So there was an election this week in which an estimated 24 percent of registered voters participated. Pretty depressing.
But there was also a ton of transit and transportation news we couldn’t get around to covering. So we present it here. Catch up time!
On Oct. 14, Westview and West End residents received good news about the long-overlooked L&N railroad tracks in Southwest Atlanta: the Georgia Department of Transportation finally voted to allow the PATH Foundation to move ahead with a proposed Beltline jogging and biking trail.
For more than a year, Patrick Berry and other neighborhood residents waited for glimmers of progress on the abandoned tracks.
Unfortunately, all they saw were dumped mattresses, shopping carts, and blankets of kudzu piling up.
“When people came to the neighborhood, they’d see garbage and overgrowth,” Berry, vice president of the Westview Community Organization, says. “It gives the impression that nobody cares.”
Beltline officials say they’ve inked a deal with Trees Atlanta to begin a five-year kudzu removal process. Ed McBrayer of the PATH Foundation, which will oversee construction of the the trail, says he plans to meet with GDOT officials this week to discuss the project.
Once completed, the 1.4-mile trail will connect with the West End trail along White Street.
Maria Saporta sends word that the Georgia Department of Transportation has scaled back its division that oversees rail programs in the state.
Vance Smith, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation, distributed a memo on Thursday, Oct. 15 announcing “organizational changes” in his department.
“Over the last few months, we have worked diligently to strategically reorganize the Department to achieve greater efficiency in both functional alignment and program delivery,” Smith wrote in the memo.
He then released the new organization chart which diminishes the role of transit and intermodal transportation in the department.
That’s a sad sign. Georgia’s been sitting on federal funding for years that could kickstart a commuter rail line from Atlanta to Griffin. And just last month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood publicly criticized the state for dragging its feet on rail.
Check out Saporta’s full report for more details and a copy of Smith’s memo.
Sources: Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, Midtown Alliance, Texas Transportation Institute
The AJC’s Ariel Hart reports that Wayne Shackelford, the Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner during the state’s boomtimes, has died:
Steeped in Gwinnett County politics and heavyweight friendships like that of developer Wayne Mason, Shackelford developed real estate projects including Gwinnett Place Mall, and helped lay the water and road infrastructure that allowed Gwinnett to transform into a booming suburb. Backed by Zell Miller, he rose to statewide prominence as DOT commissioner, a post he held from 1991 to 2000.
…
While Shackelford led the state DOT, Georgia added 1.5 million residents. Shackelford presided over historic projects to help those people move around, such as the opening of Ga. 400’s leg inside the Perimeter, and the HOV lanes that bore traffic for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. During his tenure the DOT’s three-year list of approved projects ballooned from $2.6 billion to $5.1 billion, according to DOT.
Before his death, Shackelford was a vocal supporter of the Brain Train, a proposed commuter rail line that would connect more than 30 colleges and universities along Athens, Atlanta and Macon.
Hart has a thorough story. Check it out.
Dave Williams from the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:
The State Transportation Board instructed the agency’s staff Thursday to put rail projects on its wish list for TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants, part of the federal economic stimulus program, after learning that the department’s original list contained only highway projects.
“We don’t ever consider (rail projects) as part of our process,” board member Emory McClinton of Atlanta complained during a staff update on the DOT’s plans for federal stimulus funds. “At some point, we have to change this mentality.”
But there’s a catch. Williams has that for you at the Chronicle’s site. Some of the state’s commuter rail projects include the Athens-Atlanta-Griffin (and eventually — hopefully — on to Macon) line and the long-planned downtown train terminal proposed in the Gulch.
Planning Director Todd Long
The man who’ll help Georgians stop dying slow painful deaths sitting in gridlock was unanimously confirmed this morning as the state’s first transportation planning director.
Todd Long, a transportation-planning veteran who was nominated to the post by Gov. Sonny Perdue, faced final questions from the House Transportation Committee this morning.
The planning director position was created during a Perdue-helmed overhaul of Georgia’s transportation power hierarchy earlier this year. The governor had originally proposed neutering the state Department of Transportation and placing decision-making power in the hands of a new state agency — an agency largely overseen by himself.
