By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

It's not enough to have a new Regional Transportation Plan aimed at reducing air quality problems in metro Atlanta, according to Atlanta Regional Commission officials.

Hand in glove with the transportation plan is a new Regional Development Plan for the ten-county metropolitan area, including Fayette.

ARC's Board of Directors approved the development plan in May, but recently has released “consumer-friendly” literature about the plan and will sponsor a series of workshops for local government officials to familiarize them with it.

Fourteen newly revised policies within the plan are “intended to serve as a guide for future regional growth,” according to a just-released color booklet on the plan.

“It is a big, big change in the direction we've been going,” said Julie Ralston, ARC's public information director. “We're talking about concentrating growth in the town centers and other `smart growth' techniques.”

Understanding the reasons for the changes is a matter of “doing the math,” according to the literature. Development in the Atlanta region consumed 132,920 acres from 1990 to 1995, it states. Population increased by 324,700 in the same time period, for a consumption rate of .409 acres per person, the booklet says.

That's equivalent to the land area in Douglas County.

If land consumption and population growth continue at the same rate, by 2020 an additional 526,464 acres will have been developed, covering an equivalent of Gwinnett, Rockdale and DeKalb counties combined.

To turn the tide toward fewer acres consumed for each new resident, ARC is recommending higher density development in city centers and more green space overall.

Mixed-use development will help cut down on the use of automobiles in everyday living, according to the plan.

“This really coincides with what the governor is pushing,” said Ralston. Gov. Roy Barnes has called for preservation of more green space throughout the state, especially in the Atlanta region.

Ralston said the idea is to create neighborhoods “where kids could walk on the sidewalk or ride a bike on the sidewalk to school, where people shop at the corner grocery. We're talking about live, work and play places where you don't have to drive so far.”

Workshops entitled Community Choices will kick off in January, she said, aimed at promoting the new development concepts at the local government level. “These will also involve the public,” said Ralston.

“It's a way to make these policies come alive at the grass roots level,” she added.