The urgency of now.

That could be the theme of the Get Georgia Moving Coalition, which held a press conference today in the rotunda of the state capitol.

The coalition, which represents about 100 different organizations advocating for new transportation funding, is hoping that a constructive compromise between the Senate and House bills will emerge this week.

One compromise that’s being floated would first give voters an opportunity to approve a statewide sales tax (vote would likely occur in 2010); and that if that vote failed, then there could be another referendum where voters could approve a regional approach to new transportation funding.

But there’s a problem. If the statewide referendum fails (and it’s far from certain that voters across the state would approve a penny sales tax), it could be as long as 2012 before the Atlanta region could vote on new transportation funding.

So while any compromise would be a step in the right direction, some business leaders are concerned that this compromise could prolong the agony of traffic and congestion.

“The longer we wait, the move expensive it becomes,” said Bill Linginfelter, president of Georgia and South Carolina for Regions Bank and co-chair of the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s transportation committee. “We are in support of a solution this year that leads to a vote in 2010.”

After the press conference, Linginfelter reiterated that the business community believes that a regional sales tax “makes sense for us.”

Doug Hertz, CEO of United Distributors Inc. who is the other co-chair of the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s transportation committee, made it clear that time was of the essence, and that the possibility that there wouldn’t be a regional vote until 2012 was a concern.

“We are not going to be thrilled with having to wait another two years,” Hertz said.

“And that’s an expensive proposition,” Linginfelter chimed in.

But both men don’t want a repeat of last year’s session when the transportation funding bill failed to pass because of three ‘no’ votes in the very last hour of the session.

“We were so close last year,” Linginfelter said. “It was a heart-breaker.”

And if history repeats itself? “We are not going to go away,” Linginfelter said. “This is too big an issue to go away.”

Enough already.

State legislators need to stop trying to take control of MARTA or Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Some legislators just don’t get it. They keep orchestrating plots or plans or bills for the state to take over our largest public transit system and the world’s busiest airport.

These are the same state leaders who have done virtually nothing to support either.

MARTA is the largest transit system in the United States that does not receive financial support from the state.

But are thse state legislators trying to fix that problem? Of course not. All they keep trying to do is find more ways to meddle in the agency’s business.

The ringleader in state control of both MARTA and the airport is Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), who for some reason has made it his mission in life to destroy the notion of local control when it comes to the urban areas of Atlanta.

Among his partners in these hostile takeover attempts have been State Rep. Bob Smith (R-Watkinsville) ,who is the sponsor of House Bill 644 to take over the airport; and State Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), who uses her position as chair of the MARTOC oversight committee as a platform to be a thorn in the agency’s side. In fact, she regularly calls for more state influence over MARTA.

Consider this.

The state of Georgia already has four state officials on its 18-member board: the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation, the executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Association, the Georgia Building Authority and the Revenue Commissioner.

All these state officials have a vote on the MARTA board even though they don’t pay to play.

And MARTOC, the House oversight committee, also oversteps its bounds. It keeps demanding all sorts of records, studies and data from MARTA officials. Chairman Chambers sometimes acts as though she is MARTA’s boss, repeatedly making unfounded accusations against the agency, criticizing its operations and calling its leaders on the carpet.

Again, is Chambers offering the state’s assistance to help in MARTA’s financially-strapped operations? Quite the contrary.

So why does MARTOC even exist?

From what transportation officials can tell, no other transit authority in the country has to answer to a state legislative oversight body unless it’s a state authority.

The only way the state should have any say or oversight of MARTA is if it’s a significant financial contributor. Otherwise, it should stay out of MARTA’s business.

Now I’m not saying that there should be no oversight of MARTA. Quite the contrary. It is one of the most important assets in metro Atlanta, and everything should be done to make sure it is operating efficiently and effectively.

But that oversight belongs to the people in the three governmental jurisdictions that support it: Fulton County, DeKalb County and the city of Atlanta. For nearly 40 years, people living and working in those jurisdictions have been paying a penny sales tax to build and support the system.

Those are the only governments with moral perogative to make sure MARTA is as good as it can be.

