Kyle Wingfield recently had a new column about Georgia’s proposed transportation sales tax increase, the T-SPLOST. Here is an excerpt that is particularly relevant to the residents of Alpharetta:

What’s more, 46 percent of the people in the 10-county region live OTP in Cobb, North Fulton, Dunwoody and Gwinnett. Likewise, 46 percent of the T-SPLOST’s projected revenues — $2.83 billion out of $6.14 billion — come from that northern swath.

Yet, the current project list would leave this region well short of its proportional take. Even if we include some federal funding tabbed for projects in the northern suburbs, they’d get shortchanged by $150 million. And you may as well ignore another $132 million for studying future transit along 400 and 85, since those two projects would be hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade or more away from existence.

Worse, about one in four dollars devoted to the area would go to a single rail project that would barely cross into Cobb.

Still, we are only now reaching the coup de grace. That would be Ellis’ wish to suck yet another $33 million out of the 400 corridor.

Doing so would leave an area that provides almost half the population and revenues for the T-SPLOST — and way more than half of the region’s traffic congestion — with barely one-third of the proceeds.    (emphasis mine)

Transportation is one of the biggest issues facing the city of Alpharetta and we do need a regional solution. But it becomes more apparent every day that the T-SPLOST is not that solution. Before we waste any more time I hope our state legislators will realize that we need a real solution and stop wasting precious time on a proposal that is destined for failure.

I encourage you to read the whole column here.