Large study on transit use in metro Atlanta

From the AJC:

After a major study, the Atlanta Regional Commission knows a lot more about who takes transit in the area and why. But the numbers, released Thursday, also beg the question: As the Atlanta region prepares for a referendum on funding regional transportation projects, is there really demand for regional mass transit?

While the ARC does not plan for Athens-Clarke or its surrounding counties (MACORTS does all that), its decisions will certainly affect us, especially as they relate to regional rail and other transit options.

I'm with MARTA CEO Beverly Scott on the crux of the issue:

"Part of the problem you’re looking at now is chicken and an egg," she said. With service that is more frequent, faster, more integrated and more convenient, "[transit ridership] numbers absolutely would go up."

In cities that have well-planned networks of user-friendly inter-city rail, intra-city light rail, subways, buses, trolleys, and shuttles, people absolutely use them.

Connect these transit options to walkable, bikeable, and otherwise transit-oriented communities, and you've got yourself a sustainable place worth living in and visiting.

Leaving all that oil behind

From Grist :

10 ways cities and towns can kick the offshore-oil habit

No suprises here - these solutions have been known for quite a while. Build densely and in ways that fully accomodate a wide range of transportation choices. In other words, build places that are walkable, bikeable, and transit oriented.

When we create places that can only be accessed and traversed by private automobile, surprise! - we become desperately car (and thus oil)-dependent.

Demand a more livable future, not only for your own neighborhood, but for the thousands of people, and other creatures, that your daily decisions and errands impact.

Perdue signs T-=SPLOST bill

Full story

T-SPLOST passes!

After grim 11th hour letdowns last year and the year before, Georgia's legislature finally passed a bill that would allow for a transportation-specific SPLOST (aka T-SPLOST, and not to be confused with our Athens-specific SPLOST):

Taking to the well for the first time this session, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston in a rousing speech led the House to pass HB 277, a bill for transportation funding by a vote of 141-29. The Senate passed it shortly afterward, breaking a logjam that has bottled up the issue for at least three years.

It now goes to the desk of Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The bill would divide the state into 12 regions. A “roundtable” of local elected officials in each region would draw up a list of projects for the region, and could then submit the list to voters for their approval in a referendum, along with a 1 percent sales tax to fund them. No county could opt out of a region’s tax, but a roundtable could decline to hold a referendum in the region.

[If a region opts out,] they will lose out on some new state benefits, including a bit more money for small local road projects. And it wouldn’t be able to try again for a vote for two years.

Well, it took us long enough to get here, and this money, if it's even approved by our region, won't be available for three years.

That said, this legislation is a great step forward.

Between these funds, federal transportation dollars, grants, Safe Routes to School funds, an increased gasoline tax (Georgia's is among the nation's lowest, as is our general funding for transit) and a commitment to better transportation planning overall, we may finally enjoy the kind of multi-modal transportation choices enjoyed by forward-thinking cities around the nation.

Good news

The latest roster of SPLOST projects for voters to consider this fall has some exciting prospects for expanded transportation options:

The recommended list includes a mix of transportation, recreation and public safety projects, including money for buses, sidewalks, bicycle lanes, parks, trails, an Atlanta Highway fire station, public art, police equipment, the county animal shelter, library books, a cooperative extension headquarters and a center for hard-to-recycle materials.

Not all transportation improvements made the cut, however:

Among the likely casualties are road and intersection improvements, [as well as] bike lane [installation] along College Station Road.

All told, we are very pleased with the list, as it addresses bicycle, pedestrian and transit infrastructure. Be sure to tell your commissioner that you support these projects!

Car Free Day

Three University of Georgia organizations are promoting next Friday as "Car Free Day," asking people to use alternative transportation to work and school.

The School of Ecology, in collaboration with the GoGreen Alliance and Students for Environmental Action, will station "commute captains" off campus and offer free food, drinks and prizes to participants.

Commute captains will be located at College Station Road and International Drive at 7:10 and 9 a.m. and at South Milledge and Oakland avenues at 7:15 and 8 a.m. to lead groups to campus.

Organizers will set up a refreshment stand at the front entrance of Memorial Hall between 7:30 and 11 a.m. with free food, drinks and a chance to win prizes including gift certificates for gear and a free bike check from Sunshine Cycles.