So how depressing is it that MARTA has to go begging to the state for the flexibility to be able to spend the money it raises where it’s most needed.

All MARTA has been asking the state is to remove an archaic rule that mandates that the agency split its sales tax — 50 percent for capital improvements and 50 percent for operations. Since MARTA is not expanding, it would like to spend more on its operations.

No other transit system in the country has to live within similar constraints, even where state governments contribute a substantial amount of annual operating support.

In a rational world, the only justifiable move would be for the state to totally divorce itself from any say-so over MARTA’s operations.

Or the state could finally become a true partner with MARTA by providing a substantial financial assistance in the annual operations of our major public transit system. Then, and only then, should the state play any role in the governance and oversight of MARTA.

The argument for the state to take control over Hartsfield-Jackson makes even less sense, if that’s possible.

After all, what role did the state play in the building, financing and development of the airport? None.

It has been the city of Atlanta, under the leadership of multiple mayors including Williams Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson, that had the leadership, took the risks and made the financial investment to create the world’s busiest airport.

And who has benefited by the city of Atlanta’s foresight, commitment and dedication to air travel? The state of Georgia.

Economic development officials will be quick to tell you that, more often than not, the top reason companies move or expand in Georgia is Hartsfield-Jackson. So the ripples of the city of Atlanta’s investment in the airport have been felt throughout the state.

But instead of thanking the city for building and managing the airport, state legislators have repeatedly sought an unfriendly takeover of Hartsfield-Jackson.

It makes no sense. It’s not as if the state has proven to be such a great manager of its entities. Think the Georgia Department of Transportation, widely viewed as a bloated agency that has been unable to deliver projects within budget or within any kind of reasonable timetable.

It’s not just MARTA and the airport. Unfortunately, one could make a similar case about the state’s limited financial role in a host of metro institutions, such as Grady Hospital — a centerpiece of the state’s public health system.

There’s a common theme. In life, there are givers and there are takers.

The state of Georgia is a taker. Under its current leadership, it’s clear that key Georgia leaders just care about power and control rather than doing what’s right for our region and our state.

Until the state begins treating the Atlanta region with economic fairness and until the state becomes a real partner in our future vitality, it should leave us alone.

Enough already.

Dr. Marie Csete, one of the leading stem cell researchers in the country, calls proposed legislation in Georgia to outlaw such research as “nonsense.”

When similar legislation came up a couple of years ago, Dr. Csete vehemently opposed those restrictions. As one of Emory University’s top researchers, she was trying to protect her institution’s position (as well as Georgia’s place) in the field of bioscience.

It should have come as no surprise that Dr. Csete would leave Georgia. She was offered, and took, the job of chief scientific officer of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, based in a state that is investing $3 billion in stem cell research.

I had tried unsuccessfully to reach out to Dr. Csete when I was writing last week’s Maria’s Metro column to get her thoughts about the current proposed legislation.
We finally connected a few days ago, and this is what she shared with me.

“It’s so sad that they’re at this again,” Dr. Csete said. “It’s so backwards. It’s so incredibly anti-data, anti-science and anti-health. It feels like I’m on a different planet here in California.”

Interestingly enough, Dr. Csete said that when she testified against legislation that would restrict stem cell research two years ago, testimony that was well covered in the press, she said that all contact from members of public were supportive of her position.

“My sense is that the public is on a different wave-length than the legislators,” she said. “Across the country, the public is increasingly embracing adult and embryonic stem cell research.”

Dr. Csete said she continues to be concerned about how the state legislature’s actions will damage Georgia’s economic development potential as well as its reputation in the scientific community.

And she believes that if such efforts are successful in Georgia, it will “pull a great deal of the South with it.”

The damage won’t be just economic development, but at our institutions of higher learning.

“From an educational standpoint, Georgia won’t be competitive,” Dr. Csete said. “A graduate biology student is not going to go some place where the tool box is limited.”

Let’s hope our state legislators are listening and that they care about Georgia’s economic future.

The bill limiting stem cell research passed the Georgia Senate a couple of weeks ago, and it is now in the House Science and Technology Committee. Let’s hope that’s where it dies.

