It has been a long day. Really, it’s been a long week, but only today’s (now, yesterday’s) events are worth documenting here. For about five hours, I sat through a MARTOC committee meeting. Here you’ll find my new experiences, epiphanies, and re-confirmed impressions.
In the morning, I heard ARC and GRTA representatives confirm that MARTA serves as more than just the backbone for Atlanta’s transit system. MARTA is a necessary component of any regional solution for congestion mitigation. For MARTA to be excluded from the governor’s congestion mitigation task force is pure folly.
The representative from GRTA acknowledged that many real estate developers are moving toward New Urbanism as a way to profit from an underserved market. There is one way for the state to profit from this market as well: invest in quality public transportation.
If I heard him correctly, I believe the GRTA representative alluded to the idea that the impact of suburban cul-de-sac developments on local communities is negligible. A more educated guess, based on data from the ARC, is that for every acre of cul-de-sac development built, the impact is 40 car trips per day. Imagine if that could be cut in half just by re-adopting grid systems. That’s what I call congestion mitigation.
Lunch was good and affordable at the “Sloppy” Floyd Twin Towers cafeteria. The world would be a much better place with more cafeterias like it, starting with the cafeterias in the state’s university system.
MARTA’s turn to offer its report came in the afternoon. Overall, Nat Ford and his staff came out shining like stars. There was nothing to indicate that there were mismanagement problems.
There is one place where MARTA got hammered in the meeting, and where the media will likely hammer MARTA some more. Unlike a normal business, MARTA cannot claim any sort of tax deductions from depreciation. However, MARTA found a way to benefit from depreciation and pass that benefit on to transit riders. MARTA gave an opportunity for corporations to lease its trains, which would then be leased back to the authority. Corporations would then be able to write off the depreciation of the trains on their federal taxes, and MARTA would be able to legally shift some of its capital funds to operations. These additional operating funds could then be used to provide more service to riders. Rep. Chambers spent a bulk of the session discussing the details of this program only to find that this solution was ultimately a benefit to the riders.
Though the legality of MARTA’s lease-back program was not in question, there’s a bit of a question as to whether the program was ethical. It’s easy to see how it is not ethical: it’s a tax shelter that corporations can utilize to avoid paying their fair share. From a practical standpoint, the trains are still MARTA’s trains, and everything else is just creative accounting. At least, that’s the worst way I can think of to look at it. I’m sure Jim Wooten (who I’ll talk more about in a few moments) will have a much worse — and not entirely honest — way to look at the program in one of his upcoming columns.
There is something to be said that this is not an unethical form of creative accounting. First, it’s not a lie, so far as I can tell. From a legal standpoint, the financial trasactions between MARTA and lease-back participants are real. For participating businesses, this program is a way to provide some support to MARTA, which could use all the support it can get. For MARTA, the extra cash in operations really does go toward operations, so there is a public benefit in having a little extra service. The only loser here is the federal government, whose policy makers have been able to think of much more odious ways to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them.
Holding MARTA to a high ethical standard is important. I’m not convinced the lease-back program violates such a standard.
During public comments, I spoke up. As a citizen, I can vote at the polls. As a consumer, I can vote with my dollars. As a future homeowner, I’ll soon(?) be voting with my feet. As a commuter, I would like a better chance to vote with my wheels, and I want those wheels to be made of steel. I want to cast my ballot with a transcard, not a car key. That I have to go to the lengths that I do to cast my vote takes a great deal of dedication, and it can be frustrating.
What I didn’t say in my public comment, but meant to: I understand that any committee or board I speak to is highly limited in its ability to provide me with the choices I seek. However, their abilities are much greater than mine, and I appreciate the work they do to make that choice a possibility — and, perhaps someday, a reality. I also appreciate that Jill Chambers has taken the time to ride MARTA and seek out comments from the riders. There is still much more work to be done to convince more of the legislature that they have much more to gain by supporting an investment in quality transit than what they have to lose.
After my public comment, I went out to the hall where I shook hands with Jim Wooten. He never read my letter from last week (which, I should mention, was published) but has read about CfPT. I told him I understand and appreciate where he’s coming from. He reassured me that CfPT is fighting for the right reasons. Somehow my brief encounter with Wooten made me happy — I just felt better about myself. For one thing, I could get him to say something positive. For another thing, even if he is an enemy of transit, he may not be quite the enemy I once thought.