Street improvements

From Flagpole:

Street repaving and streetscape improvements will be among the last sales tax-funded projects under the current round of SPLOST collections (a new list of projects goes before voters in November).
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Eleven downtown streets are under consideration, along with (if enough money is available) Baxter, Milledge, Prince, Oconee and Lexington.
...

The money will go to repaving downtown and other streets that need repaving the worst, under guidelines drawn up by county staffers, with streetscape improvements added. Streets where commercial "redevelopment" is especially desired will also get priority. Any plans for Atlanta Highway will have to wait; Commissioner Kelly Girtz says he'd like to see a planted center median along that road, and designated lanes for buses. Federal "smart growth" grants are available, Girtz says; he suggests Athens needs a staff person who would apply for such grants.

In May commissioners will review new planning department studies of Prince Avenue and Oconee Street that are intended to guide future developments there. The studies will inventory existing conditions along both streets and make long-term recommendations for sidewalks, minor zoning changes, or "overlay districts" with special requirements.

Also in Flagpole, some creative suggestions for cheap, grassroots transportation choices.

Childhood obesity rates high in Georgia

The AJC covers the distressingly high percent of Georgia's youth who are severely overweight and obese:

Georgia’s children rank as some of the heaviest in the country, with about 37 percent of children ages 10 to 17 overweight or obese, according to a 2009 Robert Wood Johnson study.

The extra pounds put youngsters at risk for obesity-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which used to be seen mainly in adults.

The article focuses on eating habits, alluding to the epidemic of physical inactivity but not connecting the dots between the built environment and inactivity. When our neighborhoods and cities are built to accommodate automobiles, and not people, people (big surprise!) do not engage in much activity: sit in the car, sit in the classroom, sit in the den, etc.

In communities that make biking and walking safe, convenient transportation options, obesity levels are much lower and children are healthier.

In light of these facts, Georgians shouldn't be too surprised by the obesity issue in the state but ought to be embarrassed by this.

To Do: Submit SPLOST projects support letter!

The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) 2011 Committee has made its preliminary recommendation of projects to be placed on a November 2011 referendum. The current list must be pared down to match projected revenue from the tax.

On Tuesday, April 13, the SPLOST committee chair will present this list to the Athens Clarke County Commission, seeking the commission's input on further reducing the list.

BikeAthens supports a subset of the selected projects related to expanding transportation options and encourages citizens to contact the commissioners to express their individual support.

Use our convenient web form to send an email to all ACC Commissioners. Feel free to change the message to reflect your individual preferences!

The comment period ends on Monday, April 12, 2010 at midnight.

More information about the SPLOST 2011 committee and submitted projects is available here.

Thanks for taking a minute to send in your comments!

Transit trouble in Clayton Co

Our neighbors in Clayton County are about to experience some very hard times with their public transportation system. Their story uncovers a much larger debate about what we do with our pooled resources and how we can build communities that are equitable and sustainable for the long run.

Clayton County pulled the plug on its bus system in spite of the fact that local transit has traditionally been led by local government. In Georgia, 127 counties and towns run some form of transit, from big-city trains down to small-town on-call shuttles, according to the state Department of Transportation. Special transit for the handicapped and medical visits might survive, but come Thursday Clayton will be the only one of metropolitan Atlanta's five core counties without any regular local transit.
...
The state is reluctant to supplement local budgets for operating transit, unlike most of its peer states with major systems like MARTA. Some neighbors with smaller systems fund operations. The Charlotte Area Transit System receives state funds for operations, budgeted at $13 million next year, and a local sales tax dedicated to mass transit, according to Charlotte's system.
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Yet there is an exception to the state's hard-line philosophy on operating transit: Georgia taxpayers, including C-Tran passengers, are helping fund a state-run Xpress bus service for suburbanites' long-haul commutes.

When gasoline prices spike, people will turn to public transit again. Where will people turn when there aren't any buses?

Caught in the middle are the passengers, 65 percent of whom say they have no access to a car. Interviews with bus passengers this month showed a section of the metro population that faces life-changing consequences from loss of transportation. They called it "a tragedy. They called it "crazy." Some were spending big sums to break leases and move near MARTA. Some expected to lose their jobs. Others conceded that they simply were at a loss as to what to do.

Transit-oriented communities are cleaner, more pleasant places to live, and effective public transit provides access to essential services and employment for broad segments of the community.