The top four Atlanta mayoral candidates had four distinct answers on what the single most important issue they would face as the city’s next mayor.

But the same four candidates seemed to agree with each other while answering most of the other questions posed at a mayoral forum Thursday evening.

The forum was hosted by the Urban Land Institute — Atlanta District Council, at the 999 Peachtree St. building in Midtown. It was ULI’s 4th annual Mayors Forum kicked off by Jeff DuFresne, the Atlanta District’s executive director.

So what will be the most important issue that the next mayor will need to tackle?

Atlanta City Councilman Ceasar Mitchell said it will be the handling of the city’s finances.

“If you’re not focused on finance, you can’t do anything about public safety, the streets or clean water,” Mitchell said.

For Atlanta City Councilwoman Mary Norwood, transportation tops the list, especially from the stand-point of sustainability.

“We’ve got to get our transportation house in order,” Norwood said, adding that it needs to be addressed both inside the city and throughout the region.

State Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) said the key issue will be restoring the city’s finances to pay for police and fire personnel.

“Nothing else matters if you have a city that’s unsafe,” Reed said. If public safety is not addressed, then citizen will move out of the city and visitors will stop coming to Atlanta.

Atlanta attorney Jesse Spikes, a partner with McKenna Long Aldridge, said the most important issue will be management and those who will serve in the next administration.

“You can talk about finances and public safety, when it comes to how we fix that, it really comes down to people,” Spikes said, adding that will take having the best people in place to provide the best services.

Then moderator Otis White of Civic Strategies asked each of the candidates a series of questions on transportation, the Beltline project, the Peachtree corridor, density and urban redevelopment, particularly in struggling areas.

In talking about transportation, Norwood endorsed the city’s first transportation plan — Connect Atlanta.

Reed, who had just come from the legislature, stressed the importance of getting new transportation funding, saying he preferred the Senate’s proposal of a regional one-cent sales tax.

Spikes said that Atlanta’s current transportation problems stem from not having fully implementing MARTA in the 1970s and limiting the service to the city of Atlanta, Fulton and DeKalb counties.

And Mitchell said mobility must begin in neighborhoods by building and repairing sidewalks, which is a responsibility of city government. He also said it was important to seamlessly serve all modes of travel from pedestrians, transit riders to automobile drivers.

All four candidates supported both the Beltline redevelopment as well as the Peachtree Corridor.

Reed, however, said he would like to speed up the timetable for the Beltline rather than having it be a 25-year project. Spikes said needs to upgrade its bond rating so it can better finance these redevelopments. Mitchell said both projects would improve the “connectivity” in Atlanta by offering residents and visitors more transit and housing options. Norwood agreed, especially while talking about the Beltline, but she cautioned that a Peachtree streetcar would be hard to implement particularly in Buckhead and Midtown.

White then asked the candidates whether density was desirable or inevitable.

Spikes said Atlanta must do all it can to preserve its green space, and to do that, the city will need to “tolerate some increased density.”

Mitchell said it really boiled down to having “smart density.” Government benefits when there’s a higher density because there are more taxpayers contributing to the city’s coffers, he said.

Norwood said “density is inevitable,” so it is important for the city to direct new development to under-used commercial corridors and transform those areas into vibrant and walkable communities.

Reed, however, did not view more density as inevitable. If Atlanta doesn’t deal with the issues of public safety and public education, fewer people will want to live in the city.

So what can the next mayor do to guide development towards less desirable communities in the city?

Mitchell praised the use of tax allocation districts (TADs). Norwood said it was important to clean up communities before developers will risk investing in those areas. Reed said the city could create a process that would make it easier for developers to invest in those areas. Lastly, Spikes said developers are willing to take risks building in rougher areas, but the city can create an environment that welcomes the best ideas.

Mitchell did offer one closing suggestion, that developers check out the following city website: www.atlantaemergingmarkets.com to discover new opportunties.

These four candidates currently are viewed as the most serious contenders to succeed Mayor Shirley Franklin.

But that could soon change.

As I report in today’s Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders is expected to announce next week that she is re-entering the mayor’s race.

It’s never easy to make everybody happy, a fact that the Center for Civil and Human Rights may face as its plans come out of the ground.

