Southeast - Georgia's Transportation Bill

I know it was voted down, (thank goodness)

May be a good concept, but I doubt it would do anything significant for cycling....

On the ride to the capitol, they were talking it up. Saw it for what is was...
just another way to impose another tax for projects OTHER than alternative transportation, like they were
hyping it up to be..._

Very true. I voted NO. Glad it was defeated.

I'll avoid going too deep into what I know about the bill (second hand from its proposal to State-level representatives). You're right: It had very little to do with anything but car traffic, MARTA in the Atlanta area, and possibly the smaller airports in the more tourist-heavy coastal areas. The initial ten years of the tax, when proposed, was only supposedly going to fund studies, and not actually accomplish any improvements. I could go on with other shortfalls (some of their suggestions versus previous studies contradicting their proposals), but I'll just say there was a lot more wrong with it than many people understand.

It was good to see the voters in Georgia still vote it down despite the onslaught of TV/radio campaigning they did trying to get it to pass.

IMHO, I think they could begin by buying up some of commercial time and advertise the 3 foot law. Too bad Georgia Bikes! hasn't pursued that more earnestly.

Besides that Gwinnett County already has 2-3 SPLOST's active right now. You can ask anyone who lives in Gwinnett if they think traffic has improved any since the imposition of these new sales taxes.

Reason I brought this up is I have a friend who works for GDOT. We got into a discussion about this, and he feels that it was bad that this didn't pass. He's a great guy, but his argument was weak. And he hinged his debate on the fact that we pay one of the lowest fuel taxes in the country. When he couldn't sell me on that, then he defaulted to the whole bicycles and road user taxes thing.

That is such a lame talking point, which is completely untrue. We all pay for the roads or lack thereof. Just because we choose to ride a bike instead of driving a car is irrelevant.

My last point was what I always say. The cost of going to work is not going to get any cheaper, one day when people realize just how much of their budgets go toward the cost of fuel just to get to work...They will all be griping because the lack of infrastructure...

I think that that sort of infrastructure money should come from user taxes - fuel taxes in this case.

This way businesses that use the infrastructure would pay right along side the ordinary user. T-PLOST placed most of the burden on the ordinary citizen who may not use much of the improvements their money was buying. Businesses hardly pay sales taxes. Often their purchases are sales tax exempt.

What really galled me was ground vehicle fuel and av-fuel was specifically exempted.

I'm a driver too but I think fuel should be a lot more expensive. A Lot More. Maybe that would get some of the congestion relieved. Use the money to build street cars lines, bike paths and sidewalks.

Yes, glad it was voted down. Our gov't officials can't properly manage the money they take from us now, so they try to get us to give more. Just on principal I vote no on all new taxes or increases. Would you continue to help your friend or family member financially when they demonstrated over and over again that they could not be trusted to use the money you gave them wisely? This is not the time for such projects anyway. While most of the citizenry has had to tighten their belts and make financial sacrifices, the gov't continues to spend more and more money instead of cutting back spending as well. They cut gov't jobs, force unpaid furlow days, etc. and still have the gall to ask for money for new projects. There is total mismanagement of our tax dollars.