Fresh Loaf

That’s how opponents of the statewide one-cent sales tax have branded the bill. If passed and approved by voters on the 2010 ballot, the tax could generate an estimated $25 billion over the next 10 years for a list of transportation projects that include oodles of sure-to-become-congested-in-five-minutes roads.

Dick Pettys of Insider Advantage reports:

The proposed constitutional amendment, to be voted on at the November 2010 ballot, needed 120 votes to pass, and easily cleared that mark 151-15. It now goes to the Senate, which prefers and has passed a counter proposal to allow regions to propose and seek to pass local option sales taxes for transportation.

Tuesday’s vote marked the first time in the two-year struggle to pass a new transportation funding mechanism by the Legislature that the statewide concept, backed strongly by House leaders, had come to a vote. Last session, a similar measure also was proposed but GOP leaders lacked the votes and did not put it to the floor.

Now, House and Senate leaders are positioned to try to determine anew if they can settle the long-standing debate over whether to pass the House-preferred statewide sales tax or the Senate-favored local option, regional approach.

Pettys has much more information on the bill’s passage, including the rundown on amendments tacked on at the last minute. Jim Galloway of the AJC says one of those amendments could turn into a political mess. Galloway, who says he’s no lawyer (LIES!), thinks one amendment spells out where the House stands on Gov. Sonny Perdue’s plan to gut the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Regardless, if lawmakers fail to agree on something, we’ll all still be stuck in traffic and wishing for better transit. And that’s what this issue’s about.

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1. East Atlanta neighbors stand up against crime (Ken Womack’s eavBuzz.net helps folks monitor their ‘hood — in real time.)

2. GDOT Commissioner Gena Evans fired (Chief of beleaguered transit agency later tells CL her sob story.)

3. Piedmont Park residents not cool with tunnels under Atlanta (But the rest of the city thinks they’re pretty awesome.)

4. Smart-growth guru smacks Atlanta (Andres Duany is to Atlanta what Toby Young is to overcooked fish.)

5. Strip-club arson case gets seamy (How could it not?)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Lawmaker and developers should know this about Piedmont Park by now. If you even come close to threatening the city’s most iconic greenspace, you better be prepared for a vocal reaction from its residents and supporters.

That’s why residents near Piedmont Park are keeping their eyes on one of the General Assembly’s proposed solutions to the state’s notorious congestion problem.

House Resolution 206, sponsored by state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, proposes a statewide one-cent sales tax to fund $25 billion of projects ranging from transit to roads. Included in the legislation is a controversial project: Tunnels underneath the city.

Cue the outrage.

(more…)

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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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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)

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