Just about everyone has an opinion on what should be the focus or purpose of the new center, and it might be hard for one place to encapsulate all the various desires.
That challenge was clear this morning when the architectural team for the center was announced at today’s annual meeting of Central Atlanta Progress.

For the record, the winning team was the Freelon Group, which is based in the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and HOK-Atlanta.

At the press conference after the breakfast, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin credited former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young for urging her to champion the development of a destination that would let the world know the city’s special role in the Civil Rights movement and in global human rights.

Young, one of the stalwarts of the Civil Rights movement who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr., raised a couple of concerns about the new center.

First, he believes that the center should expose the first Civil Rights movement that took place between 1865 and 1890, a chapter of history that few people have been taught.

But Young’s greatest concern was whether the center would address the whole issue of slavery.

“I don’t think we can deal with this Civil Rights movement in isolation. I think somebody has got to find a way to deal with slavery,” said Young, who added that we have yet to heal the wounds of bringing 4.5 million slaves to the United States to help develop the country.

“This city is a living witness to the fact that we don’t have to worry about the horrors of slavery,” Young said. “We can talk about it in a historical, contextural way and have people take slavery out of the closet and admit that these 4.5 million slaves made the difference of prosperity in the United States.”

In one of the funnier moments, Young said that we should not consider the center as a museum. “I don’t like museums,” he said. But he believes the center can become an education experience for those who visit.

“Somewhere we need to tell the whole story, and everyone in the world needs to come to hear this story that’s not being told,” Young said. “It’s the history of humanity, overcoming poverty, ignorance and racism. And it’s about making money. This was a city too busy to hate because it was a city that wanted to make money.”

Doug Shipman, executive director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, told me after the press conference that issues, such as slavery, would be put in an historical context. But he did say there probably will not be a separate exhibit room devoted to slavery.

As envisioned, the center would concentrate on on the movements of civil and human rights from the beginning of the last century and carry those stories to the present.

As I said, it will be hard to make everybody happy.

Every year, Atlanta hosts a conference called “Greenprints” to provide the latest thoughts on planning, architecture, construction and the use of natural resources.

The conference, which is put on by Southface and the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, brings togther the latest technology on green buildings as well as the people who are working to make our communities more sustainable.

The attendance at this year’s two-day conference (March 25-26) is not as great as in the last few years, but Southface executive director, Dennis Creech, was appreciative of the 300 people who registered. The peak attendance was two years ago when about 500 people were registered to attend.

Interestingly enough, the topic of sustainable design is as much in vogue as it has ever been given the priorities of the new administration. President Barack Obama has made energy and sustainability a centerpiece of his agenda.

Those are hopeful signs for Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, who was the keynote speaker at today’s lunch.

Architecture 2030’s goal is to transform the building sector to significantly reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Of all the energy used in the United States, 42 percent goes towards building operations; and another 8 percent is used to construct buildings. The whole transportation sector uses 27 percent of energy while industries make up the rest.

For Mazria, that means that if significant change is going to happen in our country, it needs to begin with the building industry.

Architecture 2030’s goal is to have all new buildings and those that undergo major renovations be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030.

The federal government already signed on to that commitment as have five states and numerous cities, including Atlanta.

But Mazria believes our nation can do even better. He testified in Congress three weeks ago to present a plan of how to jumpstart the building industry while making our structures much more energy efficient.

“We have a window of opportunity,” Mazria said.

The federal government currently is buying mortgage-back securities to keep interest rates low. The lower interest rates are encouraging people to refinance their mortgages. But Mazria is concerned that those savings are not being invested to renovate people’s homes. That means that all these refinancings are not sparking a revival of the housing and construction industry.

Under the plan being proposed by Architecture 2030, the administration would offer interest rate incentives for people who are willing to make their homes more carbon neutral.

For example, a retrofitted home that was able to have a 70 percent reduction in energy would receive a 3 percent interest rate, while a new home would get a 3.5 percent interest rate.

A homeowner then would have a financial incentive to make their houses more energy efficient by provide both a savings in energy costs and mortgage payments. At the same time, the building industry would become engaged by renovating or building homes that would meet those standards.

