This from a recent editorial in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:

Transportation, in Georgia and across the country — probably around the world — is a matter of always trying to catch up with needs and demands and never coming close. What transportation funding in our part of the country has traditionally consisted of, and consists of to this day, is gasoline taxes that build more roads that accommodate more cars, which in turn create the need for more roads, and so on.

That cycle can’t continue, according to Georgia state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga. Mullis chairs a panel called the Joint Study Committee on Transportation Funding, created by the General Assembly this year to look for new ideas and new ways to pay for how Georgians get around Georgia.

Even now, Mullis said Tuesday, the costs of building roads and acquiring the land to build them on are rising too much too fast for gasoline taxes to keep up. As more people switch to alternative fuels and hybrid cars, the problem will only get more pronounced.

Rep. Vance Smith of Pine Mountain, chairman of the House Transportation Committee and a member of the joint panel, offered an anecdote that illustrates the problem: After the ribbon-cutting for the new Georgia 400, Smith, recalled, “I got in my truck and came home and said, ‘We just solved Atlanta’s transportation problems.’”

Of course, Georgia 400 is now synonymous with the gridlock that has come to define Atlanta and, to a lesser extent, other Georgia cities including Columbus.

As long as the bulk of the transportation money Georgia uses is tied up as dedicated money for roads and bridges, take that lemon money and make lemonade out of it.

Where possible, shift the money toward city roads and create a set of guidelines. Getting around “within” Georgia’s population centers is at least as important as getting around “between” them. For years, however, the focus has been on going “through” population centers — which makes the “within” and “between” forms of transportation very difficult. As our representatives in the Legislature are now beginning to find out, the “through” policy is also very expensive.

In one example, Midtown narrowed a portion of West Peachtree Street (south of 10th St.). GDOT was very reluctant to agree, arguing that the result would be more traffic congestion. But instead, traffic counts went down.

A similar, strategic, narrowing of “through” roads within Georgia’s cities would save a great deal of money. Building new “within” streets wherever possible — that is, strengthening the grid — would offer a higher amount of capacity per dollar spent.