By PAUL DONSKY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/07/06
A group of Gwinnett County leaders is pushing for an extension of MARTA's rapid rail line to the booming area, 16 years after county voters soundly rejected a plan to join the regional transit system.
Officials with the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District, which covers the Norcross and Lilburn areas, say the issue deserves to be revisited because the county has changed dramatically since the last MARTA referendum in 1990.
Gwinnett's population has more than doubled, and its traffic problems now rival the nation's worst bottlenecks.
MARTA has long been locked out of the area's biggest suburban counties, leaving the transit system to serve only DeKalb and Fulton counties and the city of Atlanta.
But on Wednesday, the door into Gwinnett creaked open when the county's lone representative on the MARTA board, Bruce Le'Vell, asked the board to study the feasibility of an expansion into the state's second-most populous county.
The board readily agreed, voting to spend up to $50,000 on the study, provided Gwinnett match the figure. Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village CID, said Wednesday his group would come up with the matching funds.
Another referendum may be years away, if it happens at all. It's a politically risky matter that calls for a 1 percent sales tax increase and has racial overtones. Gwinnett and the other suburban counties' historic refusal to accept MARTA has been seen by some as way to keep out minorities.
The 1990 vote failed by more than a two-to-one margin.
"It is speculative, I know," said Le'Vell, a jeweler and developer from Duluth, of the effort. "But somebody's got to pull the trigger, and I'm going to pull it."
Gwinnett has a seat on the board because the county helped fund MARTA's original engineering study. Gwinnett voters declined to join the system in 1971.
Gwinnett began its own bus service several years ago, with limited local routes and a handful of commuter express buses.
The 1990 plan envisioned a $700 million rail line extension to Gwinnett Place Mall with three new stations, including a park-and-ride lot in Norcross at Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Buford Highway.
MARTA's study will revisit that plan and determine whether any changes should be made.
Gwinnett has grown up, said Le'Vell, with dense pockets of development that could easily support a rail line or other form of mass transit.
Several developers have recently unveiled plans to build high-rise condominiums — a first for Gwinnett, he noted.
Meanwhile, traffic on I-85 and other major roads has reached critical mass, he said.
"There's a need to move people through that highly dense corridor other than [with] cars," Le'Vell said.
Talk of a MARTA sales tax in Gwinnett comes at a time of great uncertainty in transportation circles — and possible competition for new sales tax revenue.
The state Legislature is expected to discuss several measures to shore up transportation funding, including a statewide 1-cent sales tax and allowing regions to levy a sales tax.