This TSPLOST seems to be only about traffic two times a day. Morning workers going to downtown Atlanta and afternoon workers coming from Atlanta. What about everybody else?
Rail lines are forever. They segregate parts of town much like a river. Like a river they create bottlenecks to get to and across a bridge or tunnel. Forcing the funneling of cross traffic adds increased frustration, time and cost to operate your car. Of course you can stay home and forget what’s on the other side of the tracks.
Construction of rail lines seems to be proposed only for already high density traffic areas. The construction exacerbates the existing traffic problem for years until finished.
Trains are linked buses. Buses are 40 feet in length and when a route has a heavy need you add more for the time needed and park them when they’re not needed. Trains have to drag empty cars around all of the time. Bus lines can be created or eliminated with buses increased or decreased as ridership demands.
If we can be prudent with our costs and effects we will have more funds for additional projects. The affect on all of us is tremendous and for many years.
Lamar Cheatham
Marietta
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Also, with better transportation options businesses will be more prone to come to the city and set up shop. It is a win situation for everyone.
NEWSFLASH!!!!
Unless the government just happens to have the money lying around somewhere waiting to be spent, virtually ALL infrastructure projects are paid for with bonded indebtedness over time.
The only difference is that the bonds sold to pay for the construction of transportation infrastructure can be paid back in one of two ways, through user fees in the form of tolls on expressways and higher fares on transit lines, or through (usually massive) tax increases.
And with your fervent support of this highly-flawed and extremely-inadequate and totally-incomplete TIA/T-SPLOST referendum you can't claim to be completely for improving and upgrading infrastructure as the T-SPLOST doesn't do anywhere and anything near what is needed to deal with the exceptionally-heavy freight truck traffic that contributes to a great deal of our traffic troubles.
Using a one-percent T-SPLOST that EVERYONE is going to have to pay, whether they want to or not, to attempt to partially-fund economic development/land spectulation initiatives (like the Midtown-Cumberland light rail, Atlanta streetcars and the Atlanta Beltline) and very limited improvements to roads and transit is the equivalent of attempting to heal a shotgun wound with a band aid. It's just NOT going to work.
And we thought the Big Dig in Boston cost a lot of money. Double Decking our regional interstate system would be ridiculously expensive.
With the expense and size of the project it would be years to complete and astronomically priced to drive.
You should go back to your Super Arterial on 41 concept, which still makes very little sense and like this is on NO plans in the region.
Hey, why don't we just give tax credits so people can purchase flying cars. That sounds much more feasible.
It's your type of additude that is killing this town, the outright refusal to adequately and properly invest in water and transportation infrastructure.
No one REALLY wants to invest in roads, no one REALLY wants to invest in transit and no one REALLY wants to invest in a truly multimodal transportation system.
While the leaders of this state and powers-that-be in this region only want to push another get-rick-quick scam, their biggest get-rich-quick scam yet in this T-SPLOST in which most of Cobb County's allotment of money will be spent in Fulton County, if the boosters of this huge rip-off can sucker enough of the uninformed into voting for this farce.
Support, campaign and vote for this grand scam in the T-SPLOST if you want, but in the increasingly likely event that this thing just happens to pass, don't come crying and whining to us when you are still stuck in miserable traffic on I-75, I-285 & US 41 two decades down the road with nothing to show for it.
The problem is not that we don't have enough vanpooling or carpooling opportunities.
The problem is that we have too much SOV, heavy truck and Interstate through traffic and not enough road space for all of that exceptionally-heavy traffic.
Here are some key points about both buses AND light rail that impacted my decision to support the HighRoad technology:
* Buses mingled in traffic are equally slowed by congestion, interfere with other traffic and pose risk to other vehicles and pedestrians.
* Light rail (at grade) must be manned or be fully separated from other traffic and pedestrians, resulting in the division of neighborhoods (as you indicated).
* For both technologies, elimination of risk to other traffic and pedestrians without dividing neighborhoods means grade separation; essentially, building a bridge the entire length of the route, a VERY costly and lengthy venture!
* The unsubsidized costs of constructing and operating both technologies is enormous. An honest 30-year lifecycle cost analysis reveals that.
* Total trip time matters in attracting riders. That means 'how long will it take me to get to work', including driving to a station (bus or rail), actual moving travel time on the vehicle, and getting to your final destination by foot, rented Smartcar, bike, Segue, cab, shuttlevan or other means. All public technologies face this challenge, but limiting the route because of massive cost makes this a more difficult gap to overcome.
I like HighRoad because:
* It has been endorsed by the former Georgia DOT Commissioner, Tom Moreland, a man highly regarded internationally for his expertise.
* It's proposed to be built by a former engineer in the aerospace industry, the largest high-tech concrete bridge-building firm in the Southeast, the vehicle manufacturer known for sleek-looking & operating vehicles and the controls company that does many of the other systems in operation around the world.
* It's simple in design and uses existing components.
* It is inherently designed to operate above traffic and pedestrians with a very slim shadow area.
* It can be built VERY quickly following a year or so of final planning and with less disruption of existing traffic.
