Regional sales tax for transportation and bicycle projects

Submitted by rebecca on Tue, 2011-06-07 16:49

Local governments across Atlanta and the state have an opportunity to approve real money for a broad range of transportation projects next year. As the Atlanta Regional Roundtable puts it, "The Transportation Investment Act puts the future of Georgia’s transportation in the voters’ hands. The law divides the state into 12 regions for the purpose of voting on a one percent sales tax to fund transportation projects in that region. All revenues collected in a region stay in that region. In the Atlanta region, 15 percent of funds are sent directly to local governments to fund local transportation projects, while 85 percent of funds support a list of regional projects created by local elected officials."

Several months ago when officials were setting ground rules for what percentage of the funds would go towards each mode (transit, bike, pedestrian, roads), ABC members and supporters raised their voices and got the baseline increased from 0% to 1%. We don't like to brag, but that's a 100% increase! (The top end of the guidelines stayed constant at 5%.)

In all seriousness, while these are guidelines, not legal requirements, we are encouraging our local elected officials to submit a project list to the voters with bicycle and pedestrian projects representing 5% of the total funding.

So how are we doing with that goal? Our advocacy intern, Johann Weber, did a little analysis of the unconstrained project list submitted by GDOT to the Atlanta Regional Roundtable, and compared it with the full project list local governments compiled. Here's what he found:

Total # of Unconstrained Projects: 326

Total $ Value of Unconstrained: $20,236,208,196

# Including Bike/Ped Projects: 144 (44% of projects)

$ Including Bike/Ped (*): $6,082,436,419 (30% of funding)

# Focused on Bike/Ped: 22 (7% of projects)

$ Focused on Bike/Ped: $671,756,119 (3% of funding)

# Including Bikes: 59 (18% of projects)

$ Including Bikes: $ 3,096,565,012 (15% of money)

* (Note that the Beltline Streetcar/Trail Projects are included, and account for almost $2 billion in total)

Notable projects that got cut:

Extension of Silver Comet from Cobb to Olympic Park
Regional multiuse trails program ($26 mil)
SRTS in Cobb County
South Columbia Drive to Decatur City Limits multi-use path
DeKalb Multi-Use Trail (Beltline Connector via Freedom pkwy trail, stone mountain, etc)
Multiple corridor improvements (SR 155, SR 236, Idlewood Road, North Decatur Road, Mountain Industrial Boulevard, US 29/78, SR 54, McDonough Road, )
Multi-use trail from Lower Roswell road in Cobb, to Dunwoody
Chattahoochee Hills PATH trail connections
Lots of road widenings

If you're interested in viewing the projects, you can check out the attached spreadsheet (projects cut by GDOT are highlighted in red), or view the pdf here. Also attached is a county-by-county breakdown of the number and cost of projects with a bicycle/pedestrian component, as well as a spreadsheet highlighting the bike/ped projects, with a description of what is planned in that project for cyclists and pedestrians (whether it be trails, sidewalks, lanes, or not specified).

We are pleased to be a member of the Livable Communities Coalition and their "Fair Share for Transit" (and bike/ped) campaign. Read more at livablecommunitiescoalition.org or find Fair Share on Facebook.Here's the podcast they recorded in which PEDS' Sally Flocks and ABC's Rebecca Serna discuss the upcoming referendum: "Simple investments add great value."