Transportation Committee Narrows List

The Executive Committee of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable, tasked with creating a list of $6.14 billion worth of transportation projects for a potential one-penny sales tax, has not quite finished the job yet.

The group met Thursday at the Atlanta Regional Commission office, with the hopes of drafting a final list of recommended projects to turn in to the larger Roundtable. They whittled it down to $6.56 billion—then decided to call a special meeting on Monday to make some final decisions.

Monday is, by law, the deadline for presenting the final recommendations.

“We have made tremendous progress, starting with a $23 billion list of regional transportation priorities and working cooperatively to make some hard decisions to whittle it down to this level,” said Roundtable Executive Committee Chair, Bucky Johnson, Mayor of Norcross.

Johnson said in a released statement that they would take the time necessary to get the very best list in front of voters for the Transportation Investment Act referendum, which will be on the ballot in 2012.

High-dollar transit projects, like $100 million for the I-85 North Transit Corridor, are on the working list. Currently, about half of the projects are transit oriented. “We’re just looking at projects that make sense,” said Johnson, mentioning that they are not aiming for a strict 50-50 balance of transit and road projects. 

Yesterday, Gov. Nathan Deal announced that discussion will take place at the specially called legislative session about moving the vote to November. The original date for the referendum was July 15.