Planning for Sprawl in the Atlanta Region
by Bryan Hager
This past fall the Atlanta Regional Commission unveiled their proposed transportation plan for the next 25 years. The proposed Atlanta Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is an improvement over the past plans. However, it does not go far enough to improve air quality, transportation choice, social equity or a host of other concerns.
The Sierra Club supports the increased funding for transit services, bike and pedestrian facilities. We also support the increased emphasis on activities center and town center planning. However, we believe that the proposed plan has two major failings. First, the plan provides almost no improvements to air quality due to transportation investments. In fact, analysis by the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) found that emissions would be higher in 2010 with proposed plan compared to building nothing not already under construction. This region is experiencing a public health crises due to air pollution. We must reduce that pollution. Cars and trucks are the single largest source of ozone causing pollution in the Atlanta non-attainment area. The RTP and short term transportation improvement program (TIP) should help the region to achieve the standards -- not hinder us.
Second, the plan was handicapped by the region's governments' inability to agree on a future land use plan that responds to the range of social, environmental and economic concerns of the citizens in this region. The inability of local governments in the Atlanta region to come together and agree on a regional land use plan makes it nearly impossible for the transportation plan to achieve the goals established in Vision 2020 and meet requirements of state and federal laws.
The RTP is based on existing land use trends with very minor changes in the location of employment and residences over 25 years. The Atlanta Regional Commission has adopted a set a Regional Development Policies, which, if implemented, will start moving the region toward more sustainable growth. However, the policies are voluntary and do not deal with several critical issues. Nearly all streams in the region are polluted, caused mostly by runoff from developed areas. Drinking water supplies, such as Lake Allatoona, are being threatened as development creeps through their watersheds. Communities toward the center of the region bear a heavy burden to care for the poor and sick, because development and jobs have moved further out. Citizens throughout the region are demanding better tree protection and more greenspace. These, and many other issues, cannot be in adequately addressed if the region maintains its nearly total dependence on cars and continues to sprawl ever outwards. The proposed RTP provides some support for changes in development styles. Unfortunately, it is also continues to subsidize sprawling development with capacity increases for single occupant vehicles.
This spring the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority will decide whether to approve the proposed Atlanta Regional Transportation Plan. Please contact GRTA now and asked them to support the following changes to the Regional Transportation Plan.
Georgia Regional Transportation Authority
100 Peachtree Street, Suite 2300
Atlanta, GA 30309
Fax: 404-463-8513, Phone: 404-463-3000, email: comments@grta.org.
Please ask GRTA to:
- Postpone projects that increase highway capacity until the region has adopted a land use plan that shows how we will achieve the goals identified in Vision 2020 and meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act, Cleaned Water Act, Civil Rights Act and other laws.
- Transportation agencies in the region should begin an emergency program of providing travel options for citizens of the region, while providing incentives to reduce the amount of driving. People in the Atlanta region drive more than residents and any other region on earth. This is polluting our air and water, taking time away from family and costing us hundreds of millions of wasted dollars.
- Convert an existing travel lane into a high occupancy vehicle lane on all interstate and limited access highways which have three or more travel lanes in each direction. Provide on and off ramps dedicated to HOV, by converting ramp lanes or constructing new ones if necessary. We do not need to wait for to build new lanes.
- Provide express a bus and van service on HOV lanes. The initial service can be used leased diesel powered vehicles if natural gas vehicles are not available in time. Private parties should be encouraged to provide the service as well.
- Improve transit, pedestrian and bicycle accessibility in areas around existing passenger rail stations. The sites provide the opportunity for significant reductions in per-person vehicle usage and should be supported. The whole region benefits when people ride transit. Regional agencies or the State should provide a subsidy for transit operations sufficient to reduce the fare to $1.00 dollar per ride.
- Limit road expansions to projects that are part of a congestion management program that reduces per-person average vehicle travel in the corridor. Short-term congestion relief is not an adequate justification or design goal for a service improvement. Road expansions at the fringes of our region spread development over a larger area making it harder to service by transit and creating more damage to the environment.
- Require all major employers to provide their employees with an option to "cash out" their parking place. The vast majority of employee parking in this region is free or highly subsidized. In effect, businesses are paying people to drive to work. We must flip this incentive.
- Provide sidewalks within all activity centers and connecting all activity centers, passenger rail stations, parks, schools and shopping centers to nearby residential areas. Road crossings must be improved in street design standards changed so as to provide for safer pedestrian movement. An inventory of pedestrian needs should be completed by September 1, 2000.
- Correct past damage caused by highways. Highway investments of the past have imposed heavy burdens on some local communities in the name of regional mobility. Often, the local communities received little benefit from the regional mobility improvements. These transportation inequities must be redressed. Highways bisect communities, increase stormwater runoff and create localized air pollution problems. The regional transportation plan should begin the process of healing the wounds from these past actions. GRTA should initiate a process to identify problems caused by past transportation investments and set aside the money to redress the problems.
- Significant segments of our population are excluded from full participation in society because they do not drive, in a region built solely for auto-mobility. GRTA and ARC should identify areas with significant percentages of low income, disabled and elderly people. The agency should then work with people in these communities to design and then implement transit and pedestrian improvements which provide a level of access equal to that enjoyed by people who drive their own cars.
Last updated: 30 Jan 00