they regularly drive to work

• 85.7 percent believe congestion will get worse in the next 10 years

• 70.6 percent described “traffic congestion getting into Atlanta” as a “big problem,” more than 20 percentage points higher than education, job creation, too much development and local congestion

• 59.2 percent said they would be either very likely or somewhat likely to use commuter rail service if available in the corridor

• 56.4 percent said the argument against commuter rail service that people just won’t use it is NOT PERSUASIVE

Michael Robison, CEO of Lanier Parking, said that of the 13 largest metropolitan regions in the nation, only three are without a commuter rail line. Houston’s one of those, he said, but the city has plans for a train. Detroit, the foreclosure capital of the country, is actually losing people. Atlanta’s the odd one out.

“We’re way behind the rest of the country in doing this,” Morsberger said. “The time is now.”

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Because talk of trains and all things commuter rail go best with a tall glass of data, click here to access various PDF files of Brain Train goodness, including sketches and plans of the downtown multimodal passenger terminal supporters hope to build at the “gulch” near the Georgia Dome and CNN Center.

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Note: Paul Snyder of A. Brown-Olmstead Associates contacted me and clarified some details of the Brain Train. Those notes appear below in bold. 

Tad Leithead remembers his days growing up in Greenwich, Conn., a place where his father could leave the house, hop on a train to New York City, and then simply hoof it a couple of blocks to work. Atlanta has the same situation with workers flocking to its city center — except our metropolis doesn’t have a train, he says.

Leithead, the Atlanta Regional Commission’s chairman of the Transportation and Air Quality Committee, sat on a panel last night at the Commerce Club downtown, fielding questions and hobnobbing with local notables on the topic of the Brain Train, a commuter rail line slated to run from Athens to Atlanta — and eventually to Macon — and hoped to ease the trips for many residents who for so long have lived so far out and driven too damn much. The train would run on existing tracks owned by freight company CSX. The line between Atlanta and Macon would run on Norfolk/Southern right-of-way.

Gwinnett-based developer Emory Morsberger — who throughout the evening mingled and buzzed through the crowd of public officials, media, business types and heavy hitters — told Georgia Trend in a March article that he got the idea for a commuter rail line from arriving late to his daughter’s birthday party and listening to gridlock-addled Little League parents. The idea attracted the attention of universities, cities and businesses, and is now being touted as an added boost to already booming areas and a saving grace for the congested Clifton Corridor, home to Emory University, the Centers for Disease Control and other activity centers devoid of significant transportation options except the automobile.

The panel, which included Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, Ed Campbell of SYSTRA Consulting Inc., Carl Rhodenizer of the Georgia Rail Passenger Authority, Michael Robison of the Metro Chamber and former DOT Commissioner Wayne Shackelford, expressed support for the project.

The underlying question in every issue tackling government is money, and panel members were undecided on where exactly they’re going to get the $383 million construction cost for the Athens-to-Atlanta line.

The federal government, according to press materials provided by the Brain Train group, is prepared to kick in 80 percent of the start-up costs. Federal money has not yet been assigned or identified — the 80 percent is a typical amount based on a state 20 percent match. The multimodal passenger terminal downtown — a bus and train hub proposed for downtown’s “gulch” near the CNN Center and Georgia Dome — has current federal and state funding and is estimated to cost $330.8 million overall. The downtown station is expected to be a huge draw for public-private initiatives, and the crowd suggested ideas such as TADs and regional sales taxes to build the project.

So what’s the holdup?
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