Tag Archives: atlanta regional roundtable

Roundtable approves final TIA project list

13 Oct

ARC's final report At their final meeting, the Atlanta Regional Roundtable today approved the final list of  155 regional transportation projects to be funded by revenue from the proposed 1-percent sales tax that comes up for a vote next year. 

The project list in the roundtable’s report includes only projects to be paid for by the 85 percent of the funding that’s allocated for regional projects. The other 15 percent of the revenue generated by the TIA tax will be distributed to cities and counties within the region to fund local transportation projects.

The Atlanta Regional Commission estimates that the TIA tax will generate about $7.2 billion during the ten years it will be in effect. The regional share of  that funding will come to about $6.1 billion. (Both estimates are in 2011 dollars.)

The report includes not only the project list, but also fact sheets and schedules for each project, so it’ll come in handy if you’re tired of having to fish around on the roundtable’s site to find that information a piece at a time.

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Working Weekend for the Roundtable

13 Aug

Having missed the original deadline set to nip and tuck the transportation “wish list” down to size, the Atlanta Regional Roundtable’s executive committee will work for the next three days to finalize the list by Monday afternoon.

The executive committee’s voting members are B.J. Mathis of the Henry County Commission, Tom Worthan of the Douglas County Commission, Mayor Bill Floyd of Decatur, Mayor Mark Mathews of Kennesaw and Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta. Mayor Bucky Johnson of Norcross is the group’s chairman.

As it stands, the 119-item list contains about $6.6 billion in transportation projects – $420 million more than the proposed one-percent regional sales tax is expected to generate during the 10 years it would be in effect.

The legislation allowing a referendum on the transportation tax says that a draft list of projects must be completed by Aug. 15, but doesn’t specify what would happen if that deadline isn’t met. A final draft of the list is to be completed by Oct. 15 and the referendum will be put before voters next year. Legislators will decide during the upcoming special session whether to move the date for the referendum from July to November.

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Transportation Investment Inter(Act)ive

2 May

If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around the wheres and whats of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable’s transportation project “wish list,” or if you’d just like a quick, easy way to get more information on projects close to you, check this out:

The Roundtable has created an interactive map of all 437 projects that were submitted for funding. (Keep in mind that this list will be trimmed considerably during the next several months.) Just use the text, graphic or address function to specify an area and the map produces a list of proposed projects submitted for the area you highlighted. Alongside each item on that list is a link to its project submittal form. The project submittal form provides a description of the project as well as information about the purpose, submitting agency and cost and completion time estimates.

After you finish playing with the map, make sure to take the quick transportation priorities survey  here or here.

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What happened at Allen Plaza, plus an ARC transportation “wish list” database

18 Apr
W and 12 hotel and residence buildings

An undeveloped parcel of land on Ivan Allen Boulevard sits in the shadow of Allen Plazas W hotel and condominium tower and Novares Twelve Centennial Park

Rachel Tobin wrote a brief but through history of downtown’s troubled Allen Plaza development for Friday’s AJC.

Developer Hal Barry summarized the events leading up to the recent foreclosure of one of the project’s buildings. It’s a story that’s become all too familiar in the last few years:

“We did well and made a lot of money…[a]nd we turned around, as risk-taker developers do, and reinvested a lot of it in operating expenses and project investments. And then the market hits you broadside.”

Also on Friday, the AJC published an overview of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s transportation “wish list,” with a database of all the prospective projects on the region’s list .

Among the items MARTA requested are a variable regional fare system (sometimes referred to as “zone fares”) , on-board security cameras for all buses, trains and paratransit vehicles, an advertising system for the agency’s 10 miles of tunnels and the establishment of a cloud computing system to assist in post-disaster recovery and service continuity.

The 436-item list, with projects totaling about $29 billion, will be pared down first by the GDOT’s planning director, then by the 21 members of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable. Voters in each of the state’s 12 regions will decide during primary elections in 2012 whether to approve a new one percent sales tax to fund their regions’ projects.

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