Commuter rail in Georgia and a bad case of burying the lead

August 5, 2009
By Stephen Lee Davis

The Georgia Department of Transportation has been (finally) moving towards plans for a commuter rail line south from downtown through the southern suburbs to the city of Lovejoy. This week, they got some bad news from the Federal Transit Administration, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

At a moment when mass transit is taking center stage as a solution to transportation problems nationwide, a federal report has concluded that the Georgia Department of Transportation’s transit program is riddled with financial management problems, according to a report obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The problems were so severe that the federal government has frozen DOT’s transit grants, which average about $28 million a year, including some from the federal stimulus program. The report cast doubt on whether DOT could manage grants for the commuter rail line proposed to go south through Lovejoy.

But the most alarming nugget in the story was completely buried in the closing paragraphs of the story.

Meyer said he didn’t know whether the problems were only due to sparse resources — DOT’s Intermodal Division has 23 employees handling rail, transit, aviation and waterways, in an agency of 5,400 — or if there was a culture of sloppiness. [emphasis ours]

Only 23 people out of 5,400 employees at Georgia’s DOT? It’s hard to imagine that the state could plan and implement a large-scale model railroad with only 23 people — much less their first true commuter rail line in decades.

Transportation advocates in Georgia have been working for decades to bring commuter rail to the capital city of Atlanta. It would seem like a no-brainer in a congested metro region with multiple existing railroad lines into the city — a city with deep roots as a railroad town — but it has taken decades to get a planned commuter rail line into Atlanta anywhere close to reality. It’s been a long slog, even as other cities have gone back to their past as railroad towns and opened new, successful commuter rail lines

If Georgia is ever going to follow the lead of numerous other states that are investing in commuter rail or other options for getting around their congested region, they’re probably going to need a few more than 23 people to get it done.

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: commuter rail, georgia

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http://neighborhoods.org Eric Fredericks

I’d be willing to bet that most state DOTs aren’t any better (sadly). Most just use the staff to pass through money to local agencies.
http://cartky.org Dave Morse

Attention blue state weeniers: I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re in a bit of a scrap here, down in the American South. So if you could not act so surprised at something that’s completely frickin’ obvious, that’d be great.

While the coasts were gobbling up all the New Starts money, using your so-called “state and local taxes” as matching funds, we’ve been busy keeping the country from going commie by electing anti-tax politicians. Better dead than red. Multi modalism would be nice to have while we’re doing that, let me see, how much transit can the American South buy with 50-50 match? We’ll ante up: nothing. [mumbling to self] nothing times nothing [mumble] carry the nothing [mumble] hey: nothing!

I’m glad we could have this little chat. See ya around.
http://t4america.org/author/sdavis/ Stephen Lee Davis

Well, to clarify Dave, this “blue state weener” is actually an Atlanta native. But I totally catch your drift, for the record. :)
Nathanael

While you’d *think* 23 people was far too few, in fact, somehow, Washington State managed to implement some serious rail improvements with even fewer rail people at WSDOT (15, I believe).

Now, that was a stretch and I wouldn’t recommend it. But it does show that if you have only a few people, it matters if they’re the *right* people — a tireless and highly competent rail advocate ran the department. Unfortunately the highway interests just shut the rail division in Washington down completely. That ain’t gonna help.
netdragon

The federal government has been looking to take back this money, and this is just the next attempt. It’s baloney.
One In the Know

Due to incompetence in upper management, the DOT is in some very serious trouble, and it may not be able to recover unless there is some serious changes at the top. Too long, DOT has neglect to hire people based on qualification, but instead chose to hire based on favoritism which has cause them to hire more people to cover for the person at the top. However, the person in charge believes that he is more qualified to make the best decision for the State without concerning advice from his employees.
On the case of the transit, rumor has it that DOT had been using that department to funnel money to other programs.
InsiderOut

If GDOT had 23 people working on rail, that would be one thing, but it has three, one of whom also does work for the transit branch. Most unfortunate for any rail in Georgia’s future is the fact that former Commissioner Evans was a BIG proponant of rail transportation and the people in charge now pretty much don’t want to do anything Evans thought was good. Which considering how horrid a leader she was, is understandable. Understandable, but wrong.
YESSIR

GA. is a red state! As long as I lived there, before moving to Va there has been study after study and no movement on efficient passenger rail! Its sad to see republicans will not move on this but I bet they would put money behind something that they want to achieve personally! Ga. had the opportunity when Roy Barnes was in office but they chose to go red so to the state of GA you reep what you sow! GA is so far behind its ridiculous and that has always been a critizism of the south SLOW AND BEHIND!!!