Category Archives: T-SPLOST

Public Transportation recommended by Industrial Authority’s Community Assessment

Perusing the

Community Assessment for Lowndes County
sponsored by Georgia Power and prepared by Janus Economics
for the Industrial Authority, I noticed on page 28 under Recommendations:

There is a plan for a public transportation system


in Valdosta-Lowndes
County but it currently lacks funding for implementation. Under current
budget constraints it will be difficult to implement such a project,
but businesses in the industrial parks and outlying areas may want to
implement a limited transportation system if they discover that employee
attendance is an issue.

Also on page 9 of the corresponding

presentation slides under Product Recommendations:

Continue reading →

T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn report by Matt Portwood

Received this morning. -jsq

Today’s [yesterday now]
T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn was the final event in the city’s

community planning month. The event was hosted by Corey Hull who taught
the basics of the state’s 1% transportation sales tax. Hull’s
powerpoint presentation was apparently the same one he’d spoken on
several times before. As a result there was no new information. However,
the presentation was revealing to me, as I’ve not been following the
state’s T-SPLOST plans.

Hull spoke for roughly 40 minutes then opened the floor for Q&A. The
audience quickly split between enthusiastic supporters and opponents. One
supporter, a member of the Berrien County Chamber of Commerce vented her
frustration over the number of businesses that will be leaving her county
due to crumbling roads and out of touch freight centers. As she argued,
T-SPLOST would allow a smaller community like Nashville to reduce the need
for its citizens to travel to Valdosta to shop, providing a much needed
boost to the local economy. One man, a strong opponent of the tax plan,
described it as simply a “redistribution of wealth.” As he explained,
if the T-SPLOST plan were to pass following the July 2012 vote it would
only hurt local business owners. Furthermore he claimed that if local
municipalities were to take responsibility for state and federal highway
management, local governments would retain the costs in the long term.

Hull seemed reluctant to challenge either audience member. Instead he
focused on highlighting the basics of the plan. This included explaining
the basics of the 75% regional revenue pot and the 25% local discretionary
pot. The approved project list that Hull passed out included plans
for improvements to the Five Points intersection, a St. Augustine Road
overpass, and widening of Jerry Jones Road. Hull explained that this
would include both Jerry Jones and Eager Road. I asked Hull about Larry
Hanson’s statement concerning the City of Valdosta’s rule that all
road widening projects include a bike lane. Corey Hull explained that
the road improvements to Jerry Jones would include a bike lane which
would link to the lanes already on Melody Lane and Lankford Dr. This
would create a bike lane from St. Augustine Road to N. Oak Street.

-Matt

Corey’s slides are on the SGRC web pages.
The problem with T-SPLOST is that it forces communities like Nashville
and Valdosta to all vote on projects that don’t have much relation, with
penalities for not voting yes.
The mayor of Nashville is the chair of the steering committee, and even he
complained that if they didn’t turn in a list of projects by a given time,
there was a penalty for that.
These penalties are reductions in state transportation funding for other
existing projects.
For that matter, why should the Jerry Jones bike lane be tied to the
Old US 41 N widening boondoggle

that went from $8M to $12M in two months?
No one will tell us who raised it or why,
nor who made all these other
wild swings in estimated costs.


Meanwhile

$7.5M for a bus system
from Wiregrass Tech to southside, from Moody to the Mall, by way of VSU,
VHS, and LHS, has vanished from the list.

Anyway, regarding yesterday’s event, according to Corey Hull, the City
of Valdosta was going to video it and Corey will advertise when it will
appear on the City’s TV channel. For those of us who don’t get
that channel, there is some unknown level of possibility the videos
may be on the web.

-jsq

T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn today at SGRC

There’s a Lunch and Learn about T-SPLOST at noon today at the

SGRC offices:

327 W. Savannah Ave

Valdosta, GA 31601

Phone: (229)333-5277

FAX: (229)333-5312

Corey Hull says they’re almost full.
However, the presentation is

already on the SGRC web pages.
The City of Valdosta will be videoing the event.
Once Corey knows when it will be televised on the City’s TV channel,
SGRC will advertise that.
There’s also some unknown level of possibility that the videos
may be made available on the web.

-jsq

Corrected T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes

Received this morning. Many thanks to Corey Hull and SGRC for sending this correction. -jsq

John,

I reviewed your question, and that project had an error in it, I am
attaching a new spreadsheet, that is slightly revised. It includes the
TIA funding with inflation so that it matches the other project sheets
that we have handed out at the public meetings

I am sorry about the confusion this has caused.

Sincerely,

Corey

Corey Hull, AICP

MPO Coordinator

Valdosta-Lowndes MPO

This corrects the earlier post.

The corrected spreadsheet he sent is
on the LAKE website
in Excel spreadsheet and HTML versions.

In the HTML version, I have added three columns.


Name is taken from the

Unconstrained Project Listing.
Difference and Diff% were computed from
the Original total Cost Estimate and the Updated Total Cost Estimate.

The project descriptions may be found in the
unconstrained and constrained project lists.
More later.

-jsq

T-SPLOST Southern Region Cost Changes

Update 6:30 PM 26 September 2011: Please see the corrected version received from Corey Hull today. -jsq

Received yesterday from Corey Hull, with this cover sheet message,
responding to my request in the T-SPLOST public meeting Monday.

John,

In the attached spreadsheet you will find the each project associated
with four columns: the original estimate, the updated estimate, the TIA
funding (any difference from the TIA and updated cost estimate is a
secondary funding source i.e. federal, state, or local), and whether
that project is currently included in the constrained list.