* Like the benefit you cited about buses, its vehicles operate independently, making stations smaller and easier to integrate into a community.
* Its lower cost means you can construct more miles of it for the same dollar invested, potentially locating stations closer to where you live rather than just "high density traffic areas".
I'm not a fan of T-SPLOST because I believe the entire process has been corrupted.
VOTE NO on T-SPLOST and hold out for a better deal... the OTG HighRoad!
However, your claims about the HighRoad concept are totally off base.
Unproven, unsustainable, unrealistic.
It is all theory and supposition.
And I think Tom Moreland would be surprised to hear about his endorsement.
With your statement "Unproven, unsustainable, unrealistic." and "It is all theory and supposition.", I expect you'd be absolutely terrified to walk into an innovatively designed skyscraper.
The fact is that experts who know how to do things correctly are abundant. The problem is too many people like you are afraid of innovation of any sort. Your apparent ignorance of business, science and engineering stand to shore-up bad ideas in transportation.
By the way, light rail and buses are proven only to be unsustainable and unrealistic without federal AND local tax dollars.
You have proven the statement of Lady Thatcher (I believe) who said, "Reluctance to innovate all too often is cowardice dressed up as prudence."
First of all I am not against innovation. In fact, I welcome and admire it as long as the private sector is taking the risk.
Public dollars being spent on experimental concepts is a totally different situation.
Just because you have a papermache model and a website does not mean the system is ready for primetime.
What works on paper and in your wishful imagination doesn't necessarily work in real life.
A couple of questions:
Where does this technology exist either in operation or demonstration?
You state that the construction cost is less than traditional high capacity transit.
How much less and who pays for it? Public or private?
How about ongoing operation and maintenance costs? Who pays for that? Public or private?
As far as Tom Moreland's "endorsement" is concerned.
Is he a transit expert?
If it is the same Tom Moreland I am familiar with he is an excellent road, bridge and highway guy, but I don't think his expertise extends to the field of high capacity transit systems.
Again I am with you on opposition to the TSPLOST, but from what I have seen and heard about HighRoad it is a long, long way from being a sound public investment.
First, I apologize to Mr Cheatham for "highjacking" his subject, but I have to reply to baseless accusations posted here.
I'm not certain, but I don't think the business plan OTG has put together requires public money per se. It uses revenue bonds paid with fare box revenues, BEFORE any profit is taken by private investors. To me, that represents skin in the game!
"papermache model" and "wishful imagination"? Seriously?
When an architect designs a building, they create floorplans, structural plans, electrical plans, hvac and plumbing plans, lighting plans, etc. To represent the overall concept to the public who largely don't understand what they're looking at when viewing those design plans, they frequently build a model out of art board. So, in your mind, the architect is incapable of building a reliable, sustainable, and innovative building simply because they showed you a model?
Cost? If I remember correctly, in the mid-30's per mile (vs ~$120M per mile for light rail), but that relies on many factors such as how much capacity you design for (how many vehicles you buy) and how many stations and what route, etc. That is also for two-directions of travel, not a push-pull style of transport some others offer.
Who pays? It is to be privately funded. (see above)
Regarding Tom Moreland: You have vastly understated his qualifications either out of honest ignorance or an ulterior motive. I will assume it's an honest mistake and suggest you research him and his firm.
TIC, we may have to disagree on HighRoad, but one thing's for certain: Voters should vote down T-SPLOST and demand better options!
Revenue bonds are, in fact, supported by revenue generated from the project they are funding.
Fare box revenues are going to cut it!!
Even in the best of situations they only cover about 40% of the operating/maintenance costs.
That doesn't even consider the debt service on the bonds for the construction costs.
And what happens if the revenue necessary to pay the debt service on the bonds does not materialize?
Then who is obligated to pay the debt service?
The taxpayers that's who!!
Without the full faith and credit of the county or city or state or some legitimate taxing authority the bonds will never rated high enough to be considered a viable investment by potential bondholders.
Again bond investors/holders are not going to go for it without a legitimate and verifiable income stream or with the pledge of the full faith and credit of a governmental taxing authority.
And who pays the ongoing operating and maintenance costs?
If I am not mistaken revenue bonds cannot be used for that type of expenditure.
Without even getting to the "pie in the sky" technology of the HighRoad concept it falls apart based on the financing assumptions.
Regarding the technology
Forget Tom Moreland. As fine an engineer as he may be he is not the final word on stuff like this. He has absolutely no input or decision making authority whatsoever when it come to this area of transportation.
Has the FTA signed off this technology?
Has the necessary testing of this technology passed muster with the various and numerous federal agencies that, for better or worse, have to approve it before it can even be considered to be put into service?
Show me those certifications and you might have a leg to stand on.
Again, the financing mechanism you proposed is not feasible and the technology is not proven.
Sorry, it ain't happening.
My advice is to market this as an expensive toy at HobbyTown not a potential solution to our high capacity transit needs.
Nobody really wants to ride transit in this town, but everyone wants to and has to drive.
