{"id":33702,"date":"2012-08-03T17:02:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T21:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=33702"},"modified":"2020-07-02T17:02:39","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T21:02:39","slug":"im-glad-t-splost-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=33702","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m glad T-SPLOST failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Long story short, T-SPLOST is some convoluted acronym for some government proposed program that would raise taxes by one percent in several counties surrounding Metro Atlanta, with all those funds supposedly going to a variety of transportation projects that would in theory \u201cun-handcuff\u201d Atlanta from the traffic apocalypse everyone seems to think Atlanta is.\u00a0 The voting for whether or not it would pass was on the 31st.<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Well, it failed.\u00a0 Apparently it failed pretty miserably.\u00a0 I am glad it failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now before I get accused for being a Jew and\/or a racist, let me explain: I don\u2019t trust government.\u00a0 It has nothing to do with the fact that I don\u2019t want to spend 1% more on everything, not at all.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t believe for a second that the already-suspect government officials of the state, and city of Atlanta won\u2019t be pocketing some of this money somewhere down the line, and it\u2019s on principle that I don\u2019t want them to even have that opportunity.\u00a0 Furthermore, I think I\u2019m smarter than Atlanta traffic; I can work around it, and I don\u2019t want to pay for those who can\u2019t.\u00a0 Apparently, I\u2019m not the only one who feels that way.\u00a0 So I\u2019m glad the program failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1% doesn\u2019t sound like a lot of money, and honestly, it really isn\u2019t.\u00a0 But kind of like in\u00a0Office Space<\/em>, it kind of ends up turning into a large-scale salami slicing scheme.\u00a0 Even if T-SPLOST passed, took effect and a whole bunch of transportation projects started, completed, and actually did some good.\u00a0 What next?\u00a0 It\u2019s like the current state of airline travel; when the fuel crises hit, they jacked up prices and began charging for checked luggage.\u00a0 When the fuel crisis stabilized somewhat, those fees didn\u2019t go away; hell no, the airlines had gotten used to making that much money, and they sure as shit didn\u2019t want to forfeit it.\u00a0 I see T-SPLOST doing the same thing; this 1% tax hike would never go away without some drastic opposition.\u00a0 So it\u2019s best that it never gets a chance to take effect in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgia State Route 400 is a great example of how this would turn out if T-SPLOST passed.\u00a0 The 50 cent toll at the southern point of the road was technically only supposed to exist for a set amount of time, in order to pay for itself, but it turned out that it paid for itself pretty quickly once it began such a major vein of transportation.\u00a0 Did the toll go away?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 It remained for years, and the estimated 120,000 cars that passed by it on any given work day meant that the state was making close to $60,000 every single day.\u00a0 They repave GA-400 on an annual basis to give a transparent college try at justifying the retaining of the toll, but people aren\u2019t stupid, the state just wasn\u2019t ready to forfeit that kind of daily bank.\u00a0 The toll was finally announced to be going away after 2013, but because it happened to be just two weeks ago, right before the voting of T-SPLOST, it was easily identified as a strategic ploy to try to win the good graces of the Metro Atlanta citizens and coerce them to vote YES on T-SPLOST.\u00a0 Much like T-SPLOST, it failed, and now the city will have the (sort of) luxury of being able to take GA-400 for free come 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wow, did I go off on a tangent there.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad that the whole T-SPLOST plan failed, but what amuses me the most is the very liberal frame of mind that feels that this was some sort of crushing defeat for progression, and that T-SPLOST was some sort of great hope at making the whole city a traffic-less oasis.<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing I really liked was the idea that T-SPLOST would create all sorts of rail options in parts of the city that didn\u2019t have mass transit.\u00a0 One side felt that mass transit is a greener alternative to driving, which is valid, but the main opposition were those who felt that mass transit also assists in spreading crime to parts of cities that don\u2019t have mass transit.\u00a0 As someone who personally saw witnessed the rapid and gradual degradation that the Springfield-Franconia Metro did to Springfield Mall, I don\u2019t have to explain which side of the argument I am on.<\/span><\/p>\n

The funny thing is that I don\u2019t deny that Atlanta is a city that certainly has its bad traffic problems, but at the same time, it takes a retard to not adapt and find ways to work around it and manage to flourish.\u00a0 There\u2019s that line about the true mark of insanity is trying something the same way over and over again, and expecting different results?\u00a0 That\u2019s clearly the mindset of people who thought T-SPLOST was a good idea.\u00a0 And these are the same people who resign themselves to sit in the same predictable traffic hot-spots on a daily basis, instead of trying to figure something else out.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, I have it worse, because I commute from outside the city.\u00a0 Regardless of that, I don\u2019t sit in traffic nearly as bad as I used to when I had a job in a poor location.\u00a0 But now that I\u2019ve got a fairly normalized routine, I scoff and a laugh at Atlanta traffic, and the deadbeats that choose to sit in it like saps.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, there are occasional days where an unexpected wreck, or something unprepared happens on the road, which sometimes leads to some crippling traffic, but these are typically events that don\u2019t happen on a normal basis.\u00a0 Otherwise, I have a fairly reduced-stress series of routes and back roads to try, not to mention occasionally car-pooling with Jen.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just it; if T-SPLOST passed, then savvy, adaptable, resourceful commuters like myself are the ones who get boned, because now we have to endure the 1% tax hike because everyone else is fucking stupid.\u00a0 T-SPLOST passing is the equivalent of caving in to stupidity.<\/span><\/p>\n

T-SPLOST and anything like T-SPLOST aren\u2019t ever needed; people just need to learn how to adapt, learn how to read a map, get some better spatial understanding, and just in general, use their fucking heads.\u00a0 Atlanta traffic isn\u2019t crippling at all, unless you let it cripple you.\u00a0 And to let that happen is truly the mark of stupidity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long story short, T-SPLOST is some convoluted acronym for some government proposed program that would raise taxes by one percent in several counties surrounding Metro Atlanta, with all those funds supposedly going to a variety of transportation projects that would in theory \u201cun-handcuff\u201d Atlanta from the traffic apocalypse everyone seems to think Atlanta is.\u00a0 The … Continue reading I\u2019m glad T-SPLOST failed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,15,143,10],"class_list":["post-33702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-og","tag-ohatlanta","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33704,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33702\/revisions\/33704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}