Long story short, T-SPLOST is some convoluted acronym for some government proposed program that would raise taxes by one percent in several counties surrounding Metro Atlanta, with all those funds supposedly going to a variety of transportation projects that would in theory “un-handcuff” Atlanta from the traffic apocalypse everyone seems to think Atlanta is. The voting for whether or not it would pass was on the 31st.
Well, it failed. Apparently it failed pretty miserably. I am glad it failed.
Now before I get accused for being a Jew and/or a racist, let me explain: I don’t trust government. It has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want to spend 1% more on everything, not at all. I just don’t believe for a second that the already-suspect government officials of the state, and city of Atlanta won’t be pocketing some of this money somewhere down the line, and it’s on principle that I don’t want them to even have that opportunity. Furthermore, I think I’m smarter than Atlanta traffic; I can work around it, and I don’t want to pay for those who can’t. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels that way. So I’m glad the program failed.
1% doesn’t sound like a lot of money, and honestly, it really isn’t. But kind of like in Office Space, it kind of ends up turning into a large-scale salami slicing scheme. Even if T-SPLOST passed, took effect and a whole bunch of transportation projects started, completed, and actually did some good. What next? It’s like the current state of airline travel; when the fuel crises hit, they jacked up prices and began charging for checked luggage. When the fuel crisis stabilized somewhat, those fees didn’t go away; hell no, the airlines had gotten used to making that much money, and they sure as shit didn’t want to forfeit it. I see T-SPLOST doing the same thing; this 1% tax hike would never go away without some drastic opposition. So it’s best that it never gets a chance to take effect in the first place.
Georgia State Route 400 is a great example of how this would turn out if T-SPLOST passed. The 50 cent toll at the southern point of the road was technically only supposed to exist for a set amount of time, in order to pay for itself, but it turned out that it paid for itself pretty quickly once it began such a major vein of transportation. Did the toll go away? Of course not. It remained for years, and the estimated 120,000 cars that passed by it on any given work day meant that the state was making close to $60,000 every single day. They repave GA-400 on an annual basis to give a transparent college try at justifying the retaining of the toll, but people aren’t stupid, the state just wasn’t ready to forfeit that kind of daily bank. The toll was finally announced to be going away after 2013, but because it happened to be just two weeks ago, right before the voting of T-SPLOST, it was easily identified as a strategic ploy to try to win the good graces of the Metro Atlanta citizens and coerce them to vote YES on T-SPLOST. Much like T-SPLOST, it failed, and now the city will have the (sort of) luxury of being able to take GA-400 for free come 2014.
Wow, did I go off on a tangent there.
I’m glad that the whole T-SPLOST plan failed, but what amuses me the most is the very liberal frame of mind that feels that this was some sort of crushing defeat for progression, and that T-SPLOST was some sort of great hope at making the whole city a traffic-less oasis.
One thing I really liked was the idea that T-SPLOST would create all sorts of rail options in parts of the city that didn’t have mass transit. One side felt that mass transit is a greener alternative to driving, which is valid, but the main opposition were those who felt that mass transit also assists in spreading crime to parts of cities that don’t have mass transit. As someone who personally saw witnessed the rapid and gradual degradation that the Springfield-Franconia Metro did to Springfield Mall, I don’t have to explain which side of the argument I am on.
The funny thing is that I don’t deny that Atlanta is a city that certainly has its bad traffic problems, but at the same time, it takes a retard to not adapt and find ways to work around it and manage to flourish. There’s that line about the true mark of insanity is trying something the same way over and over again, and expecting different results? That’s clearly the mindset of people who thought T-SPLOST was a good idea. And these are the same people who resign themselves to sit in the same predictable traffic hot-spots on a daily basis, instead of trying to figure something else out.
In fact, I have it worse, because I commute from outside the city. Regardless of that, I don’t sit in traffic nearly as bad as I used to when I had a job in a poor location. But now that I’ve got a fairly normalized routine, I scoff and a laugh at Atlanta traffic, and the deadbeats that choose to sit in it like saps. Don’t get me wrong, there are occasional days where an unexpected wreck, or something unprepared happens on the road, which sometimes leads to some crippling traffic, but these are typically events that don’t happen on a normal basis. Otherwise, I have a fairly reduced-stress series of routes and back roads to try, not to mention occasionally car-pooling with Jen.
But that’s just it; if T-SPLOST passed, then savvy, adaptable, resourceful commuters like myself are the ones who get boned, because now we have to endure the 1% tax hike because everyone else is fucking stupid. T-SPLOST passing is the equivalent of caving in to stupidity.
T-SPLOST and anything like T-SPLOST aren’t ever needed; people just need to learn how to adapt, learn how to read a map, get some better spatial understanding, and just in general, use their fucking heads. Atlanta traffic isn’t crippling at all, unless you let it cripple you. And to let that happen is truly the mark of stupidity.