“Things are moving quickly, and they will move more quickly now given what the new administration wants to accomplish,” Mazria said. “We have a huge opportunity to create jobs and bring the housing sector back.”

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, during her annual address at the Rotary Club of Atlanta on Monday, let it be known that Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is in good hands under the city’s control.

She also said she hopes the city will finish the year in the black, despite the current economic climate.

Rotarian R.K. Sehgal asked the mayor how she felt about some Georgia legislators exploring ways for the state to takeover Hartsfield-Jackson.

While not mentioning the threat directly, Franklin made it clear the city is doing just fine running the airport and working with its major airlines to renegotiate the master lease agreement.

“I expect that by the end of the year, we’ll have a master lease agreement,, a fair and equitable agreement,” Franklin said.

Franklin said that Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson and AirTran CEO Bob Fornaro want to negotiate a new agreement with Hartsfield-Jackson because they like flying out of Atlanta.

“Atlanta is the cheapest place for airlines to fly in America,” Franklin said. “It also is one of the most efficient airports.”

But negotiating a new master lease agreement is complex.

“As we move forward, the question is what kind of relationship we want for the future,” Franklin said. “I will assure you there are very productive conversations underway. We are on track, and it is precisely because (the airport) is a good place to do business.”

She then said Hartsfield-Jackson is the result of a “series of city leaders over 80 years who have made a series of decisions” that has turned a little crop duster airport into the largest airport in the world.

“How did it get developed? Who provided the leadership? How did it get financing? Franklin asked rhetorically, clearly pointed questions for state leaders. She then wondered why some leaders were focusing their efforts on the airport rather than spending their time dealing with real problems, such as transportation.

Asked about the city budget, Franklin said she knew in January, 2008 that the downturn was coming and tried to prepare for it. The first sign was when the city’s sales tax revenues fell flat instead of growing at least 4 percent a year.

The city ended up with a deficit in its last fiscal year, and Franklin attributed part of the reason to the fact she couldn’t get the Atlanta City Council to support a proposed property tax increase.

The city now has implemented furloughs and other cutbacks in its operations.

“We believe we will finish the year on June 30th in the black,” Franklin said. In fact, she mentioned that there might be a surplus.

“We now have a policy that if we have a fund balance at the end of the year, that it will go into a rainy day fund, which the city has never had,” Franklin said.

When I was growing up, Atlanta and Georgia were viewed as beacons of progress in the South.

On virtually every level, Georgia outpaced its sister Southern states — largely because its leaders stayed focus on what was best for the state’s economic development future.

Now, one bill in the state legislature threatens to reverse Georgia’s progressive reputation — a bill that would outlaw embryonic stem cell research in our state.

After the Georgia Senate passed that bill, Shepherd Center’s Chairman James Shepherd received a call from a group that had been considering conducting clinical trials at the center. The Shepherd Center treats more spinal injuries than any other institution in the country making it an attractive site for research.

Shepherd was told that if Georgia were to enact such a bill, the company would be moving its research operations to Birmingham.

The ominous signs have been present for the last couple of years when a bill with similar language was being considered.

At the time, Dr. Marie Csete, one of Georgia’s most widely recognized scientific researchers and a leading stem cell researcher at Emory University, testified saying that such a bill could prohibit her research. “I’m really worried this is a slippery slope,” Csete said.

Not surprisingly, today Csete is the chief scientific officer of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, one of the entities funding by a $3 billion stem cell initiatve in California.

So Georgia said good-bye to one of the nation’s top scientists, who was a magnet for federal and private research dollars, contributing to the state’s economic development.

On paper, Georgia leaders claim to want the state to be a leader in bioscience and biomedicine. It has spent years and millions of dollars attracting eminent scholars to create a critical mass of research so that Georgia will become a center for science, cutting edge technology and solid research.

But one bill, like the one that passed the Senate a couple of weeks ago, can undermine all that work.

If the House passes similar legislation, Gov. Sonny Perdue already has said he would support making it law and erroneously added that it would not impact Georgia’s economic development efforts.

