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Originally Posted by atlantagreg30127
I think you'll find among natives down here a very strong "me mentality". Meaning, their thoughts regarding controversial subjects are, "If it doesn't specifically benefit ME, then I'm not going to vote for it!". So, rather than think of the region as a whole and how certain transit issues could help at least reduce some of the traffic, they still vote no because they personally would not benefit from it.
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Or because they don't understand how they personally would benefit from it. The real costs to them are hidden because they don't have to reach into their wallet and fork over, and the benefits are hidden because they're not getting a check.
So if you want to get people to make rational decisions about this sort of thing, you have to stop hiding the cost of the development practices we follow. Before development permits, permits for driveways, sewers, etc., are issued, there needs to be an impact assessment, paid for by the developer but conducted by an independent party, regarding impact on traffic and on viable alternatives. Once that's done, the local authority needs to assess impact fees to cover the costs of infrastructural changes dictated by the impact assessment. Costs for this will obviously be passed along in the form of higher prices for homes, higher rents for apartments and commercial space. That's the stick. The carrot is that by designing with this in mind, developers will have an incentive to minimize the transportation impact of their developments in ways that they don't today. Likewise, consumers and businesses will have an incentive to select properties that have lower impact. And this effect can be strengthened by offering tax incentives and other pot-sweeteners for targeted types of development, for including transit-friendly features in developments, etc.
I'd also propose that once that's in place, we identify some sort of workable usage fee for automobiles (and trucks, etc.). Gasoline taxes serve this purpose to an extent, and have the advantage of moving the assessment and collection down to the immediate area where at least some of the usage takes place, and of varying the burden based on a proxy for the vehicle's impact (its fuel consumption, which is greater for larger vehicles) but again they aren't visible enough to the individual. Instead of realizing that it's costing them $12 every time they fill the tank on their SUV to pay for road building and maintenance, people just grumble about the price of gas. They may modify their behavior a bit in response, but they don't change the way they calculate the costs and benefits of driving vs. transit. They're not blaming the DOT and themselves for the expense, they just blame the gas companies for their "high prices". So at the least I'd mandate totaling that part separately, so that when you buy gas, instead of seeing $30 for gas, you'd see $17 for gas and $13 for road maintenance.
As part of a comprehensive overhaul, we'd also need to amend the state constitution to allow use of revenue from gas taxes (or user fees, as above) for transportation-related purposes other than road construction and maintenance.
Obviously, it would also make sense to offset this extra cost somewhat in the form of tax credits and other economic incentives for use of transit. But this will only make a difference when transit is a viable alternative for a significant percentage of the populace, which it currently is not. One alternative approach would be to make the establishment and operation of private or cooperatively run transit systems economically attractive, via seed money loans, tax incentives, etc. If there's a market for an upscale commuter bus between John's Creek and Cumberland, and there's a way to clear unnecessary regulatory obstacles out of the way, let's make it attractive to do so.
As appealing as the transit systems of Boston, New York, and European cities may be, the population patterns and transit needs of those areas are very different from ours. Rail is great for collecting lots of people from outlying areas, delivering them to central cities, and dispersing them to their homes again afterward -- provided that the "last mile" (or five miles, or whatever) is reasonable. But I daresay that a huge number of the people with a commute of over a half hour in Atlanta aren't going into Downtown Atlanta -- they're going from Decatur to Perimeter Center, or Dunwoody to Duluth, or Brookhaven to Windward Parkway, or Kennesaw to Norcross. And I haven't seen a rail proposal yet that would touch any of those problems. A comprehensive bus system with satellite stations at key points is about the only approach I can think of that might work and is deliverable in months, instead of decades. There are lots of ways it could still fail -- if the experience is unpleasant or impractical, doesn't serve the routes that are most in need, is too costly, or whatever. It can't succeed without a level of intergovernmental cooperation that would be unprecedented in this area (At the very least, Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton counties and all their constituent cities would have to work together, not to mention Paulding, Bartow, Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall, Barrow, Jackson, Oconee, Walton, Newton, Rockdale, Henry, Fayette, Coweta and Douglas Counties). The political will for this won't come cheap -- the price, I'm afraid, will have to be the higher costs for the individual detailed above -- usage-based fees for vehicles, transportation impact fees for development, etc. Once it starts costing people money in ways they can see, however, they'll be a lot more likely to direct their representatives to help solve the problem.
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