Almost 150,000 Households Call in to Telephone Town Hall

Monday night’s telephone townhall meeting to gauge Gwinnett citizens' priorities for transportation projects revealed that citizens care about transit investment. 

A Regional Roundtable is currently working to draft a list of projects that will be included in the Transportation Investment Act, which citizens will vote on in July of 2012. The Act would create a one percent, 10-year sales tax for regional transportation projects, if passed.

The citizens were polled about their priorities by phone: Of those 147,700 households who called in, 20,927 participated in the polling, according to numbers released by Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson, who is the chair of the Regional Roundtable executive committee. 

Fifty nine percent of the citizens polled said they think it is “very important” that metro Atlanta increase its investment in transportation, with 25 percent responding that it “somewhat important” and 16 percent responding that it is “not important.”

When asked if they think transit is critical to the long-term success of the region, 64 percent responded with “yes.”

Exactly half of respondents said that connecting Gwinnett to Atlanta via light rail would be the most important transportation investment that the county could make. Another 17 percent thought that extending Sugarloaf Parkway from Scenic Route 316 to State Route 20 is the most important, while 33 percent chose neither.