Thursday Thoughts: T-SPLOST? REALLY?

On this coming 31 July, Georgians will be asked to vote on a transportation funding bill.  That bill is the “T-SPLOST.”  That stands for Transportation-Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. That July day is listed as a “General Primary/Non-Partisan/Special Election (to fill vacancies and propose questions)”  One of the “Questions” will be whether we will add a sales tax to fund a huge laundry list of “regional transportation projects.”

We, as cyclists and residents of the area should pay attention, and take some actions.

Possibly the first thing that should be done is to look at what this proposed SPLOST is to fund.  This LINK http://transformmetroatlanta.com/regional-projects/  will take you to an interactive map of all the projects that are to be funded by the Sales Tax.  I only count six project that are bicycle-pedestrian related.  On the other hand there are numerous roadway projects.  More, if one looks at the money proposed, a huge amount is going to heavy rail.

I’ll leave the analysis and debate of the merits of each of these to others.  I should like rather to address some principles.

The “Build Your Way Out of It” model:

This one seems, intuitively to make some sense.  The problem is, it doesn’t work.  The concept is that we have congestion and transportation problems, so increasing system capacity will alleviate them.  This has been tried.  I’ll mention Los Angeles, New York City, and Houston, Texas as examples.  Simply put, increasing roadway capacity, and extending highway networks leads to increased usage!  That’s not less, but more congestion.

 The “It’s Not Working, Make it Bigger” model:

This seems to be the philosophy behind the “transit” portion of these plans.  MARTA doesn’t have enough riders to make it pay.  It’s never met its budget, and it always runs in the red.  So what’s the solution?  Well, if we just made the whole system bigger (and more expensive) then it would pay for itself.

A History Lesson:

Once upon a time, we here in Fayette County were handed a SPLOST to fund a “transportation improvement plan.”  I worked hard on that one.  I worked to motivate cyclists to support the passage of the SPLOST.  The idea was, there would be nice things for cyclists in the plan.  The SPLOST passed.  It was a narrow passage.  It could be argued that the vote of cyclists in the county made the difference.  (Cyclists vote.)

What were the results of that particular plan?  Well we had to charge 1% more for everything sold in the county.  But aside from that…  How many cycling improvements have you seen?  I see large road-building programs going on.  The southern portion GA-74 has been turned into a massive highway.  It’s all but impossible to cross it, and there are no accommodations for cyclists along it.  As I write, the massive “West Fayetteville Bypass” project is advancing.  It’s tearing the heart out of the county.  I don’t see how it will benefit cyclists, and I see a lot of ways in which it will have a negative impact.

A Look at the Big Picture:

To se an interactive map of all of the proposed projects the T-SPLOST is supposed to fund please follow this LINK.

One of the biggest problems I have with this whole thing is that the proponents have no “Plan B.”  We are told that we must do this, and that this is the only way to accomplish “critical” ends.  I’ve never been happy with that kind of rhetoric.

I’d urge all to take a look at this thing and ask the following:

• “Do we really need another regressive sales tax?”
• “Do we really need to do all this stuff?”
• “Is this the only way to accomplish it?”
• “Will any of this stuff actually help us?"