A decade ago this month I began a public campaign to help the state find the additional money it needed to invest in our roads and bridges.  I worked on the public relations and policy end of a group that understood the depth of the problem, but also the lack of political will to fund a solution. 

Ten years later I no longer have clients in this space and am not soliciting any.  I say that to clarify I have no inside knowledge of the continued efforts to keep Georgians moving, nor a financial incentive in any proposed solutions.  I’m just a guy that has noticed that the time I sit bumper to bumper in various corners of the state is getting worse, and likely will continue to do so.  Today’s column is brought to by the letter “T”.

Transportation: “Logistics is in our DNA” was an oft repeated quote by former Mayor Kasim Reed.  It was part of his pitch to demonstrate the connected nature of the city with the region and state, while showcasing the enviable assets of our airport, road network, and ports.  When we get too much of a good thing, however, we get…

Traffic:  Congestion in metro Atlanta has been an issue my entire half-century plus lifetime. People are moving to Georgia faster than we build roads.  Our new road building has stopped, with respect to interstates.  We’re barely adding new lanes.  While we remain among the fastest growing states in the country, we’re not matching the people arriving with the ability to move them around. 

Two-Eighty-Five:  Nowhere is this more apparent that Atlanta’s Interstate 285.  It’s a four or more lane perimeter around the Atlanta city center. As the metro area has sprawled to over six million people, it’s no longer a bypass.  It is “oversubscribed” much of the day, with lanes backed up for major interstate exists to or from this highway by….

Trucks:  If Trucks were our canary in our traffic coal mine, we would have been ignoring them long enough that we would all be dead. I-285 officially bars them from the two left lanes, but this is ignored and not enforced.  Trucks now own three of the lanes of the highway at all times, and when traffic slows, they immediately move to the far left lane too. This isn’t just a metro Atlanta problem however.  As a frequent driver on I-16 and I-95, we have to understand that moving freight has become the critical function of our interstate network 

Trains:  More freight trains would help get more trucks off our roads, but railways are private entities, and building more rail lines has the same opposition as building new roads.  The Port of Savannah has done extensive upgrades to match their growing capacity with additional rail transport of containers, but we still don’t separate the freight traffic coming to Atlanta vs that coming through Atlanta very well.

Terminals:  We continue to incentive warehouses as exurban and rural economic development projects.  Our logistics DNA now has these terminals stretching along all freeways leading to/from Atlanta, along I-16, and up and down I-95.  They’re great for local governments who get property tax dollars while offering few municipal services.  They’re horrible for the congestion of our road network.

Transit:  Transit is the holy grail of Atlanta media; to the point they use it as a synonym for transportation.  Politically, it is the unfortunate and unnecessary enemy of traffic fixes.  Any public discussion of congestion is usually hijacked into a discussion of MARTA expansion and intercity passenger rail.  The discussion of moving freight does not resonate with thought leaders who want any extra funds going into moving people.

Taxes:  Like with all public problems, even when clearly identified, no one wants to pay to solve them.  The 2015 transportation funding bill increased annual revenue from Georgian’s pockets by less than the amount of a monthly cell phone bill.  There is no political will from Republicans to raise taxes of any kind, and Democrats willing to raise taxes want the money spent on transit, not roads and bridges.  There is no champion or sponsor to solve this problem.

Time:  Elected officials are not kin to take a hard vote like raising taxes and/or spending billions away from their core constituency’s wishes when the projects will not start for years, and will not be finished for decades.  To be fair, voters have the same immediacy of wanting an instant ROI for their tax dollars.  Federal red tape makes it impossible to do even minor projects in less than years, and major ones could outlast two two-term Governors.  

It’s not that we all don’t’ know that there’s a problem, and that it is growing.  It’s just that we collectively would rather sit in traffic and complain about it than get our citizens focused on the problems at hand and begin the slow process of building coalitions for solutions.