How many lives must be lost before we make Peachtree Street permanently safer?

Since the hasty demise of the Peachtree Street shared space project in downtown Atlanta, in 2022, it has always seemed like a matter of time before this action would lead to a preventable death. On Feb. 11 it happened, when Pradeep Sood, 67, a merchant at nearby AmericasMart, was hit by a driver while crossing Peachtree Street and died as a result of his injuries.

He was crossing at the faded crosswalk at the heart of Peachtree Center and at the heart of the now-scuttled project, a place where many others cross daily as well. During the shared-space pilot, the street was narrowed to two lanes, and drivers tended to slow down. Since the return to “normal,” the street has resumed its four-lane configuration, with frequently speeding traffic.

It’s now clear — if it wasn’t before — that “normal” isn’t good enough.

In downtown Atlanta, as in many American downtowns, what we consider “normal” is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to WWII, though American cities were hardly idyllic — marred by racial inequality, redlining and segregation — urban centers were nonetheless bustling, walkable places, well-served by streetcar and bus transit. Going even further back, to the 1920s, the automotive industry had to invent the crime of “jaywalking” so its vehicles could assume primacy on urban streets, a ranking we now take for granted.

As Michael Scaturro accurately notes in the AJC: “The issue of pedestrian safety dates to the 1960s, when downtown was redeveloped so commuters could enter and depart on wide roads designed for speedy access to highways. Many suburbanites who work in the city want to keep it that way.”

This story has been written again and again. White people with the means to do so fled city centers for suburbs, then demanded access to cities on their own terms. And that convenience has been won at the exorbitant cost of increased injury and death on city streets. Meanwhile, the interventions in downtown Atlanta — expressways that tore apart neighborhoods, one-way streets that encourage high speeds, and the dismantling of a once robust streetcar network that delivered workers, shoppers and tourists to downtown streets — have done little to promote livability or, arguably, economic vitality.  

Despite the resistance of certain moneyed interests, we believe the tide is turning, and must turn toward returning city streets to people, instead of speeding vehicles. If we didn’t realize before that lives were at stake, we all should realize it now. 

Instead of re-creating a safe crossing, the city’s immediate response has been to remove the faded crosswalk entirely — a move in the wrong direction which will only remove liability, not the desire of people to cross the street. In fact, the existence of this crosswalk in the first place was in response to the reality that people were already crossing in this spot regardless of infrastructure.

The street is also slated for resurfacing this year — the administration’s preparations for the World Cup include repaving streets without implementing planned projects, despite our efforts and those of City Council to prevent that. Current plans for the resurfacing do not include safer crossings, but legislation introduced by the area Councilmember, Amir Farokhi, calls on the Mayor to reinstall a permanent crosswalk

There are also funded plans in the pipeline that may make a difference. The Moving Atlanta Forward infrastructure package includes a Peachtree Street Safe Street project, essentially a permanent version of the Shared Peachtree pilot, with a May 2025 — January 2027 timeline that we acknowledge may be overly optimistic.

Meanwhile, the Stitch, the ambitious, federally-funded project to cap Atlanta’s Downtown Connector between midtown and downtown, is moving forward, with a public comment period underway.

As recent events have shown, time is not on our side. The longer we leave streets in their “normal,” high-speed, car-oriented state, the more we risk injury and death for all street users: people walking, cycling, using micromobility — and driving. 

It’s a price we shouldn’t have to pay.