Transportation

The People Speak Out

Following publicity by BikeAthens and other community groups, local residents filed 377 public comments on what to include in the future transportation plan for Madison, Clarke and Oconee Counties. ACC Transportation Planner Sherry Moore called the response "phenomenal" and is working on a summary to give to local officials and citizens who are members of the Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study, along with copies of all the responses.

The MACORTS board - which proposes how federal transportation dollars will be spent locally, subject to approval of the state DOT and federal guidelines - will draft a new long-term plan by next summer, Moore said. She said DOT uses census data to produce a "travel demand model" every 10 years based on where people live and work. Local planners are encouraged to propose projects based on higher "travel demand" in certain areas.

An overwhelming number of the responses asked for consideration of sidewalks, bike paths or lanes, or improved bus service. However, according to Moore, Federal funds have been much more available for roads than for sidewalks or bike paths. Whether this continues is up to Congress. Some federal money is available for buses, mostly for equipment costs, she said. In some cases, she believes, Federal funds can be "flexed" into non-road projects if local leaders are willing to forego some road projects.

Some citizen comments called for more "traffic calming" measures in neighborhoods (such as speed bumps or traffic circles). Some expressed concerns about roads perceived to be dangerous (such as the Peter Street intersection with the bypass, or the Tallassee Road railroad bridge). A number of people asked for better enforcement of traffic laws and speed limits (although that may not be a MACORTS responsibility).

"A wonderful friend was killed by another driver, who ran a red light," one person commented. "Grandiose transportation plans are pointless when existing speed limits and traffic signal violations are not enforced."

Judging from the pile of responses, many locals feel the approach of widening roads has reached its limit. And indeed, says Moore, for many Athens roads there is "nowhere to widen to."

Wrote one citizen, "I see almost daily the need for an interconnected network of bike lanes linking campus to metro Athens." Another suggested: "There is a waterline easement to Bear Creek reservoir most of the way down Tallassee. This would have been an ideal place to put a bike lane."

"When I moved to Athens from Colorado three years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at the beauty and culture that existed in this little Southern oasis - except for one thing - it is impossible to bicycle anywhere" wrote another.

"Lumpkin is awful. Milledge is awful," complained another. "We definitely need bike lanes on those two streets. And the wider, the better."

Not everyone agreed. "Please do not constrict Prince Avenue the way ACC changed Baxter Street... Baxter Street is completely congested."

Many respondents asked for improvements to the bus system. "It's hard to arrange a work day around once-an-hour bus schedules without spending two hours waiting and riding buses instead of 20 minutes in my car," said one. Another asked, "If a community like Chattanooga can run an electric shuttle up and down its main street every 15 minutes, why not a shuttle from the new multi-modal center to the mall every 30 minutes?"

In Europe, said one traveler, "they would have maps of the bus routes at the bus stops. You didn't have to figure it out ahead of time."

"After dealing with my father and his dangerous driving habits as he aged," wrote another resident, "I feel that we should have some options for these people who shouldn't be driving but need to go places."

Others suggested regional bus routes, like "direct shuttle routes and commuter shuttles to adjacent counties." Another asked for "a serious exploration of the rail line between downtown Athens and Oconee County for commuting - with stops along Milledge, including Whitehall Road."

"I am surprised and even disgusted with a government who seems to have no vision as to how to improve transportation," wrote another. "Take the middle two lanes and put in rapid buses or MARTA. The more connections you have the more people will use public transportation."

There were many requests for more sidewalks. "In all commercial areas, such as Atlanta Highway... there should be sidewalks," said one. "More sidewalks" suggested another, "with some green buffer and bike lanes off the street."

"My biggest argument is the lack of sidewalks every residential and business area should have. I can't even walk to Kroger on W. Broad Street safely."

And a number of people suggested that UGA freshmen should not keep cars, or that parking fees be raised. "Parking fees need to be minimum of $1000 a semester. They are in other college towns, why not UGA?"

"Reverse the priorities," suggested one writer. "Start thinking of motor vehicles as the 'alternative' and the rest of the planning process will take care of itself."

John Huie

John Huie is frequently a pest at meetings of BikeAthens, Federation of Neighborhoods and ACC Community Tree Council.

Animal Control

This Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 70 calls.

6 complaints of animal cruelty

2 reported bite cases

1 complaint of barking dogs

5 citations for dogs running loose and/or no rabies vaccinations

ACCAC impounded 32 animals.

27 dogs

1 cat

1 raccoon

1 mourning dove

1 squirrel

1 big brown bat

ACCAC placed 19 dogs.