GDOT provided the updated costs estimates (based on current GDOT bids)
and in some cases those estimates were further revised by GDOT and the
local governments where appropriate. All project scopes remained the
same with the exception of RC11-000049 and RC11-000042 (highlighted in
yellow), these project termini were changed significantly.

I hope this answers your questions, let me know if you have any more.

Corey

Corey Hull, AICP

MPO Coordinator

Valdosta-Lowndes MPO

327 W. Savannah Ave.

Valdosta, GA 31601

Visit our Facebook Site!

229.333.5277

229.300.0922 (c)

229.333.5312 (f)

chull@sgrc.us


www.sgrc.us/transportation

The spreadsheet he sent is
on the LAKE website
in Excel spreadsheet and HTML versions.
If you want to know what the projects are, you need to look at the
unconstrained and constrained project lists.
More later.

-jsq

T-SPLOST public meeting in Valdosta Monday morning 19 September 2011

The next

T-SPLOST public meeting is tomorrow morning:

Monday, September 19, 2011; 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.; at the Valdosta
City Hall Annex; 300 North Lee Street, Valdosta, Georgia; presentation
will begin at 10:30 a.m.

These meetings are intended to gather public input:

After the public meetings the Roundtable will reconvene to review the
public comments and adopt a final Constrained List that will be presented
on the ballot to voters in 2012.

If you can’t go to the meeting, you can send in the

public comment form
or email Corey Hull at the SGRC.

I don’t know what you might want to comment on,
but a couple of things that come to my mind are:

-jsq

Lowndes County: commuter rail hub

Look at all those other railroads converging on Valdosta in



that GFRR project proposal map.
Valdosta is a historical rail hub for passenger traffic to Atlanta,
Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Thomasville, Tallahasssee, and
beyond. All the tracks are still in place and still in use for freight.
With some rolling stock and a few deals with the railroads, Valdosta
and Lowndes County could become again a passenger rail hub with a mass
transit system for local commuting to jobs and for long distance travel.



Add

a bus system and local commuting becomes very practical.
People could take the train to town and catch a bus to work.
Many people could walk or take a bicycle to their work from the
train station.
This could work the other way around, too.
People could live in Valdosta and work in Ray City or Lakeland or
Hahira or Lake Park or Clyattville and not have to drive to get there.
That would save

a lot of wasted time and wasted fuel.

This kind of mass transit would attract the knowledge-based workers
we supposedly want around here.


Including jobs our high school and college graduates could take,
so they wouldn’t have to move elsewhere.

And upgrading the railroads, building stations, building
and refurbishing houses and apartments near the stations, etc.,
would employ a lot of construction workers;
probably as many as road projects and sprawling subdivision projects,
but without the sprawl.

-jsq

Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) – Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation $6.25 million T-SPLOST

Now here’s a T-SPLOST project I like:
upgrading the railroad that runs


from Valdosta to Moody AFB
and on to Ray City and Nashville in Berrien County,
and Willacoochee in Atkinson County.
This proposal is to aid freight, but with this upgrade to the track,
the same track would be even more readily usable for passenger rail.
That same track was used for passenger travel up into the 1950s.
My mother used to catch the train at Barretts (just north of Moody) to go visit her relatives in Pearson (a bit east of Willacoochee).

It’s true the project sheet talks about “potential customers in the region”:

This project will provide for more efficient train operations along
the rail corridor to accommodate the increase rail traffic serving the
existing and potential customers in the region.

However, rail promotes development in existing population
centers and at stations, unlike all along automobile roadways.

This project is also another example of how
the economic area of Moody AFB includes

Continue reading →

$12M to widen US 41 N is more than $7.5M for a bus system

There is no public transit in Lowndes County, except for the
tiny MIDS bus system (I like it, but it’s small).
Meanwhile,
the county proposes to spend more in a new sales tax to widen one road,

$12 million dollars for Old US 41 North,
than

a bus system would cost, $7.5 million.

One short stretch of road vs. a three-line bus system to connect Wiregrass Tech, Five Points, Downtown,
Moody, East Side, South Side, West Side, and the Mall.

Road and bridge proponents usually mutter that a bus system won’t pay back
for years, if ever.
And that’s right: bus systems usually operate at a loss because local
governments subsidize them for the social and economic benefits they bring,

such as these:

This project will provide mobility options for all travelers; improve
access to employment; and help mitigate congestion and maximize the use
of existing infrastructure by promoting high-occupancy travel.

Employment, safety, and less sprawl, all from a bus system.

What road and bridge proponents don’t ever mention is:

Continue reading →

Public comment form on T-SPLOST Roundtable

Received today on

T-SPLOST meeting in Waycross today. -jsq



The SGRC website has been updated to correct the error for the public
comment form. Thank you for letting us know and helping to spread the
word about these public meetings.

-Southern Georgia Regional Commission

The correction has

this new link to the form.
The form says:


Public Comment Form

Southern Georgia Regional Transportation Roundtable

and asks for your name, address, phone, email, and your comments.
I bet you could email that information if you don’t want to print
out the form and write on it.
The
public notice about the regional T-SPLOST meetings said:

Comments are being accepted by email at chull@sgrc.us, by fax at
229-333-5212, or by mailing them to SGRC, ATTN: SG RTR, 327 W Savannah
Ave., Valdosta, GA 31601.

For more information please call Corey Hull at 229-333-5277.

-jsq