Atlanta's $36 Billion Regional Transportation Plan Falls Short of Mark

ATLANTA, February 29, 2000 - Most Atlantans may not realize it but the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) just closed its 30-day public comment period on a $36 billion Regional Transportation Program (RTP) and a draft three-year, $1.9 billion Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP). These plans are supposed to improve air quality, provide more alternatives to driving, protect and enhance the environment, promote energy conservation, and enhance mobility and job access. "If you follow the money, you can see exactly where the ARC priorities are. While moving in the right direction, the plans do not go far enough in targeting funds into ensuring transportation equity across the ten-county region. There is no blueprint for a coordinated and linked regional transit system" said Robert Bullard, author of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

There is also some question as to whether ARC's plans will deliver on improved mobility with the region expected to grow by 40 percent over the next 25 years. Of particular equity concern are the impacts of large-scale transportation investment on commerce and the quality of life of low-income and people of color households.

For many low-income households and the transit dependent, access via transit to employment, medical and social services, and recreation and shopping is critical. ARC estimates that in the year 2000, 34 percent of the region's jobs were within 60 minutes via transit for persons with annual incomes less than $20,000 annually. Under the improvements planned under the RTP, 39 percent of the population in this income group will be within walking distance of a bus line by the year 2025. With ARC's no-build scenario, only 23 percent of the Region's jobs will be accessible in 2025. "Even with these improvement projections, six of ten jobs in the region will be out of reach by transit. That is simply unacceptable," says Angel Torres, a Geographical Information System (GIS) specialist with the Environmental Justice Resource Center.

Today, two out of three new jobs in Atlanta are being created in the outer suburbs, outside of the urban core where most welfare recipients reside. Entry-level jobs, most appropriate for recent welfare leavers, are far greater in outlying areas. But public transportation to these locations is virtually unavailable because MARTA's service area does not include eight of the ten counties that comprise the ARC region. Local Bus Service Expansions clearly show MARTA service areas reaching well beyond the current two-county system. The depicted expansion into Clayton,

Gwinnett, and deeper penetration into Cobb counties, if implemented, will offer much improved access to the job-rich suburbs from inner city Atlanta.

The RTP failed to adequately address regional transit operating costs. Local suburban county governments (non-MARTA counties) have been slow to embrace and commit local match for funding, constructing, and operating regional transit. The RTP does not provide any specific funding mechanism to make up the 65% gap in the long-term operating costs for MARTA. However, it does mention the possible role of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority or GRTA in addressing the long-term operational costs of all new regional transit services. The assumptions made on transit fares are low. The RTP assumes that bus and rail fares will remain constant ($0.90 to $0.99 in 1990 dollars) over the next 25 years.

Bus overcrowding is a major transportation equity problem that was not addressed in the RTP. No specific proposals are offered in the RTP to address the heavy concentration of overcrowding on MARTA bus routes, whose riders are largely poor and people of color.

ARC should fund more projects that demonstrate improved the safety and welfare of pedestrians, walkers, bicyclists, car and van poolers, and transit riders. The Atlanta metropolitan area is the third most dangerous large metropolitan area for walking. Rates for non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics were two and six times greater, respectively, than for non-Hispanic whites. People of color account for less than one third of the region's population and nearly two thirds of all the pedestrian fatalities in the region. These statistics clearly point to safety disparities.

ARC's public involvement plan needs improvement. Regional standards for local public involvement are needed to ensure public involvement much earlier in the process, with a common threshold met by all projects brought to the regional planning table.

The ARC's explicit and public consideration of the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and equity and environmental justice issues in general, appears to have begun, in a rudimentary way, in 1998. In that year, for the first time, ARC's evaluation of a 20-year transportation investment package included performance measures disaggregated by income, and maps of high concentrations of the elderly, poor and minorities and the location of nearby proposed transportation projects. Forecasted impacts on minority travel behavior was not explored, at least in part, because the travel demand model used by ARC to predict future regional travel behavior did not, and does not, use race as a factor, but uses such factors as income, automobile availability, and household size.

It appears the region's progress in acknowledging transportation equity and environmental justice issues and starting to address them in the last 18 months has occurred as a result of the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) critical certification review of the regional planning process in May 1998, coupled with the local environmental justice coalition's December 1998 notice of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act.