5 adopted

10 reclaimed

4 turned over to other agencies/rescue groups

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control press release for the week of Thursday, Aug. 14 to Wednesday, Aug. 20

Highest Salary

Underserved and Overpayed

When you decide to look for the highest paid state employee in all of Georgia, don't be surprised if he's not one of the fat-cat politicians making (and breaking) laws in Atlanta. That's because the highest paid state employee in Georgia lives and works right here in Athens. And the name of that certain government worker whose annual salary will top $1,500,000?

Mark Richt, of course.

As this summer has proved, Mark Richt, and not Vince Dooley, was the only untouchable employee in the athletic department. While critics have lambasted UGA President Michael Adams for other fiscal indiscretions, those same ones are silent when it comes to the oversized and undeserved contract Adams negotiated with Richt: eight years on the job worth a guaranteed $12,000,000.

But these are the same people who believe Richt can walk on water and repeat one of the luckiest seasons in the history of UGA football.

Before Richt is powerful enough to revise history, let's try to remember back to his first season at the helm of Georgia football. In 2001, he took a team of mostly NFL players and reduced them to an unimpressive 8-3 record. Richt tried to do the same thing in 2002, but fortunately a South Carolina fumble, a hail Mary and a pushoff in the Auburn game, and a missed final by FSU quarterback Chris Rix allowed UGA to win the SEC Championship as well as the Sugar Bowl.

Richt is receiving the kind of kid-glove criticism and media coverage that George W. Bush was receiving directly after the September 11 attacks. Why is no one doubting his moronic decision to have rotating quarterbacks throughout the season? Why is no one worried about the problems at offensive line and running back? Do any real college football fans believe Georgia can win the SEC playing with a "finesse" style?

The NCAA just recently released a study showing that increased spending on athletic programs had no correlation with the success of the athletic teams. Perhaps overpaying college football coaches, especially the ones who have had only one good year, has something to do with it. I hope Mark Richt is worth the price of 100 public school teachers; it's our money.

Daniel Whitman

Daniel Whitman is a freelance sportswriter who lives in Athens.

Iraq Is A Mess

A Real Coalition Is Needed

You may have thought that the war against Iraq was justified, and despite the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction you may still think it was justified in the beginning, but there is no justification for the way that this administration is handling the situation now. First, and there is no denying it, compared to the old Iraq things are way the hell worse now. If you add up the total number of people in Iraq whose lives are now hell as compared to before, this is a fact. It is a bona fide mess, and it is getting worse each day, not better.

Meanwhile, we are refusing military and financial help from any country that wants any control over post-war Iraq. We should be so lucky! We are trying to bring control to a society of millions of people that only yesterday were living under a military dictatorship, and we're doing it from scratch, with no garbage men, postal workers, electricity, gas, water, police, hospitals or oil. We need all of the help we can get and then a whole lot more. We should not refuse any ounce of aid from any possible source. We can't do this by ourselves and we don't want to. We've done enough. If there was any good to do in terms of dismantling the Iraqi military, it has been done. We are living in "the peace" and we have had enough of it.

We said before the war that those nations who didn't join in with us in this effort would not share in the "spoils of war," i.e. the lucrative re-building projects funded by the huge oil revenues. Well those fruits aren't being born. The real spoils of this war are chaos and bloodshed and the rumblings of frightening forces of fundamentalist revolution coalescing beneath the surface. We cannot afford to wait until we are inextricably drawn into a real religious war. We can no longer afford to ignore the presence of willing nations to help us control such a dire situation. We can only hope that with their help, we might see a new and stable Iraqi government rebuild Iraq.

The post-war Iraq situation has been compared by the Bush Administration to the re-building of Japan and Germany after World War II, but it is the exact opposite. After that war, the neighboring countries of both Germany and Japan unanimously applauded their defeat and gladly offered support in the aftermath. On the other hand, in the Middle East there is far more hatred for the United States outside of Iraq than within Iraq. We should have thought of that before we made this move. The terrorists and suicide bombers running amok in Iraq right now are made up of the same religious zealots that Saddam Hussein kept in check with an iron boot. The fact is that Saddam's worst enemies are now our problem. We didn't know what a hard job he had.

Chip Shirley

Chip Shirley is a local freelance writer.