State lawmakers, clever jackals that they are, rewrote most of the proposal near the end of the legislative session. What came out leaves GDOT intact but created the transportation planning director position.
Oh hey, Ariel Hart of the AJC, what good news do you have for us this evening?
At a moment when mass transit is taking center stage as a solution to transportation problems nationwide, a [Federal Transit Administration] report has concluded that the Georgia Department of Transportation’s transit program is riddled with financial management problems, according to a report obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The problems were so severe that the federal government has frozen DOT’s transit grants, which average about $28 million a year, including some from the federal stimulus program. The report cast doubt on whether DOT could manage grants for the commuter rail line proposed to go south through Lovejoy.
It’s that last sentence that really smarts. A GDOT spokesman tells Hart that the agency’s taken steps to fix the problems and unfreeze the funding. For a better idea of how behind the times Georgia is when it comes to rail, Hart’s full article is worth checking out.
State auditors have discovered what they call evidence of “possible financial statement fraud” and questionable accounting practices at the Georgia Department of Transportation during two years of former Treasurer Earl Mahfuz’s tenure.
According to a 54-page report released Monday, Mahfuz, who was demoted last year to assistant treasurer, “was responsible for the decision to implement business process changes at GDOT [between 2005 and 2007] that he knew would violate the Georgia Constitution.”
Those changes involved GDOT letting road projects even if it lacked the money to do so. The audit notes that the state Constitution has strict requirements when it comes to the state incurring debt.
The audit says the accounting practices might have helped mask GDOT’s budget deficit. It also says GDOT’s upper management and top boardmembers often butted heads with each other and that a general mistrust existed between the agency and the governor’s office. These factors helped create an operating environment that auditors say was “dysfunctional to the extent that GDOT was ripe for fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement.”
The world’s greatest sport and some game that is played between marriage proposals and awkward photos 
of Chipper Jones will create traffic havoc tonight in Atlanta.
This weekend, the Georgia Department of Transportation will be setting beams for the new (yippie!) 17th Street off-ramp (boo!). That project will require the closure of several lanes on I-75/85 northbound. Here are the details:
Starting at 8 p.m., Friday, July 24, the three regular travel lanes to I-75 North will be closed through the weekend until 5 a.m., Monday, July 27. All northbound traffic on I-75 must use the HOV lane to continue north on I-75. The three lanes to I-85 North will be open, but traffic will be very congested. Northbound drivers just passing through Atlanta are strongly encouraged to use I-285 to avoid the congestion.
Emphasis added. The following weekend, GDOT will once again resurface the interstate near the downtown connector, turning it into a real-life version of “Everybody Hurts.” That process will take 10 weekends to complete. The good news is that all of this activities, which are part of the 14th Street Bridge improvement project, will help GDOT finish the project ahead of schedule.
Do yourself a favor, if possible: Avoid interstate traffic this weekend and quite possibly for the rest of your life. Take local roads or I-285. Better yet, give transit a try. From the comforts of MARTA, you can laugh at the sea of gridlocked motorists. Citizens for Progressive Transit has a helpful online trip planner. You can also access a mobile version.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
1. Atlanta’s doin’ it and lovin’ it, says Trojan study (We’re No. 1 in the nation for sexual satisfaction and No. 2 for frequency of sex. Yeah, right.)
2. Washington City Paper’s Marion Barry story = gold (Speaking of surprising sex stories, the City Paper’s doozie on former mayor Barry was such a hit it crashed the paper’s website. What do you expect from the headline: “He put me out in Denver ’cause I wouldn’t suck his dick”?)
3. Filthy Rich: Best of Atlanta 2009 kicks off today (There are 18 days left to vote for the city’s best bands, restaurants, galleries, music venues, artists, shops and cultural attractions.)
4. Peachtree Streetcar vision isn’t dead yet (But it ain’t exactly called desire.)
5. GDOT, Beltline strike deal on vital track segments (City now controls roughly half of the right of way along the Beltline’s 22-mile loop.)
