Voting NO is the way to go

The following column was recently published in the Marietta Daily Journal

By Lance Lamberton

Despite all the hype about this year’s presidential election, it is easy for down ballot issues to get drowned out amidst all the hoop and holler. And in no place is that more true than right here in Cobb County, which is facing the single largest and longest tax increase in the county’s history. I refer specifically to the mis-named Mobility SPLOST, a ballot initiative in this upcoming election which seeks to raise $11 billion in additional tax revenue by raising our sales tax by 17% over the next 30 years! No. That is no exaggeration. And all for the purpose of expanding mass transit service in a place where demand for mass transit has declined by 73% over the past 11 years.

What this proposal seeks to do is turn back the hands of time and bring us to a romanticized and bucolic era when most of us got around by walking, horseback (if you were well to do) or public transportation. Those nostalgic for such a past look with disdain at the private automobile and bewail our dependence on the car, failing to recognize that it is independence and freedom of movement that is its true legacy.

National trends all point to less and less dependence on public transit, and more and more on personal autonomy and the promise of emerging technologies reducing travel times, lowering costs and improving public safety. Let’s look at just a few of these emerging trends documented by a Cato Institute paper entitled Transit: The Urban Parasite.

• Most low-income workers have given up on transit as a method of commuting and have purchased cars.
• Energy efficiency of cars are increasing, while declining for transit due to declining ridership.
• Transit uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than cars transporting the same number of people.
• Expanding public transit will not reduce congestion, save energy, reduce pollution, or efficiently promote economic development. In fact, in all those instances it will do exactly the opposite.
• A 30 minute commute by car would access four times as many jobs as a 60 minute transit ride.
• Owning a car is more helpful in getting and keeping a job than getting a high school diploma.
• Per capita transit usage peaked in 1920 at 287 trips per year per urban resident to 37 trips in 2019.
• In many cities, like Atlanta, public transit service increased by 13 percent but lost 12 percent of its riders.
• Despite massive increases in spending on mass transit, ridership has continued to trend downward, year after year, and decade after decade.

As to specific concerns in Cobb with the proposed transit expansion, proponents love to brag on the fact that they would provide signal priority and give special treatment for transit vehicles at signalized intersections. That may be great for the one percent or so of the population that ever uses mass transit, but for the 99% of the rest of us who will continue to use our cars regardless of whether this measure passes, it means longer commute times as thousands of us wait in our cars while a handful of us are granted special treatment.

The county’s proposal is also fraught with a lack of specifics and data on which the voter can make an informed decision. It talks about their proposal “tailored to meet the specific needs of our growing community.” Who is this tailor and what are his recommended measurements? What are the specific needs being addressed? Have they given us a number of people whose needs will be addressed who currently are having their “needs” unmet? Mum is the word.

And how much will this boondoggle cost the average household? When you go into a car dealership you want to know how much a car will cost before you buy it. Shouldn’t the county provide us with that cost, especially after asking us to fork it over for the next 30 years? I have asked the county that question repeatedly, but can never get an answer.

Lack of specifics is also a concern regarding where the new bus lines will be built. If not on existing roadways then eminent domain will have to be invoked where the county could incur costs greater than the revenues available to build them, not to mention the disruption to private businesses and their customers.

But I guess the quote that most encapsulates the fact that transit tax proponents have no idea what their brave new world will look like was the quote by its foremost champion, Board of Commissioner Chairwoman, Lisa Cupid, who said in this paper: “We hope congestion wouldn’t be made much worse with transit.”

Well keep on hoping Lisa. I’m just hoping that most of will do the right thing and just say NO.

Lance Lamberton is the Chairman of the Cobb Taxpayers Association; one of the groups that have mobilized to defeat the M-SPLOST currently on this year’s ballot.