ATLANTA — Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said a fight over the state flag two decades ago cost Georgia a major highway project – and commuters today are paying for it.
Young admits he spent much of his career in politics on the wrong side of highway construction issues, which always draw lots of opposition.
Atlanta’s brutal traffic seemed just as bad a generation ago. In the mid-80s, state officials looked at a map, saw the I-285 perimeter – and pitched building an outer perimeter 20 or more miles further out.
Young, who was mayor of Atlanta at the time, liked what he saw.
"This would have been a perimeter 60 miles from the center of the city," Young said on Friday. "What that means is, all the trucks we’ve got going into Atlanta would have gone around Atlanta. Without the heavy truck traffic, this would have been a perfectly run city."
More than 20 years ago, then-Governor Roy Barnes started making plans to build the northern arc of the outer perimeter. But Barnes had also engineered a plan to change Georgia’s state flag, which had the heavy presence of the old confederate battle flag. In 2002, Barnes lost re-election to Sonny Perdue – and Perdue scotched the outer perimeter project.
"They got in a fight over the confederate flag and all this foolishness. And to me, that’s foolish. I prefer substance over symbols. So I would have let the flag go to keep the road," Young said, adding that this admission could cause him "trouble."
Young said the St. Andrew cross, which dominates the confederate battle flag, was rooted in 1500s Scotland. "For really (only) four years of the Civil War, it was a confederate battle flag. I don’t think that’s worth fighting over," Young said.
Young's career in public life began with 1960s Civil Rights campaigns against segregation and white supremacy in the South. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before becoming a member of congress and mayor of Atlanta. He will turn 90 in March.
Young said the outer perimeter was needed with the growth of Atlanta’s population and traffic.
"If I had to choose between spending an extra 45 minutes a day in traffic, and letting people have a [confederate] flag on the back of their car if they want it – 45 minutes of my life in traffic is a price I don’t want to have to pay, over a flag," Young said.