Pork I Can Agree With

From the AJC:

State leaders on Monday hailed Georgia's share of a massive federal transportation funding bill that adds $286 million a year in road and other improvements to the state's transportation budget.

"These are real numbers," said Gov. Sonny Perdue after exultant speeches by U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and state Transportation Board chairman David Doss at a news conference. "When everyone has their act together, this is the kind of benefit that we can enjoy and put together for meaningful projects."

The bill, approved Friday by Congress, designates $7.55 billion for Georgia over six years, adding an additional $286 million a year in transportation funds that the state didn't have before, according to state figures. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law soon. It is unclear when the projects would begin.

Included in that $7.55 billion are up to $350 million in "earmarked" projects that legislators got specifically written into the bill to bring home to their constituents. Transportation officials could not say which projects would have been funded with or without the bill. The money earmarked for work on Ga. 400 and I-285 at Ashford Dunwoody Road relieved Yvonne Williams, president of the Northside Community Improvement Districts. She said that she can't count the number of times she has been to Washington lobbying for the bill in the past five years.

If you didn't know, transportation is a huge issue in the state of Georgia. Case in point, Atlanta has the second highest miles of asphalt per-capita in the country, yet it has the fourth worst traffic congestion. And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder how much of this money is going to MARTA and the expansion of public tranportation throughout the state. In the long run, that would help alleviate the need for these billions of dollars to help fix Georgia's tranportation situation, which only gets worse as more people move down here. But oh well, I'll take it.