Transportation issues will

probably be a hot topic when the Atlanta Regional Commission starts its

2002 session in January, say local members Greg Dunn and Kenneth Steele.

Steele, mayor of Fayetteville,

has been appointed the representative on ARC's board for local cities,

and County Commission Chairman Dunn is the county's representative.

"The ARC needs to change

the way we do business," Dunn told The Citizen this week in the wake

of recent approval of a three-year Transportation Improvement Plan. ARC

is the planning agency for metropolitan Atlanta, including Fayette.

The plan, which funnels federal

money into the region for transportation projects, "didn't have much

for Fayette County," Dunn said.

Widening of Ga. Highway 54

from Peachtree City to Doctor Fischer Road in Coweta County, and Ga. Highway

74 from 54 to Ga. Highway 85 were included, but many of the other projects

identified by the county and local cities as top priorities such as a

bypass around Fayetteville for Ga. Highway 85 were put off ten years or

more.

The problem, Dunn said, is

that after years of planning by county governments working through the

ARC, Gov. Roy Barnes has tossed aside the counties' priorities and inserted

his own, using the Greater Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority as

a tool to get that done.

GRTA was created by the Legislature,

at Barnes' urging, to help the Atlanta area meet federal air quality standards.

"Planning and implementing

are our [ARC's] responsibility, not the administration's," Dunn said.

In recently approving the TIP,

officials from several other counties agreed with those sentiments, Dunn

said, but they still voted to approve the TIP.

Among next year's tasks will

be approving a new Regional Transportation Plan. While the TIP is a three-year

plan, the RTP goes out 20 years, and ARC is beginning to discuss the RTP

that will take the region into 2030, said Dunn.

"It's going to have to

be a lot more action-oriented than in the past," he said. "We're

going to be fighting about that in this session of the ARC. Most of the

counties are unhappy," he said.

Steele said he is in agreement

with Dunn's stance, and will be supporting his positions on transportation

and other issues.

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