1. SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013 THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
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Forward
“Askyourselfonequestion.‘Isitright?’Thendowhatyoubelieveisbestforyourtown,
yourstateandyourcountry.”—JamesM.Cox,founder,CoxEnterprises
EDITORIAL BOARD
AmyGlennon,Publisher
KevinRiley,Editor
BertRoughtonJr.,Managing Editorand SeniorEditorial Director
AndreJackson,Editorial Editor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Editorial
SUNDAY ISSUE: EASING YOUR COMMUTE
Nine months after the T-
SPLOST’s defeat, the Atlanta
region is still grappling for
a doable “Plan B” to begin
reducing the traffic congestion
that affects us all. Some counties
are starting to talk about ways to
work together on smaller-scale
transportation improvements.
Meanwhile, voters remain leery
of big, costly solutions, yet
indicate a willingness to pay for
solutions they think will work.
It’s imperative that civic de-
bate continue around conges-
tion relief strategies. One idea
that should remain in the con-
versation has been embraced
in most other Atlanta-class cit-
ies: commuter rail. It’s a con-
cept that’s long been on public
planners’ radar here. Yet the
idea vanished from public dis-
cussion several years ago, ap-
parently being short of both
political backing and actual
funding.
As this metro area looks to-
ward future solutions, the con-
cept deserves continued explo-
ration. This is not to say com-
muter rail is the magic fix for
all of the region’s traffic woes;
but we ought to at least consid-
er it for our toolbox.
What is commuter rail?
It’s not MARTA, nor is it light
rail; it’s conventional passen-
ger trains, pulled by diesel lo-
comotives, operating on ex-
isting railroads. Commuter
trains are familiar in older cit-
ies like New York, Chicago and
Philadelphia, and are becom-
ing increasingly so in plac-
es that have introduced them
in recent years, like Nashville,
Minneapolis and Dallas-Fort
Worth.
“Of the nation’s 13 most pop-
ulous metropolitan statistical
areas (Atlanta is the ninth), 10
have a commuter rail system,”
according to the introduction
to the 2007 R.L. Banks and As-
sociates study for the Metro At-
lanta Chamber, Georgia De-
partment of Transportation
and Transit Planning Board.
The broad commuter rail
plan here envisioned seven
commuter lines totaling 429
miles serving 55 communi-
ties, and projected more than
40,000 passenger boardings a
day (see map).
That works out to about
20,000 people a day. The
Georgia Regional Transporta-
tion Authority’s Xpress com-
muter bus system, by compar-
ison, carries 9,000 daily riders
on 33 routes and is touted for
removing many drivers from
area roads.
The commuter rail plan es-
timated capital cost for rolling
stock and line improvements
would be upward of $2 billion
in 2007 dollars — unadjusted
for inflation, granted, but still
less than a third of what the T-
SPLOST would have cost. Com-
muter rail is cheaper than con-
structing new, dedicated, MAR-
TA-like lines because it uses ex-
isting infrastructure.
Even if the idea caught on
here, it’s unlikely the entire rail
system would be built at once.
Service could begin on a sin-
gle route to test the concept.
If that line proved successful,
trains could roll out on oth-
ers as funding and local pub-
lic support warranted. That’s
the approach that surfaced
here two years ago. During the
T-SPLOST debate, state Rep.
Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, backed
a 30-mile commuter rail line
from Atlanta to Acworth that
he estimated could be start-
ed for “considerably less than
$100 million,” compared with
$856 million for a proposed 8-
mile light-rail line from Mid-
town to Cumberland Mall.
Even given today’s tax-leery
political landscape, the public
may now be more receptive. A
recent poll commissioned by
The Atlanta Journal-Constitu-
tion found nearly two-thirds
of respondents were willing
to pay a new fee or tax to cre-
ate well-designed public tran-
sit; more than two-thirds in
Cobb and Gwinnett counties
supported expanding train ser-
vice beyond Fulton and DeKalb
counties.
