Sorry if I

seem a little too laid back this week, but I took a

vacation trip to Jekyll Island this past week and it'll

probably take a few days before I get properly tensed up

again.

On the way

down, I noticed these strange orange barrels all along

the road. They looked really familiar, but I just

couldn't quite remember what they were for. Then it hit

me. Oh yeah, road construction. I'd forgotten what that

looked like.

I also

noticed something else. The air was nice and clear.

You really

have to wonder: is there road construction because the

air is cleaner, or is the air cleaner because there's

road construction?

I'm sure

the scientists at the federal Environmental Protection

Agency can explain why my lamebrained, layman's reasoning

is way off base, but it just seems to me that withholding

funds for road construction will result in more cars and

trucks being forced into smaller spaces for longer

periods of time, emitting noxious fumes all the while.

True, there

is a method behind their madness. I'm sure the EPA wonks

know that holding up road construction will work directly

against their concerns for air quality in the short run.

In the long run, they're hoping to get the Atlanta area

to do things that will improve the air quality... in the

long run.

Like public

transportation. If we get some trains and buses in here,

and we get people to ride those trains and buses instead

of using their SUVs for the daily commute, air quality is

bound to improve.

And, as

much as I tend to rebel against federal agencies forcing

their will on us average local folks, I can't argue with

that basic logic. Put some commuter trains in, and

provide some tax incentives to get private companies to

provide bus and shuttle services, and I think once people

get used to it, they'll find that public transportation

can be a good thing.

What are

you giving up, after all? The right to sit in your car by

yourself for two hours a day, breathing noxious fumes,

getting tense, risking a wreck or a run-in with a road

rage warrior?

Of course,

you'll still have that right. You'll just have a choice.

But the

more you listen to the plan, the more the federal

reasoning starts to get a little cloudy and the

bureaucratic meddling starts to be a little... well,

bureaucratic.

You see,

it's not enough that we put in the train service and have

stations available in case we want to spare ourselves the

torture of the commute. Once we put in the rail line,

apparently, we have to make sure there are a lot of

people to ride it so that the people who forced us to

build the tracks won't be embarrassed by news footage of

empty train cars running back and forth from Senoia to

the airport.

So, in order to ensure the

success of the rail lines and bus routes, we have to

change our long-term land use and zoning philosophies so

that there are high-density developments all along the

transit routes.

Now, I realize my reasoning has

gotten all fuzzy while I was on vacation, but help me out

with this. Too many people want to live here, which is

making the air bad. So we're putting in public transit to

get people out of their cars. But that costs money and we

want to make sure it's successful, so we have to make

sure more people live here.

And having more people live here

makes the air bad... right?

I've gone over the GRTA

reasoning numerous times, starting at different places

each time. I really want to believe that somehow life is

going to be better in the Atlanta area with the changes

being forced on us by those pointy-headed bureaucrats up

in Washington.

But every time I go through it,

I come up with the same answer. They want to improve air

quality, which, they tell us, is caused by too much

growth. And their solution is to increase density, i.e.

increase growth.

I hate to say it, but it begins

to look like there may be other motives behind all of

this than simply improving air quality.

I've been an observer of

bureaucracies - federal, state and local - for

a long time, and there is one characteristic they all

have in common: they spend at least a third of their

time, energy and money justifying their own existence.

Often, there is sufficient

public need to provide that justification. But when there

is not, another unfailing characteristic of bureaucracies

is that they will always manufacture crises to justify

not only their continued existence, but expansion of

their funding, their staffing and their power.

Casual observation of the

actions of the EPA, the ARC and GRTA over the last year

will confirm that this is a textbook case.