Fight brews over tab for highway lights
By ERIC STIRGUS , ARIEL HART
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, January 12, 2009
Atlanta’s highways could get much darker pretty soon.
The city now pays $1.2 million a year for lights on three interstate highways that cut through Atlanta and on Langford Parkway, but City Councilman Jim Maddox thinks the state or federal government should pay that bill. And if neither of those governments steps up, the lights would go out under the councilman’s legislation.
Parts of I-20 cut through the city limits of Atlanta. To save money, City Councilman Jim Maddox wants the state and federal governments, not Atlanta, to pay for lighting interstate highways.
Other local governments in metro Atlanta, scouring their budgets for savings in a brutal economy, could follow suit.
Parts of I-20, I-75 and I-85 go through Atlanta’s city limits. That includes complicated — and potentially dangerous — multi-lane stretches of the Downtown Connector, where I-85 and I-75 converge and drivers weave between HOV and exit lanes branching and curving in and out. It carries 380,000 vehicles a day, many of them from out of state.
Several motorists say Maddox should hit the brakes on that idea.
“I don’t think that would work,” said Tucker resident Deborah Harrington, 42, who uses the connector to get to work and to visit her mother, who lives in Atlanta. “Even though you’d have your car lights on, it’d still be too dark.”
Maddox, Atlanta’s longest-serving councilman, wants to save the city money as it grapples with what he describes as a financial “crisis.” Mayor Shirley Franklin last month laid off 222 employees, slashed payrolls by 10 percent and made cuts to most city services to cover a projected $50 million revenue shortfall.
Since it’s a federal highway controlled by the state, “they should pay for it,” said Maddox, who’s been on the council since 1976. “That’s one million to offset the cutbacks.”
Atlanta is a hub for freight and motorists traveling from the Northeast, Midwest, coastal ports and other parts of the South.
The interstate highways are owned and operated by the states, and in Georgia the state Department of Transportation builds, repaves and maintains them. At the local jurisdiction’s request, DOT may pay to install lights, but in most instances the local government will have to pay the power bill. DOT does pay the bill for a Downtown Connector tunnel by the Capitol, said spokeswoman Crystal Paulk-Buchanan. But the state currently has no intention of picking up the tab for the city’s other lights, she said.
National highway lighting guidelines are voluntary, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration said. AAA Auto Club South spokesman Gregg Laskoski said having no lights on these highways would create safety hazards.
Motorists, he said, might be caught off-guard when driving from a lighted highway to one that is not. And many interstate exits have twists and turns that can be tough to navigate without proper lighting.
“That million dollars spent on lighting might be the best million dollars spent anywhere,” Laskoski said.
Maddox noted many stretches of interstate outside Atlanta are not lighted. As for concerns that turning off the lights would cause more collisions, Maddox said “that’s why cars are supposed to have their lights on.”
Atlanta resident Michael Jones, filling up his BMW on Friday near the Downtown Connector, believes the city bears some responsibility for maintaining the lights for stretches of the highways that run through its boundaries.
“The roadways are in the city of Atlanta, and it’s up to all of us to make sure that they’re safe,” said Jones. “I don’t know of any suburban roads with 10 lanes and speeds of 70 mph.”
Maddox’s resolution outlining his plan, introduced to the City Council last week, will be reviewed by the council’s Finance/Executive committee on Wednesday.
Atlanta isn’t the only jurisdiction taking a hard look at its road lighting bill because of the economy.
“That’s obviously one of the things that’s on the table,” said Brian Allen, director of transportation for Gwinnett County, which lights parts of interchanges with I-85 at Sugarloaf Parkway and Ga. 316.
“I think a lot of governments are in that situation right now,” Allen said. “It may be more important to keep ambulances and fire trucks running than it is to have interstate lights.”
John Gurbal, director of public works in DeKalb County, says DeKalb has not yet considered whether to turn off highway lights, but could.
“It’s a safety issue, so you can’t ignore that,” said Gurbal. But “do all the lights need to be on? That’s a whole other deal.”
Not every inch of roadway needs a light if cars’ headlights are working, safety experts say. Research is ambiguous on the benefits of lighting “in-between stretches,” said John Bullough, but more consistent in saying there’s a benefit to lighting interchanges. Bullough’s Transportation Lighting Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., is working on a study to fill gaps in the research now.
Paulk-Buchanan said the state generally doesn’t pay to light the interstates because safety research doesn’t call for it. DOT collects crash data on Georgia interstates, but apparently has never used it to study whether lighting seems to prevent crashes here, she said.
Whatever decision governments make, “the overriding goal should be to maintain safety,” said Bob Dallas, director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, who agreed not all stretches of road need lights. If necessary, lights are shut off, he said, “You run the risk that you’ll have additional crashes. That’s really what it comes down to.”
