One mile of Toll Tunnel, proposed recently by the Reason Foundation and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, = $871 million.
{72 mile Brain Train [$383 million]} + {26 mile Atlanta to Lovejoy Commuter Rail Line [$106 million]} + {14 mile Atlanta Streetcar [$350 million]} = $839 million.
One (1) mile of Tunnel would cost $32 million more than 112 miles of Transit, assuming the Atlanta Tunnel didn't come in way over budget as was the case with Boston's Big Dig ($10 billion +)[Dad-Gum!!].
You can find more financial comparisons at Citizens for Progressive Transit and joeventures.
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GA DOT is a decade or two behind the best state DOT's. They never hire outside of the state, fail to embrace any cutting edge technology, etc. However, they have no problem being whores for Georgians for Better Transportation, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, the Reason Foundation (funded by big auto and big oil) or big money Georgia road building interests.
"How can Washington State’s transportation department be so precise about the growth of congestion? Because it buries electronic sensors in highways to measure speed and volume. This is, DOT officials told the Seattle Times, a far better way of measuring congestion than studies that guess what it’s like based on traffic volume and highway mileage."
http://www.governing.com/notebook.htm
You Can Get There
The Emerging Downtown Advantage
Posted November 27, 2006
Since the 1970s, people have been aware of the major geographic changes in metropolitan areas, not just the movement of families to the suburbs (people have been aware of that since the 1920s), but the commercial reordering as well. In the early 1990s, we finally got a name for the clustering of work in the suburbs, “edge cities,” and with that name, a firm understanding that we live and work in regions with multiple business districts. Turns out, though, that some of these places work better than others.
Background: What we learned from the book “Edge City: Life on the New Frontier,” published in 1991, was that unlike residential growth, commercial development (work and retail) doesn’t spread evenly across the landscape; it clusters, mainly around major highway intersections. Hence, Washington, D.C.’s Tysons Corner, Atlanta’s Perimeter Center, Tampa’s Westshore area. These suburban districts were creations of the post-World War II highway construction boom, but they were accidental creations. Nobody set out to create business districts at these intersections; they just happened.
Now, consider what happened with traditional downtowns at the same time. Even as some businesses were leaving, downtowns improved their positions as true transportation hubs. The interstate highway system (for better or worse) sliced through neighborhoods to bring in people from all over the region. Transit systems were started or upgraded to haul people downtown. Where intercity rail was important, the big train station was almost always located downtown. Result: Today, it’s easier in many metro areas to get to downtown than to one of the edge cities. And as congestion worsens, that could be a huge competitive advantage.
You can see the advantage starting to tilt things in the Seattle area, where a new, sophisticated study of commuting times shows that, if you live in Everett on the northern end of the metro area, it takes longer to drive to the edge city of Bellevue than to downtown Seattle, even though the mileage is the same. And downtown’s advantage is growing. That is, congestion is increasing everywhere, but it’s getting worse faster in the suburbs. (You can find the study of Seattle congestion by clicking here.)
Well, if downtowns have such advantages (they were designed as hubs and offer choices for getting to work, including transit), why haven’t they competed more effectively in the past? Because congestion wasn’t as great a problem in the 1980s and 1990s. As the study makes clear, the daily commute has escalated since the 1990s from annoyance to full-blown crisis. (Snapshot: If you set out at 7:40 a.m. on a weekday to drive from suburban Auburn to Renton along Highway 167, a trip of less than 10 miles, it will take more than two and a half hours. In 2003, the same trip would have taken a little more than an hour.) How long will businesses and their workers endure such agony? Not long, we suspect.
Footnote: How can Washington State’s transportation department be so precise about the growth of congestion? Because it buries electronic sensors in highways to measure speed and volume. This is, DOT officials told the Seattle Times, a far better way of measuring congestion than studies that guess what it’s like based on traffic volume and highway mileage.
I think I see your point about downtowns being in a better position for transit dollars. All the transit initiatives mentioned in my post -- Atlanta to Lovejoy Commuter Rail, Brain Train, and Atlanta Streetcar -- are designed to transport folks into or through downtown Atlanta.
For the paid experts and politicians to be proposing toll tunnels underneath downtown, or double decking I-285, shows them to be out of touch, completely, with the reality and costs of steel, concrete, complex machines and insurance, not to mention the fact that China and India have exploded on the demand scene. The reality is our day of extravagant spending on this scale will most definitely have to directed towards tracks and aerial trams. That decision is no longer ours to make voluntarily, yet where is the politician or public servant courageous and visionary enough to lead us back to reality?