Beltline has secured a purchase option on segments highlighted above in red
The Beltline and Georgia Department of Transportation have agreed that key railroad tracks owned by the state agency will indeed be part of the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.
GDOT Commissioner Vance Smith and Atlanta Beltline Inc. CEO Terri Montague announced today the agencies have struck a deal over a two vital segments of railroad tracks in Southwest and Southeast Atlanta.
The set of tracks in Southwest Atlanta stretch more than three miles from Allene Avenue to Lena Street. The other segment, which is much smaller, runs from Wylie Street to Memorial Drive in Reynoldstown.
According to the agreement, Beltline officials have exclusive claim on the properties until June 30, 2012. Until then, ABI will lease the segments and prepare them for public use — think hiking tours, urban sightseeing, etc.
The state Transportation Board this morning unanimously elected state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, as the new Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner. Once he resigns from the Gold Dome, Smith’s expected to move into GDOT offices on June 25th.
What exactly Smith’s duties will be is rather murky. Earlier this year, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill pushed by Gov. Sonny Perdue that restructured the transportation planning power structure. Whereas previously the DOT board called the shots, now most of the people-moving decision-making will be made by a planning director appointed by the governor. It wasn’t what Perdue originally wanted, but he signed the bill. The governor hasn’t named his planning director pick. (UPDATE: Dick Pettys of Insider Advantage reports just now that Perdue has named Todd Long, formerly or DOT and the Georgia Regional Transporation Authority, as planning director.)
Pettys also reports that there was some debate among boardmembers over how to interpret the governance reform bill, but that they’ve decided to hold off until all the pieces of the bureaucratic puzzle come together.
In a released statement, Smith says the state and DOT must work together to finally solve Georgia’s transportation woes. He adds that the deep-in-the-red department sorely needs new funding. During his time under the Gold Dome, Smith pushed for a statewide one-cent sales tax that would fund new roads, bridges and transit. Like all transportation funding proposals in the Legislature, it never passed.
…that’s not the real story.
The veteran political reporter’s sources say the state agency wants to avoid ending the fiscal year with a deficit, possibly by tapping $75 million in federal funding. There’s also the question over what exactly Senate Bill 200, a piece of legislation that shakes up Georgia’s transportation power structure, means for GDOT.
At the same time – and this is where it gets interesting – talks have been underway between the DOT staff and the governor’s office over how to implement SB 200, the governance reform bill that gives the governor (through the new planning director) and the Legislature (through new budget authority) broader control over DOT. There are some loose ends that the bill does not address.
Some believe the two issues have become entangled in something of a quid pro quo, with the governor holding both a carrot (the bailout money) and a stick (the new rules which dissidents believe give the planning director – and through the planning director, Perdue – more power over issues like public-private partnerships and funding allocation formulas than the law stipulates.)
Others don’t see any such entanglement, but this week’s meeting should be interesting nonetheless. Even if there is no suspense about the new commissioner.
Business blogger Maria Saporta reports state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, seems to be the most likely candidate to be named the next Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner.
Smith, chairman of the House transportation committee, has been interested in the DOT job for nearly two years, and it appears he will get his wish.
The deadline for applications from people interested in the DOT job was today at 5 p.m.
Word has it that Smith’s top two potential competitors did not apply for the job, meaning that he is the last man standing.
Saporta reports one of those competitors, Georgia Regional Transportation Authority Executive Director Dick Anderson, decided to stick with GRTA to try to implement the governor’s recently completed statewide transportation plan. Interim GDOT Commissioner Gerald Ross is rumored to return to his position as chief engineer.
At last week’s State Transportation Board meeting in Douglas, Ga., Erik Steavens of the department’s intermodal program director briefed board members on land negotiations that are underway between GDOT and Atlanta Beltline Inc., the agency tasked with designing the planned 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit that will one day circle the city’s urban core.
GDOT owns two pieces of transit right-of-way that ABI has marked as part of the project’s “spine” — a small sliver in Southeast Atlanta and a larger one in Southwest Atlanta.
