TIA2012 - Roswell Local Projects

As you may know, the TIA2012 or TSPLOST will return 15% of the total tax receipts back to local municipalities.  Roswell has been a little late to the party laying out it's project list.  Many municipalities aren't even producing a local list with the expectation that the tax will fail on July 31st.  Those elected officials obviously weren't Boy Scouts.  Roswell DOT presented our list to council at Monday night's city council meeting.

The great thing about our list is that it really focuses on pedestrian and bike resources.  It will improve overall safety and improve connectivity.  There are two groups of projects.  The first are signature projects and the second is 'potential projects' which fall into three main categories; sidewalks, complete streets, redevelopment connectivity.  Check them out below:

Signature Projects

• Early Off Ramp from SR 400 NB to Market Boulevard
• Holcomb Bridge Road Multi-Use Trail, Phase 2 (Steeplechase to HBMS)
• Holcomb Bridge Road Multi-Use Trail, Phase 3 (HBMS to Nesbit Ferry)
• Holcomb Bridge Road Multi-Use Trail, Phase 4 (Nesbit Ferry to Barnwell)
• Holcomb Bridge Road Multi-Use Trail, Phase 5 (Barnwell to Gerrards Landing)
• Eves Road Complete Street (Riverside to Eves Circle)
• Eves Road Multi-Use Bridge over Holcomb Bridge Road (Eves Circle to Scott Road)
• SR 120 Improvements (Trail Connection from Willeo Road to Square; Sidepath from Kroger to Just Friends)

Potential Projects List

• Old Mountain Park Road (Cobb County to Mountain Park Road)
• Select items from over 150 other projects on the Sidewalk Program Matrix
• Hardscrabble Green Loop Phase 2 including Hardscrabble/King intersection (Target/SR 92 area to King Road)
• Any Roswell Loop-related project
• Oxbo Road ROW and/or CST
• Sun Valley Road Phases 1, 2 and/or 3 ROW and/or CST
• Over 200 other projects on the Connectivity Program List

VOTE YES on July 31st, 2012

Vote No on August 1st, 2012

Over half the total funding, $3.2 billion, is going to a mode of transportation that less than 5 percent of commuters choose to use — mass transit.

I'm having fun reading through all of the misguided anti-transit editorials being slung around these days.  This thought of the week is from Steve Brown a Fayette County Commissioner.  He's trying to make the case that spending money on transit is a waste because only 5% of the metro area uses transit and that it is subsidized.  However, what he doesn't address is that virtually everyone in the metro area benefits from the transit system.  It takes over 400,000 trips off the roads each day.  That's 146,000,000 trips a year that would most likely be made by car on our roads.  So, the next time you hear someone say MARTA or transit is worthless, think about adding all of those cars to the roads... where does that get us?  STUCK IN TRAFFIC.  

I'd also like to point out that MARTA ridership would be much, much higher if for commuters could "choose" to ride.  That's the objective with the TIA2012.  Give Atlanta more choices.