In a recent interview with the AJC, MARTA CEO Beverly Scott said – among many other things – this…

The legislation, HB 277, says none of the new tax money can be used to pay for operations of the current MARTA system. It is morally wrong to have MARTA singled out to be treated differently than any other transportation entity in the state. It is also shortsighted. This is a $6.4 billion, largely public investment in a core public transit system. Why would we want to starve the heart of what is the regional system? It is absolutely shortsighted and ill-advised. If we don’t fix those flaws, it will cause significant problems for the entire region when we request funding at the federal level for transportation.

Now I’m not the kind of person who’s not all that comfortable with throwing morality onto an argument.  I tend to believe that transportation issues are complex enough without deeming myself the arbiter of right and wrong at the outset.

Now “shortsighted and ill-advised” – that’s something I can get on broad with. (Oh, the wonderful puns.)

I think I got so dang excited about the transportation bill getting passed at all, that I didn’t give the exclusion of funding for existing MARTA infrastructure enough time in the spotlight.

To quote Scott, “Why would we want to starve the heart of what is the regional system?”  For better or worse, MARTA must be the center of any future Atlanta transportation system that doesn’t take place behind an odometer.  Anything else is a complete waste of a $6.4 billion investment.  Excluding it from funding does nothing but weaken the core of the very system you’re trying to enhance and expand.

But of course, this probably isn’t so much about future planning and rational argument as it is about “politickin’”.