This article on the GDOT Bd. is hard to believe. ABSOLUTE SCUM! Write them a fax on your thoughts on their prostitution/behavior. Would they at least sit down for pizza with CPT? Or does CPT have to bring in Travis Tritt to get a sit-down?
www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/11/29/1130metdot.html
Transportation officials wined and dined, often in secret
By ARIEL HART
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/30/06
1ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
ROY HERRINGTON
382 East Parker Street
Post Office Box 130
Baxley, Georgia 31515
(912) 367-7723 (912) 367-1009 (Fax)
2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
W.P. "BILLY" LANGDALE
Post Office Box 1088
Valdosta, Georgia 31603
(229) 242-7450 (229) 333-2534 (Fax)
3RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
WARD EDWARDS
Post Office Box 2160
Butler, GA 31006
(478) 862-5535
4TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
ROBERT L. BROWN, JR.
250 E.Ponce de Leon Ave, 8th Floor
Decatur, GA 30030-0126
(404) 377-2460 (404) 377-5833 (Fax)
5TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
EMORY C. McCLINTON
132 E. Lake Drive, SE
Atlanta, Georgia 30317
(404) 377-5101 (404) 371-7335 (Fax)
6TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
JOHNNY GRESHAM
Gresham Real Estate Advisors
1200 Johnson Ferry Road, Suite 360
Marietta, Georgia 30068
(770) 579-9188 (770) 579-9189 (Fax)
7TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
GARLAND PINHOLSTER--Vice Chairman
1770 Flat Bottom Road
Ball Ground, Georgia 30107
(770) 735-3928 (770) 735-3928 (Fax)
8th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
SAM M. WELLBORN
2110 Oak Avenue
Columbus, Georgia 31906
(706) 649-2233
9TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
BILL KUHLKE, JR.
Post Office Box 1693
Augusta, Georgia 30903
(706) 364-2760 (706) 364-2762 (Fax)
10TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
MIKE EVANS--Chairman
212 Dahlonega Street
Cumming, GA 30040
(678) 771-1000
(678) 771-1329 (Fax)
11TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
DAVID DOSS
Post Office Box 431
Rome, Georgia 30162
(706) 291-9191 (706) 291-1205 (Fax)
12TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
RAYBON ANDERSON
P.O. Box 1447
Statesboro, GA. 30458
(912) 764-9084 (912) 489-2783 (Fax)
13TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
DANA LEMON
7943 Thrailkill Road
Jonesboro, Georgia 30236
(770) 490-9125 (770) 957-6118 (Fax)
Among the recommendations:
• Along with better sidewalks and bike lanes, communities should improve mass transportation so that people can walk to the train station, for instance, instead of driving door to door.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/11/17/activity.friendly.reut/index.html
Sidewalks, parks seen as help in obesity fight
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Sidewalks, parks and neighborhood stores could be part of the solution to the ever-expanding U.S. waistline, according to a new report.
Writing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers offer a top-10 list of ways to turn sedentary cities and suburbs into "activity-friendly" communities. The point, they say, is to fight obesity by encouraging people to get more incidental activity into their daily lives.
One of the main goals is to give people reasons to get out of their cars. This includes building more sidewalks and intermingling residential and commercial buildings so that more people will walk to the store or the movie theater instead of driving.
"The number of hours we spend in our car everyday detracts from our physical, social and mental health," Dr. Laura Brennan Ramirez, the report's lead author, said in a statement.
"Our dependence on the car is overwhelming," added Brennan Ramirez, an adjunct assistant professor of community health at Saint Louis University School of Public Health.
She and her colleagues arrived at their recommendations through a systematic review of research into the community features that encourage physical activity. They then had a panel of experts pare these features down into a top-10 list.
Among the recommendations:
• Along with better sidewalks and bike lanes, communities should improve mass transportation so that people can walk to the train station, for instance, instead of driving door to door.
• Improve community aesthetics. People will be more likely to walk if their surroundings are clean and offer some sights to see.
• More schools should require gym classes, while workplaces could offer activity incentives, like flexible schedules or on-site gyms.
• Public policies should divert some of the funds that go to highways toward projects like creating roadway bike lanes. Cities should direct funds toward maintaining parks and other recreational areas.
The current anti-walking design of many U.S. communities is a particular problem for older adults and children, Brennan Ramirez noted.
"We haven't really designed our communities well for older adults, particularly once they get to the point that they can't drive," she said. "In addition, given concerns about the soaring childhood obesity rates, not having schools located within the neighborhood is a major problem."
"The obvious problem, in Virginia and elsewhere, is that the state is a lousy place for making transportation decisions because it’s too distant from the people served."
http://www.governing.com/notebook.htm
Dec. 7, 2006
Say It Slowly for State Legislators
Let’s Link Land Use to Transportation
The greatest value of the smart-growth movement may have been its connecting of land use to transportation. It’s so obvious — where you put highways and transit lines affects how land is used nearby — some may well wonder that these things were ever not connected. But this is the price of America’s hyperfederalism: Highways are laid out by state governments and transit by regional authorities, and land use is the responsibility of local governments. And many times these entities don’t work well together. Which makes the revolt in Prince William County, Va., very, very interesting.