Consider this. In May, Georgia is hosting the international convention — BIO — which will bring some of the top bio-scientists and industry leaders to Atlanta. If such a bill passes, several economic development officials are saying privately that it will give Georgia “a black eye” and make us “the laughing stock” in the country.

That’s not quite the message we had in mind when we announced the tremendous economic development benefits Georiga would enjoy by hosting BIO.

For retired Delta Air Lines’ CEO Leo Mullin, this is not just about economic development. It’s about people’s quality of life.
Mullin, who still lives in Atlanta, is chairman of the National Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He and his wife, Leah, became involved with the organization when one of their children was diagnosed with diabetes 26 years ago.

“Stem cell research represented some of the greatest hope that we have ever had,” Mullin said. But much of that progress was put on hold during the administration of George W. Bush, who placed restrictions on stem cell research.

When President Barack Obama recently lifted those restrictions, Mullin was in Washington D.C. to join in the celebration.

His “joyful” mood quickly turned to shock upon returning to Georgia and reading the headline: “State could restrict research on embryos.”

As Mullin sees it the legislatio would “brand our state as anti-science,” and “it will hamper economic development when Georgia needs it most, as scientifically-oriented companies opt to go elsewhere.” It would serve as a “competitive blow” to our state.

As Shepherd sees it, the bill as proposed is “ill conceived.”

“It makes us look like one of the least progressive states in the nation,” Shepherd said. “We claim to be an international city on the cutting edge. We do have cutting edge research going on at Emory, Georgia Tech, University of Georgia. But if this bill passes, it will kill a lot of that. People will view Georgia as a hostile environment in which to do business or research.”

Last year, when BIO held its convention in San Diego, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to boast about the enormous investment ($3 billion) his state was making in the field of stem cell research. Undoubtedly, attendees left BIO feeling as though California was an enthusiastic partner in their own research or related economic development.

So when BIO comes here in May, what in the world will Gov. Perdue say?

It’s of great concern to educators, scientists, researchers, health care professionals, economic development officials and others who just want to see scientific advances take place in Georgia.

“We are now behind Alabama in our approach to the exciting research and science underway across the country,” Shepherd said. “We now rank behind Alabama in being a progressive state.”

It makes me long for the days, not so long ago, when Atlanta and Georgia were on the right side of history.

Guest Column by JIM JACOBY,
Developer of Atlantic Station

With the passage of time, it is easy to forget the economic insecurity and fear that followed Sept. 11, 2001. The appalling human tragedy of that awful moment in our nation’s history dwarfs the financial market shock of Sept. 15, 2008.

But one cannot avoid a sense that we have been here before. I am confident that we will rise to the occasion once again.

The dreadful déjà vu for me is a repeat of the economic conditions we faced just as a milestone project for our city was gaining momentum. We are proud that Atlantic Station is invoked so frequently today as the sort of project that others wish to emulate.

But the spring of 2002 was not, at first blush, a promising time to be tackling the most ambitious brownfield redevelopment to date in Atlanta.

Similarly, as this spring arrives, it is a daunting time to be attempting the most ambitious mixed-use redevelopment to date south of downtown – Aerotropolis on the site of the former Ford plant in Hapeville.

But the most remarkable and significant parallels between then and now are not the challenges we confront but, rather, the opportunities at hand.

While economic, political and social cycles come and go, significant long-term trends persist:

• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has driven our city’s economic development for more than a half century;

• our success in attracting human resources to Atlanta has inversely impacted our natural resources and adversely affected our quality of life; and

• the region’s ability to continue to thrive on inexpensive energy requires a combination of innovation and conservation.

Economic development, talent, natural resources and energy.

How do we balance them all to the benefit of the crucial urban core of our region?

The aims we pursued at Atlantic Station, and others have since pursued elsewhere around the city, are more relevant than ever.

Let’s reclaim former industrial sites to create environmentally and economically sustainable places that attract people to live, work, pray and play in proximity to a mix of transportation options.

We re-developed Atlantic Steel into Atlantic Station on 138 acres at the intersection of interstates 75 and 85, and created it transit-ready, with a shuttle to MARTA to the east and prepared for the BeltLine to the west.

