By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 12, 1998; Page A04

ATLANTA—The electronic sign stretched across the freeway flashed a familiar message one recent afternoon: Traffic ahead was moving "very slowly." Motorists in this booming region drive an average of 34 miles a day, highest in the nation, with the predictable result of frequent traffic jams filled with frustrated and angry drivers.

"If you are looking for southern hospitality, don't get on one of our freeways," said Harry West, director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, the region's central planning agency.

Relief, however, would seem to be on the way in the form of new federal highway legislation that is working its way through Congress. Under either the $217 billion House measure or the $214 billion Senate version, Georgia and metropolitan Atlanta, home of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R), are big winners, getting at least a 50 percent and as much as an 80 percent increase in federal transportation dollars over the next six years. Surely all that new money, and what it can build, will go a long way toward untangling the traffic mess.

Perhaps, but there are no guarantees here or in other major metropolitan areas that are suffering the consequences of years of rapid growth built around the automobile. Transportation decisions at the state level are no less complicated than they are in Washington, and more money does not automatically translate into solutions. Some officials even fear that the coming surge of federal funds will worsen three of Atlanta's most pressing problems: traffic congestion, air pollution and suburban sprawl.

While the two houses of Congress negotiate the details of the highway measure, including which "demonstration projects" are worthwhile and which are pure pork, the key decisions on how to spend the bulk of the money will not be made in Washington but in the 50 states. Those local decisions will be made within a web of sometimes conflicting federal and state mandates, financing restrictions that often make it easier to build more roads than other modes of transportation and political and economic pressures to continue traditional development patterns that are highly dependent on highway transportation.

Atlanta is one of more than a dozen metropolitan areas, including Denver, Las Vegas and Charlotte, N.C., that are threatened with restrictions or a loss of federal transportation funds because of air pollution problems. For at least the next two years -- or until regional officials come up with a transportation plan that the Environmental Protection Agency believes will reduce ozone levels from vehicle emissions -- new road projects that have not been "grandfathered" under EPA regulations will be prohibited in 13 counties around Atlanta.

Although Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) officials discount the possibility, West and others fear that this could lead to a shift of federal transportation dollars outside the 13-county area to other parts of the state, where the money can be spent without restriction. They are especially worried that much of the new money will be used to build roads just beyond the restricted zone, encouraging more growth on the fringes.

"The sprawl will just leapfrog out to the next layer of counties," West said. Which, he added, would exacerbate the air quality problem.

Like urban officials around the country, Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell believes his city cannot use the influx of federal funds "to pave our way out of these problems." Beginning in 1991, federal highway legislation has given state and local officials far more flexibility than in the past in deciding how to spend transportation money -- for example, on mass transit projects.

But at the state level, such shifts are not so easy. Most federally funded transportation projects require a 20 percent local match. In Georgia, the state constitution requires that the state gasoline tax be spent exclusively on roads and bridges, meaning that local matching funds for transit projects, bicycle paths and other alternatives must come from another source.

"While there is a lot of flexibility at the federal level, that flexibility is not necessarily present in the local match that ends up driving the project," said Jeffrey A. Rader, vice president of transportation programs for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 18 other states, including such high-growth areas as California, Florida and Texas, have similar constitutional restrictions on the use of gasoline tax revenue. Other jurisdictions, including Maryland, Virginia and the District, have laws that govern how gasoline tax revenue can be spent.

Atlanta has built a heavy rail system known as MARTA that is similar to Washington's Metro system, although most of it is above ground. Matching funds came from a local sales tax. But only two of the five counties authorized to be served by the system -- Fulton and DeKalb -- voted to impose the tax.

The result, said West, is that MARTA "is landlocked." The system can and probably will expand within the two counties, but unless there is a change in voter sentiment, no amount of federal funding will enable it to reach some of the fastest-growing suburban jurisdictions.

The irony for Atlanta is that it is facing these restrictions just at the moment that it stands to be among the big winners from the pending highway legislation. Under existing federal law, Georgia is one of 18 "donor states" in the South, Southwest and Midwest that pay more into the Federal Highway Trust Fund than they receive from Washington.

According to one calculation, Georgia gets back only 76 cents for every $1 its motorists provide to the trust fund, one of the lowest returns for any state. The new legislation will change the distribution formula, guaranteeing that no state will receive less than 91 cents in federal aid for every $1 of taxes paid.

One reason the Atlanta region suffers from the related problems of traffic congestion, air pollution and suburban sprawl has been its explosive growth. Between 1990 and 1997, the population within the 10 counties covered by the Atlanta Regional Commission increased from 2.5 million to more than 3 million -- almost all coming from outside the city.

But it has been uneven growth, a source of concern to Sam A. Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. In the past five years, he said, there has been a 40 percent increase in jobs north of the city, in an arc that stretches between Interstates 75 and 85, while job growth south of Atlanta was 19 percent and within the region's central core was only 4 percent.

Why? "Transportation," Williams said. "You build the roads and you'll create the development. More transportation spending has been done in that northern arc than in other areas," in part because the northern counties of Cobb and Gwinnett have enacted local sales taxes to fund transportation projects (but not an extension of the MARTA system).

Citing suburban fears that a rail link to the inner city would bring inner-city problems to their communities, Williams said, "Nobody wants to touch MARTA out there because of political and racial innuendos."

James Chapman, executive director of Georgians for Transportation Alternatives, is among those who see state and local financing restrictions as a key element in shaping transportation decisions after federal money flows from Washington. "The typical local response to a bicycle or pedestrian or transit project is to say we'd love to do it, but you know how stretched we are," he said. "But if the local government wanted to widen a road, they could generally rely on GDOT to supply the local match."

At 7.5 cents per gallon, Georgia's motor fuels tax is the lowest in the nation, another incentive to drive more. In 1991, a proposed state constitutional amendment would have allowed revenue generated by any increase in the tax to be spent on projects other than roads and bridges. The amendment was perceived as a tax increase and rejected 2 to 1.

State transportation officials supported the 1991 amendment, but they have adamantly opposed any attempt to lift the roads-and-bridges-only restriction on how the existing 7.5 cent tax is used. George Boulineau, director of planning and programming for GDOT, said removing the constitutional restriction "in theory sounds good."

"The problem is the 7.5 cents does not generate enough funds to cover all the needs for all the modes," he added. "It would really be creating a false expectation that funds would be created for transit and other modes when you don't have enough to meet all the capacity demands for highways."

Lawrence D. Frank, a city planning professor at Georgia Tech, said state transportation officials alone should not be blamed for the problems. "If you are going to hold the DOT responsible for its transportation investments," he said, "you have to hold local governments accountable for their land use decisions."

Frank said "every single pressure possible" will encourage transportation and land use decision makers to continue with business as usual here. These range from the state and local tax structure to the demands of local officials for more roads to spur more development that would enhance the local government's tax base. An increase in federal transportation funds "will cause a lot of political pressure from jurisdictions that are suffering from transportation problems," Frank said. "Everybody is going to want to build."

Atlanta, he added, has become an early test case of the federal government's ability to clean up dirty air while it still plays its traditional role of helping the states meet their transportation needs. "If a region continues to grow and invest in transportation in a manner that appears to be detrimental to meeting air quality objectives, will we continue to support and finance those planning decisions?" he asked. "That linkage is being tested here."