Oh I like this from TrafficTruth.net by way of Jim Galloway:
The Lights of Liberty Drive will be held Saturday, July 21st at 10am.
We will all converge on to 285 outer loop at 10am on Saturday morning July 21st and go counter clockwise for 2 loops or about 2 hours. We should drive the speed limit in the center lane with our flashers on. Please don’t impede traffic. We only want positive coverage. We are hoping to have hundreds of cars on the loop at the same time, coming in from all directions at the same time. Set up a caravan if we can from your area. Display signage or decorate your car in protest to the NEW TAX and send a message that we do not support it!
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Pascual Perez will be driving the pace car.
I had to google him, but solid reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_P%C3%A9rez_(baseball)
+1 to bgsmallz
That’s a good one!
Hilarious!
+1
+100! LOL
Sounds like this bunch will be sallying forth…..
Bad idea unless you’re looking to piss off a bunch of peeps — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-Ox0ZmVIU
Yep. Absolutely horrible juvenile idea. Nobody wants to be delayed by some self important asshat impeding traffic to make a point. Whoever came up with this idea needs to stop it, and anyone that participates will be helping pass TSPLOST. I hope no one gets hurt in the process, but it’s not unlikely if anyone is actually stupid enough to participate in this stunt.
They should do this on Friday afternoon around 5:30….oh wait, that would never work b/c 285 is a parking lot at that time.
I see this going really well… not.
So, they are going to:
1. Drive the speed limit on 285. Good, lets cause congestion on 285 when there is no congestion to protest a tax that would like to minimize congestion in Metro Atlanta.
2. Drive with their “flashers” on. Illegal and dumb. If you ever have to put your “flashers” on while driving, your car better have just caught fire and you are trying to get to an emergency lane. If you do this when it’s raining hard you should not be allowed to drive. Ever.
3. Decorate your car. Are we going to do an over/under on the time it takes one of these decorations to fly off and cause an accident?
4. Lights of Liberty. How about call it the Hardly-can-see-the-Amber-”Flashers”-of-Liberty-in-the-Daylight?
Please stay home and don’t screw up the rare time in the Metro Atlanta area that there is not congestion.
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the executioner’s block, Simeon.
Can you actually tell me that this sounds like a good idea?
I won’t be able to make it down to 285, but i will make sure to drive with my flashers on for the entire weekend, and thereby piss off most Gwinnett drivers, which I think is the point of this exercise.
UNTIE Atlanta has issued the following response:
“It is incredibly ironic that they are choosing mid-day on a Saturday for this drive,” campaign manager Che Watkins said. “They obviously know that traffic on I-285 is tied up in a knot during both morning and afternoon rush hour during the week, so all this stunt does is remind frustrated commuters how quickly you could get around the perimeter with less traffic.”
Dearest Che Watkins,
Per the ARC Fact Sheets, 285 will be addressed in 2020 and finished in 2022 – ten years from now. That is a very long time to untie a knot.
http://www.atlantaregionalroundtable.com/documents/Fact_Sheets_Final_Investment_List_Higher_Resolution.pdf
Ironically, the tax lasts 10 years or until the project is finished. Truth.
“…or until the project is finished. Truth.”
You’re not helping your cause, James. You’re saying that if the project runs over on schedule that we keep paying for it. HOW does this not tick you off as a taxpayer??
I can think of many other things as a taxpayer that tick me off that I do not have a chance to vote on directly.
I am happy to vote on this directly and if it happens to go over the 10 years, then I will pay until it is finished. I am just a simpleton mind you and I don’t profess to know as much as some of this high falootin scholars, but I do know that we have a problem and not being an engineer, planner, developer, etc., I am trusting the people who are paid to do this for a living and trust them.
Then again, a simpleton indeed.
“I am trusting the people who are paid to do this for a living and trust them.” Yea because they have done such a great job up until now, what’s not to trust?
James, as we’ve discussed, I don’t think you plan to be here in 10 years. Hence, “Tax us. I don’t care. I won’t be here long.”
I plan to retire in Cobb County. My mom has lived in the same house in Smyrna for 43 years. This is not a good, long-term solution for those of us in it for the long haul.
I never said I was moving at all. Most of my friends who know me best have heard me say I plan to move to Atlanta for a year or two and enjoy downtown before getting married and moving back to Cobb County to raise a family. In either scenario, I am paying a tax.
