Ok, so do you have a better idea?

Sure, but first let's stop doing stupid stuff.

Plan B:
1. Reform the dysfunctional DOT. Elect the board and hire real professionals to run the department. Academics should not be hired to run anything.
2. Legislatively mandate transportation priorities, with congestion relief at the top. Make every project be justified with hard numbers against these priorities. The current TSPLOST list has no justifications attached to any items.
3. Conduct a referendum on continuing the MARTA tax. If it fails, force MARTA to operate within its revenue generation.
4. Establish a budget for innovation and move Georgia to the front line of innovative design. Explore flyovers and set strict limits on placement of stoplights on arteries.
5. Keep transportation spending inside of the state budget, and responsibility inside the General Assembly where it belongs. Putting massive spending on autopilot is a formula for misuse of funds.
6. Redevelop the Statewide Transportation Plan and eliminate all of the Fed-speak. Base in on a large-scale origin-destination study and make the study details public, so that public analysis is possible.

Georgia can do much better than the TIA T-SPLOST, but first we have to stop doing stupid stuff.

Do you honestly think the average middle class resident of Fulton or Dekalb makes $35k in retail purchases within the two county area in a year? I spend A LOT of money and I don't even come close. The median income in Fulton is $58k. Since you want to segregate out the city, let's be generous and look at the average income of $80k. After tax, this is more like $58k. Let's knock another $12k off for mortgage or rent. How about another $8k on car loans (if you're in that middle to upper middle area, you're probably driving a nice ride)? Most groceries don't have the local sales tax included. How about another $5k. Now we're at $33k. We're going to have to spend every remaining penny in Fulton or Dekalb to get close to your numbers. Maybe $20k but no way it's $35k.

Transit does nothing to relive congestion?? Let's put over 400k additional trips on our roads today that currently are taken using transit and see just how little transit does to relieve congestion. Our transit system is dysfunctional not because it is transit.. It's dysfunctional because too many people have had your mindset for too long. That will start to change in July.

$700/year to fund rail transit??. You're forgetting that MARTA has BUSES and that only 52% of the TSPLOST is for transit.

Opinions are great and everyone has one but don't stealthily veil them as fact.

The Patch should require better fact checking of it's bloggers.

Michael Hadden – I’m in favor of bus and rail so long as those who use it pay for it through a fare. No tax-payer subsidies. If you want it, then you should pay for it. But please stop demanding that everyone else should pay for your version of utopia.

Jake Lilley - I didn't demand it anywhere. But, I'd love to see a transit system (bus rail or auto) that isn't subsidized in some way. If you're for user fees paying for it, then you must also be for user fees paying for roads lest you be hypocritical. Thus, you probably support the HOT lanes on 400 and I85. If you think user fees pay for our roads in full, you are sorely mistaken.

I am pro toll. those who choose rail as their mode of transportation should not be required to pay for my car or the road on which I drive.

The underlying problem in metro Atlanta metro is that NOBODY can only use rail. Rail doesn't go close enough to individual neighborhoods or destinations. This isn't New York, Chicago or D.C. It isn't laid out that way, and at this stage never will be.

If MARTA built a rail line to, say, Northpoint Mall, how are you going to get on that
train? 99% of riders will have to drive to it, except for a few condo or apartment dwellers right nearby. And even they will have to drive almost everywhere else (try taking a train to the grocery store or Home Depot, or your job or a friend's house in Marietta or Lawrenceville).

I love transit - in theory. But in Atlanta, widespread transit use isn't going to happen because the metro area design doesn't permit it. Why would we keep spending billions of of taxpayer dollars to build and operate something that can never be a viable frequent transportation mode for most people?

I like the idea of a mileage tax, but the problem is that it does not directly associate the fee with the use of a given road. For example, if I travel in a multi-state area, then to which state should I pay the mileage tax and to which roads should the funds be applied? To properly assess payment for the use of a road through a mileage tax, you would need to employ GPS tracking that records which roads you drove on. Of course, then we get into a whole set of privacy issues, so a mileage tax is problematic.

Therefore, I still favor a system of toll-based user fees for funding roads. However, I am NOT in favor of using a toll system as a form of DOUBLE TAXATION. If we are to adopt a toll system as our source of funding, then drop the other taxes that are already being used to pay for the roads.

1.) Eliminate the indirect tax system (i.e. SPLOSTS and gas tax) and raise the tolls to pay for roads.
2.) Pay for rail transit through rail fare
3.) Privatize the bus system. If they can operate on fare sales, then great - they will be providing a service that is in demand to people who are willing to pay for it. If they cannot operate on fare sales then don't ask non-bus riders to foot the bill.

Kate, thank you for bringing sanity to this discussion. Atlanta's development does not support rapid transit, and that is a simple fact. In fact, any city that developed after the advent of the automobile will most likely not contain a development pattern that supports transit. Transit needs density to sustain itself. Auto based development is just the opposite.

The most grating aspect of this tax proposal is that 50+% is for transit, and a significant portion of that 50+% is for operations - not construction for traffic relief, but operations. And "construction for traffic relief" is a misnomer, since it is not proven at all (especially in Atlanta) that transit relieves traffic one iota.

While trying to drive around Roswell today, I was thinking how I shouldn't subsidize the road, the bridges, the police and fire personnel that deliver daily, the utilities, the soldiers we honored, the hospital personnel who get here from other areas...and how we should just cut ourselves off from the "region" and keep everything here in our bubble. Participate.