And another thing on that

Julie DeSa Lorenz from Jefferson is all over Glenn Richardson, the Georgia General Assembly's Speaker of the House for his comments on the 'Brain Train.'

Why? Well, quite possibly because he possesses such a short-sighted vision of alternative transportation and such little regard for both Athens-Clarke County and the metro Atlanta area.

The Athens-to-Atlanta commuter rail is a bipartisan attempt to not only reduce traffic flow between these two cities, but also to encourage viable mass transportation opportunities through the Northeast Georgia region. While it is far from a perfect proposal, it's a positive first step in the right direction to not only alleviate traffic, but also accommodate the growth in this area.

It's also more than a tad disconcerting to read that he thinks it was 'great' to 'lay down pieces of steel and move an object back and forth across it' in 1807, but not now. Someone should tell the speaker that railways were not introduced in the United States until the 1820s.

All Richardson's comments proved was that we have an elected official in a leadership position who not only has little vision for the future, but also apparently no concept of our past.