The only place I would move would be Washington, D.C., but that is nowhere on my radar. So, I am currently moving forward with plans to stay in the Metro Region and pay a 1 cent sales tax.
The tax would last for 10 years or less, if the total amount is fulfilled early. Correct.
So because it takes a long time we just shouldn’t do it?
Isn’t that a very similar theme to what we are talking about/ pulling our hair out in addressing the national debt?
Why are our biggest problems (like 285) being put to the very end of the list, and things like transit are at the front? Give me some good faith. Go for the no-brainers first that will have an immediate positive impact. Mass transit will not do that.
I might be stupid, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to fix the 400 interchange at 85 (which they are currently doing) and 285 at the same time. Maybe that is too much common sense and not enough VAST (Insert your favorite wing) Wing Conspiracy!
Which Transit projects are scheduled in Band 1?
- Atlanta to Griffin Commuter Rail ‐ Region 3 (Fulton, Clayton and
Henry Counties.
– MARTA North Heavy Rail Line Extension to SR 140 ‐ Project
Development Activities
– SR 54 (Fayetteville Road) from McDonough Road in Fayette County
to US 19/41 (Tara Boulevard) in Clayton County ‐ Widening
I’m sure there’s a detailed list somewhere, but if you Control F “Band 1″ in my link a few comments up, you can click through. On the bottom of each sheet is a box labeled “Implementation Band”. The tentative schedule is listed there.
Right…so in Band 1 we are funding some study money on commuter rail and line extensions, doing some funding to the bus system, and doing a bunch of artery road and bridge repair.
Sorry, that sounds like the ‘no brainers’ that you said they weren’t doing in Band 1.
I’m not sure planning/implementation/completion of any of the major interchange or transit projects are feasible in the first three years. That’s why they are all in Band 2 or 3. Again, that’s just common sense, right?
I guess my point is that the list seems to be pretty even handed when it comes to implementation and in fact does have the ‘no brainers’ in Band 1. That would seem to satisfy your complaint (but obviously doesn’t satisfy the large ax you intend to grind)
From what i saw, the big transit project was the over haul of MARTA’s power plant, which is labeled as affecting every region. it’s the big ticket item, IMHO.
And it goes last, probably because under the law you have to have $$ in order to pay for the project when its complete.
I’m liking the proposal, mostly because there seems to be a harder line on not using the funds outside of its stated purpose… I doubt transportation would get funded in any form and still have the funding mechanism stay true.
How long will it take if we don’t fund it? Are the construction fairies going to show up and build it as a congratulatory gift once we prove that we really, really, really don’t want to pay for the things we want?
We really have four options, right? T-Splost, Raise the Gas Tax, retrofit roads for tolls, or don’t do (X, Y, Z, etc.).
I don’t see how the 285/400 interchange gets funded without T-Splost. Do you?
Your options two and three work for me.
Ask Debbie Dooley. I am waiting for her Plan B.
Show me a half-cent tax with a smaller number of projects that make a high impact on the traffic problem over 5 years. That’s something I could rally behind. After those five years of successful on-time, on-budget installations, let’s do it again.
Ah yes, the old “give ‘em just enough money to fail” gambit.
Worked for MARTA.
Sorry, man. I wouldn’t give my closest people carte blanche with my checkbook; I’m certainly not giving it to politicians.
Provide a sane business plan, and I’ll invest. Simple as that.
So by making the list smaller, you think you are going to get a better regional consensus?
That’s why it has to be large….if it isn’t large, there will be areas that feel ‘left out’ because there aren’t actually shovels in their dirt.
Of course, that brings us back to the whole problem and why this is a marketing nightmare…the state said ‘well…we want the region to work together’ but instead of actually creating a system where the region could plan a real systematic plan of transit, commuter rail, and road improvements, we are going to put all of our local leaders in a position where they have to make a list of the most ‘marketable’ projects so that people will vote an extra penny sales tax on them.
It’s stupid. The ‘leadership’ was absent. The legislature should have done the hard work…come to us with a real regional plan that has real oversight and fits within a certain framework, decide which representatives need to be on the oversight group in order to provide accurate representation, and we will then provide the funding for the plan through our power to tax. They incentivized the marketing of the plan rather than regional cooperation….and that really was their only choice when they decided that they were more scared of Grover’s beard than they are of the problems that face our region.
+100
A sane business plan from the Georgia Legislature?…Good luck with that.
