Streetcars – Yes, No, Maybe?
In May GDOT Commissioner Russell McMurry gave Atlanta and MARTA the Tuesday deadline to come up with their plans to address 60 problems outlined in recent audits. According to the AJC’s Dave Wickert, the city has submitted more than 2500 pages that responded to 41 of the 60 problems that needed addressing to avoid a shutdown.
However GDOT may be following Obama’s Syrian red line theory as their response to the 5 PM Tuesday deadline was:
“The department has had numerous work sessions, meetings, and conversations and will continue to work collaboratively with the City of Atlanta and MARTA to ensure the goal of a safe and secure streetcar system,” the GDOT statement said.
Given that one-third of the deficiencies have not been addressed and no shutdown occurred at 5 PM would it not be natural to take future GDOT ultimatums as mere suggestions. Additionally it would be hard to imagine that the 41 deficiencies purportedly addressed actually required an average 61 pages of corrective action explanation. Unless you are using the Federal government strategy of “bury them in paper”, ask for a good faith extension and of course remove your threat of a shutdown in the interim.
About Author
IrishPat
Patrick Malone is a Business Advisor and Leadership Mentor headquartered in Blairsville, Georgia. He co-hosts Mountain Daybreak and Mountain Mornings, weekday news programs, and hosts This Week in Blairsville a weekend program on WJUL/WJRB. He is a mentor in Union County High School, serves on his church council and writes a monthly column on leadership in the animal healthcare industry.
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It takes more than 2500 pages to explain why spending $100,000,000.00 to impede traffic is really a good thing.
🙂
Who does Reed terminate on this one? He fired the fire chief and the airport guy but he can’t fire DOT or the MARTA guy so maybe he should just fire himself.
As someone who works downtown and thinks it’s a great place to go every day, the streetcar’s design as a circulator is a fatal flaw. I’m not going to take it 2 stops for lunch on Edgewood if it takes me 7 stops to get back to where I started and neither is anyone else.