Special transportation districts across the state, including the Atlanta region, are now tasked with creating a fiscally constrained, or affordable, list, based on projected revenues from the one penny sales tax, which goes in front of metro voters as a ballot referendum in July 2012. But the list must be complete by August 15, 2011.

For the Metro Atlanta Region, the Atlanta Regional Roundtable was created to come up with a combined "must have" projects for the region. 

This process is required by the the Transportation Investment Act of 2010, approved by the Georgia Legislature and signed into law by former Governor Sonny Perdue.

MARTA MAKES THE FIRST CUT BUT LOSES OUT ON INFRASTRUCTURE 

All major MARTA rail line proposals were included by GDOT as eligible projects, including a MARTA East Heavy Rail Line Extension from Indian Creek Station to Wesley Chapel Road near I-20 East; a MARTA West Heavy Rail Line Extension from Hamilton Holmes Station to Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive near I-285; and a MARTA Northeast Heavy Rail Line Extension from Doraville Station to Norcross.
MARTA bus improvements were also included.

Several City of Atlanta projects were included as eligible, including several road improvements and a few portions of the Atlanta Beltline.

Rejected projects include several for the City of Atlanta, such as various road improvements, MARTA infrastructure improvements, and bicycle and pedestrian paths.

MARTA, which submitted its own list, also had several projects rejected, including various upgrades and renovations, as well as certain parts and phases of a proposed rail project for Dekalb County's Clifton Corridor near Emory University [other parts and phases were approved as eligible].

NORTH FULTON'S NEW TRAIN: THE POLAR EXPRESS GOES NORTH 
GDOT added several new potential projects, including several roadways, and bicycle and pedestrian paths, as well as an additional MARTA North Heavy Rail Line Extension to SR 140 in Roswell.
"Our region's ideal transportation priorities mix will create and retain jobs, expand our mobility options and reduce the amount of time we spend stuck in traffic," Mayor Bucky Johnson [pictured below] of Norcross and Chairman of the Roundtable, said in a statement.

"We will work over the summer and into the fall, with the help of residents, to craft the right project mix that will have the most positive impact on our quality of life in the shortest amount of time,"  Johnson said.

"As we assemble the project list, the Roundtable’s primary objective is to ensure that all projects can be underway within 10 years and guarantee that spending is 100 percent accountable and transparent to everyone," Johnson maintained. "That’s why it’s so important that all residents participate and provide us with their preferences."
In the next four months, the Roundtable plans to conduct what it claims will be the "largest public outreach effort ever undertaken in the Atlanta region."
In June, the Roundtable plans to hold telephone county-by-county town hall meetings. 

Meanwhile, Terence Courtney of the Public Sector Alliance, one progressive organization dealing with public transportation issues in Atlanta, released a statement opposing the penny sales tax.

"The Transportation Investment Act will do nothing to fund MARTA operations--the part of MARTA’s budget that transit dependent riders and workers interact with most," Courtney alleged. 
"We see [the Act does not] do what transit riders need most... improve access, affordability, and accountability.  One has to really wrack their brains in an attempt to grasp why anyone would create a law to supposedly fund regional transit development, yet exclude the institution that represents the vast majority of regional transit assets. But that’s just what Georgia lawmakers did last year, and worse still, we have regional leaders actually trying to implement this as regional policy," the public transportation advocate complained.

But MARTA Heavy Rail Line Extensions are on the table: East, North, Northeast, West; extensions for every existing line but the one heading due South.

MARTA RAIL ANALYSIS  

Conceivably, a MARTA Heavy Rail South Line Extension could extend from the current Airport Station down into Clayton County. With Clayton having recently lost its public transportation C-TRAN--and with Clayton County residents having recently voted in a non-binding referendum to join MARTA--it would seem, from the perspective of serving the greatest need, a Southern Line Extension could have been quite helpful.

Clayton County's initial wish list included funding for a commuter rail project in addition to buses, but if the County wants a rail project, joining the MARTA Heavy Rail South Line would seem to be a reasonable idea.

The exclusion of a Heavy Rail South Line Extension may have more do with with legal and political realities--and with the lack of leadership on the Clayton County Commission--than with racial discrimination or classism on the part of MARTA, the region, or state.

Currently, MARTA is only permitted to operate in Fulton and Dekalb Counties and the City of Atlanta [in addition to one bus line in Cobb County through an agreement with Cobb], according to Ashley Robbins, President of Citizens for Progressive Transit.

And while the proposals for the East, North, Northeast, and West Line Extensions could all be completed by expanding out further into Fulton and Dekalb Counties, it would be impossible to extend any further south below the existing Airport Station, without going into Clayton County.

While Clayton could choose to join MARTA through a binding referendum, each of the County's Commissioners with the exception of Chairman Eldrin Bell (D) have not been supportive of such a binding referendum. Two of these Commissioners are currently facing reelection.

Chairman Bell did not answer calls to his cell phone, while his voice mailbox was full.

Robbins said that Clayton's request for commuter rail [which at this point would not be part of MARTA] is more economically feasible and that it could hook up with MARTA's existing South Line.

Gwinnett County has proposed light-rail which would hook up with the proposed Northeast Line Extension for MARTA, Robbins added.  The Northeast Line extension merely takes the line across the highway, to a location where it will be easier to connect with the light-rail proposed for Gwinnett.

The Atlanta Regional Roundtable originally included in its regional list, all items from the wish list submitted by MARTA; this list included extensions for the East Line, Northeast Line, and West Line. 

Atlanta Regional Commission spokesman Jim Jaquish deferred to MARTA for any questions regarding the rationale for MARTA's Heavy Rail Line Extension proposals.

MARTA spokeswoman Cara Hodgson noted that its wish list originated from internal department of planning. Hodgson offered to set up an interview with a staff member from that department, but it could not be completed by press time.

Still, Robbins says that MARTA had already been engaging in a planning process for a West Line Extension, while Hodgson added that it was more feasible for MARTA to request funding for projects that were already in a later stage of the planning process because they could be completely more quickly.

MARTA'S TREASURE MAPS 

According to a copy of an old MARTA planning map which is still posted on an escalator at Peachtree Center Station, the West Line Extension and the Northeast Line Extension were in fact part of a later update of the original plan for MARTA, dating back at least twenty years.

Historically, voters in the northern part of the Metro Atlanta region have hesitated in making it easier for low-income minorities to travel into their neighborhoods.

Gwinnett County voters, the majority of whom are White, declined to join MARTA in 1971 and again in 1990.

Clayton County's recent nonbinding vote to join MARTA was a major turnaround for the County, which previously voted not to join MARTA. Between the two votes Clayton went from being a majority White to a majority Black county.

But GDOT thought the Atlanta Regional Roundtable should consider an additional line extension, for the North Line.

Jill Goldberg, a spokeswoman for GDOT, confirmed that GDOT did suggest to the Roundtable that an extension be considered from the current North Springs Station, north to State Road 140, also known as Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell. Still a North Line Extension proposal could have conceivably gone further, to Mansell, Old Milton Parkway, or to Winward. But for now, that is not in the cards.