When the Georgia Assembly passed the Transportation Funding Act of 2015, it made big news across the state. With a set of new or increased fees and taxes, the act will raise nearly $1 billion for transportation projects in Georgia. Now Gov. Nathan Deal has announced his plan for putting that money to use.
On January 12, Gov. Deal, along with several legislators and representatives of the Georgia Department of Transportation, released a comprehensive plan for maintaining Georgia’s infrastructure. The plan will be financed by the Transportation Funding Act of 2015.
According to Deal, the goals of the plan are to maintain the state’s roads and bridges, to alleviate congestion, and to facilitate the movement of freight traffic. The plan includes an 18-month project list amounting to $2.2 billion in spending, as well as a 10-year list of planned projects expected to cost another $10 billion.
A new accountability tool was also announced. The tool, available on www.garoads.org, will allow Georgians to track spending and progress on the projects.
Short-Term and Long-Term Plans
The projects included on the 18-month list will result in the resurfacing of almost 2,500 miles of roads, the replacement of over 100 bridges, and the rehabilitation of more than 300 bridges. The longer-term, 10-year plan will focus on infrastructure improvements along Georgia’s major interstates. Additionally, 109 intersections will undergo improvements, and 36 stretches of highway will be widened from two lanes to four.
The 10-year plan includes:
- Adding managed toll express lanes to the top end of I-285 from I-20 to I-20, and on Ga. 400 at McGinnis Ferry Road north to Forsyth County
- Interchange reconstruction at I-285 and I-20
- Widening of I-85 in Gwinnett and Jackson Counties
- A new truck-only lane on I-75 from Macon to McDonough
- Reconstruction of the interchange where I-95 and I-16 come together outside Savannah.
The new truck-only lane and the Savannah project—thanks to its proximity to the Port of Savannah—will be a boon to truckers, industry publication Transport Topics notes.
Funding the Plan
The Transportation Funding Act is raising the money to finance these projects through a number of revenue-generating provisions, including:
- Replacement of the state sales tax on motor fuels with an excise tax of 26 cents per gallon on gasoline (from the current level of 19.3 cents) and 29 cents a gallon on diesel.
- A new, annual user fee on electric vehicles of $200 for personal vehicles and $300 for commercial vehicles. Additionally, electric vehicles will lose the $5,000 tax credit the General Assembly implemented in the late 1990s.
- Elimination of a sales tax exemption on purchases of jet fuel (an exemption that has mainly gone to Delta Air Lines).
- A $5-per-night, statewide hotel-motel tax.
- For trucks, a “heavy impact” road-user fee of $50 or $100 a year, depending on the weight of the truck.
To save costs, some or all of the plan’s larger projects will be built through public-private partnerships, a strategy that has proven successful for the overhaul of I-285/GA 400 interchange and the Northwest Corridor express lane project at I-575/I-75. The public-private, design-build approach to the I-285/GA 400 project resulted in a bid that was $300 million less than expected.
Gov. Deal claims that every dollar spent on these projects will generate four dollars in return. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that implementation of the plan will generate 13,000 short-term jobs per year, Deal says.
The Georgia DOT has already approved much of the transportation plan and was just awaiting funding, Transport Topics reports. The Georgia Assembly is expected to approve the plan in the coming weeks.
Whence Transit?
Some have criticized the transportation plan for failing to allocate funding for transit projects. But the Transportation Funding Act did not include transit, the money for which flows through another division of the GDOT, the intermodal division. The proposed plan for expanding MARTA, however, has been addressed in another piece of legislation, Senate Bill 313. The bill allows any local government that has a contract for rapid transit with MARTA and is currently at a 1% MARTA sales tax (Clayton, Fulton, DeKalb) to impose an additional half-penny sales tax as long as voters approve it in a local referendum. An ordinance must then be adopted by June 30, 2016. This extra funding would help to facilitate the proposed MARTA expansion that could potentially double the rapid transit system.
In a surprise move, however, the legislation was sent to the State and Local Governmental Operations Committee, which is chaired by North Fulton Senator John Albers (R), who has been a vocal critic of the MARTA plan. Consequently, the bill may never make it out of the committee. Presumably in response to this maneuver, Senator Brandon Beach (R), who introduced Senate Bill313, introduced a nearly identical piece of legislation, Senate Bill 330.
Whatever the legislation’s fate, MARTA must submit a preliminary list of rapid transit projects by May 31st of the referendum year to the participating local government within or serving the geographical boundaries, as well as a final list by July 31st. If approved by the voters, MARTA and the local government that incorporates the final list of projects will enter into a contract to execute those projects.
Blog contributed by Trevor Smith, Vice President, Cresa Atlanta. Trevor specializes in office and industrial tenant representation for clients across Atlanta. For more information, please contact Trevor at 404.446.1571 or tasmith@cresa.com.