We’re developing Aerotropolis on 130 acres at the juncture of Interstate 75, the Airport’s new international terminal, the Southern Crescent Transit Center, and future transit such as the Griffin line.

Why is it important to shift our focus south of downtown to the airport?

Because just as seaports drove development in the 18th Century, railroads drove development in the 19th Century, and cars drove development in the 20th Century, it is airports that will drive the most important, progressive development of the 21st Century.

We’ve been transforming brown fields. We now need to see them as brown ports – places with potential, like traditional seaports, to receive all forms of transportation and to transfer all sorts of cargo, from tangible goods to intellectual capital.

As Richard Florida recently described in an Atlantic magazine article, “The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism…. The economy is driven by key urban areas ….”

Atlanta will rise to the occasion.

My friends with the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers asked if I could help clear up confusion on what constitutes the different modes of passenger rail.

It’s probably wishful thinking, but I keep hoping Georgia will decide sooner rather than later to dedicate its transportation future to rail as other states, like North Carolina, have done.

But I agreed that it would be helpful if we could agree on a set of definitions for the different forms of rail transportation.

GARP members Jim Dexter and Richard Hodges were nice enough to provide me a summary of the different forms of passenger rail.

I’m passing them on to you so we can become more literate when we talk about rail transit in our metro area, our state and the Southeast region.

Thank you Jim Dexter for providing this at Richard Hodges’ request.

THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF PASSENGER RAIL

INTERCITY RAIL trains link two or more distinct metropolitan areas. They usually consist of one or more diesel or electric locomotives pulling several passenger cars, and share their tracks with freight trains. Amtrak’s Crescent, which runs between New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans is an example of intercity rail.

HIGH-SPEED RAIL trains are intercity trains that run at top speeds of at least 90 mph. They are less likely than other intercity trains to share their tracks with freight trains. Most high-speed lines feature multiple daily departures. Amtrak’s Boston-Washington Acela Express line is an example of high-speed rail.

COMMUTER RAIL trains connect major metropolitan areas with their outlying suburbs. They’re primarily designed for daily commuters going to and from their jobs, and most service is concentrated during the morning and evening rush hours. Commuter rail stations are spaced more closely than intercity rail stations, but NOT as closely as urban rail transit stops. Commuter rail trains usually share tracks with freight trains. The proposed Atlanta-Griffin and Atlanta-Athens lines would be examples of commuter rail.

URBAN RAIL TRANSIT consists of HEAVY-RAIL TRANSIT, LIGHT-RAIL TRANSIT and STREETCARS. They serve densely populated urban areas, i.e., central cities and close-in suburbs. They do NOT share their tracks with freight trains or with intercity rail or commuter rail trains. They offer frequent service most of the day, in some cases 24 hours a day.

HEAVY-RAIL TRANSIT trains run in multiple-car sets on their own dedicated right-of-way, above or below street level. They’re usually powered by an electric third rail. They are slower than commuter trains, largely because they make more frequent stops. They are faster than light-rail trains or streetcars. Passengers board heavy-rail trains on raised platforms, level with the passenger car floor. Trains consist of several cars. MARTA Rail trains are heavy rail trains.

LIGHT-RAIL TRANSIT trains usually run in their own dedicated right-of-way, but their tracks may cross streets at grade level. They’re usually powered by an overhead wire. Stations can be more closely spaced than heavy-rail transit stations, but they tend to be simple structures, sometimes consisting of little more than a curb-level boarding platform. Light-rail trains usually consist of more than one car. Charlotte’s new Lynx line is an example of light-rail transit.

STREETCARS often run on tracks imbedded in streets shared with automobiles and trucks. They’re slower than other urban rail transit. They’re almost always powered by an overhead wire. A typical streetcar is about as big as a bus, smaller than a light-rail vehicle, and most streetcars operate as single units. Stops are frequent, often at every corner, like bus stops. The proposed Peachtree Streetcar would be one example.

NOTE: Some passenger rail lines combine aspects of more than one mode. Many “light-rail” lines are actually combinations of light-rail and streetcar technology. Some intercity trains scheduled to link nearby cities during rush hours carry daily commuters, like commuter trains.