After the jump, screenshots from Steavens’ presentation to GDOT board members depicting the properties, including what kind of profit the department might see from their sale.
On April 16, President Barack Obama gave rail lovers some long-awaited good news: As part of the president’s stimulus plan, he offered $8 billion to begin linking major U.S. cities with high-speed rail lines — and an additional $5 billion more to improve rail service over the next four years.
“We need high-speed rail,” Obama said. “It’s happening right now. It’s been happening for decades. The problem is, it’s been happening elsewhere, not here.”
By “elsewhere,” the president was referring to Europe and Asia. But he could just as easily have been talking about Southeastern states other than Georgia. Thanks to a lack of vision, little to no funding, and an almost cartoonish addiction to roads, the Peach State’s far behind many of its neighbors when it comes to rail.
Transit and transportation advocates say if the state’s leadership doesn’t work to catch up, Georgia could miss out on a nationwide rail renaissance.
Click here to continue reading this story.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Number of state employees laid off this fiscal year: 345
Number of state employees who were furloughed in late February: 24,969
Percentage by which the number of furloughed employees has increased since then: 27
Total number of employees in the state Department of Corrections: 13,500
Number of days Department of Corrections employees are required to take as unpaid leave in the first half of 2009: 2
Total number of employees in the state Department of Transportation: 6,000
Number of days DOT employees are required to take as unpaid leave in the first half of 2009: 1
Total number of employees in the University System of Georgia: 40,000
Number of days that University System employees are required to take as unpaid leave: 0
Sources: AJC.com, www.macon.com, www.dot.state.ga.us, www.usg.edu
For most of the Beltline’s history, concerns about displacement have largely focused around slowly gentrifying neighborhoods in Southeast and Southwest Atlanta. The land and homes are less expensive and ripe for the picking by a developer agog at the thought of a project near the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.
But at Monday morning’s Atlanta City Council meeting, councilmembers heard from concerned residents who feared a plan to save a key part of the $2.8 billion project would potentially uproot them from their homes.
At yesterday’s special-called meeting, council unanimously OK’ed a deal reached by the Georgia Department of Transportation, Amtrak and Beltline officials that saved residents near the Piedmont Park the headache of high-speed trains lumbering nearby on tracks called the “Decatur Belt.” The move also saves the entire Beltline project — late last year, the city poured money into the area when it purchased the property from a Gwinnett County developer for at least $66 million.
But the vote came without some last-minute amendments thanks to Marietta Street residents who said Amtrak, GDOT and Beltline officials’ plan to save the Decatur Belt merely shifted the burden of high-speed rail on to them — and placed their homes at risk. According to rough plans presented to GDOT’s board last week, the alternate plans for high-speed rail serving Atlanta involve expanding the tracks and potentially seizing property. The buildings and lofts in which the residents could very well be some of those.
The most tangible component of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan — transportation projects — is starting to take shape in metro Atlanta and Georgia.
Yesterday, the State Transportation Board today approved 135 projects — most of which involve bridge maintenance and road resurfacing — valued at more than $512 million.
And today, the Atlanta Regional Commission approved stimulus projects totaling more than $270 million — $95 million of which will help metro region transit agencies replace aging vehicles, complete maintenance projects, and improve park-and-ride facilities. MARTA has been allocated $55 million. Some pedestrian improvements are included in each agency’s project lists.
If Gov. Sonny Perdue approves the projects, bids will be solicited. Work is expected to begin immediately thereafter.
Georgia was allocated $1.1 billion in transportation funding under the plan — $931 million for roads and $144 million for transit projects. GDOT oversees 70 percent of that cash. The remaining funds are distributed among metropolitan planning organizations — i.e. the ARC.
After the jump, screenshots of GDOT’s approved projects in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. To view the entire list and monitor how the agency spends Obamabucks, visit its stimulus projects website. To download a PDF of the ARC’s approved stimulus projects, click here. I’d post screenshots for you, dear reader, but since the projects are all local, it’s best to read the list in full.
The dispute that potentially derailed Atlanta’s smart-growth future seems to be officially coming to an end.
