Interstate 75 between Cobb County and downtown is familiar territory for veteran money manager Phillip M. Larkins, who calculates that he's spent 3.3 years of his life fighting traffic jams since 1964, when he first started commuting to work at an investment firm. As he worked his way up the corporate ladder at now-gone Bank South, the 62-year-old Larkins recalls "with horror" the many hours he spent inching his way toward his Marietta Street office, dreaming of the day he wouldn't have to make the commute.

Long after Bank South had been gobbled up, Larkins finds himself in happier driving circumstances, now wasting little time. He moved inside the perimeter to Sandy Springs and has a 10-minute commute "at most" to his office at Northern Trust Co. a half dozen miles north of Midtown. "It's wonderful," he says. "But it's a little depressing to think how much time I wasted, and how much time, money and productivity are lost every day because of our traffic problems."

It's depressing to area political and business leaders, as well.

Congestion is creating frazzled nerves, costing the city lost income, lost productivity, lost jobs and lost chances to attract new companies needing new labor, a trend that had already reached crisis proportions before the current recession, and which had spurred business and civic leaders into frenzied activity. According to a McKinsey & Co. study commissioned by Governor Sonny Perdue, the state could lose out on 320,000 new jobs and more than $500 billion in economic benefits in the next 20 years, unless it can generate up to $160 billion for new transportation investments.

Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Chairman Sam Olens, who's also chairman of the Cobb County Commission (CCC), admits at least two companies that considered setting up headquarters near the Galleria complex opted out because of traffic congestion.

Olens and other leaders, such as Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, say it's still going to be years, perhaps a decade, before user-friendly and easily accessible transit modes such as light rail will be in operation around this area. And long delays - already costly - could eventually prove disastrous. With budget deficits and cuts looming, money is burning up and disappearing like the smoke from idling exhaust pipes.

And it's only getting worse. Metro Atlanta has gone from 15th to second worst in terms of traffic delays in the last three years, according to a study by the Texas Transportation Institute that was commissioned by the state of Georgia. The study found that 13 percent of Atlanta drivers spend more than an hour getting to work, which is fourth worst in the nation, according to Julie Ralston of the ARC. She said the average Atlanta resident drives 29 miles per day and that the average commute time is 39 minutes. "We have grown the most of any metro area in the country since 2000, gaining over one million people," she says.

"We are the second worst funded transportation state in the country," Olens explains. He says it's not being downbeat to face the reality that it will be years before metro Atlanta has alternatives to driving in cars, other than the buses, carpools and vanpools that now operate. "The negativity is real," he says. "The positive part is that the agencies are working together better than ever before."

He says the various groups and other entities studying traffic are in agreement that the status quo is not suitable, but "the impasse at the moment is the mechanism to fund transit."

Olens believes the metro area has made "enormous strides" in recent years in coming together to discuss the region's traffic problems. "Everyone wants this to happen overnight, but the fact is, that's not going to happen," he says. "The problem is, everyone sees congestion and wants an immediate solution, but reality dictates that it's going to take a while."

Give Commuters Options
Thousands of metro Atlantan's have taken to using little-known, alternative forms of transportation, says Kevin Green, executive director of a non-profit group called The Clean Air Campaign (CAC), which works with thousands of employers, commuters and schools to design and implement transportation options.

The CAC, along with nine local groups around the metro area, coordinate to set up vanpools for commuters or employers that wish to help their workers out. Vanpools typically have seven to 15 riders each, and each person pays for his/her seat. Price is determined by the number of people splitting the gas and the distance the vanpool drives, so they range in price quite a bit. Some employers provide partial or full vanpool and transit subsidies and actually pay for a vanpool seat or transit pass for employees. CAC spokeswoman Sarah Waters says that more than 500 vanpools operate in metro Atlanta daily.

