Grinding Axes Won’t Fix Traffic
This week’s Courier Herald column:
It’s a tried and true axiom. Never let a crisis go to waste.
No sooner than had a section of I-85 collapsed due to a freak yet apparently quite preventable incident last Thursday evening than opportunists seeking a vehicle for their agenda poured into social media to grind their quite familiar axes. Traditional media poured on as well with their follow on takes.
A friend of mine took to Facebook to lament that the leadership of Kasim Reed and Tim Lee spending money on stadiums left us deficient in infrastructure. There’s just a small problem with this logic. Even if a rumored federal trillion-dollar infrastructure program had suddenly appeared, there’s no way any of that money would have been allocated to rebuilding a perfectly good section of interstate 85.
If he was talking about expanding transit, his logic continues to fail. Voters in the City of Atlanta have already approved an additional sales tax to expand MARTA within the City’s footprint. Transit infrastructure is being expanded, and under Mayor Reed’s leadership.
On Saturday, I got a request from an Atlanta media outlet to discuss the consequences of past votes to deny transportation infrastructure funding. Well, the state legislature passed a bill in 2015 that added almost $1 Billion of additional annual transportation funding, about half of which has been dedicated to repaving roads and rebuilding bridges.
I’m quite familiar with that one. I worked on it with many others for about two years.
We rolled out the public initiative in January of 2014 to get Georgians talking about common ground solutions for real transportation problems. Amazingly, during our press conference, it began to snow. The result was the storm now known affectionately as “snowmageddon”, when some spent the night stuck in traffic on I-75. The next day, the entire country was talking about Atlanta’s traffic.
I got a lot of press inquiries during the next couple of weeks. I said the same thing then as I say now. Public policy that involves 50 year solutions should not be made in an emergency. Snow melts, and so does heightened public opinion and awareness. Rather than rush a Band-Aid solution built around our coalition’s meager stated goals, it required discipline and patience to build public opinion around a much larger, more comprehensive solution.
We had to resist the urge for a quick fix in 2014, in order to get a real fix a year later. It was imperative that the public back a measure when the temps outside were 70 degrees and sunny, not just affected by snow and cabin fever.
My favorite ax ground thus far has come from New York Magazine, where writer Ed Kilgore blames Atlanta’s bridge collapse and resulting traffic issues on…the county unit system. Even though Kilgore admits the system was abolished in 1963, he still believes that the fact that Georgia hasn’t consolidated down from 159 counties is the root cause of attitudes and politics that haven’t implemented a comprehensive regional transit system. It’s ironic that a New York writer openly sneers at Republicans and their transit views having a “bad, socialist aroma” when quite literally painting all Republicans as blocking transit to uphold Jim Crow.
A few things Mr. Kilgore should understand. The five MARTA eligible counties (Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, Cobb and Gwinnett) have about one third of the state’s population. Literally no one is suggesting these counties consolidate. If he believes consolidating Quittman County (population 2,335) and Clay County (population 2,030) in Southwest Georgia will somehow free up the tens of billions needed for fully comprehensive metro Atlanta transit system, or change the political barriers opposing it, then I have a still smoldering section of I-85 to sell him.
Mr. Kilgore may also want to understand that the 2015 transportation act of 2015 added state funding for transit for the first time. He should probably know that the Speaker of the House from rural Fannin County has become one of the biggest proponents of expansion of MARTA. Somehow, he was re-elected again in 2016 from his base of apparent Jim Crow-clinging, transit hating conservatives.
Consolidating Counties won’t change the majority opinions of anyone. Time and economic data are required to do that. The 2015 transportation act opened the door. Attitudes are in fact changing with every announcement that a company relocates to be near MARTA rail. Gwinnett will likely hold a MARTA referendum in the next 24 months. Cobb is even, if somewhat reluctantly, beginning to kick the tires on commuter rail.
What is the biggest barrier to this happening at the moment? It’s smug, in-town liberals and their friends in national media that see the opportunity for a drive-by hit to scream racism. This doesn’t help win hearts and minds. Just like a January snowfall, it freezes them.
The challenges of how to deploy transit, and bigger question of how to pay for it will take time to unpack. We’ll still be debating this long after traffic is flowing freely again on I-85.
About Author
Charlie
Founder of GeorgiaPol.com; Now weekly columnist Very interested in Georgia and Georginas. Interest in politics is waning daily.
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The objective of our transportation system in Georgia should remain constant and that is, to move people and product as efficiently/cost-effectively as possible. That being said, a project such as the MARTA Emory Link should be closely scrutinized. Questions such as will Emory partially fund it and what is the projected ridership should be asked.
One observation from the past couple days is the flexibility within the current system. MARTA is using a few larger buses and Gwinnett Transit altered its bus schedule. Additionally MARTA was able to slightly alter its rail service to increase capacity.
As for Gwinnett, many of us are interested in rapid transit. Unfortunately there has not been a specific plan offered by either the county or MARTA. Let’s see a plan first before a vote.
The real question is why did GDOT allow flammable materials to be stored underneath a freeway? I’ve seen the coils of plastic piping underneath that area for years but had no idea that a lubricant is used with those materials to pull the wiring or fiber.
Who owned and stored this material? Were there petroleum based lubricants also stored at these sites? Did GDOT know these lubricants were stored at these sites? Who gave permission to store any of this on the public right-of-way? Why didn’t the owner of these materials store them properly in a warehouse or private storage yard?
Well how did they find the perps so quickly? Are they going to find a crushed chair and shopping cart under that rubble? What kind of chair? A flammable chair? A flammable chair that a guy can lift up onto a shopping cart?