[William] Millar, the American Transit Association president, said that every dollar invested in public transit generates about four dollars in the economy.

Funding public transit allows people who can't drive, including the elderly and those too poor to own car, to participate in society, he added.

"It’s really a basic question of values," he said.

T-SPLOST revival

Plans for a transportation-dedicated SPLOST were championed by David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) today.

He said action on the bill, which would divide the state into 12 transportation regions, is overdue.

The House committee was trying to put finishing touches on the bill as the Legislature wrapped up its 26^th day of the 40-day session. Legislation must pass one chamber of the Legislature before the 30^th day to have a chance to become law this year.

Under the bill, each of the 12 regions would hold a referendum on a list of transportation projects, and a penny sales tax to pay for them. If a region’s voters passed the tax, the money collected in the region would all be spent on projects in that region.

Well, this is mostly what we've been clamoring for for the past three years. My fear is that the bill gets tweaked such that a portion of the funds are dedicated to highway projects and only a small percentage is established for transit, pedestrian, or bicycling infrastructure.

The process should be open so that each region can establish its own transportation priorities. State-wide, it will likely lead to a mottled and dis-jointed approach to transportation planning, but at least we'll have a chance to prepare for a future that will demand less driving, whether we like it or not.

Text of HB 1218 here, if you're feeling masochistic.

Scooters

Athens Rising breaks down the impact of the scooter/moped trend, especially on UGA's campus.

Scooters have made traffic move a little more slowly and safely, creating a better environment for bicyclists and pedestrians as well. Sure, there are bad scooter drivers, but those kids would be just as bad behind the wheel of a Suburban, which is where this change in policy will likely send them. If scooters are made to be inconvenient to use, then we’ll likely see a host of other unintended consequences kick back up.

I agree. Scooters are a much more bike/ped friendly mode of transportation than automobiles. They're less noisy than cars, have good gas mileage, and they travel at much safer speeds. I'd rather bike next to a 35 mph scooter than a 55 mph Expedition. For folks whose physical condition or geographic location prohibits cycling and/or walking, scooters are a much more sensible transportation than a full-size car for short, in-town errands.

UGA does need to come up with a solution for the crowded and haphazard scooter parking on campus, however. Scooters block entrances and sidewalks, and they are frequently chained to bicycle racks, which are in high demand. Pushing scooters to the frontiers of campus is not the solution. As Williams notes, "any hasty move which disincentivizes this mode of transportation will cut off a whole realm of possibilities for the future of Athens."

Any other perspectives on this?

Rails-with-trails

Flagpole's Athens Rising column explores informal uses of urban space and how "the way people use the city doesn’t necessarily correspond with the planning and design intentions of the government."

When families and otherwise “adult” people join the exploring kids as benign trespassers, this may be a symptom of some larger issue in the built environment. Rather than working to eliminate these symptoms, we ought to understand their underlying causes. The guerrilla SPOA (Skate Park of Athens) illustrated a need, which ultimately resulted in a sanctioned skate park being built at the Southeast Clarke Park. The High Line, in New York, is another example of informal park uses taking on a formal status.
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The spaces that people choose to occupy with these informal uses are ones that have been disregarded or left undefined in some way.
...

Consider the folks who walk along the railroad tracks. The rail right-of-way provides a useable route between destinations. People who walk along the tracks are interested in the route, and not the rails themselves. Building a formal walking path with a fence between it and the tracks gives people a safer alternative than walking on the rails in the same way that a sidewalk along a road is safer than people walking on the shoulder. This logic has been implemented in many communities around the country, leading to the creation of “rails-with-trails” (the logical outgrowth of the rails-to-trails movement).

That sort of logic should be applied to address the alternative ways people use the city in every case. People do things for reasons, and by understanding the causes of actions, we can build a city which is more interesting and more equitably accessible.

Reliable transportation

Thanks to Michael Brugger for passing this along:

Bicycles as a boon to state budgets

"A new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students says bicycling generates more than a $1.5 billion economic impact in Wisconsin, exceeding the impact of even the deer hunting industry," reports the Greenbay Press-Gazette.

