PeachPundit Saturday T-SPLOST Pro & Con Thread

PeachPundit Saturday T-SPLOST Pro & Con Thread

By Charlie

This project list is a trap for taxpayers that consumes 52% of the money on rail transit projects, many of which are initial phases multi-decade projects that will require your support again and again every 10 years and will do practically nothing to reduce traffic.  Even the AJC reported on May 20, 2012, that regional planners concede that the TSPLOST project list will do little to reduce commute times.  Hijacked by powerful in-town interests, the TSPLOST ignores recent compelling studies that propose intersection improvements and even express bus projects that provide a reasonable return on our investment.  Instead, the TSPLOST funds $120 million per mile pet projects such BRT/Light Rail to Cumberland Mall and the Atlanta Beltline, a project of great political interest to in-town leaders that will do absolutely nothing to reduce traffic.  Furthermore, the TSPLOST brazenly commits $600 million to bail out the existing MARTA system, a concept that the legislature intentionally tried to prohibit in passing the enabling act.

Predictably, there is no real funding to get the counter-TSPLOST message out because this is a classic case of concentrated benefits, dispersed costs.  There really is no one big entity that stands much to gain from opposing TSPLOST, just voters who have become ever accustomed to the call that “it’s just one penny, you’ll never miss it.”

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