Fresh Loaf

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.

Bookmark It

The Reason Foundation, a Libertarian-leaning think tank, is keeping its idea about a multi-level traffic tunnel running underneath Atlanta alive.

From a May 28 post on the group’s website titled “Tunnels Are Part of the Traffic Solution”:

This proposed tunnel would have an inside diameter or 45 feet and each deck would have three 11 foot lanes and an overhead clearance of 12 feet allowing the tunnel to accommodate buses as well as SUVs and cars. The northern tunnel would be 5 miles long and the southern one would be 3.1 miles in length.

…

In 2004, Refik Eilbay, the director of tunneling services for Jordan, Jones and Goulding, a leading Georgia-based engineering firm told Tunnel Business Magazine, “The area continues to grow, so the City is developing long-range plans to deal with the population increase. Because there is less and less surface space available to support infrastructure growth, it will continue moving to the last remaining frontier - the underground.”

Eh. How about we occupy some of those narrow slices of land and finally offer rail options? You know, avoid the tailpipe emissions, the massive cost, the continued reliance on the automobile as the primary mode of transportation?

For a great take on the Reason study, click here to read a August 2007 CL article by Joe Winter.

(Photo courtesy of Cofiroute)

Bookmark It