$140 million contract awarded for I-85 HOT lane extension (Atlanta: best, building)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Everyone benefits from state infrastructure. Even those who don't directly use it. If we were to implement non user-based taxes, the burden could be applied to everyone in a way that impacts them equally. The poor pay, the middle class pays, the upper class pays. The only difference is in how much.

The thing is, GA has a terrible, barely existent, progressive tax structure, and so something like that will never get implemented.

But by having a nation wide VMF, then drivers that pass thru GA and do not buy gas or food or spend any type of money will pay their fair share of road maintenance.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by cqholt

But by having a nation wide VMF, then drivers that pass thru GA and do not buy gas or food or spend any type of money will pay their fair share of road maintenance.

But what about those free-loading Canadians!?

(I agree that VMF is an improvement over the current system, but can't help but play devil's advocate :-) )

[roadtrip75]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Having to pay for the roads you use may be a new concept to you and many others, but it is not transit just because transit users pay fares to ride.

This is an impressively incomprehensible sentence.

This project is transit because it moves people around. OP was just trying to appropriate the word "transit" for his own pet projects to marginalize the forms of transit which he hates (and which Georgians incidentally love, but who cares about the public?).

It is something you better get used to

This is the "Managerial State" attitude I was referring to. It has a totalitarian flavor to it.

highways have been bleeding tax dollars for a while and there is no other viable alternative to keep them in shape besides having users pay for them.

No alternative at all ... except for these alternatives and many others:

1. Leave the gas tax exactly where it is but spend all of it on transit. Right now a huge chunk of it is diverted into other areas.
2. Raise gas taxes
3. Fund new projects with tolls that are removed when the project is completed, e.g. GA-400

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by cqholt

But by having a nation wide VMF, then drivers that pass thru GA and do not buy gas or food or spend any type of money will pay their fair share of road maintenance.

And by having a national progressive tax that gathers enough to pay for the roads anyway, they've already paid via. the U.S.DOT and any other federal assistance.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

1. Leave the gas tax exactly where it is but spend all of it on transit. Right now a huge chunk of it is diverted into other areas.
2. Raise gas taxes
3. Fund new projects with tolls that are removed when the project is completed, e.g. GA-400

Not sure why you feel a need to confuse public transit and transportation, most will assume you mean public transit only when you say "transit".

1. False, Georgia has a constitutional amendment that specifically prohibits gas taxes to be used for anything more than roads & highways. Not only that but gas taxes cover only about a third of the roads in GA today.

2. Not likely given the no-raised-taxes mentality in most of the government.

3. How do you pay the hundreds of millions in upkeep that roads cost? Anyone that has had to repave their driveway should realize that roads aren't cheap to maintain.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

And by having a national progressive tax that gathers enough to pay for the roads anyway, they've already paid via. the U.S.DOT and any other federal assistance.

The initial construction may have been paid for, but on going maintenance is needed. Heavier vehicles should pay more as well, looking at you tractor-trailers and SUVs.

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

The problem is, this isn't always true.

Attempting to keep the HOT lane flowing at least 45 mph is a noble goal. Those of us who use it know this is rarely the case.

You can save SOME time, SOMETIMES by using the HOT lane. But MANY times, it is just as slow, and occasionally even SLOWER than the regular lanes.

I wish they would figure out how to make it work better, but I don't know what they could do aside from raising the price. I've seen the HOT lane crawl even when the price approaches $10. I think a lot of the time it makes traffic even worse as people try to figure out whether it is saving money and you have a lot of crossing into and out of the lane, which slows things down.

Of course, I'm not a traffic engineer, these are just my observations.

At least this new HOT lane will represent new capacity, not just a converted HOV lane like we got from Chamblee-Tucker to Old Peachtree. Maybe that will help some.

Construction sure is going to be fun!

I'm assuming you travel during peak times. I'm off peak, but still during rush hour(s). HOT lane is great then. Sometimes I'll get down to 50 in the afternoon but it just depends on the person in front of me. I've also used it outside of rush hour when there's a random wreck. <5 mph for a couple miles but I'm blowing past it all in the HOT lane and still only paying the bare min 3 cents or whatever.

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

That's a great idea.

I know when I get onto the highway, I only have about a mile to get into the HOT lane, or else I have to wait several miles for another opportunity.

That means I have to cut across 5 lanes of traffic, including the fast lane, in a pretty short amount of time. The same thing applies for getting off the highway. Dedicated on and off ramps would help, but I can't imagine they will be built.

That's the most annoying part. Getting over to Beaver Ruin isn't as bad as Indian Trial, but it's still pretty bad. I feel bad for the people who have to get over to 285 in the morning. Good luck with that. Dedicated ramps I think would help mainlines and the HOT lane. When people have to get out of the lane and the mainlines are stopped, that's going to back up the HOT lane.

[columbusgametro]

Waste of money the traffic problems in atlanta can never be fixed doesn't matter how much money is spent on atlanta roads and interstates. The reason why atlanta has heavy traffic congestion is because of the travelers coming threw the area traveling it's not the residents of atlanta themself. Atlanta has alot of interstates coming out of the metro so traffic will never be at ease again. The only way too take some of the congestion out of atlanta is too divert some of the interstates out of atlanta altogether. When the I285 loop was built around atlanta all that did was create and spur growth and made problems worst. Atlanta will alway's be the heart and engine of georgia I wish atlanta wasn't so big because there's know way the other 2nd tier cities in georgia could ever compete with atlanta. The only way atlanta could probably shrink itself is moving the state capitol out of atlanta. Us 2nd tier cities need to grow but how can we when atlanta gets all the jobs and is the king. Why can't georgia be like north carolina where you have charlotte, raleigh, greensboro that are descent sized cities. And then you have texas where houston is the biggest city but that doesn't stop dallas, san antonio, or austin which are great sized cities too. Augusta , Savannah are not hardly growing too compete with atlanta. The reason why im not including columbus is because in some people's eyes columbus is an runned down miltary town with know full interstate access so we could never compete with any cities in georgia.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by columbusgametro

Waste of money the traffic problems in atlanta can never be fixed doesn't matter how much money is spent on atlanta roads and interstates.

So you're advocating sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Great idea.

[jsvh]

If you aren't following what is going on congress related to transportation, some very relevant things to my earlier post and the reality that the Highway Trust Fund continues to be insolvent:

Congress Breaks Down On Funding Roads And Transit - Forbes

In 24 days, federal spending authority under the highway trust fund comes to an end.
...

The real question, then, is how lawmakers will come up with the $11 billion they’ll need to fill the trust fund for the rest of this year. When they do, it will be the 34th temporary funding bill Congress has approved over the past six years. [And those temporary funding sources, of course, are not coming from raised gas taxes]

The challenges are long-standing. Neither Congress nor President Obama support an increase in the gas tax, which has become an increasingly poor way to fund roads, both because people drive less and because inflation has eaten away at the value of a tax that was last raised two decades ago.

...

What will Congress do? In the end, the best bet is a temporary extension of the highway bill through the end of the year, when it will be wrapped up in a last-minute debt limit/government funding/expired tax provisions Lollapalooza.