Big Props to other media, especially the local TV news folks, for making MARTA the BIG story this week!

And Beverly Scott deserves special praise for the great MARTA strategy & for getting the big guns down to the Capital. Now she has all eyes on MARTA & an excellent opportunity to remake it into the best run transit system in the country!

For someone who likes to hold MARTA accountable, I’m surprised you aren’t interested in the fact that GDOT is so in over its head that it’s on schedule to borrow $3 billion over 10 years just to keep up. Not to mention, if we can’t meet the 20% federal match in the future, we’ll pass up hundreds of millions in federal grants. That’s not all that great when you’re city is competing with other cities for jobs and stuff.

As for the MARTA spending restriction, I’m not sure anyone is saying that lifting it will solve MARTA’s problems. But it gives a bit more flexibility, which is sorely needed at this particular juncture, when everyone is hurting from declining revenue.

In any event, my point is simply that the MARTA spending restriction is a red herring. It solves nothing beyond the next year or two, at most. MARTA will be back asking for more money in no time. So the real debate we need to have is: to what extent do we tap the state’s already stretched budget to provide massively subsidized transportation for people in metro Atlanta? I’m not saying that the question is never posed that way, but the spending restriction issues obscures it sometimes.

Can we hold GDOT to the same critical standard DEM?

At least MARTA isn’t so poorly managed that it will have to pass up “tens if not hundreds of millions” in federal funds for road projects, because it will be unable to supply the standard 20 percent local financial match”

Big props to you & Thomas & MARTA & all the groups who helped make this happen!!!

And big props to the Gold Dome politicians too!!!