Other car- and vanpool options for commuters include the Commuter Club, a program of the Cumberland Community Improvement District (CCID), and RideSmart, a cooperative effort of the ARC, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), which matches commuters with potential carpool or vanpool partners. Malaika Rivers, executive director of the CCID, says the Commuter Club operates more than 100 vans daily in roughly 20 counties, each hauling eight to 15 people.

Green says roughly 350,000 people -14 percent of all daily commuters - use alternatives "to driving alone three or more days a week." And other measures could and should be taken, he says, to reduce congestion, including convincing the area's employers to allow more telecommuting and "compressed" work weeks. Other alternative proposals include the expansions of HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes and the implementation of "hot lanes," which would allow a single driver or sometimes two-person carpool to use a designated lane in exchange for a toll. Such possibilities, Rivers says, are now being studied.

Show Me The Money
Are these alternative commuting options enough? According to research by the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, a conservative think tank, Atlanta's traffic congestion costs the area $1.75 billion a year, and the situation is sure to get worse. A rush-hour trip that today takes 46 percent longer than it would at off-hours will take 67 percent longer in 2030, the research organization says.

"Our analysis concludes that Atlanta's current approach of investing heavily in mass transit, carpooling and land-use changes to reduce the extent of driving is not compatible with the congestion-reduction goal," the Reason Foundation says in a recent in-depth analysis. "The current long-range plan, despite devoting the majority of its funding to transit and carpool lanes, would lead to no increase in the fraction of commute trips made by carpool, and a less than 2 percentage point increase in transit's market share, while overall congestion would soar."

The research organization, which is non-partisan, concluded that metro Atlanta has no choice but to increase the capacity of its roadways. "Our modeling (using the ARCs traffic model) shows that a careful program of catch-up capacity additions over the next 25 years can substantially reduce vehicle hours of travel without increasing total driving. The result would be the elimination of the worst congestion by 2030..."

Get Georgia Moving, a broad coalition that represents more than 100 groups across Georgia - including business and government leaders, transit advocates, road builders and environmentalists - recently commissioned a poll that found Atlantans are fed up with traffic problems. Actually, angry would be more like it - enough to want to raise their own taxes to help deal with it.

The poll, conducted by Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research, recognized that 75 percent of Republicans and an equal percentage of Democrats want the right to vote in a referendum for a 1 percent tax to improve transportation in their areas. At press, several bills supporting both regional and statewide sales tax increases for transportation and infrastructure improvements have been introduced in the State legislature.

"It's a horrible climate to try to do much of anything new right now," says David Goldberg, an official of the Smart Growth America think tank in Washington. "Still, there is going to be reauthorization of the federal transportation law later this year.

"It's going to be a while before money starts flowing in, but we'll have a federal plan that should be supportive of Georgia's transit efforts,'' Goldberg says. "It'll happen in much the same way as the feds and the states built the interstate highway system in the 1950s."

"If we're going to see a new New Deal, that's exactly the kind of stuff we're going to build," Goldberg says. "The highway system is unraveling everywhere. We need more innovative ways to move people around."

Settling On A Plan
With a lucrative federal stimulus package and potential state or regional sales tax revenues looming, it's time to settle on concepts and plans that make sense, so we can be ready to go when it's time to cash the checks.

 "Our state and region have way too many agencies and way too many plans and way too little dirt moving, and dirt can't move without additional funding" from both the state and federal governments, says Olens. "We are looking at five to 10 years before we're going to see anything like light rail," he said. "It's not good, but [that's the] reality."

Commuting options in Atlanta, Green says, have "plenty of room to grow," but planners must find a way to unclog the metropolitan area's main arteries. "For businesses and commuters, it comes down to this: 'When will traffic improve?' Green asks. "Unless we act now, the answer may not be one that anyone wants to hear."

But acting fast when it comes to Atlanta's traffic seems akin to maneuvering an aircraft carrier in a bathtub.  Last year, the General Assembly failed to pass a proposal that would have allowed regional referendums. Olens says even if the legislature approves the proposals this year, it won't necessarily result in regional referendums before 2010, which means money wouldn't be collected for perhaps three years or more. "There's a delay between funding and project delivery," Olens says. "If it takes you 15 years to build, you haven't solved the problem. And that's a problem."

