“We need to start thinking regionally here in the coastal north of Georgia. The numerous projects budding up throughout this region require us to lift our horizons a bit and start thinking laterally in a way I don’t think we’ve done before.”
Dec. 2, 2023 – On Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending the Georgia Transportation Summit in Athens as an extracurricular part of my duties as a Chatham Area Transit board member. The event by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia brought together road, runway, river, and rail engineers from around the state.
I’m writing this at a little coffee shop in Athens the morning after and about to get on the road, but I wanted to take some time to put my thoughts down and share some insights from the event.
First thing to consider is the organizer and the audience. The ACEC is an association of engineering companies – these are folks in the business of the study, design, construction, management, and delivery of transportation projects such as roads, roundabouts, bridges, bus terminals, rail systems, interchanges and more. Some companies specialize in just the study and design part and some companies can tackle the whole enchilada.
Advertise with Savannah Agenda
Many of these types of large infrastructure projects are paid for with public funds either at a federal, state or local level, and sometimes a mix of all three. These projects are also wildly expensive, regularly costing tens of millions of dollars, very often hundreds of millions.
You also might be surprised to learn that the government doesn’t just write a check for $100 million dollars and hand it over. The procurement, management and delivery of these projects is seriously complicated and designed to ensure the public gets the best bang for its buck while minimizing corruption and receiving the safest product possible built in the most careful and equitable way. That is a tough equation to balance. Multiply that by projects measured in miles and you start to see why the Georgia Department of Transportation’s 2024 budget is $3.8 billion.
We need to start thinking regionally here in the coastal north of Georgia. The numerous projects budding up throughout this region require us to lift our horizons a bit and start thinking laterally in a way I don’t think we’ve done before. We are a gateway. One that will continue to grow and need critical and creative thinking to supply the power, people, and pathways in a way that strengthens and enriches our communities. Take interest, take action, and be kind.
The summit was broken into two parts; a morning general session and in the afternoon three mini breakout sessions. I’ll break down my day and thoughts the same way.
General Session
- Anna Roach, CEO of the Atlanta Regional Commission
- Balram Bheodari, General Manager of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
- Collie Greenwood, General Manager & CEO of MARTA
- Ed McCarthy, COO of Georgia Ports Authority
- Janine Miller, Executive Director of ATL, GRTA, and SRTA
- Russell McMurry, Commissioner of GDOT
The day opened with short presentations from all six heads of Georgia’s major transportation systems and then an hour-long panel discussion between them.
A couple highlights:
- Savannah was quite the topic of interest! Area projects such as the port, the Hyundai Metaplant, the bridge raising, and the I-95 at I-16 interchange comprised about 20% of the overall conversation during this session.
- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the port is a MAMMOTH.
- The port wants to operate with an extra 20% capacity at any given time. The increase in shipments during the pandemic took that extra capacity away and they are working overtime to get it back.
- Port projects: Trans-shipment facility is complete. Ocean Terminal renovations are happening now. The new Hutchinson Island Terminal is currently in permitting with construction expected to start in two years. I’ll be doing little videos on all of these.
- During the group panel each member really pressed how much time they spent cooperating with each other. MARTA getting people to and from the airport, GPA working with GDOT to raise the bridge, GDOT working with the airport to better design roadway access, the list goes on and on.
While these folks were talking, I realized that I was looking at a group of six people who over the next couple years will spend over $10 billion dollars in public funds on operations, maintenance and new construction.
Breakout Session: Best Practices for Utilizing Federal Funds
Federal funds are a big part of transportation budgets anywhere in America – Georgia is no exception. Federal funds are typically dispersed two ways: formula funding and grant funding. Formula funding uses data such as population, ridership, density, etc. to deliver consistent funding to state and local agencies year after year. Grant funding is for one time construction projects or studies and must be applied for each time.
Chatham Area Transit (CAT) gets both types of funding from the Federal Transit Administration and I’ve come to see firsthand the importance and complexity of managing these kinds of funds. Procuring services (engineering, construction, studies, etc) is delicate, time-consuming, and I’ll just let this flowchart from the presentation speak for itself:
Photograph by Clinton Edminster – A flowchart above my paygrade explaining how to manage public money.
Breakout Session: Georgia’s Electric Transportation Future
Georgia wants to be the electric vehicle capital of America. I’m interested to see how that works! The Rivian and Hyundai plants are obviously a big part of that momentum but building electric vehicles and having a considerable percentage of traffic actually being electric are different things.
President Biden’s two major infrastructure bills also have quite a bit of funding for helping states close gaps on electric charging infrastructure. Most of the time at this presentation was focused on talking about that.
At the end someone made a point about our electric grid and our transportation network really becoming entangled, almost to the point of becoming one massive electro-transportation system. The amount of energy that will need to shift from liquid fuels to electric is simply huge and that transition will have a big impact on every aspect of our lives.
Breakout Session: Funding Opportunities for Local Government Transportation Projects
The last session of the day for me was focused on local funding options. I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about local taxes than I ever wanted to by being on the CAT board and one that I was very focused on was the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST). What a cute name for a tax! TSPLOST, ESPLOST, and plain old SPLOST all need to be voted on by a public referendum and last year attempts by Chatham County and Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce to pass a local TSPLOST did not pan out.
I’ve got my ideas as to why it didn’t but I’ll sum it up to a simple lack of engagement with the public about how TSPLOST works, what it would fund, and how it would help the community. I also believe it helped subsidize sprawl in our community and I hope that next time we can work a little closer together with stakeholders to develop a smarter, more impactful TSPLOST plan.
It’s interesting to note that we are surrounded by counties that ARE collecting TSPLOST pennies right now and most of central Georgia is as well.
Photograph by Clinton Edminster: Blue is single county TSPLOST, green is regional TSPLOST and white is counties that are not currently collecting TSPLOST.
Downtown Athens
After the summit I wandered into Downtown Athens and explored a bit before getting a fantastic burger at Clocked. Highly recommend them if you’re in Athens – great vibe. Here’s a couple photos I took and some short commentary:
Photograph by Clinton Edminster: Parklets! I saw about three of these on my walk. Each parklet was well built and of a similar design with railings, a ramp, and heavy duty seating. It took up about four parking spaces and later into the evening most of them were well seated.
Photograph by Clinton Edminster: All the bus stops had large system wide maps of the entire fixed route system. Let’s do this! CAT is currently working on an audit of all 1,800+ bus stops in our system and once that’s complete I’d like to work on getting this done.
Photograph by Clinton Edminster: Small example of public art really added some fantastic texture to the street. This project was installed in 2022 and was such a wonderful surprise to find!
Photograph by Clinton Edminster: This is a parking garage with ground floor retail! There’s capacity for hundreds of cars in here but the structure doesn’t take away from street level activation – it adds to it! I talked to some of these store owners and it’s interesting to note that the front door is the only door. There is no back door into the parking garage. I don’t know if we have any parking garages with ground floor retail in them in Savannah but could some of them be renovated to add it? Probably!
Clinton Edminster is the owner and founder of Starlandia Creative Supply and Waters Cafe and a board member of Chatham Area Transit, the Downtown Business Association, and TEDxSavannah. An avid infrastructure and public systems enthusiast, he’s been spending his spare time exploring our built environment and the policies and people that make it happen.
#StayEngagedSavannah
If you find value in this website, please consider contributing via Paypal to help cover the costs. You can also send contributions via Venmo @Savannah_Agenda. Your support, no matter how much you give, is appreciated and will help ensure the future viability of this community resource. You can also show your support by sharing Savannah Agenda with others via email or social media. Increasing readership is critical to the long-term success of this site.