If they’re willing to consider
allowing commuter trains, the
region’s major freight railroads,
CSX Transportation and Nor-
folk Southern, would need to be
compensated for track and sig-
nal improvements. The upside
for them would be enhanced
capacity for freight trains, a
pressing need today that’s ex-
pected to become even more
so as traffic builds at the Port of
Savannah and needs to move
across the country.
It should go without saying
that if commuter rail is to have
a chance, support must start
with citizens and work upward
through their mayors, coun-
ty commissioners and business
chambers. The process should
be deliberate, inclusive and,
yes, conservative: one city and
one county at a time. That’s a
lesson T-SPLOST taught us.
Commuter rail may hold
promise in bridging the dis-
tance between in-city transit
systems like MARTA and our
far-flung suburbs. If the Atlan-
ta region still has aspirations of
being a global 21st-century city,
we may want to include com-
muter rail in the discussion
about our transportation fu-
ture. Many of our competitors
are already there.
David Ibata,forthe Editorial Board.
Commuter rail merits study
A different kind of transit may help us bridge the distance between in-city transit systems like
MARTA and our more remote suburbs. And much of its infrastructure already exists.
THE EDITORIAL BOARD’S OPINION
Atlanta
Canton
43 miles
Bremen
52 miles
Seven lines would
total 429 miles,
serve 55 communities
and see more than
40,000 passenger
boardings
a day.
Gainesville
53 miles
Senoia
38 miles
Madison
68 miles
Athens
72 miles
Macon
103 miles
19
85
85
285
75
75
20 20
Commuter rail plan 985
575
LINDA SCOTT / STAFF
Source: Georgia Department
of Transportation
BIBB
CO.
MORGAN CO.
ATHENS-
CLARKE CO.
HALL CO.
CHEROKEE
CO.
HARALSON
CO.
COWETA
CO.
Stationstop
How Nashville got
aboard with trains
ByPaulJ.Ballard
Where is the only commut-
er railroad between Chicago
and Miami?
Surely it must be a city the
size of Charlotte, which has
light rail, or Atlanta, which al-
ready has heavy rail in its sub-
way.
The answer, surprising to
some, is Nashville, where the
Music City Star has operat-
ed along the 31 miles between
Nashville and Lebanon, Tenn.,
since 2006. The Star was the
least costly construction proj-
ect of its kind in modern U.S.
history. It was built for $41 mil-
lion, combining federal, state
and local funds.
Leaders from seven Mid-
dle Tennessee counties that
formed the Regional Trans-
portation Authority came to-
gether to improve the area’s
development, environment
and quality of life with a proj-
ect that seemed alternately
challenging or just plain im-
possible.
Ridership on the Star be-
gan with 500 rider-trips per
day but steadily increased
each year to the present aver-
age of 1,000 to 1,100 daily rid-
er-trips. The passengers are al-
most exclusively people who
had never used public tran-
sit in any form, a close-knit
group so loyal to the Star that
they will never willingly plow
through the daily commute by
car again.
While these transit consum-
ers understand what we mean
by “quality of life,” the term
does not impress skeptics.
They want to know if com-
muter rail will pay for itself.
Of course it won’t: No pub-
lic transit system in the world
pays for itself. Transit is a key
to development benefiting the
whole community, however.
Regional economic devel-
opment was a primary stimu-
lus for building the Music City
Star, and now that planning is
paying off. A prominent devel-
oper has forsaken building sin-
gle-family homes on large lots
and is instead constructing
Hamilton Springs, a mixed-use
transit-oriented development
along both sides of the train
tracks in Lebanon. It features
a platform stop for the Star.