Among the policy recommendations included in the report are to: accelerate investment and development of bicycle routes, lanes and paths throughout the state for safety and convenience; encourage people to replace short automobile trips with bicycling trips; and develop a culture of bicycling for recreation and transportation, especially among the younger generation.
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With the current economic climate, the report said promoting bicycling tourism could encourage visitors from places like metropolitan [cities] who choose to forego more exotic vacations. Increasing nonresident bicycling by 20 percent has the potential to increase spending by more than $107 million and create 1,528 full-time equivalent jobs.

Town of Menasha resident Tom Ales, who bikes about eight miles year-round to his job as a research scientist at Kimberly-Clark Corp., estimated he spends $500 to $1,500 annually on bike equipment, apparel, tools and components.

While biking 8,000 to 10,000 miles a year, Ales spends money at "local convenience stores, the mall, movie theaters" while avoiding other costs. "I save a ton on gas and only put 2,000 to 4,000 miles on my car a year as a result," he said. "I ride all year-round and from March to the end of November I ride everywhere I can."

There's no reason this article couldn't be written about Georgia in a few years. Our road-building, suburban sprawling fiesta is over, our elected leaders & transportation planners need to realize that immediately, and we need to actively engage in (re)building a responsible state worth caring about.

Democrats re-introduce T-SPLOST

From the AJC:

Citing a failure of state leadership to raise transportation funding, Georgia Democratic leaders on Thursday announced a proposal to allow regional referendums on a penny sales tax for transportation, and to dedicate part of the current gas tax for any transportation purpose, including operating a mass transit system.

Creating a long-term source of operating funds could clear the way to compete for federal grants to build new local transit projects, transportation officials said.

Almost all of the Georgia gas tax currently goes to transportation, but one cent per dollar goes to the state’s general fund. The part that goes to transportation can only be spent on roads and bridges, not mass transit.

GA loses out on even more transit funding

As if the loss of high speed rail funding wasn't painful enough, AJC comes in with this late hit.

The Federal Transit Administration on Tuesday published a list of 27 transit projects recommended for $1.8 billion in federal funding. Georgia wasn’t on it.

It couldn’t be. Georgia had no proposals up for consideration, FTA spokesman Paul Griffo said.

In contrast to the high-speed rail grants last week, these recommendations would fund development of local transit projects such as new bus and streetcar lines.
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Rail advocates last week blamed Georgia’s loss of high-speed rail money on the state’s past indifference to rail transit.

"If you don’t have operating money, nobody’s going to give you the money you need to build lines," said Lee Biola, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit. "Other states are investing in other ways of traveling [than by car] and they are becoming competitors when it comes to luring businesses and high-tech workers to their states."

If it wasn't clear before, it's clear now: Georgia's old boy network of back-slapping car dealers, sprawl builders, and road pavers will keep us mired in gridlocked traffic, smog, and ugly landscapes until we demand something better.

Bad news/Good news

The bad news:
Our great state's short-sighted, issue-neglecting leaders have squandered the chance for millions in high speed rail money.

Georgia appears to have won as little as $750,000 from the $8 billion pool of high-speed rail grants.
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Last fall, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a number of states, including Georgia and Florida, that they had better get their act together on rail transit or risk losing out on the high-speed rail grants.

In a special session weeks later, Florida voted additional annual funding for one transit rail line and expedited buying track for another.

What did Georgia's legislators do? Not a thing. And what are they doing now? Talking about more tax cuts for big business (and campaign contributors) and ethics re-form.

All of which nets us, the traffic and air pollution-beleaguered residents of the state, with .0094% of the federal funding available for high speed inter-city rail.

The good news?

Maybe folks will finally get fired up about the ridiculous priorities of our state government and demand some actual governance, the kind that faces reality and seeks informed solutions to our common problems.

Gov. Perdue sure likes talking the talk. Will we ever see any action? That's largely up to us. We'll have to drag our highway-loving legislature kicking and screaming, but we can make it happen.

Let your legislator know how disappointed you are!

Georgia's Statewide Strategic Transportation Plan

See a copy of the plan (including a readable executive summary) at:
http://www.it3.ga.gov/Pages/default.aspx

Comment on MACORTS Transportation Improvement Program

The Madison Athens Clarke Occonee Regional Transportation committee is now seeking comments on the Transportation Improvement Program, the short list of local projects to be funded by federal, state and county budgets. Comments will be accepted through Wednesday, October 21, 2009.

Use our convenient webform to send your comments to MACORTS!

See this earlier post for more information.