AJC Atlanta Forward: "No new taxes for roads" (Alpharetta: employment, tenants)

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by evannole

Transportation (and so many other things) have been massively underfunded for years. Despite recent trends (which may be more blips than trends, and remember, the suburbs are much larger and are still growing), it will take many decades, if not a century, for a significant enough number of people to move in town - if they even work in town - to eliminate the need for both transit AND road expansion.
Incidentally, despite the fact that I'm pleased to see MARTA's improvements, those improvements can't solve the whole problem ITP, either. The road system inside the city also needs to catch up with the increasing density. The worst traffic I usually encounter is not on I-75, I-285, Cobb Parkway or Atlanta Road. It's in town, on Howell Mill, Marietta St., Peachtree, 10th, 14th... on weekends, no less. I'm very glad I don't work in the central city and don't have to fight it on a daily basis. My 285/Atlanta Road commute is, by comparison, a breeze. I used to occasionally go up Marietta St. and Howell Mill towards Smyrna if 285 NB was messed up in the evenings, but that has gotten MUCH worse in recent years and is typically now much slower and more frustrating.

So demand is higher than supply? Maybe we should raise the price of using transportation infrastructure to more than $0. Whats wrong with the users directly paying for the infrastructure?

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by jsvh

There are many cities out there with populations well over 10 million that don't spend a fraction of what Atlanta does on highways. Many don't have any highways in there core.

There is a system out there to determine how much we should spend on transportation: the free market. Let users pay for what they want. I have not problem with whatever lifestyle people want to live. As I have said before, I am glad those in Atlanta have the choice of a suburban lifestyle and think they should continue to have that choice. I just think if they should be picking up the full cost of the roads they are using. Nor should a suburbanite have to pay for a transit system they don't use.

No no no....I'm not letting you get away with that.

large cities spend a butt-load of money on transportation and this includes highways. This discussion is about transportation and you just tried to truncate this to highways alone, ignoring lots of transit planning, arterial planning, and job centers close to where people live in suburbs.

You will be hard pressed to find any state in the union with a large city that spends less than Georgia. That is a harsh reality.

Free market in transportation will never be perfect. You can try to rely on that argument all you want, but you're ignoring harsh realities.

Lastly, gas taxes are an indirect type of user fees and they pay for most highway and arterial road funding and the state and federal government still takes a large portion of these taxes and sends it to the general budget away from transportation.

[evannole]

Originally Posted by jsvh

There are many cities out there with populations well over 10 million that don't spend a fraction of what Atlanta does on highways. Many don't have any highways in there core.

There is a system out there to determine how much we should spend on transportation: the free market. Let users pay for what they want. I have no problem with whatever lifestyle people want to live. As I have said before, I am glad those in Atlanta have the choice of a suburban lifestyle and think they should continue to have that choice. I just think if they should be picking up the full cost of the roads they are using. Nor should a suburbanite have to pay for a transit system they don't use.

Have you been to Paris? London? They have transit systems that we could only dream of, and still have traffic as bad as or worse than our own. Transit is badly needed, but it won't solve everything.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by evannole

Have you been to Paris? London? They have transit systems that we could only dream of, and still have traffic as bad as or worse than our own. Transit is badly needed, but it won't solve everything.

Yes, transit users directly pay a larger share of the infrastructure costs than road users do. Transit does a great job of serving denser cities. The best solution is to shift all transportation to 100% user funded (market economy). But if we are going to keep paying for it from the general tax fund, I agree transit deserves a much larger share of that money.

[evannole]

Originally Posted by jsvh

So demand is higher than supply? Maybe we should raise the price of using transportation infrastructure to more than $0. Whats wrong with the users directly paying for the infrastructure?

Ha, don't get me started. I match supply to demand for a living, and have done so very successfully for nearly 20 years.

You completely sidestepped my point. Cars aren't going away - not in the suburbs, and not in the city, either. The city's road infrastructure (both surface streets and highways) are woefully inadequate and are in dire need of upgrades - upgrades that have to happen regardless of how much better transit gets. Same goes for the suburbs. We need both, like cwkimbro says.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by evannole

You completely sidestepped my point. Cars aren't going away - not in the suburbs, and not in the city, either. The city's road infrastructure (both surface streets and highways) are woefully inadequate and are in dire need of upgrades - upgrades that have to happen regardless of how much better transit gets. Same goes for the suburbs. We need both, like cwkimbro says.

Of course we need both. And users should directly pay for both. Use the surplus from toll roads to pay for expansions. (But I think we will also find cases where not enough users are willing to pay for some highways because while we have a shortage at a price of $0 we likely will find we actually have an oversupply of transportation infrastructure at market price)

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by evannole

Ha, don't get me started. I match supply to demand for a living, and have done so very successfully for nearly 20 years.

You completely sidestepped my point. Cars aren't going away - not in the suburbs, and not in the city, either. The city's road infrastructure (both surface streets and highways) are woefully inadequate and are in dire need of upgrades - upgrades that have to happen regardless of how much better transit gets. Same goes for the suburbs. We need both, like cwkimbro says.

We could spend a fortune in the city of Atlanta just fixing potholes and making sure everybody has decent sidewalks and streetlights.

[cwkimbro]

Well these arguments are side-stepping harsh realities that transit is not 100% user fee supported by a long-shot and that roads are built mostly from a indirect user fee tax.

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Well these arguments are side-stepping harsh realities that transit is not 100% user fee supported by a long-shot and that roads are built mostly from a indirect user fee tax.

I've got a reputation point backlog about 3 or 4 posts long for you.

[evannole]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Of course we need both. And users should directly pay for both. Use the surplus from toll roads to pay for expansions. (But I think we will also find cases where not enough users are willing to pay for some highways because while we have a shortage at a price of $0 we likely will find we actually have an oversupply of transportation infrastructure at market price)

Do you have kids in the public schools? If not, do you object to paying taxes to support said public schools?

I do not have kids, and I also am HAPPY to pay taxes to support the public schools, even if I'm not using them directly, because I'm an indirect user. Smart kids are going to work for me directly and, more importantly, for the society in which I live when they get out of college, and they're going to pay for my retirement in my old age.

I support public investment in transportation (both roads and transit) for similar reasons (and on top of it, yes, in this case, I am a direct user). And like it or not, even if you don't have a car, you're a user of the public roads as a consumer of anything (including transit).