ATLANTA — Just when it appeared that major funding of passenger rail was dead for the year in the Georgia General Assembly, its backers have found an inventive way to keep the issue alive, the Savannah Morning News reports.
The $16.1 billion 2003 budget that goes to the Senate floor today contains $12 million inserted by the upper chamber’s Appropriations Committee to launch a planned commuter-rail line linking Atlanta and Macon.
With the federal commitment to 80 percent of the cost, that state taxpayers’ share would cost $60 million for the project, which carries a projected price tag of about $325 million.
“We want to signal that we’d like to move this forward,” said Sen. Robert Brown, D-Macon, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that recommended the money.
While the Atlanta-to-Macon line would serve middle Georgia, it also plays a crucial role in planning for a passenger-rail network that would crisscross the state.
Routes linking the Georgia capital with such cities as Savannah, Albany and Jacksonville, Fla., would go through Macon. And a proposed commuter-rail line between Atlanta and Athens won’t be built until the Macon route because the latter is a notch higher on the state’s priority list.
Passenger-rail funding had seemed to be on hold for this year when lawmakers approved a 2002 mid-year budget that limited state investment to about $2.6 million to buy property for a bus-train terminal in downtown Atlanta. Funding for major capital projects in Georgia tends to come from bonds included in the mid-year budget. But the subcommittee found a different source for the money: the state’s share of the nationwide tobacco settlement.
Since the settlement’s inception several years ago, Georgia has set aside a portion of the funding for economic development, based on the argument that weaning Americans from smoking will mean helping tobacco farmers and factory workers find other means of making a living.
The American Lung Association of Georgia, which has spoken out against tobacco-settlement money being used for economic development instead of smoking prevention, sees a connection between lung disease and passenger-rail service.
“Taking cars off the road improves air quality,” said June Deen, spokesman for the association. Arthur Vaughn, executive director of the Georgia Rail Passenger Authority, said the first priorities for the money would be completing the engineering work along the proposed corridor and undertaking the major upgrades that would be needed, including replacing track and building a new signal system and crossing protections.
If the funding proposal survives today’s vote, Brown and other supporters still would have to convince Gov. Roy Barnes and the House to go along with it.
Although the $8.3 billion transportation initiative Barnes unveiled last year includes more than $440 million for the Atlanta-to-Macon rail line, the governor has been cautious about jumping into the project. For one thing, the state and freight-rail carrier Norfolk Southern Corp. haven’t reached an agreement on sharing the corridor.
Rep. Terry Coleman, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is a supporter of passenger rail.
But Tuesday, Coleman, D-Eastman, said he’d rather see Amtrak — the nation’s passenger-rail operator — take the lead on the Atlanta-to-Macon line. Several Amtrak-reauthorization bills pending in Congress call for connecting Atlanta with Jacksonville via Macon.
“Amtrak could do all of the negotiating (with Norfolk Southern), the track upgrades and the crossing studies,” Coleman said.
The money’s fate could be clear within days. After today’s Senate vote, the budget will go to a House-Senate conference committee. A final version of the spending plan could be back for a vote as early as Monday.