The proposed Powder Springs Connector in Marietta has essentially been dead since last summer, and the Marietta City Council did the right thing Wednesday by driving the final nail in its coffin.

The Atlanta Regional Commission had asked the city to update its list of future road projects in order that it could plug them into its master list/model to ensure that metro traffic conforms with federal air quality guidelines. The city could not obtain federal funding for any future road project unless it could show its impact on federal air quality regulations.

The council axed $1.8 million in SPLOST funding for the project last July. By doing so, it bucked then-Mayor Bill Dunaway, for whom the Connector was a pet project. The voted to spend the money instead on street improvements in front of the Marietta/Hilton Conference Center on Powder Springs Street, and left a token $1,000 earmarked for the Connector so as not to be in violation of SPLOST law.

Councilman Johnny Sinclair argued at Monday's City Council work session that the Connector should not be included on the ARC and, in effect, should be killed.

"My experience has always been that with a road project, if you let it begin in any way, if you ask to have a study done, you've started the road project's march, you've started the process," he said.

The Powder Springs Connector had been controversial almost since the moment it was first proposed. It would have connected Powder Springs Street on the city's west side with South Cobb Drive near Chattahoochee Technical College at an estimated cost of $15.4 million for the 1.5-mile road. Other funds for the road would have come from the county, state and federal governments.

Residents of the neighborhoods near the Connector were strongly against the road, predicting it would increase cut-through traffic into their streets.

New Mayor Steve Tumlin was against it as well.

"I'm a neighborhood guy," he said. "We've always got to be conscious of the impact on neighborhoods, and the Powder Springs Connector would impact Whitlock Heights and Charlton Forge adversely."

Moreover, the Cobb Board of Commissioners, which would have had to provide part of the money and much of the right-of-way for the road, was opposed to it as well.

And other critics have pointed out that the presumed need for the road would be greatly lessened by the four-lane Windy Hill/Macland Road Connector, which will provide west Cobb motorists a more direct route to I-75 and which is now under construction.

There was no need for the Powder Springs Connector when it was proposed, and there is no need for it now.