See the reaction of folks on 285 forced to drive 55 mph and decide for yourselves if this protest will succeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoETMCosULQ
Oh, the irony of the anti-tsplosters. They are so cute and creative.
The anti-tsplosters are obviously a heckuva lot more “cute and creative” than the pro-tsplosters as the public approval for the referendum is polling at less than 50% in Fulton and DeKalb counties and at barely above 30% in the other eight counties of the 10-county Metro Atlanta region.
Where is this data? Please link me.
http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/19198850/article-Polls-show-TSPLOST-has-tough-road-ahead
Here’s a direct link to the article that appeared on the WSB-TV website that shows the slipping support for the T-SPLOST both in the city and the ‘burbs:
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/poll-support-tsplost-slipping-election/nPh7r/
I just hung up with a survey person who asked me about my thoughts on TSPLOST.
I told her. I think the negative numbers just went up.
Because they are doing the absolute worst job of attempting to sell what was already going to be an extremely-tough concept to sell (in which the powers-that-be that came up with this poorly thought-out and highly-flawed concept severely-underestimated and miscalculated just how tough it was going to be).
The way that this already-flawed tax referendum has been sold is as if they are trying to (poorly) brainwash everyone into voting for it like they’ve got some kind of machines automatically cranking out comments, some under obviously fake screen names, on every comments sections of newspaper articles and blog entry where the T-SPLOST issue is written about.
Some examples of this extremely-poorly executed public relations campaign:
…From the Marietta Daily Journal, posted under the screen name “Restless in GA”:
“With the transportation issues that we have in the area, this is the best alternative that we have to solving our needs. The plan set forth is a comprehensive plan that will include transit and road improvement projects to solve the critical needs of our city.”
That does not even sound like someone human wrote it, but a scripted machine or something.
’twill be interesting to see the outcome of the vote in a few weeks.
Though I’m not a very big fan of the T-SPLOST, I’m actually growing more and more fearful of the outcome because, even though this process is extremely-poorly thought-out and highly-flawed, I know that the aftermath of the increasingly likely rejection of this thing is not going to be very good for this region and this state, an aftermath in which the fallout from this easily avoidable debacle may last for a very long time.
I know that this necessary rejection of the T-SPLOST will more than likely be happily and gleefully used against us by our economic competitors in Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, South Florida, Northern Virginia, etc.
It won’t matter how severely-flawed or poorly thought-out or how unworkable this T-SPLOST is as the only thing that will matter in the business world is that the Atlanta Region will officially be on irrefutable record as soundly-rejecting what the rest of the nation (and likely much of the world) perceives to be the opportunity to address our increasingly very severe traffic congestion and transportation mobility issues.
Meanwhile, the very poor excuse of a Georgia Legislature that set us for a very visible perceived failure on the world stage with this very intentional abdication of their constitutional duties with a hastily put together tax referendum on the transportation needs that they should be funding themselves during the course of the jobs that they were elected to do will most likely use the sound defeat and rejection of the Metro Atlanta Regional T-SPLOST as an excuse to continue to do absolutely completely nothing (even moreso than the absolutely nothing that they were doing before) on transportation for many more years to come.
This T-SPLOST referendum has the feeling of sort of a Northern Arc-type political moment (on a scale of times 5), only with infinitely-higher stakes as I fear that this thing could likely be the definite beginning of the end of this region’s economic viability, especially if the rejection and defeat of this thing is followed by years of legislative inaction on transportation as turned out to be the case in the political aftermath of the defeat of the Northern Arc.
In any case, I fear that a situation that was already not pretty is going to get even uglier.
I seriously wish that the Georgia Legislature had taken the advice of many of the groups on the political right (the Tea Party, etc) and abandoned and cancelled this process while they still had the chance.
Heck, just probably continuing to do absolutely nothing on transportation would be perceived much better by the outside world than the coming seemingly resounding and overwhelming no-vote that the business world will likely strongly perceive to be as a total rejection of the concept of even minimal transportation infrastructure improvements and the already do-nothing Georgia Legislature will perceive as a mandate to continue to do even more of the absolutely nothing that they were doing on transportation matters.
Scott Adams reports:
Boss: What we need is an ovearching strategy to stimulate our innovation.
Dilbert: …..or you could stop smothering the innovation we already have.
Boss: That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard in my entire life.
Dilbert: …..and there it is.
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