The Georgia Department of Transportation today ended its role in the dispute over railroad tracks in northeast Atlanta considered vital to the Beltline, the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit proposed to one day circle the city.
During its monthly meeting, the department’s board unanimously voted to remove its objection over the Beltline’s plans for the “Decatur Belt,” a 4.3-mile rail segment that stretches from Ansley Park to DeKalb Avenue.
After narrowly passing the state Senate on March 5, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s re-arranging of the deck chairs is scheduled to be debated in the lower chamber perhaps as soon as tomorrow. And whattya know, the members of the lower chamber aren’t taking too much of a shine — that’s Southern-speak for “unhappy with” — to the legislation.
If approved, Senate Bill 200 would create a new transportation agency led by a governor-appointed “secretary” and overseen by an 11-member board. Five board members would be appointed by the governor. The lieutenant governor and House speaker would each appoint three. The legislation would also neuter the Georgia Department of Transportation and turn it into a glorified road maintenance agency. Currently, state lawmakers elect GDOT board members. UPDATE: The AJC today offers dueling guest editorials about the legislation from Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, and GDOT Board member Brandon Beach.
The whole proposal has some lawmakers flummoxed.
Beltline
The federal agency in charge of the exciting topic of “railroad abandonments” has told the Georgia Department of Transportation, Amtrak and Atlanta Beltline Inc. that it expects an update about the three agencies’ dispute over hotly contested Beltline tracks no later than March 23.
In a decision filed today, the U.S. Surface Transportation Board says it received the transportation agencies’ requests for 15 more days to resolve any remaining issues about the “Decatur Belt,” a 4.3-mile segment of rail that runs from Ansley Park to DeKalb Avenue and hugs Piedmont Park.
In late January, the local, state and federal agencies got into a nasty fight over the rail segment, which is owned by the city and planned to be a vital part of the Beltline, the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit envisioned to circle the city. Last Friday, the agencies said they’d reached a “consensus” that commuter or intercity rail did not need to run on the tracks.
(Courtesy Atlanta Beltline Inc.)
1. Atlanta THUNDERSNOW!!!! (Yes, that was last week. Snow. Inches of it. Followed by 80-degree bliss. Georgia is rad.)
2. Man found dead in Capitol office building (State employee apparently took his own life.)
3. Gena Evans: ‘Best day’ at GDOT was day I was fired (What the former Department of Transportation commissioner meant to say was, “Take this job and shove it!”)
4. Speakeasy with Outkast’s Andre Benjamin (Rapper’s “Class of 3000″ cartoon transitions from TV to the stage.)
5. Animated superheroes burst from shadows of live-action films (In other animation news, comic-book protagonists transition from ink to celluloid.)
(Image from Regator’s “thundersnow” t-shirt page on Zazzle)
Happy ending for the Beltline?
Residents and transit wonks hoping for a Friday cease-fire over unused railroad tracks called the “Decatur Belt” got good news today.
Officials from the Beltline, Georgia Department of Transportation, Amtrak and other transportation agencies say they’ve reached an agreement regarding the hotly contested rail segment that stretches from Ansley Park to DeKalb Avenue.
“These parties have reached a consensus on joint actions to develop and implement a plan to accommodate commuter rail, intercity and high-speed rail service in the region that does not require the use of the Decatur Belt rail corridor,” a joint statement says.
The agencies agree that a commuter, intercity or high-speed rail line could operate along modified tracks west of the city. Beltline supporters initially proposed such a concept, but Amtrak and GDOT rejected it, calling it difficult because those tracks are busy freight routes.
A technical committee recommends a long-awaited downtown train terminal proposed near Philips Arena which would accommodate the trains be redesigned, that Amtrak consider possible stations along MARTA’s Northeast line, and that the local, state and regional transportation agencies conduct a study of freight traffic options in metro Atlanta.
In other words: It appears that, barring anything insanely out-of-the-blue, the mixed-use, light-rail Beltline vision proposed near Piedmont Park is safe.
Background and the full release from the agencies after the jump.
