Sure Barrow County isn’t part of the Atlanta “transportation district”, who’s voters will determine whether to levy a 1-cent sales tax upon their own hides to fund new transportation efforts in the metro.

But it IS a neighboring county.

And in a straw poll taken during this past Tuesday’s primary vote, 79% of voters voted “NO” to this question, according to Online Athens…

Would you favor an increase in local taxes in order to help passenger rail service from Athens to Atlanta?

What does this say about a potential regional tax for Atlanta?  Probably not too much.   Barrow isn’t actually a representative sample of Atlanta opinion.  But still, it is only a skip and a hop from Gwinnett County.

It probably says a bit more about the potential for statewide support of any larger, far-reaching public transportation goals within Georgia.

Something along the lines of, “Hell no.”

h/t: That’s Just Peachy

UPDATE:  Wheatley isn’t impressed.

From the AJC’s Gold Dome Live blog….

House and Senate negotiators met for the first time shortly after 10 a.m. on the impasse on transportation legislation.

The meeting, announced by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s office, didn’t produce any immediate decisions — except an agreement for another meeting, probably on Monday or Tuesday.

Both sides were talking positive about reaching an agreement, hopefully before Day 40 of the 40-day legislative session.

The meeting lasted less than an hour, and the bulk of it involved Rep. Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla) going line by line over the changes that the House made to the governor’s original bill.

Hooray!  Now we can convince ourselves that our efforts yesterday made a difference!  (I’m sure it didn’t have anything to do with Wheatley’s “FARTA” article or all the businesspeople bused to the Capitol as documented in April Hunt’s recent AJC piece.)

Apparently discussion of the idea of putting a tunnel under East Atlanta neighborhoods – in an effort to funnel traffic away from the connector – is still going hot and heavy down at the Gold Dome.  The AJC reported on this a couple days back, but it just caught my attention again when it popped up on the front page of AJC.com.

“The tunnel is the one project that absolutely, head and shoulders above every other P3, moves the needle the most on congestion mitigation and mobility,” said David Doss, who chairs the state Transportation Board’s committee on such projects. The reason it wasn’t listed at the very top of DOT’s project list was because of the “unknowns” involved in creating a new urban road tunnel here, he said.

Where to begin this time?

Um, how about more highway pavement doesn’t actually relieve congestion?  It just encourages more folks to set up shop in the fragile exurb ecosystem?  How about the cost to build and maintain the dang thing will be astronomical?  How about the level of damage done to those east-side neighborhoods during construction and after?  (Ben’s already done a great job of summarizing these points over at Terminal Station.)

Oh, and here’s the most deliciously insensitive part of this whole cockamamie idea.

Read the rest of this entry »