This is the kind of fore-
sight that allowed Nashville
to build commuter rail in the
first place. Support from the
Chamber of Commerce has
been crucial to the Star. The
most active business lead-
ers in Middle Tennessee have
formed a Transit Alliance to
promote public transportation
funding. Championed from in-
ception by Nashville’s May-
or Karl Dean, the Middle Ten-
nessee Mayors’ Caucus has
put public transit funding first
in its list of priorities. With
strong regional cooperation,
we hope to expand commuter
rail to Clarksville, Tenn.
The Music City Star has be-
come an important part of a
public transportation network
that currently provides almost
11 million passenger trips an-
nually. Middle Tennessee is an
inviting, vibrant and economi-
cally healthy region expecting
1 million new residents over
the next 20 years.
They’ll need commuter rail
when they get here.
This column is based on a
presentation by Ballard at
the North Carolina Railroad
Conference on March 6 in Raleigh.
ANOTHER VIEW
Paul J. Ballard is CEO of the
Nashville MTA and Regional
Transportation Authority.
Commuter rail costs
too much, does little
ByWendellCox
The fiscal challenges facing
metropolitan Atlanta and the
nation are clear. Tax funding
needs to be as prudently spent
as money in a household bud-
get. The proposed commuter
rail system would be a classic
example of the opposite.
The proposed commuter rail
plan would add virtually noth-
ing to the metropolitan econ-
omy, and would do so at great
cost. Seven lines would con-
verge on downtown Atlan-
ta. Travel times would not be
quick. Macon line commuters
would spend up to 4 hours 20
minutes on the train, and Ath-
ens line commuters up to 3½
hours each day. The Senoia line
would have the shortest max-
imum commute time, at near-
ly two hours. In a metropoli-
tan area where round-trip com-
muting averages one hour com-
muting each day, so few riders
would be attracted that there
would be no reduction in traffic
congestion.
A report for the Metro Atlan-
ta Chamber of Commerce in
2007 indicated that of the re-
gion’s nearly 2.5 million com-
muters, barely 20,000 people
(projected ridership was about
40,000 daily boardings) would
ride the trains each day. Updat-
ing the cost estimates to 2011
dollars and applying federal
discounting standards, the total
annual subsidy would be more
than $13,000 per rider, assum-
ing a very optimistic 40 percent
of the operating costs would be
paid by passenger fares. The
average Atlanta area house-
hold spends about this much
on housing each year. The tax-
payer subsidy could be even
higher if the typical cost over-
run and overly optimistic pa-
tronage projections document-
ed by the leading international
research were to occur. The At-
lanta region has opened more
high-capacity rapid transit
(MARTA) over the past 35 years
than any metropolitan area be-
sides Washington, D.C. Yet, on-
ly 3 percent of the region’s com-
muters use transit, and most of
them use buses. This is not be-
cause transit is undesirable. It is
rather because transit does not
and cannot go where people
need to go in a time that is com-
petitive with the automobile.
Transit’s commuting impact
is largely limited to downtown,
which with Midtown is less than
10 percent of employment in
the metropolitan area. Less
than 4 percent of the metropol-
itan area’s jobs can be reached
by transit in 45 minutes by the
average employee, according to
Brookings Institution research.
Commuter rail wouldn’t change
that.
Traffic congestion can on-
ly be alleviated by providing
sufficient capacity for the rap-
id door-to-door travel peo-
ple require. This is a problem
in Atlanta with its sparse free-
way coverage and less than ro-
bust arterial street system, a
factor covered in my Jan. 17,
2010 Atlanta Journal-Constitu-
tion commentary (http://bit.ly/
100djwu). The expanding HOT
lane program is a step in the
right direction, though there is
much more to do.
Traffic congestion can be re-
duced, but only if available
funding is used to reduce trav-
el delay the most per million or
billion dollars of spending. Slow
trains cannot compete on a ra-
tional basis.
ANOTHER VIEW
Wendell Cox is principal of
Demographia, an international
public policy firm. He was ap-
pointed to three terms on the
Los Angeles County Transporta-
tion Commission.