And with the millions of dollars spent on studies and plans to improve infrastructure and ease traffic, very few decisions have actually been made. One of the more well-researched proposals is Concept 3, a futuristic idea to create a system of buses and trains throughout metro Atlanta, which was developed by the now defunct Transit Planning Board. Concept 3 calls for spending $54 billion for six commuter rail lines, extensions for MARTA's heavy rail system, new light-rail lines and streetcars, as well as express buses.

Williams says he's seen transit plans for metro Atlanta that go back "30 or 40 years" and finds the Concept 3 plan intriguing. "Light rail can be a track down the middle of the street; down the middle of an expressway. The cost is $10 million to $20 million a mile, but you have to build it where the real estate is available. You don't have to bulldoze things like you do for heavy rail."

Then there's IT3, which stands for Tomorrow's Transportation Today, a plan birthed by Gov. Sonny Perdue and the State Transportation Board to set goals and priorities for roads, highways, bridges and public transportation, working in concert with GRTA and GDOT.

Sam Williams says that the IT3 / McKinsey study commissioned by Perdue "comes up with a whole economic model that says there is a huge payback if you put money into transportation improvements. There's a very high return on your investment, is what IT3 says." But some leaders, including Williams, are becoming impatient with statistics and think tank studies.

"We have a lot of good ideas, but you can't do anything without money," Williams says. "The good news is, for the first time in 40 years, we are finally getting the leadership all saying we've got to do something about transportation. The business community is ready to burn down the Capitol if they don't get a funding mechanism for transportation to get us out of the mess we're in."

 "We spend too much time talking," Olens adds, reiterating the frustration, "We want to see dirt moving rather than more hot air."

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The Great Light Rail Debate
Charlotte has long been seen as an Atlanta wannabe, but it has a new light rail system that metro leaders envy. Phoenix has one, too. Tampa and other major metropolitan cities weary of gridlock are getting closer in their quests for light or even heavy rail or more modernistic forms of rapid transit.

Charlotte's new "Lynx Blue Line" is an "environmentally friendly electric light rail system" that runs through the heart of the city. The 14-mile line, which opened in November 2007, is being hailed by city leaders as a roaring success, though it might not be described that way in Atlanta since it carries fewer than 20,000 commuters a day.

Sam Olens has been to Charlotte and seen its light rail system. "Very nice," he says. "What was interesting was all the new construction that was occurring immediately adjacent to it. These systems absolutely bring economic development. We need light rail."

According to The News & Observer, the Charlotte light rail project cost $463 million when it was complete last year, and prior to the economic downturn, $1.86 billion worth of construction and redevelopment were planned along the rail corridor.

Both Charlotte and Phoenix got nearly half their rail money from federal funds. City and special regional taxes paid the rest in Phoenix, whose system began operating late last year.  In 1997, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory lobbied the state legislature to charge an additional half-cent regional sales tax. The special regional tax passed in a referendum the following year, and raises roughly $77 million annually to help pay for buses and fund the Lynx.

It took the Phoenix system 12 years to go from drawing board to carrying passengers, says Hillary Foose, an official of the city's METRO light rail.

The new commuting option is 20 miles long, connecting Phoenix with the suburbs of Tempe and Mesa. "It will work well for metro Phoenix as it's another layer to our overall transportation network," Foose says. "It was important for the light rail system to connect with the existing and future bus routes."

And so far, commuters have taken a shine to it. It carried more than 350,000 people in the first week alone, Foose says. "We are right in our forecasted range of 20,000 to 30,000 boardings each day," she says.

For Atlanta, light rail is still just dreams on a drawing board. "I'd envision within five years, moving dirt both for northern light rail, the 'Brain Train' to Athens, and potentially a line headed west for MARTA," says Olens. "But it's going to be a while."