I have been impressed with the DOT’s response though. They got a lot of equipment onto that scene pretty quickly, despite the traffic. And jumped right into the demo too. (I hope that work area is safe.)
@Progressive Dem:
Everything is flammable except water. Which means that it could have been textiles/fiber, lumber, paper, foodstuffs etc. and it still would have caught fire had someone lit it. The issue with storing materials is not if it will burn if someone lights it ablaze. It is whether it is poisonous, explosive or otherwise hazardous. Building materials are for the most part not by definition so they are legally permissible to be stored anywhere. And considering that this bridge is in fact state property, it was appropriate for the state to store their excess material there. Doing so is not illegal and is not even unwise. So despite the desire of some to divert attention away from the actual arsonist and towards a (Republican) GDOT, it is something that is not going to go anywhere. If storing those materials were illegal someone – an investigative journalist (who tend to be Democrats) – or an official with the city of Atlanta (more of the same) would have used it against the (again) Republican GDOT years ago, especially since these materials have been stored since 2006, back when relations between the city of Atlanta and the state’s Republican leaders weren’t nearly so cozy as they are now between Kasim Reed and Nathan Deal.
” Building materials are for the most part not by definition so they are legally permissible to be stored anywhere.”
This is factually incorrect. Please familiarize yourself with fire codes. I wont speak to the legality of the storage in this instance as my interpretation could differ from an investigators or the courts. But there are regulations as to where and what kind of materials can be stored in certain places.
@Lea Thrace:
I will defer to you on this topic when it comes to legal and other codes. However, I do propose that such codes were obeyed when fiber optic cables were stored under this bridge. Claiming otherwise is a serious charge that would – again – not only be laid against the (currently – and conveniently for a lot of folks throwing these claims around – Republican) leadership of the GDOT but also the city and county inspectors for failing to do anything about it for this long. But suffice to say, flour and grain are FAR more likely to spontaneously combust than plastics, and wood, paper and textile products are a whole lot easier to catch fire period. So if it were illegal to store something somewhere because it would burn if someone comes along and purposefully, willfully set on fire, then there just wouldn’t be a lot of places where it would be legal to put very many things. Not just bridges mind you, but factories, farms, shipyards, warehouses, storerooms you name it. So you would be far better off trying to identify laws or codes that make bridges off-limits for storage. And come up with reasons why a bridge is so much worse than a factory or warehouse that is spitting distance from an airport, bus terminal or residential neighborhood while you are at it.
With all due respect, the Facebook friend may have gotten his “transportation infrastructure over stadiums” argument from this writer’s own columns claiming that the tax money being spent on the Falcons’ stadium should have instead gone to the Beltline, and how easy and appropriate it would be for the state to amend the hotel/motel tax laws for that purpose. And yes, T-SPLOST – which the author dedicated no little effort to opposing – would have resulted in far more money going to transportation infrastructure than $1 billion a year, which is barely enough to cover the maintenance backlog for existing projects, let alone add new projects to meet projected capacity.
As for Ed Kilgore, I recall reading in the AJC a few years back when the guys who were the original creators and champions of MARTA admitted that the project was caught up in the 70s racial politics. Whether one wishes to admit it or not, that factor does tend to explain why support for rail/transit was a lot harder and longer to come by in Georgia than it was for a lot of other similar places in the country such as Texas. Especially since Georgia was ruled top to bottom by New Deal Democrats in the 1970s and wasn’t that fiscally conservative to begin with. And the smug, intown liberals? They were the ones who had to put up with the nonsense that began being directed their way when Maynard Jackson was elected mayor, and the sustained temper tantrum in the decades since that only recently – during and because of the Great Recession crisis – began to abate. The words and actions of a lot of political, civic and corporate leaders – check the archives of some of the opeds that were written in the Marietta Daily Journal and the Atlanta Journal during that time if you want to know what I mean – caused real harm to the smug intown liberals for a good amount of time and because of that no small amount of resentment lingers. The way to deal with that isn’t to pretending to be leaders, visionaries and statesmen by championing the very same ideas that were rejected and laughed at when the smug liberals first promoted 20-30-40 years ago. Instead, you are going to have to offer those folks an olive branch, preferably one that isn’t wrapped around a sharp stick.
First…the only appropriated funds that could have prevented this were funds for storage of construction materials, and not below critical infrastructure.
One more thing, next time you’re tempted to use the term “smug liberal” think about how mad the term “racist conservative” makes you feel. Neither are particularly helpful or appropriate when you are trying to make a point (other than not to use either term). I like the 24hr rule. When you write about something that pisses you off, wait 24 hrs and re-read it.
I’d be much more interested on Charlie’s take on this piece written at Vox
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/31/15133232/atlanta-traffic-help-bridge-collapse
Actually I think Ed Kilgore is talking about the Atlanta Region with 29 counties, not just the MARTA approved counties, and unless all you want to consider is transit, a transportation plan for 29 counties does seem a bit much as compared to 5.
The 29 number is his data in search of his conclusion. That includes counties like Pike, Lamar, and Pickens. Go ask MARTA’s board if they have any financial model that will support mass transit from Zebulon to Jasper. I’ll wait.
He’s using number of counties so he can directly tie Jim Crow to resistance to transit. Let’s, again, presume he gets his wish. Consolidate every Georgia county into one. Guess what you have? A county that still has a majority of residents that don’t want to fund transit. And calling everyone that has an objection about it a racist segregationist isn’t going to help get them on the pro-transit side.