Directly address our transportation needs where they are the most pressing by double-decking all of the Interstates and GA 400 and paying for the project by placing user fees in the form of tolls on the upper-deck which would be open only to vehicles with six or fewer wheels, leaving the lower-deck (existing roadways) open mainly to vehicles with more than six wheels in most cases (trucks, buses and vehicles with trailers with more than six wheels).
We can also pay to improvements to untolled roads by taking the 4% of the gas tax that goes into the state's general fund and returning to road maintenance where it actually belongs which would actually serve as an increase in tax revenue without raising taxes.
We don't need tax increases in the form of T-SPLOST which is actually nothing more than the creation of a glorified regional slush fund for politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies who already take enough of our money.
I am only going to say this once:
NO NEW TAXES!!!!!
This T-SPLOST is going down in flames and rightfully so as the politicians are only going to get what they are already getting and NOT a penny more!
You say NO NEW TAXES as if a Toll is not a tax? You can call it a user fee but if you are building this project with public funds you are putting the taxpayers on the hook to pay for it eventually through bonded endebtedness.
Talk about your pie in the sky projects. How long would it take to do this? Have you even thought this thing out?
Do you know how much the tolls will be on the I-75/I-575 HOT Lanes when completed close to the year 2020?
The adjustable tolls on the I-75 HOT Lanes at rush hour will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $15.00 one-way to push the excess traffic out of the lanes and keep them moving at a minimum of 45-50 mph for three-person carpools, buses and 1-2 person vehicles able and willing to pay top dollar to get out of the increasingly severely heavy traffic in the regular lanes.
With my suggestion the tolls won't be nearly as high as the lanes on the upper-deck will be intended to transport most of the car traffic on the highway leaving the lower deck to mainly bus, trailer and the extremely-heavy truck traffic that plagues Atlanta Interstates.
We are in a political environment where we cannot raise taxes forever and ever and ever to pay for the transportation infrastructure improvements that we severely need so we have no choice but to utilize user fees in the form of tolls for new roads and higher fares for new transit.
As for cost estimates: $3 billion dollars to double-deck the I-75/I-575 Northwest Corridor, $4.5 billion if you add in Highway 41/Cobb Parkway between I-75/Mt. Paran Rd in Northwest Atlanta and I-75/Red Top Mountain Rd south of Cartersville and $30-35 billion metrowide and between 5-10 years to complete.
An upper deck on I-75 NW outside of I-285 would be used by up to 300,000 vehicles with six or fewer wheels per day with tolls in the range of up to $5 one-way during rush hour which will compare much favorably to the tolls to the HOT lanes planned for I-75 where the tolls may reach as high as $15.00 one-way to ride the entire length of the lanes from the I-75/I-285 NW Cobb Cloverleaf out to either I-75/Hwy 92 in Acworth or I-575/Sixes Road in Canton.
That said, you still have not answered the question about the strange quandry you find yourself in of advocating for no new taxes, being against the Transportation Referendum but suggesting and advocating for the largest public works project in the history of this city.
Can you work that out for the good folks at home?
I provided estimates that were based on GDOT's $16.2 billion estimate of how much it would cost to construct and implement the 285 miles worth of HOT lanes on the freeway system throughout North Georgia.
If you have estimates of cost and construction, we sure would like to hear them.
Though, I get the feeling that since double-decking the freeway system seems to be an idea that you don't seem to particularly care for that ANY cost estimate that anyone gives will be way off from YOUR very biased anti-infrastructure, anti-anything useful, point-of-view.
Of course double-decking the freeway system would be the largest public works project in this region's and this state's history in the 2010's and into the 2020's just like the massive "Freeing-the-Freeways" widening project that made I-75 and other metro freeway as wide as they are today was the largest public works project in this region's history back in the 1980's.
I'm against no new taxes in the form of the extremely-misguided and very much flawed T-SPLOST because a sales tax only gets us a severely-limited amount of road, transit and economic development projects while utilizing user fees in the form of tolls on each new expressway and fares on each new transit line makes A LOT more money available for transportation infrastructure not only as a whole, but also for each individual project.
This T-SPLOST only gets us up to $7 billion over a decade.
Utilizing user fees gets us however much we need to finance each new expressway and transit project individually, user fees in the form of tolls and fares that will only be paid by those who use those particular roads and transit lines, meaning that everyone's taxes does not have to go up to pay for projects that do not directly affect them, like they do under T-SPLOST where people in Cobb will be paying for MARTA, streetcars and the Beltline in Atlanta.
"A project like you suggest would take 20 years or more to complete and who knows how many years of bonded indebtedness to pay for. That means the taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for those dollars."
The taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the bonded indebtedness of transportation infrastructure projects either way, whether the projects are paid for with YET ANOTHER TAX INCREASE that EVERYONE PAYS whether they use a particular piece of transportation infrastructure (like the light rail line in Fulton County that Cobb County taxpayers are going to be on the hook for with sales taxes from Cobb County) or not.
At least with USER FEES, only the people who use one particular piece of infrastructure pay for its construction, operation and maintenance if the project is properly placed to have the most maximum positive effect on traffic congestion and transportation mobility.