Institute Index

Vacation Starvation

o Percent by which U.S. residents are decreasing vacation time this year: 10

o Percent of U.S. employees who work more than 50 hours a week: 40

o Percent of U.S. companies that provide no paid vacation leave: 13

o Amount that U.S. businesses pay for "job stress" related problems, in billions: $150

o Minimum weeks of vacation mandated by law in European countries: 4

o Number of weeks mandated in U.S.: 0

Published by the Institute for Southern Studies and Southern Exposure magazine. www.southernstudies.org/support.asp

WorldCom Deal

No ethics? No experience? No problem!

WorldCom Inc., recently and hilariously accused of rerouting phone calls to avoid paying connection fees to other phone companies (who was running the joint, frat dudes?), ranks with Enron in the annals of modern corporate debauchery. After an $11 billion accounting scandal sunk the infamous telecommunications conglomerate into bankruptcy, the U.S. General Services Administration banned federal agencies from doing business with WorldCom. So how is a proscribed "company that has demonstrated a flagrant lack of ethics" - the words belong to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), chairperson of the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee - poised to land a $900 million Pentagon contract to build a cell phone system for occupied Iraq?

"I was curious about it, because the last time I looked, MCI has never built out a wireless network," comments Len Lauer of Sprint.

Indeed, WorldCom's MCI division never figured out how to build a cell network in the U.S., and ultimately gave up trying. But who needs experience when you have tasty political connections? Before 2000, WorldCom donated equally to Democrats and Republicans in order to land cell service contracts with U.S. occupation armies in Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Now it's leveraging a $45 million deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) into a Halliburtonesque sweetheart contract to build the first national mobile phone network in Iraq, where more than 2 million new customers are expected to sign up right away.

The Pentagon's rush to protect WorldCom from a scrappy Bahraini-based competitor, Batelco, which has built cell networks in the Middle East, has exposed yet another unholy alliance between corporate America and the Bush Administration. Demonstrating the brand of lightening-quick entrepreneurship traditionally treasured by free-market-loving Americans, Batelco raced into Iraq after the U.S. invasion and installed cell towers throughout Baghdad. With half of land lines out of service and Saddam's 1990 plan to build cell towers stymied by U.N. trade sanctions, Baghdadis welcomed the new service. But the CPA shut down Batelco and threatened to confiscate its $5 million worth of equipment. Now the CPA is prohibiting companies more than 10 percent owned by foreign governments from bidding on civilian cell business in U.S.-occupied Iraq. That eliminates Batelco and most other Middle East-based telecommunications companies and, according to analyst Lars Godell of Forrester Research in Amsterdam, leaves MCI with "a head start."

Ordinary Iraqis, meanwhile, are back in the pre-Alexander Graham Bell era.

Companies like Vodafone, T-Mobile and NTT DoCoMo of Japan all have more experience of "setting up green field operations in developing countries [than MCI]," says Godell. He adds that the Bush Administration's decision not to seek competitive bids "confirms the worst suspicions" of European cellular companies. Fortunately for them, being American means never having to say you're sorry.

Old-fashioned influence-buying, coupled with inside-the-Beltway cronyism, is MCI's not-so-secret weapon in the fight over Iraqi spoils. As recently as June 2002, a week before the big accounting scandal broke, the Washington Post reported that WorldCom contributed $100,000 to a GOP fundraising gala featuring Bush - "enough to be listed on the program as a vice chairman of the event." Before becoming attorney general, John Ashcroft cashed a $10,000 WorldCom check for his losing Senate race. And the University of Mississippi's Trent Lott Leadership Institute, named for the racist GOP Senator, received $1 million from WorldCom. With Republicans controlling Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House, WorldCom no longer needs to be an equal-opportunity corrupter.

WorldCom's rivals, furious at being cut out of Iraq, are lashing out. "We don't understand why MCI would be awarded this business given its status as having committed the largest corporate fraud in history," says AT&T spokesman Jim McGann. "There are many qualified, financially stable companies that could have been awarded that business, including us." Motorola's Norm Sandler noted that the Iraq gig had never been offered for competitive bidding: "We were not aware of it until it showed up in some news reports."

Perhaps MCI-WorldCom will overcome its lack of experience, $5.5 billion in post-bankruptcy debt and an extensive criminal record in order to provide the people of occupied Iraq with affordable, crystal-clear cell phone service that never drops calls or loses voicemail for hours at a time. But sleazy back-room deals with Halliburton and MCI-WorldCom belie America's supposed faith in the transparency of free markets and their relationship to spreading democracy. They do more damage to our tattered relationship with the people of Iraq than any suicide bomb. And they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that George W. Bush's commitment to fight corporate fraud is just another lie.

Ted Rall

Cartoonist/columnist Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back.