Final Comments Sought on Taxes for Roads, Transit, BeltLine in Midtown

Midtown is scheduled to get traffic lights timed to speed traffic through its main streets, MARTA Arts Center station is set to benefit from system-wide maintenance and people will be using the Beltline by 2023, if these projects survive the last edits and, more dicey, a 10-county vote on a major new regional tax.

In 2010, the state legislature told Georgia that if they want more transportation money, they could join together in groups of counties, write up lists of projects and ask their voters to approve a ten-year one-penny sales tax to pay for the wish list.

In the ten-county metro Atlanta region, such a tax would net about $7.2 billion over 10 years, by the state's math. Now metro leaders, in the so-called Transportation Roundtable, are finishing the list that they will put in front of their voters in 2012. The draft list is already out and comments are being accepted ahead of a final leadership vote in mid-October.

In Midtown, major surface streets would get traffic light improvements, such as better timing for faster traffic:  14th Street, 10th Street, Ponce de Leon, North Avenue, Spring Street and Piedmont Avenue. Those are relatively cheap, mostly less than $1 million per corridor. Piedmont is proposed for additional fixes in new signs, sidewalk repairs and resurfacing, that would cost some $3.6 million along the whole length between downtown and Buckhead.

The Beltline segment connecting Piedmont Park and Auburn Avenue in downtown is on the to-do list, at $174 million.

Regionwide, MARTA's in line for about $600 million for maintenance and safety upgrades under the plan, which includes lighting in tunnels around the Arts Center station.

And a transit link all the way from Arts Center to the city of Acworth in Cobb County is still breathing. It's neither on nor off the list just yet. The exact mode route and mode — say, rail or speedy bus — has yet to be settled. The price tag from Arts to the Perimeter near Vinings would come to about $856 million.

The list has full support from Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall, he said via e-mail. The Midtown projects will benefit residents and businesses directly, he wrote. "Just as importantly," the Midtown representative continued, "a number of items on the comprehensive regional list will improve quality of life and transportation options for those who want to experience all that Midtown has to offer, but who live elsewhere."

The public referendum on the final list is scheduled for July 2012 at the general election primary. If it passes, the sales tax will be collected from 2013 through 2023. Legally, all the funds must go to the listed projects. There is no mechanism for shifting the money elsewhere.

A "yes" vote gives the Beltline "a great opportunity to happen quicker," said Beltline External Affairs Director Rukiya Eaddy, within five to ten years.

But, she pointed out that in case of failure, there is a 25-year tax allocation district that is dedicated to the Beltline. "That will allow it to be built over time, or at least a good bit of it," she said.

Similarly, routine Atlanta road maintenance, like paving, streetlight repairs and sidewalk fixes, would still happen, but could happen faster if the tax passes. Atlanta, like all other local governments in the 10-county region, would get a chunk of cash to distribute on its own transportation projects.

Atlanta's projected $93 million share would probably be spent on its "significant" maintenance backlog and the priorities listed in its Comprehensive Transportation Plan, suggested Tom Weyandt, the transportation policy advisor to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, speaking to a Sept. 15 public meeting.

If the referendum fails, the metro falls back on its chief source of state transportation funds, a state gas tax, supplemented by federal funds. And in Fulton and DeKalb Counties, there is already a one penny sales tax that subsidizes MARTA, which gets no state funding.

Unhappy transit and bike users, however, were chief among the citizens who came to comment on the plan at the Sept. 15 open house. Road projects out in the greater metro Atlanta region will not necessarily have to be so-called "complete streets," with safe space for cars, bikes and pedestrians. And a few Fulton residents asked why they should pay a "second" penny for transportation in addition to the MARTA penny at a time when their bus routes are being cut.

And the money for the so-called "northern arc" highways to connect north metro counties would be better spent on transit on I-85 or commuter rail to Griffin, testified Colleen Kiernan Georgia director of the Sierra Club.

It's that city-suburban split that might make passage difficult. Freeways dozens of miles from Atlanta are little more popular with Atlantans than MARTA maintenance is for suburban dwellers who never use it. The plan that's written to try and please diverse voters of ten counties may end up pleasing none. 

The counties vote as one. The majority decision regionwide is binding on all counties.