What should metro Atlanta’s vast network of roadways, transit systems, and more human-scale transportation alternatives look like in 26 years? It’s tough to say, but the region’s planning and intergovernmental coordination agency has officially updated its forecast.
On Wednesday, the Atlanta Regional Commission Board approved a major update to the Atlanta Metropolitan Transportation Plan, or MTP, which happens about every four years, providing groundwork for upgrades and maintenance across the 20-county metro.
The revised MTP allocates $168 billion in federal, state, and local funding to improve both transportation and safety between now and 2050. The ARC expects metro Atlanta to swell by another 1.8 million people by then, pushing the total population to 7.9 million.
The MTP is intended to create a roadmap for accommodating that population boost. It advocates for channeling billions toward transit expansion and bicycling-pedestrian infrastructure improvements such as unfinished BeltLine segments—but also toward hundreds of miles of new road lanes. Other aspects are meant to encourage alternative commute options, such as teleworking and carpooling.
ARC officials collaborate with local governments and transportation agencies to revise the MTP blueprint every few years. Encouragingly, it identifies transit expansion as “a critical investment that is needed as the Atlanta region continues to grow and become denser.”
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Obviously, the MTP isn’t a $168 billion check toward making these things happen. But the ARC does mandate that projects included in the MTP are fiscally constrained, meaning that “funding is reasonably anticipated to be available within the time period,” per the ARC.
The lion’s share of hypothetical funding—roughly $105 billion, or 63 percent of the total—is earmarked for maintaining, modernizing, and operating existing transportation infrastructure, including road…
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