Bloglanta

The Georgia Department of Transportation has apparently gone nuts.  We could have commuter rail up and running by 2006, but not if the NIMBYs adversly influencing GDOT have their way. 
It could serve Clayton county, which needs both transportation choices and an engine for economic development.  The Federal Government will pay most of the capital costs and operating costs would be about $4 million per year plus the amounts collected from the fare box and GDOT is balking. 
Words cannot describe how foolish this is.  Now we have the chance to begin the work GDOT has been planning for some time!   The board meets on July 20th to decide the future of commuter rail and now is the time to get involved.  The board is ordered by congressional district.  Contact your board member and urge that the Lovejoy rail plan get support and proceed.
Please also contact Governor Sonny Perdue!  He supported using Clayton as the model and put the line in his transportation package!  Now apparently he has said “he doesn’t intervene in DOT struggles”.  He’s the chief executive.  He needs to step to this and flex some muscle.  To fail in this matter would be a failure of leadership.  Delta & AirTran also need to get behind this effort.  They are the largest employers in Clayton and can flex some muscle. 
Lastly, if the city’s wealthy men can put up $200,000,000.00 for an big fish tank or a large housing development, surely some of the wealthy men and women can come together to put forth a challenge grant.  Someone with the capital needs to step up with $2,000,0000 and pledge to match funds committed by Clayton and the cities in it for 3 years.  After that time, we’ll have some idea of whether commuter rail has taken hold. 
Waste this opportunity and it will be another sign that Metro Atlanta is not prepared to be a world class 21rst century, just another 20th century story of boomtown gone bust.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 2:02 am and is filed under Politics, as Usual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.