Limo Steve's commuter math doesn't add up

Both the Atlanta-Athens proposal and its southside counterpart, the Atlanta-Lovejoy commuter rail plan, still face entrenched opposition from the Road Warriors, a small but powerful group that's determined to deny Georgia commuters any meaningful alternative to using highways. One of the most outspoken Road Warriors, Rep. Steve Davis (R-McDonough), recently renewed his attack on commuter rail with an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He repeated his now-familiar litany of distortions, half-truths and untruths, starting with one of the most shopworn whoppers of all: the claim that "for the same amount of money" as setting up the Atlanta-Lovejoy line, "all passengers could be provided with a limousine to ride to work for 20 years." It shouldn't be necessary to rebut such an absurd assertion, but maybe it's time. Projections show that the Atlanta-Lovejoy line would carry 1500 riders in each direction by 2009. 1500 Lincoln Town Cars at $42,000 each would cost $63,000,000. The daily round-trip between Atlanta and Lovejoy would rack up 100,000 miles on those limos every three years, suggesting they'd need to be replaced at least five times during the 20-year period Davis specified. That brings the total limo price to $315,000,000 even before you take future inflation into account, and unfortunately, that's only the beginning. One expressway lane can carry about 1500 vehicles per hour, suggesting that in order to accommodate Davis's theoretical limo fleet, the state would have to widen Interstate 75 with one new lane in each direction over the 26 miles between Atlanta and Lovejoy. That's a total of 52 lane miles, and at the going price of $10 million per mile, that total road construction bill works out to $520,000,000. $520 million for the roads plus $315 million for the limos brings the grand total for the Davis scheme to $835 million, making the $106 million pricetag for commuter rail an absolute bargain by comparison. One of these days, somebody needs to clue Davis in on the fact that the way to fight traffic congestion is to take cars off the road, not to put more cars on the road.

Source: Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers September Newsletter