Prince William is an exurb of Washington, D.C., that has seen 72 percent population growth in the last 15 years. As this formerly rural county has been drawn into the Washington metro area, it has enjoyed the benefits (rising income levels, better shopping) and the drawbacks (choking road congestion). Like others in Northern Virginia, its county government and legislative delegation have begged the state for new highways and expanded roads, but to little avail. (More than most, Virginia lawmakers hate raising taxes.)
This fall, the county did an end-run around the state with its own $300 million bond referendum for road improvements, which is a nice down payment. It was this referendum, approved by 80 percent of voters, and the feeling that the state government had let down Prince William, that gave Supervisor W.S. Covington III an idea: If the state wouldn’t fix transportation, then maybe Prince William shouldn’t approve any more housing permits.
In November, Covington introduced a resolution to stop all residential construction for the next 12 months. “This is something we need to do to get the governor’s and the General Assembly’s attention,” he told the Washington Post. “The resolution recognizes the fact that there is a limit as to how far local governments can go. The state has been collecting these tax dollars for years, and they have been neglecting our infrastructure.”
This isn’t a no-growth effort, then, it’s a protest. (Thanks to the housing slowdown, there are no big residential projects on the drawing boards.) Covington’s point: If the state can’t manage its half of the land use-transportation equation, then maybe the county shouldn’t do its part either. Others on the county board of supervisors say they’ll likely go along, if the county attorney says it’s legal. “I think to get the attention of the General Assembly and, you know, the governor, I will say that this would be a shot across the bow to say we need some help dealing with these types of problems,” one told the Post.
It’s not clear that Virginia legislators would recognize a warning shot if they heard one, but one group certainly did: homebuilders. An official with the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association warned that Prince William’s moratorium could cripple its economy. Besides, he said, it was wrong to punish homebuilders for the foolishness of a distant government. “It would make equal sense to put a moratorium on all new automobile sales in the county to solve the transportation problems,” he told the newspaper.
The obvious problem, in Virginia and elsewhere, is that the state is a lousy place for making transportation decisions because it’s too distant from the people served. Better that Northern Virginia make its own decisions about the transportation it needs and the price it’s willing to pay. Better yet if some of those decisions could be made by the localities themselves. Wouldn’t that just invite chaos? Unlike, say, the current situation?
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061217/DAYBREAK/61217004/0/living
Unsafe holidays on the highways, the monster trucks are coming
By DMITRI IGLITZIN and STEVEN HILL
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome holiday gift that could literally kill them.
The FHA, which oversees our nation's highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our highways. These vehicle combinations, called ''saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations,'' or simply ''four-ways,'' consist of four trucks all linked together with only the first truck having both its front and rear wheels on the ground. On the other three trucks, only the rear wheels touch the ground, the front resting on the truck preceding it. From the side, the four-ways look like elephants holding each others' tails with their trunks - only much, much larger, and more dangerous.
As one veteran truck driver with 40 years of experience put it in testimony submitted to the FHA, ''The notion that a saddlemount 97 feet long and consisting of four semitractors is safe is absurd. All four-way configurations have the tendency to cause the fourth truck to whip and sway. It can quickly become a dangerous situation.''
Another driver, who has been driving vehicle combinations for 20 years, testified, ''While driving these setups, the rear truck is unstable and wanders excessively from side to side. This type of setup is a danger to the motoring public, and to myself.''
Under current federal regulations states are allowed to impose an overall length limit of 75 feet on four-ways, and almost every state has imposed such limits. But for the trucking companies, longer truck combinations mean fewer trips and fewer drivers, which cuts their costs and increases profits. The American Trucking Association, National Automobile Dealers Association and other industry trade associations have all pushed hard to overturn these limits.
Last year Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the ''Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users,'' known as SAFETEA-LU. That's a mouthful of doublespeak for a misnamed law that permits truck combos nearly a third of a football field long to sway dangerously down our roads. This law could be interpreted by the FHA as actually prohibiting any state from passing a law restricting four-ways to less than 97 feet.
But vigorous opposition has emerged. Truckers like J.J. Bishop, a longtime Teamster driver, testified about seeing a horrible accident caused by one of these saddlemounts, saying: ''The general public doesn't realize what a risk these trucks are.'' The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials testified to the FHA that the new size limitation ''has raised serious concerns among some state enforcement officials concerning possible safety and infrastructure issues.''
Congressman Dave Reichert, R-Wash., has written to the head of the FHA about what he sees as ''significant public policy safety concerns'' and urging him to allow states to enact their own limits on four-ways.
The FHA is still considering whether to give the green light to these behemoths. There may be time to prevent this dangerous policy from being implemented. But that will only happen if a lot more Americans and elected officials say ''no thanks'' to this ill-advised regulation.
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